14 January 2012
Crime can be defined as the form of deviance that involves an infraction of the criminal
law and is subject to official punishment. Not all laws are criminal - civil law
and constitutional law are 2 other key areas of the law. Not all illegal acts are
necessarily deviant - eg: it is illegal to use your mobile phone (without it being
handsfree) while driving but the sheer number of people who do so suggests that they
do not see that behaviour as deviant.
Sociologists have suggested 2 distinct definitions of deviance: normative and relativistic.
Deviance: the Normative Definition
This definition can be summed up as ‘the violation of social norms’. Thus, deviance
is culturally determined.
Deviance is often thought of in terms of deviation from accepted social standards
- eg: certain kinds of sexual behaviour or drug use. However, people who are mentally
ill are often treated as deviants. (See the ‘social deviance’ branch of the Defining
Abnormality mind map.) Even harmless eccentrics may be considered deviant - or, according
to Erich Goode (2008), people who have been heavily tattooed or pierced. In some
cultures, deviation from a strict political and/or religious orthodoxy is considered
deviant and may invoke penalties under criminal law.
In terms of Integrated SocioPsychology, deviation can be seen as the RED vMEME driving
a break away from the conformity-oriented vMEME harmonic of PURPLE and RED. (In
Freudian terms, this would be the Id escaping the combined controls of the Ego and
the Superego.)
The normative definition, of course, assumes that there are shared clearly-understood
values and norms and labels as ‘deviant’ someone who breaks away from these shared
values and does not think and/or behave in accordance with the shared norms. (In
the Western world various surveys - such as the annual British Attitude Survey in
the UK - attempt to document current values and changes in values.)
Underpinning the normative definition is the assumption that society is essentially
consensual - ie: that the vast majority of people in society share a core set of
values - a value consensus - which Émile Durkheim (1893) referred to as the collective
conscience. The more behaviour differed from the norms coming from these values,
the more those behaviours were likely to be labelled as ‘deviant’.
According to Edwin Lemert (19720, it is the degree of social reaction to an expression
of deviance which determines whether it is primary deviance or secondary deviance.
Primary deviance is behaviour which is deviant to the common social norms but which
is tolerated or indulged to some degree as a permissible departure from what is normally
expected. The behaviour may be treated as marginal to the identity of the deviator.
Justifications for the partial tolerance of the behaviour may be made - eg:-
- a man who behaves aggressively is “under stress at work”
- a woman who is moody and snaps at others does so because it is “that time of the
month”
- a child who is naughty is actually “overtired”
Secondary deviance is behaviour which brings consequences in an overt and punitive
way. Such behaviour is stigmatised and often criminalised, with the deviant attracting
deviant identity labels such as ‘thief’, ‘welfare cheat’, ‘junkie’, etc. Edwin Schur
(1971) notes that, this stigmatisation may involve, rejection, degradation, exclusion,
incarceration or coercion of the deviant who will need to be treated, punished or
converted.
The PURPLE vMEME can be viewed as the prime driver in the vMEME harmonic with respect
to the way primary deviance works - the group or community still want the deviant
to belong to them in spite of the difficulties being caused by the deviation. Justifications
which marginalise the deviant behaviour help reduce the cognitive dissonance it creates.
However, BLUE is firmly dominating in secondary deviation where the deviant must
be punished and/or changed, regardless of the human cost of such change - eg: execution,
families split up by a leading member being imprisoned.
Marshall B Clinard (1974) argues that the term ‘deviance’ should be reserved for
behaviour so disapproved of that the community finds it impossible to tolerate. However,
most commentators prefer Lemert’s delineation of 2 different levels of deviance.
Durkheim’s assumption of the collective conscience predicates an approach to studying
deviance and crime in terms of what factors lead people to deviate from the core
values. So the aims of such research are to discover the differences - eg: social
class, type of family, peer group influences - between people who deviate from the
core values and those who don’t.
A key problem with the normative approach is that values clearly change over time
as well as with culture. What was primary deviance may become secondary deviance
- and vice versa. And what was not at all considered deviant can become deviant -
and vice versa. Moreover, the pace of change in values has accelerated dramatically
since the end of World War II.
