Who said that crime is normal

If crime does not occur then it is impossible for a society to define its own moral boundaries. With out this there would not be social consensus, which is needed to hold a society together. I agree with Durkheim when he says that in all societies there is crime. I find it hard to think of a functioning society with zero criminal activity when people are born into certain lifestyles that involve committing crimes to survive or committing crimes is a way of life.

People will sometimes do what ever it takes to meet the needs of survival, needs or wants. An example is stealing. There are some that steal to gain items of material goods jewelry but then there are those who steal to survive food. Either of them are willing to commit a crime to get what they need or want, which goes against most moralistic values that stealing is wrong. Having this idea makes it easier for us to punish those who do wrong, which hold our social moral values together, making our society strong.

Pavlich, G. Filed under Musing. Fair enough. Crime, as we know it — an act that violates codified laws administered by a bureaucratic state and subject to formal sanction — is linked to the modern and late modern socio-historical contexts. Deviance is relative to the "level" at which one is operating. Key insight here is that questions of deviance and social control are always tied up with questions of social units, boundaries, and identity.

Assertion V. Communities are boundary maintaining. This means that communities identify themselves in terms of where they are and where they are not, in terms of what they do and what they do not do. Think back, for a minute, to our discussion of etiquette.

The old meaning of etiquette was "a ticket into society" — we might, for a moment, modify this: etiquette is a passport that allows us to cross boundaries in order to enter the space of various social units. One way to see this is to note that any and all talk of community or group is implicitly talk of not-community or not-group.

In terms of behavior, any US will have a particular "radius of activity" which includes all those forms of conduct which are consonant with being a good, upstanding, acceptable US. Any activity that falls outside this radius is considered inappropriate, distasteful, or immoral.

Consider, for example, a campus group dedicated to pro-choice. Which of the following might enjoy membership in this club? Someone who believed abortion should be legal in all situations.

Consider, in this same regard, the question of who should be allowed to run for office on the reform party ticket, or, for that matter, on the democratic or republican ticket. What criteria might be used to figure out the difference between a reform minded republican and a conservative democrat?

Or for a third example, how many of you know the difference between a footnoted quotation and plagiarism? We know the difference between extremes, but middle ground cases give us headaches. We can sit here and have a philosophical discussion about these things, but most folks don't have time for such things most of the time.

Question: How, then, do social groups help their members to know what the "radius of activity" is for the various communities of which they are a part? Answer: The occasional "big" event wars, pageants, etc. There has been a shift in recent centuries away from punishment as spectacle in which the king demonstrated his power for all of his subjects by public torture and humiliation of his enemies, but don't let this seduce you into thinking that the "dramatization" of "good" vs.

It's all around us all the time. Same process, different instruments. Share on. Create account or Sign in. Social Control Spring File name File type Size crime-is-normal. Schoepflin theorized that, although viewed as outside conventional norms, driving a hearse is such a mild form of deviance that it actually becomes a mark of distinction.

Conformists find the choice of vehicle intriguing or appealing, while nonconformists see a fellow oddball to whom they can relate. When a person violates a social norm, what happens? A driver caught speeding can receive a speeding ticket. A student who texts in class gets a warning from a professor. An adult belching loudly is avoided. All societies practise social control , the regulation and enforcement of norms. Think of social order as an employee handbook and social control as the incentives and disincentives used to encourage or oblige employees to follow those rules.

When a worker violates a workplace guideline, the manager steps in to enforce the rules. One means of enforcing rules are through sanctions.

Sanctions can be positive as well as negative. Positive sanctions are rewards given for conforming to norms. A promotion at work is a positive sanction for working hard. Negative sanctions are punishments for violating norms. Being arrested is a punishment for shoplifting.

Both types of sanctions play a role in social control. Sociologists also classify sanctions as formal or informal. Informal sanctions emerge in face-to-face social interactions.

For example, wearing flip-flops to an opera or swearing loudly in church may draw disapproving looks or even verbal reprimands, whereas behaviour that is seen as positive—such as helping an old man carry grocery bags across the street—may receive positive informal reactions, such as a smile or pat on the back.

Formal sanctions , on the other hand, are ways to officially recognize and enforce norm violations. If a student plagiarizes the work of others or cheats on an exam, for example, he or she might be expelled. Someone who speaks inappropriately to the boss could be fired. Someone who commits a crime may be arrested or imprisoned. On the positive side, a soldier who saves a life may receive an official commendation, or a CEO might receive a bonus for increasing the profits of his or her corporation.

