Deviance and Social Control - Lecture Slides | SOCI 1101, Study notes of Introduction to Sociology

Download Deviance and Social Control - Lecture Slides | SOCI 1101 and more Study notes Introduction to Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Deviance and | social Control _  What is Deviance?  Understanding deviance using the different theoretical perspectives  The US Prison System Norms make social life possible by making behavior predictable. Without norms, we would have chaos. Thus, human groups develop a system of social control –formal and informal means of enforcing norms.  Medicalizing deviance The means of social control are negative and positive sanctions.  Sociobiologists explain deviance by looking at answers within people, such as genetic predispositions.  Psychologists also focus on conditions within the individual. They examine personality disorders.  In contrast, sociologists search for factors outside the individual. They look for social influences such as socialization, membership in subcultures and social class.  Differential Association Theory (Edwin Sutherland): People learn to deviate from (or conform to) society’s norms by the groups they associate with. • Liminal or Situational Deviance  Bridal Showers  Subcultures  Control Theory (Walter Reckless): We have inner and outer controls that stop us from deviating. Inner controls: internalized morality, conscience, religious principles, ideas of right and wrong… Outer controls: people to whom we feel responsible, people we respect, police… Social values generate crime by making everyone strive for accepted forms of success (cultural goals) but not providing everyone with the institutionalized means to do so. This creates a value contradiction. • Some people may find their path to education and good jobs blocked. These people may experience strain or frustration, which may lead them to commit crimes. • These people might feel anomie, a sense of normlessness. TABLE 6.1 » How People Match Their Goals to Their Means Do They Feel the Strain That Leads to Mode of Anomie? Adaptation No Conformity Deviant Paths: 1. Innovation 2. Ritualism 3. Retreatism 4. Rebellion Source: Based on Merton 1968. Cultural Goals Accept Accept Reject Reject Reject/Replace Institutionalized Means Accept Reject Accept Reject Reject/Replace Functionalists argue that people from different social classes encounter different opportunities to commit crimes. Illegitimate opportunity structures: 1. Street crime 2. White collar crime, corporate crime  Some populations benefit from having large numbers of people incarcerated • Consider the privatization of jails and prison guard unions  The US Prison population is disproportionately black, under- educated, and poor  The law is an instrument of repression  By US law, causing the death of a worker by willfully violating safety rules is a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to 6 months in prison.  Sioux manufacturing was required to pay a fine for knowingly producing subpar safety equipment to US soldiers.  Compare to a poor person who steels a car? Will they just pay a fine?  Conflict Perspectives on deviance explain these differences  The US has more prisoners than any other nation and has the highest incarceration rate of any other nation  Anyone who is convicted of a 3rd felony receives and automatic mandatory sentence  The Three Strikes laws have led to a boom in the US prison population  Innocent people have been killed, leading some states to call a moratorium on the death penalty  Not administered evenly • Rich people and women are rarely sentenced to death • When blacks kill whites, prosecutors are 40X more likely to request the death penalty than when blacks kill other blacks TABLE 6.4 > The Race-Ethnicity of the 3,279 Prisoners on Death Row Percentage on Death Row _ in U.S. Population Whites 44% 65% African Americans 42% 13% Latinos 12% 15% Asian Americans 1% 4% Native Americans 1% 1% Source: By the author. Based on Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2010:Table 6.80 and Figure 9.5 of this text.