Anthony Browne (2008) writes: “It has been said that a Victorian who fell asleep
in 1848…who woke up in early 21st Century Britain would not only find their country
unrecognisable, but would be profoundly shocked by it. They would be astonished obviously
by the technical wizardry, but shocked by the change in values - the demise of marriage
between heterosexual couples and the existence of marriage between homosexual and
mixed race couples; the quarter of children living with just one parent; the millions
of able-bodied people paid by the state to be idle; the disappearance of deference,
even to the monarch; the empty pews on Sundays (and the full mosques on Fridays)....
Things that caused outrage a generation ago are now celebrated. Until 1967 British
men were imprisoned for having sex with other men; forty years later, gay marriage
is enthusiastically covered in recently homophobic tabloid newspapers. Attitudes
to sexuality, lone parenthood, marriage, race, welfare benefits, alcohol, drugs and
violent crime have all been transformed.”
Deviance: the Relativistic Definitions
This approach sees society as too complex for there to be a common set of shared
values. Rather, the basis of society is a diversity of values. High levels of consensus
are not that common and there are multiple definitions of ‘normality’ and ‘deviance’.
Sociologists supporting this perspective point out the differing memes and competing
interests which characterise modern societies. These memes jockey for position and
mutate as they compete to be the more ‘socially valued’ values in a society.
In the relativistic approach the values of society are understood not so much as
a set of fundamental values and beliefs but are viewed much more as the outcome of
some form of dynamic process through which some values dominate in society at the
expense of other values.
This process can be explained from 2 perspectives:-
- The Interactionist or Labelling approach, according to which the values that emerge
as the most highly-rated are the result of complex interactions between different
groups and individuals in society.
- Conflict approaches, most notably Marxism, argue that the values dominating a society
reflect the interests of the ruling class and, beneath that, the dynamics of the
dialectic.
The relativistic definition’s view that dominant values are merely the outcome of
a struggle to get one group’s values accepted over another makes the normative researchers’
attempts to understand deviance purely through comparison of conforming people with
‘deviant’ people seem overly simplistic. Relativistic researchers focus, not so much
on the differences in values and behaviours but on the processes by which some values
dominate over others. Effectively such researchers are engaging in Memetics.
The Normative Approach to Crime
Durkheim’s work is often taken as the starting point for the development of Functionalism.
Perhaps not too surprisingly then, Durkheim (1895) perceived deviance and crime both
as being inevitable and as having a role to play in the effective functioning of
society.
Crime and Social Cohension
Durkheim believed a certain, limited amount of crime helped society change and remain
dynamic. He even argued that too little crime was detrimental to the process of society.
The boundaries between what is and what is not acceptable are often blurred and the
boundaries can change. With this in mind, Durkheim saw 3 positive benefits of a limited
amount of crime:-
- The boundaries of acceptability are reaffirmed when a person who breaks the law is
prosecuted in court. The prosecution and the publicity it is given affirms the existing
values. This is particularly so in societies where punishment takes place in public
- eg: a murderer taken out to be hung or an adulterer stoned to death.
- When the prosecution of someone is seen as somehow unjust, the resulting public outcry
may signal a change in values which, over time, can lead to a change in the law to
more closely reflect the change in attitude of the population.
- When a particularly horrific crime takes place, there is often a drawing together
of the community in a shared revulsion and outrage of the crime. This strengthens
social cohesion - the sense of belonging to a community. Many Britons - and Londoners
in particular - felt a renewed sense of community in the wake of the tube and bus
bombings of 7 July 2005. There was even talk of people finding the ’Blitz Spirit’
again! (See Dave Lowe’s comments on the Blog: ‘Inside the Mind of a Suicide Bomber’.)
Crime and Anomie
Durkheim also saw that too much crime had negative consequences.
He referred to the breakdown of the collective conscience as ‘anomie’, with people
being freed from the social control imposed by the collective conscience. As a result,
people start to look after their own selfish interests, rather than adhering to social
values, and crime rates soar. Only by reimposing collective values can the situation
be brought back under control.