Not all forms of social control are adequately understood through the use of sanctions, however. Black identifies four key styles of social control, each of which defines deviance and the appropriate response to it in a different manner. Penal social control functions by prohibiting certain social behaviours and responding to violations with punishment. Compensatory social control obliges an offender to pay a victim to compensate for a harm committed.

Therapeutic social control involves the use of therapy to return individuals to a normal state. Conciliatory social control aims to reconcile the parties of a dispute and mutually restore harmony to a social relationship that has been damaged.

While penal and compensatory social controls emphasize the use of sanctions, therapeutic and conciliatory social controls emphasize processes of restoration and healing.

Michel Foucault notes that from a period of early modernity onward, European society became increasingly concerned with social control as a practice of government Foucault In this sense of the term, government does not simply refer to the activities of the state, but to all the practices by which individuals or organizations seek to govern the behaviour of others or themselves.

Government refers to the strategies by which one seeks to direct or guide the conduct of another or others. These treatises described the burgeoning arts of government, which defined the different ways in which the conduct of individuals or groups might be directed. The common theme in the various arts of governing proposed in early modernity was the extension of Christian monastic practices involving the detailed and continuous government and salvation of souls.

The principles of monastic government were applied to a variety of non-monastic areas. People needed to be governed in all aspects of their lives. 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.

Foucault describes these modern forms of government as disciplinary social control because they each rely on the detailed continuous training, control, and observation of individuals to improve their capabilities: to transform criminals into law abiding citizens, children into educated and productive adults, recruits into disciplined soldiers, patients into healthy people, etc.

Foucault argues that the ideal of discipline as a means of social control is to render individuals docile. That does not mean that they become passive or sheep-like, but that disciplinary training simultaneously increases their abilities, skills, and usefulness while making them more compliant and manipulable.

The chief components of disciplinary social control in modern institutions like the prison and the school are surveillance, normalization, and examination Foucault Surveillance refers to the various means used to make the lives and activities of individuals visible to authorities. In this way, Bentham proposed, social control could become automatic because prisoners would be induced to monitor their own behaviour. Similarly, in a school classroom, students sit in rows of desks immediately visible to the teacher at the front of the room.

In a store, shoppers can be observed through one-way glass or video monitors. Contemporary surveillance expands the capacity for observation using video or electronic forms of surveillance to render the activities of a population visible. London, England, holds the dubious honour of being the most surveilled city in the world.

The practice of normalization refers to the way in which norms, such as the level of math ability expected from a grade 2 student, are first established and then used to assess, differentiate, and rank individuals according to their abilities an A student, B student, C student, etc. Minor sanctions are used to continuously modify behaviour that does not comply with correct conduct: rewards are applied for good behaviour and penalties for bad.

Periodic examinations through the use of tests in schools, medical examinations in hospitals, inspections in prisons, year-end reviews in the workplace, etc. On the basis of examinations, individuals can be subjected to different disciplinary procedures more suited to them. Gifted children might receive an enriched educational program, whereas poorer students might receive remedial lessons.

Foucault describes disciplinary social control as a key mechanism in creating a normalizing society. The establishment of norms and the development of disciplinary procedures to correct deviance from norms become increasingly central to the organization and operation of institutions from the 19th century onward.

Whereas the use of formal laws, courts , and the police come into play only when laws are broken, disciplinary techniques enable the continuous and ongoing social control of an expanding range of activities in our lives through surveillance, normalization, and examination. While we may never encounter the police for breaking a law, if we work, go to school, or end up in hospital, we are routinely subject to disciplinary control through most of the day.

Why does deviance occur? How does it affect a society? Since the early days of sociology, scholars have developed theories attempting to explain what deviance and crime mean to society. These theories can be grouped according to the three major sociological paradigms: functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theory.

Sociologists who follow the functionalist approach are concerned with how the different elements of a society contribute to the whole. They view deviance as a key component of a functioning society. Social disorganization theory, strain theory, and cultural deviance theory represent three functionalist perspectives on deviance in society.

Moreover, Durkheim noted, when deviance is punished, it reaffirms currently held social norms, which also contributes to society Developed by researchers at the University of Chicago in the s and s, social disorganization theory asserts that crime is most likely to occur in communities with weak social ties and the absence of social control.

Rather than deviance being a force that reinforces moral and social solidarity, it is the absence of moral and social solidarity that provides the conditions for social deviance to emerge. Early Chicago School sociologists used an ecological model to map the zones in Chicago where high levels of social problem were concentrated.

During this period, Chicago was experiencing a long period of economic growth, urban expansion, and foreign immigration. They were particularly interested in the zones of transition between established working class neighbourhoods and the manufacturing district. They proposed that these zones were particularly prone to social disorder because the residents had not yet assimilated to the American way of life. When they did assimilate they moved out, making it difficult for a stable social ecology to become established there.

