Deviance
The recognized violation of culutral norms.
Crime
The violation of a society's fomrally enacted criminal law.
Social Control
Attempts by society to regulate people's thoughts and behavior.
Criminal Justice System
THe organizations that respond to alleged violations of the law.
Cesare Lombroso
Theorized that criminals look our ape-like ancestors.
William Sheldon
Concluded that ciriminality was more prominent in boys with muscular builds.
Walter Reckless and Simon Dinitz
Containment Theory: Good boys identified with the norms and worked well with frustration while the bad boys were the opposite.
Kai Erikson
Studied Puritans and found that even they created deviance.
Robert Merton
Argued that society is set up in a way that encourages excessive deviance. Strain Theory.
Strain Theory
Theory that deviance is more likely to occur when a gap exists between cultural goals and the ability to achieve these goals by legitimate means.
Innovation
Using unconventional means to achieve a culturally approved goal.
Ritualism
The rejection of cultural goals but a rigid adherence to the legitimate means of achieving them.
Retreatism
Disregards both means and goals.
Rebellion
Retreatists that form a counterculture.
Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin
Proposed that crime results not only from limited legal means but also easily accessible illegal means. Deviance arises from the relative opportunity structure that frames a person's life.
Albert Cohen
Suggested that delinquency is most common among lower-class youths because they have the least opportunity to achieve conventional success.
Walter Miller
Characterized delinquency by trouble, toughness, smartness, need for excitement, belief in fate, and desire for freedom.
Elijah Anderson
Explained that in poor urban neighborhoods, most people manage to conform to conventional values.
Labeling Theory
The idea that deviance and conformity result not so much from what people do as from how others respond to those actions.
Edwin Lemert
Observed that some norm violations have little repercussions. Primary deviance: initial deviance committed by a person. Secondary deviance: Deviance that is the result of the societal reaction and consequent labeling of person who committed a deviant act.
Erving Goffman
Deemed that secondary deviance marks the start of a deviant career.
Stigma
A powerfully negative label that greatly changers a person's self-concept and social identity.
Harold Garfinkel
Deemed the term degradation ceremony as when an entire community formally stigmatizes an individual.
Retrospective Labeling
Interpreting someone's past in light of some present deviance.
Projective Labeling
Using the person's deviant identity to predict future actions.
Thomas Szasz
Charges that people are to quick to apply the label of mental illness to conditions that simply amount to a difference we don't like.
Medicalization of Deviation
The transformation of moral and legal deviance into a medical condition.
Edwin Sutherland
A person's tendency toward conformity or deviance depends on the amount of contact with others who encourage or reject conventional behavior. Differential Association
Travis Hirschi
Developed control theory, which states that social control depends on people anticipating the consequences of their behavior.
Alexander Liazos
Points out that the people we tend to define as deviants are typically not bad, but powerless.
Steven Spitzer
Argued that deviant labels are applied to people who interfere with the operation of capitalism.
White-Collar Crime
Crime committed by people of high social position in the course of their occupations.
Edward Sutherland
Defined White-Collar Crime. Explained that white-collar offenses typically end up in a civil hearing rather than a criminal courtroom.
Corporate Crime
The illegal actions of a corporation or people acting on its behalf.
Organized Crime
A business supplying illegal goods or services.
Hate Crime
A criminal act against a person or a person's property by an offender motivate by racial or other bias.
Elliott Currie
Suggested that crime stems from our culture's emphasis on individual economic success.
Retribution
An act of moral vengeance by which society makes the offender suffer as much as the suffering caused by the crime.
Deterrence
The attempt to discourage criminality through the use of punishment.
Rehabilitation
A program for reforming the offender to prevent later offenses.
Societal Protection
Rendering an offender incapable of further offenses temporarily through imprisonment or permanently by execution.
Community-Based Corrections
Correctional programs operating within society at large rather than behind prison walls.