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Daryl Bambic

Chapter 7. Deviance, Crime, and Social Control | Introduction to Sociology - ... - 0 views

  • personality disorder
  • anti-social behaviour, diminished empathy, and lack of inhibitions.
  • term psychopathy is often used to emphasize that the source of the disorder is internal, based on psychological, biological, or genetic factors, whereas sociopathy is used to emphasize predominant social factors in the disorder: the social or familial sources of its development and the inability to be social or abide by societal rules (Hare 1999).
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  • ociopathy
  • sociological disease par excellence.
  • Cesare Lombroso
  • positivist criminology who thought he had isolated specific physiological characteristics of “degeneracy”
  • James Fallon
  • lack of brain activity has been linked with specific genetic markers
  • environment, and not just genes
  • psychopathy and sociopathy are recognized as problematic forms of deviance because of prevalent social anxieties about serial killers as types of criminal who “live next door” or blend in.
  • we do not know our neighbours well
  • deviance is a violation of established contextual, cultural, or social norms, whether folkways, mores, or codified law
  • Folkways
  • Mores
  • laws are norms that are specified in explicit codes and enforced by government bodies
  • rime is therefore an act of deviance that breaks not only a norm, but a law. Deviance can be as minor as picking one’s nose in public or as major as committing murder.
  • Firstly, deviance is defined by its social context. To understand why some acts are deviant and some are not, it is necessary to understand what the context is, what the existing rules are, and how these rules came to be established
  • Whether an act is deviant or not depends on society’s definition of that act
  • deviance is not an intrinsic (biological or psychological) attribute of individuals, nor of the acts themselves, but a product of social processes.
  • moral entrepreneurs
  • individuals’ deviant status is ascribed to them through social processes
  • even when these beliefs about kinds of persons are products of objective scientific classification, the institutional context of science and expert knowledge is not independent of societal norms, beliefs, and practices
  • Crime and deviance are social constructs that vary according to the definitions of crime, the forms and effectiveness of policing, the social characteristics of criminals, and the relations of power that structure society
  • social control,
  • organized action intended to change people’s behaviour
  • maintain social order,
  • enforcing rules are through sanctions
  • Positive
  • Negative
  • formal or informal
  • Formal sanctions
  • Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532),
  • It was not, however, until the 19th century and the invention of modern institutions like the prison, the public school, the modern army, the asylum, the hospital, and the factory, that the means for extending government and social control widely through the population were developed.
  • disciplinary social control 
  • Foucault argues that the ideal of discipline as a means of social control is to render individuals docile.
  • The chief components of disciplinary social control in modern institutions like the prison and the school are surveillance, normalization, and examination
  • seeing machine.
  • rows of desks
  • one-way glass or video monitors.
  • normalization
  • examinations
  • disciplinary social control as a key mechanism in creating a normalizing society.
  • One way deviance is functional, he argued, is that it challenges people’s present views
  • which also contributes to society
  • crime is most likely to occur in communities with weak social ties and the absence of social control.
  • cial disorganization theor
  • A person is not born a criminal, but becomes one over time, often based on factors in his or her social environment.
  • Individuals who believe they are a part of society are less likely to commit crimes against it.
  • Attachment
  • Commitment
  • involvement,
  • belief,
  • studies have found that children from disadvantaged communities who attend preschool programs that teach basic social skills are significantly less likely to engage in criminal activity
  • strain theory
  • that access to socially acceptable goals plays a part in determining whether a person conforms or deviates.
  • Critical sociology looks to social and economic factors as the causes of crime and deviance.
  • but as evidence of inequality in the system.
  • accommodatio
  • discrepancy between the reality of structural inequality and the high cultural value of economic success creates a strain that has to be resolved by some means.
  • consensus crimes
  • Conflict crime
  • Social deviations
  • social diversion
  • The second sociological insight
  • ndividuals are not born deviant, but become deviant through their interaction with reference groups, institutions, and authorities
  • t is not simply a matter of the events that lead authorities to define an activity or category of persons deviant, but of the processes by which individuals come to recognize themselves as deviant.
  • Once a category of deviance has been established and applied to a person, that person begins to define himself or herself in terms of this category and behave accordingly
  • The major issue is not that labels are arbitrary or that it is possible not to use labels at all, but that the choice of label has consequences.
  • Government refers to the strategies by which one seeks to direct or guide the conduct of another or others.
  • differential association theory, stating that individuals learn deviant behaviour from those close to them who provide models of and opportunities for deviance.
  • White-collar or corporate crime
  • sociologist C. Wright Mills described the existence of what he dubbed the power elite, a small group of wealthy and influential people at the top of society who hold the power and resources.
  • their decisions affect everyone in society
  • The goal of the amendments was to emphasize that sexual assault is an act of violence, not a sexual act
  • secondary victimization
  • Women who are regarded as criminally deviant are often seen as being  doubly deviant. They have broken the laws but they have also broken gender norms about appropriate female behaviour, whereas men’s criminal behaviour is seen as consistent with their aggressive, self-assertive character
  • medicalize
  • n part the gender difference revolves around patriarchal attitudes toward women and the disregard for matters considered to be of a private or domestic nature
  • 1970s, women worked to change the criminal justice system and establish rape crisis centres and battered women’s shelters, bringing attention to domestic violence.
  • Interestingly women and men report similar rates of spousal violence
  • more a result of differential socialization processes.
  • Labelling Theory
  • Labelling theory examines the ascribing of a deviant behaviour to another person by members of society.
  • not so much by the behaviours themselves or the people who commit them, but by the reactions of others to these behaviours.
  • Secondary deviance can be so strong that it bestows a master status on an individual
  • Primary deviance is a violation of norms that does not result in any long-term effects on the individual’s self-image or interactions with others
  • Secondary deviance occurs when a person’s self-concept and behaviour begin to change after his or her actions are labelled as deviant by members of society.
  • The criminal justice system is ironically one of the primary agencies of socialization into the criminal “career path.”
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