Social disorganization theory points to broad social factors as the cause of deviance. A person is not born a criminal, but becomes one over time, often based on factors in his or her social environment. According to Hirschi, social control is directly affected by the strength of social bonds.

Many people would be willing to break laws or act in deviant ways to reap the rewards of pleasure, excitement, and profit, etc. Those who do have the opportunity are those who are only weakly controlled by social restrictions. Individuals who believe they are a part of society are less likely to commit crimes against it.

Hirschi identified four types of social bonds that connect people to society:. An individual who grows up in a poor neighbourhood with high rates of drug use, violence, teenage delinquency, and deprived parenting is more likely to become a criminal than an individual from a wealthy neighbourhood with a good school system and families who are involved positively in the community.

Research into social disorganization theory can greatly influence public policy. For instance, 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.

In the same way, the Chicago School sociologists focused their efforts on community programs designed to help assimilate new immigrants into North American culture. However, in proposing that social disorganization is essentially a moral problem—that it is shared moral values that hold communities together and prevent crime and social disorder—questions about economic inequality, racism, and power dynamics do not get asked.

From birth, we are encouraged to achieve the goal of financial success. A woman who attends business school, receives her MBA, and goes on to make a million-dollar income as CEO of a company is said to be a success.

However, not everyone in our society stands on equal footing. A person may have the socially acceptable goal of financial success but lack a socially acceptable way to reach that goal. The 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. Merton defined five ways that people adapt to this gap between having a socially accepted goal but no socially accepted way to pursue it.

As many youth from poor backgrounds are exposed to the high value placed on material success in capitalist society but face insurmountable odds to achieving it, turning to illegal means to achieve success is a rational, if deviant, solution.

Critical sociology looks to social and economic factors as the causes of crime and deviance. As a result of inequality, many crimes can be understood as crimes of accommodation , or ways in which individuals cope with conditions of oppression Quinney Predatory crimes like break and enters, robbery, and drug dealing are often simply economic survival strategies.

Personal crimes like murder, assault, and sexual assault are products of the stresses and strains of living under stressful conditions of scarcity and deprivation. Defensive crimes like economic sabotage, illegal strikes, civil disobedience, and eco-terrorism are direct challenges to social injustice. The analysis of critical sociologists is not meant to excuse or rationalize crime, but to locate its underlying sources at the appropriate level so that they can be addressed effectively.

Institutions of normalization and the criminal justice system have to be seen in context as mechanisms that actively maintain the power structure of the political-economic order. The rich, the powerful, and the privileged have unequal influence on who and what gets labelled deviant or criminal, particularly in instances when their privilege is being challenged.

As capitalist society is based on the institution of private property, for example, it is not surprising that theft is a major category of crime. By the same token, when street people, addicts, or hippies drop out of society, they are labelled deviant and are subject to police harassment because they have refused to participate in productive labour. On the other hand, the ruthless and sometimes sociopathic behaviour of many business people and politicians, otherwise regarded as deviant according to the normative codes of society, is often rewarded or regarded with respect.

In his book The Power Elite , 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.

Wealthy executives, politicians, celebrities, and military leaders often have access to national and international power, and in some cases, their decisions affect everyone in society.

Because of this, the rules of society are stacked in favour of a privileged few who manipulate them to stay on top. It is these people who decide what is criminal and what is not, and the effects are often felt most by those who have little power. While functionalist theories often emphasize crime and deviance associated with the underprivileged, there is in fact no clear evidence that crimes are committed disproportionately by the poor or lower classes.

There is an established association between the underprivileged and serious street crimes like armed robbery and assault, but these do not constitute the majority of crimes in society, nor the most serious crimes in terms of their overall social, personal, and environmental effects.

On the other hand, crimes committed by the wealthy and powerful remain an underpunished and costly problem within society. White-collar or corporate crime refers to crimes committed by corporate employees or owners in the pursuit of profit or other organization goals. They are more difficult to detect because the transactions take place in private and are more difficult to prosecute because the criminals can secure expert legal advice on how to bend the rules.

PricewaterhouseCoopers reports that 36 percent of Canadian companies were subject to white-collar crime in theft, fraud, embezzlement, cybercrime. Recent high-profile Ponzi scheme and investment frauds run into tens of millions of dollars each, destroying investors retirement savings.