Robert K Merton (1938) thought Durkheim was too vague and thus redefined anomie as
the situation where the socially-approved goals of society are not available to a
significant proportion of the population if they follow socially-approved means of
obtaining such goals. Ie: they are socialised into wanting these goals but their
position in the social structure severely limits their opportunities to achieve them.
In this situation, Merton proposes that people commit crime and become deviant to
get those goals. Eg: a child in a poverty-stricken family wants the latest PlayStation
promoted relentlessly on TV so his father engages in burglary to afford that and
other luxury goods.
While there are hints of 2nd Tier thinking in Durkeim’s views, primarily they are
rooted in BLUE order. Merton, in recognising the inherent contradictions between
what society promotes as desirable and what it actually enables people to do, seems
to be more coming more strongly from the 2nd Tier in his analysis.
Relativist Approaches to Crime
The law is perceived as enshrining certain sets of values over other sets of values,
to the advantage of some groups and the disadvantage of others. Whether the thinking
or behaviour of an individual is deviant depends on whose values form the basis for
what determining what is normal or conformist behaviour.
The Interactionist View (Labelling Theory)
The notion that the design and implementation of the law is merely certain sets of
values dominating over sets of values is at the core of arguments put forward by
Interactionist/Labelling theorists such as Howard Becker (1963). According to Becker,
there is always competition for whose values will be enshrined in law and winning
values may or may not reflect the values of the bulk of the population. This concept
of the competition for dominance between values is perfectly reflected in Susan Blackmore’s
(1999) studies into how memes propogate and prosper while other memes might even
fail to survive - fading away as they fail to replicate.
Anthony Giddens (1993, p128) argues that the winners in this competition reflect
the power structures in society: “By and large, the rules in terms of which deviance
is defined, and the contexts in which they are applied, are framed by the wealthy
for the poor, by men for women, by older people for younger people and by ethnic
majorities for minority groups.”
Government politicians, as the legislators, play an important role in the winning
of the competition - with opposition politicians also playing a role. However, Becker
argues it is the media who play the most important role as, fed by the ‘moral entrepreneurs’
championing particular sets of values, they can whip up moral panics, with the public
then pressurising the politicians to introduce new laws or insist on the more strict
enforcement of existing laws.
In their understanding of the relativistic aspects of what is and isn’t considered
deviance, the Interactionists/Labelling theorists are rooted in at least GREEN and
possible 2nd Tier thinking.
The Marxist View
Marxists too take the view that the law reflects vested interests. However, they
do not view it as a pluralistic competition but quite simply as the ruling class
using the law to impose their values on the proletariat…in the interests of the ruling
class.
Marxists argue that the ruling class can do this because they have control of the
institutions which diffuse values through society - eg: education and the media -
and they control the political process. Portraying certain values as deviant and
declaring certain values both deviant and illegal reflects the power of the ruling
class.
Ian Taylor, Paul Walton & Jock Young (1973) point out that old laws have been reactivated
and new laws created in order to control and contain a growing range of behaviours
seen as problematic for the interests of the powerful groups in society.
Marxists also note that much of the ‘crime problem’ is associated with working class
crime which is often of a fairly trivial nature, at least financially. However, comparatively
little effort is put into pursuing white-collar crime such as corporate tax evasion.
Such crime seems to be almost expected and, therefore, not far off being tolerated
in the sense of it being a primary deviation. Eg: in the UK’s Coalition Government
of 2010, Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable vowed to bring in the estimated
£35B owed to Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs by big business and mega-wealthy individuals.
Tory Prime Minister David Cameron supported Cable’s assertions in public but the
Treasury, under Tory Chancellor George Osborne, showed little interest in Cable’s
campaign - in spite of the severe austerity measures being implemented across the
public sector to bring down government debt.
As usual, the rigid BLUE underpinning the Marxist approach limits it a simplistic
us vs them analysis. However, again as usual, the Marxists excel at pointing out
how ruling classes use power to uphold and entrench their positions at the expense
of other groupings.
This page is discussed in the Blog post Family Systems and Crime & Deviance.
