Chapter 6

Deviance and Crime

 For Starters…

Greta Thunberg and Uncomfortable Deviance

What do you think?

 Chapter Topics and Overview
• 6.1 What is Deviance?
• 6.2 Conflict Deviance
• 6.3 “Race” and Deviance: To Be Non-White is Deviant
• 6.4 Gender and Deviance: To Be Female is Deviant
• 6.5 Class and Deviance: To Be Poor Is Deviant
• 6.6 Sexual Orientation and Deviance: To Be Gay is
Deviant
• 6.7 Disability and Deviance: To Be Disabled is Deviant
• 6.8 Criminal Deviance
 6.1 What Is Deviance?
• Deviance: A behaviour that strays from what is
“normal”
– Does not mean bad, criminal, perverted, “sick”, or inferior
in any way
– It is different from the norm, the usual.
– Is a category that changes with time, place, and culture.
– Definitions of deviance often reflect power.
 What Is Deviance?
• Characteristics of Deviance:
– Overt characteristics: actions or qualities taken as
explicitly violating the cultural norm
– Covert characteristics: the unstated qualities that might
make a group a target for sanctions
– e.g., age, ethnic background, “race” and sexual
orientation, sex, and physical and mental ability
 6.2 Conflict Deviance
• Deviance Is Contested across Cultures
– Deviance differs from culture to culture.
– Deviance changes over time
• e.g. Tattooing was a respectable practice for generations before
becoming a cultural taboo and then over time, being more
acceptable
– Deviance is contested
 Conflict Deviance
• Deviance Is Contested within Cultures:
– Definitions of deviance differ not only across but within
cultures
– Deviance is a social or cultural construct
– Deviance can be contested
• Conflict Deviance is a disagreement among groups
over whether or not something is deviant.
– e.g. legalization of marijuana
 Social Constructionism
versus Essentialism
• Social constructionism proposes that certain
elements of social life, such as deviance, are not
natural are created by a society or culture
• Essentialism argues that there is something natural,
true, universal, and therefore objectively determined
about these characteristics.
– When we look at certain social phenomena, we can see
that each of these two viewpoints applies to some degree
• e.g. Alcoholism
Social Constructionism versus Essentialism

• Goffman’s study on stigma and deviance, (1963),

illustrates the interplay of essentialism and social
constructionism. He identified three types of
stigmata (the plural of stigma):
• Stigma: human attribute that is seen to discredit an
individual’s social identity
– Bodily stigmata: physical deformities
– Moral stigmata: blemishes of individual character
– Tribal stigmata: transmitted through group association
 The Other
• An image constructed by the dominant culture to
characterize subcultures
• Can be depicted as mysterious, mystical, or mildly
dangerous, but somehow it is ultimately cast as inferior
– e.g. Edward Said’s Orientalism discussion how the dominant
West constructed the Middle East as Other
• Dominant Canadian culture defines “Indigenous” as Other
• Deviant behaviour, once it has been associated with
Otherness, is often subject to negative sanctions or
punishment. The ‘Other’ label can be difficult to erase.
 Deviance and the Moral Panic
• Moral panic: is a campaign designed to arouse
concern over an issue or group
e.g racialized deviance and illegal drugs
Moral entrepreneur
– According to Becker (1963), a person who tries to convince
others of the need to take action around a social problem
that they have defined
• e.g., Zoot-suiters, niqab debate in Canada
 6.3 “Race” and Deviance:
To Be Non-White Is Deviant
• Racializing deviance: Linking particular ethnic groups
—especially visible minorities—with certain forms of
deviance
– Making ethnic background a covert characteristic of
deviance
– Treating these groups differently because of that
connection
• e.g., Muslims wearing a niqab are seen as deviant, their faces are
covered.
 “Race” and Deviance:
To Be Non-White Is Deviant
• Canada formally subscribes to multiculturalism:
– A set of policies and practices designed to encourage
respect for cultural differences
• But, racialized minorities face pressure to assimilate:
– Pressure to become culturally similar to the dominant
culture
• Not assimilating can be viewed as deviant
 “Race” and Deviance:
To Be Non-White Is Deviant
• Deviance is racialized through racial profiling:
– Actions undertaken supposedly for reasons of safety,
security or public protection, based on stereotypes about
race, colour, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, place of origin
rather than on reasonable suspicion
– Visible characteristics used to predict illegal activity
– A person’s otherness is used as grounds for differential
treatment
• e.g., law enforcement, employers, service providers, landlords
 6.4 Gender and Deviance:
To Be Female Is Deviant
• In patriarchal society (one dominated by men)
“male” is normal and female is treated as Other and
seen as inherently deviant
• In a patriarchal two concepts are important:
Misogyny literally means “hating women”
– In patriarchal societies, images of women are often
constructed in ways that contain and reflect misogyny
 Gender and Deviance:
To Be Female Is Deviant