These were highly publicized cases in which jail time was demanded by the public although as nonviolent offenders the perpetrators are eligible for parole after serving one-sixth of their sentence. However, in — prison sentences were nearly twice as likely for the typically lower-class perpetrators of break and enters 59 percent as they were for typically middle- and upper-class perpetrators of fraud 35 percent Boyce This imbalance based on class power can also be put into perspective with respect to homicide rates Samuelson In , there were homicides in Canada recorded by police, an average of 1.

This is an extremely serious crime, which merits the attention given to it by the criminal justice system. However, in there were also 1, workplace deaths that were, in principle, preventable. Canadians work on average days a year, meaning that there were on average five workplace deaths a day for every working day in Sharpe and Hardt Estimates from the United States suggest that only one-third of on-the-job deaths and injuries can be attributed to worker carelessness Samuelson In , 51 percent of the workplace deaths in Canada were due to occupational diseases like cancers from exposure to asbestos Sharpe and Hardt The Ocean Ranger oil-rig collapse that killed 84 workers off Newfoundland in and the Westray mine explosion that killed 26 workers in Nova Scotia in were due to design flaws and unsafe working conditions that were known to the owners.

However, whereas corporations are prosecuted for regulatory violations governing health and safety, it is rare for corporations or corporate officials to be prosecuted for the consequences of those violations. Corporate crime is arguably a more serious type of crime than street crime, and yet white-collar criminals are treated relatively leniently. Fines, when they are imposed, are typically absorbed as a cost of doing business and passed on to consumers, and many crimes, from investment fraud to insider trading and price fixing, are simply not prosecuted.

From a critical sociology point of view, this is because white-collar crime is committed by elites who are able to use their power and financial resources to evade punishment. Here are some examples:. Women who are regarded as criminally deviant are often seen as being doubly deviant. For example, in the late 19th century, kleptomania was a diagnosis used in legal defences that linked an extreme desire for department store commodities with various forms of female physiological or psychiatric illness.

Feminist analysis focuses on the way gender inequality influences the opportunities to commit crime and the definition, detection, and prosecution of crime. In part the gender difference revolves around patriarchal attitudes toward women and the disregard for matters considered to be of a private or domestic nature. For example, until , abortion was illegal in Canada, meaning that hundreds of women died or were injured each year when they received illegal abortions McLaren and McLaren It was not until the Supreme Court ruling in that struck down the law that it was acknowledged that women are capable of making their own choice, in consultation with a doctor, about the procedure.

Similarly, until the s, two major types of criminal deviance were largely ignored or were difficult to prosecute as crimes: sexual assault and spousal assault. In the Criminal Code was amended to replace the crimes of rape and indecent assault with a three-tier structure of sexual assault ranging from unwanted sexual touching that violates the integrity of the victim to sexual assault with a weapon or threats or causing bodily harm to aggravated sexual assault that results in wounding, maiming, disfiguring, or endangering the life of the victim Kong et al.

Johnson reported that in the mids, when violence against women began to be surveyed systematically in Canada, 51 percent of Canadian women had been the subject to at least one sexual or physical assault since the age of The goal of the amendments was to emphasize that sexual assault is an act of violence, not a sexual act.

Previously, rape had been defined as an act that involved penetration and was perpetrated against a woman who was not the wife of the accused. This had excluded spousal sexual assault as a crime and had also exposed women to secondary victimization by the criminal justice system when they tried to bring charges.

In particular feminists challenged the twin myths of rape that were often the subtext of criminal justice proceedings presided over largely by men Kramar The first myth is that women are untrustworthy and tend to lie about assault out of malice toward men, as a way of getting back at them for personal grievances. The girl, of course, could not consent in the legal sense, but nonetheless was a willing participant.

The accused and his wife were somewhat estranged cited in Kramar Consent to sexual discourse was redefined as what a woman actually says or does, not what the man believes to be consent.

Feminists also argued that spousal assault was a key component of patriarchal power. Typically it was hidden in the household and largely regarded as a private, domestic matter in which police were reluctant to get involved. Interestingly women and men report similar rates of spousal violence—in , 6 percent had experienced spousal violence in the previous five years—but women are more likely to experience more severe forms of violence including multiple victimizations and violence leading to physical injury Sinha In order to empower women, feminists pressed lawmakers to develop zero-tolerance policies that would support aggressive policing and prosecution of offenders.

These policies oblige police to lay charges in cases of domestic violence when a complaint is made, whether or not the victim wished to proceed with charges Kramar In , 84 percent of violent spousal incidents reported by women to police resulted in charges being laid. However, according to victimization surveys only 30 percent of actual incidents were reported to police. The majority of women who did not report incidents to the police stated that they dealt with them in another way, felt they were a private matter, or did not think the incidents were important enough to report.

