Erickson’s Functionalist Perspective

• Deviance helps maintain boundaries of

acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

• Deviance bolsters cohesion and solidarity of

a community.

• Deviance promotes the stability of social

life.

• Deviance provides employment.

Erickson Continued.

• A deviant is someone whose actions/identities

have moved outside the margins of the group-

when society holds him/her accountable for it, it

reinforces boundaries.

• Every time society reacts to deviance it sharpens

its authority and power.

• Agencies designed to curtail deviance often

perpetuate it.

Durkheim

• Crime and deviance are normal, provided they don’t exceed a certain level.

• Deviance and Crime free societies are impossible to attain (see example with drug use and legalization debate).

• The authority the moral conscience enjoys must not be excessive. Individual originality must be able to express itself.

Durkheim and Anomie

• Anomie= absence of social ties that bind people to society,

state of where norms about good and bad have little

salience in people’s lives. Outcome of advanced

Capitalism and ideology of individualism (latter 20th

century U.S.)

– Who are you responsible to? Example of deviance and

responsibility.

– Weakening of social ties destabilizes society and leads to chaos.

– Collective good versus individual self-interest? Did Durkheim

believe functional society’s had to chose between these two things

or did he advocate balance between them? Why?

Interactionism and Labeling

Theory (cont.)

• As Becker relates, "Social groups create

deviance [crime] by making the rules whose

infraction constitutes deviance [crime], and

by applying those rules to particular people

and labeling them as outsiders

Interactionism and Labeling

Theory (cont.)

• Note that labeling theorists attempt to

explain only what Lemert called "secondary

deviance”

• Secondary deviance = the commission of

crime after the first criminal act, with the

acceptance of a criminal label

Interactionism and Labeling

Theory (cont.)

• Secondary deviance begins with an initial

criminal act, or what Lemert called

"primary deviance"

• The causes of initial criminal acts are

unspecified

Interactionism and Labeling

Theory (cont.)

• If society, especially official agents of the

state, reacts negatively to an initial criminal

act, the offender will likely be stigmatized,

or negatively labeled

Interactionism and Labeling

Theory (cont.)

• It is possible, even likely, that an initial

criminal act will not be reacted to at all, or

that the offender will not accept or

internalize the negative label

Interactionism and Labeling

Theory (cont.)

• However, if the negative label is

successfully applied to the offender, the

label may produce a self-fulfilling prophecy

in which the offender's self-image is defined

by the label

Interactionism and Labeling

Theory (cont.)

• Secondary deviance is the prophecy

fulfilled

• The crime prevention implication of

labeling theory is simply not to label or to

employ "radical nonintervention”

• This might be accomplished by:

Interactionism and Labeling

Theory (cont.)

• Decriminalization (the elimination of many

behaviors from the scope of the criminal

law)

• Diversion (removing offenders from

involvement in the criminal justice process)

Interactionism and Labeling

Theory (cont.)

• Greater due process protections (replacing

discretion with the rule of law

• Deinstitutionalization (a policy of reducing

jail and prison populations and

construction)

Interactionism and Labeling

Theory (cont.)

• Once a person is labeled and stereotyped as

"criminal," he or she probably will be

shunned by law-abiding society, have

difficulty finding a good job, lose some

civil rights (if convicted of a felony), etc.

Interactionism and Labeling

Theory (cont.)

• The criminal (and delinquent) label is

conferred by all agencies of criminal

justice-- police, courts, and corrections--as

well as the media, the schools, churches,

and other social institutions

Conflict Theory

• Deviance is caused by economic and political

forces in society.

• Criminal law and the criminal justice system are

viewed as vehicles for controlling the poor

members of society.

• The criminal justice system serves the rich and

powerful.

• Deviance and Crime are defined in ways that meet

the needs of those who control society.

Unit 2 - 16

Conflict Theory (cont.)

• Crime is a function of the extent of conflict

generated by stratification, hierarchical

relationships, power differentials, or the

ability of some groups to dominate other

groups in that society

Conflict Theory (cont.)

• Crime, in short, is caused by relative

powerlessness

• Conflict theory has two principal crime

prevention implications:

Conflict Theory (cont.)

• On the one hand, dominant groups could

cede some of their power to subordinate

groups, making subordinate groups more

powerful and reducing conflict

Conflict Theory (cont.)

• Increasing equality in that way might be

accomplished by redistributing wealth

through a more progressive taxation

scheme, for example

Conflict Theory (cont.)

• On the other hand, dominant group

members could become more effective

rulers and subordinate group members

better subjects

Conflict Theory (cont.)

• To do so, dominant groups would have to

do a better job of convincing subordinate

groups that the current inequitable

distribution of power in society is legitimate

and in their mutual interests

Conflict Theory (cont.)

• Members of subordinate groups, in turn,

must either believe it or resign themselves

to their inferior status

Conflict Theory (cont.)

• Either way, dominant group members hope

that over time subordinate group members

will learn to follow those who dominate

them