A significant proportion, however, did not want anyone to find out 44 percent , did not want their spouse to be arrested 40 percent , or were too afraid of their spouse 19 percent Sinha Social groups and authorities create deviance by first making the rules and then applying them to people who are thereby labelled as outsiders Becker Deviance is not an intrinsic quality of individuals but is created through the social interactions of individuals and various authorities.

Deviance is something that, in essence, is learned. In the early s, sociologist Edwin Sutherland sought to understand how deviant behaviour developed among people. Since criminology was a young field, he drew on other aspects of sociology including social interactions and group learning Laub His conclusions established differential association theory , stating that individuals learn deviant behaviour from those close to them who provide models of and opportunities for deviance.

According to Sutherland, deviance is less a personal choice and more a result of differential socialization processes. A tween whose friends are sexually active is more likely to view sexual activity as acceptable. Becker paid his way through graduate studies by performing as a jazz pianist and took the opportunity to study his fellow musicians. He conducted 50 interviews and noted that becoming a marijuana user involved a social process of initiation into a deviant role that could not be accounted for by either the physiological properties of marijuana or the psychological needs for escape, fantasy, etc.

Regular marijuana use was a social achievement that required the individual to pass through three distinct stages. Failure to do so meant that the individual would not assume the deviant role as a regular user of marijuana. Firstly, individuals had to learn to smoke marijuana in a way that would produce real effects.

Many first-time users do not feel the effects. If they are not shown how to inhale the smoke or how much to smoke, they might not feel the drug had any effect on them. Although people might display different symptoms of intoxication—feeling hungry, elated, rubbery, etc. Through listening to experienced users talk about their experiences, novices are able to locate the same type of sensations in their own experience and notice something qualitatively different going on.

Thirdly, they had to learn how to enjoy the sensations: they had to learn how to define the situation of getting high as pleasurable. Smoking marijuana is not necessarily pleasurable and often involves uncomfortable experiences like loss of control, impaired judgment, distorted perception, and paranoia.

Unless the experiences can be redefined as pleasurable the individual will not become a regular user. Often experienced users are able to coach novices through difficulties and encourage them by telling them they will learn to like it.

It is through differential association with a specific set of individuals that a person learns and assumes a deviant role. The role needs to be learned and its value recognized before it can become routine or normal for the individual. Although all of us violate norms from time to time, few people would consider themselves deviant. Labelling theory examines the ascribing of a deviant behaviour to another person by members of society.

Thus, what is considered deviant is determined not so much by the behaviours themselves or the people who commit them, but by the reactions of others to these behaviours. As a result, what is considered deviant changes over time and can vary significantly across cultures. It is important to note that labelling theory does not address the initial motives or reasons for the rule-breaking behaviour, which might be unknowable, but the importance of its social consequences. It does not attempt to answer the question why people break the rules or why they are deviant so much as why particular acts or particular individuals are labelled deviant while others are not.

How do certain acts get labelled deviant and what are the consequences? Sociologist Edwin Lemert expanded on the concepts of labelling theory, identifying two types of deviance that affect identity formation. Speeding is a deviant act, but receiving a speeding ticket generally does not make others view you as a bad person, nor does it alter your own self-concept.

Individuals who engage in primary deviance still maintain a feeling of belonging in society and are likely to continue to conform to norms in the future. Sometimes, in more extreme cases, primary deviance can morph into secondary deviance. For example, consider a high school student who often cuts class and gets into fights. Secondary deviance can be so strong that it bestows a master status on an individual. A master status is a label that describes the chief characteristic of an individual.

Some people see themselves primarily as doctors, artists, or grandfathers. Others see themselves as beggars, convicts, or addicts. In the second case, being labelled a juvenile delinquent sets up a set of responses to the teenager by police and authorities that lead to criminal charges, more severe penalties, and a process of socialization into the criminal identity. In detention in particular, individuals learn how to assume the identity of serious offenders as they interact with hardened, long-term inmates within the prison culture Wheeler The act of imprisonment itself modifies behaviour, to make individuals more criminal.

Judges were also found to be more likely to impose harsher penalties on teenagers from divorced families. Unsurprisingly, Cicourel noted that subsequent research conducted on the social characteristics of teenagers who were charged and processed as juvenile delinquents found that children from divorced families were more likely to be charged and processed. Divorced families were seen as a cause of youth crime. This set up a vicious circle in which the research confirmed the prejudices of police and judges who continued to label, arrest, and convict the children of divorced families disproportionately.

The labelling process acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy in which police found what they expected to see. The sociological study of crime, deviance, and social control is especially important with respect to public policy debates.