• Patriarchal construct: Social conditions that favour

boys/men over girls/women
– Male values are normalized through customs, laws, and
cultural production
– e.g., well-paying jobs are dominated by men
 Gender and Deviance:
To Be Female Is Deviant
• Sexual Deviance is Gendered: The double standard that
has long applied to male and female sexual activity
e.g. Magdalene asylums

• Gendered Deviance in Ontario: Thousands of women in

Ontario (between 1913 to 1964) were put into reformatories
under the Female Refuge Act for being sexually active outside
of marriage. This kind of behaviour and the women guilty of it
were branded “incorrigible.”
 6.5 Class and Deviance:
To Be Poor Is Deviant

• Poverty can be considered a covert characteristic of

deviance
e.g., drug or alcohol use are considered deviant in
poor people, but less amongst those who
are rich

• According to Reiman (1998), the criminal justice

system also has a distinct class bias
 White-Collar Crime
• Research focuses predominantly on the poor and the
crimes they committed
• Behaviours associated with poverty and
criminality become synonymous

• Edwin Sutherland (1939) introduced the concept of

white-collar crime:
– A crime committed by a person of respectability and high
social status in the course of his/her occupation
 White-Collar Crime
• Clinard and Quinney (1973) refined Sutherland’s concept
• They distinguish two types of white-collar crime
1. Occupation crimes
• Benefit the individual at the expense of other individuals who work for the company
• e.g., sexual harassment
2. Corporate crimes
• Benefit the corporation and its executives at the expense of other companies and the general
public
• e.g., Enron
 Class and Deviance:
To Be Poor Is Deviant
• From School to Prison: The Deviance of Students in
Low-Income Neighborhoods
– Class bias in the criminal justice system
• Schools-to-prison hypothesis
– Biased application of zero-tolerance policies in schools
– Poor schools are often located in racialized
neighbourhoods
– Constant surveillance and bias in the criminal justice
system can result in higher incarceration rates
 Class and Deviance:
To Be Poor Is Deviant
• Crime in Low-Income Communities
The lower class is over-represented in the statistics on
criminal convictions and admissions to prison
• Reasons for higher crime rates include:
– A lack of social resources
• e.g., knowledge of the law and legal system, lack of social
connection, and the ability to pay for a lawyer
– Limited ability for impression management:
• Control of personal information flow to manipulate how others see
and treat you
6.6 Sexual Orientation and Deviance: To Be
Gay Is Deviant
• Homosexuality is socially constructed as deviant to
varying degrees around the globe.
– The way homosexuality is sanctioned varies, from informal
(social scrutiny) to formal (law)
• Penalties ranging from flogging and imprisonment to death
– In Canada, homosexuality is informally sanctioned by
comments such as “Don’t be so gay”
• This is sometimes referred to as the ideology of fag, which
influences especially men to behave according to gender
expectations
 6.7 Disability and Deviance:
To Be Disabled Is Deviant
• People with disabilities often suffer negative
sanctions by society not accommodating differences
in physical ability
– Punished not by being singled out, but by omission
– e.g., revolving doors, restricting sidewalks, public transport
• People with disabilities have been targeted because
of their difference
• e.g., Members of the Deaf community representing surgically
implanted devices in an attempt to be seen as normal.
 Disability and Deviance:
To Be Disabled Is Deviant
Lennard Davis and the Politics of the Disabled Body:
• The politics of disability involves promoting respect for
difference, as opposed to just respecting the “normal” and
treating anything else as a problem to be solved.

• The social problem of disability is actually created by those

people (typically able-bodied people) who view and treat
those with a different set of abilities as “Other” rather than
accepting their difference.
 Disability and Deviance:
To Be Disabled Is Deviant
Henry Goddard and the Eugenics Movement
• The eugenics (“good genes”) movement was based on the
mistaken beliefs:
- Intelligence can be measured easily
- Intelligence is inherited, transferred directly from one
generation to the next.
• Popular philosophy during the first half of the twentieth
century, it led to the so-called “feeble-minded” sexually
sterilized so that they could not reproduce.
e.g Alberta’s Sexual Sterilization Act (1928-1972)
 6.8 Criminal Deviance
• Not all deviant behaviour is criminal

• Criminology: the sociological (and psychological)

study of crime in terms of such elements as
causation, prevention, management or control, and
the statistical patterns of crime.
 Theories of Criminal Deviance

1. Strain theory
2. Subcultural theory
3. Labelling theory
4. Social control theory
 Theories of Criminal Deviance:
Strain Theory
• Robert Merton (1938) explained why some
individuals “choose” to be criminally deviant
• The American dream: anyone has the opportunity to
be successful regardless of their background or
circumstances as long as they work hard
• Strain is the disconnect between culturally defined
goals and uneven distribution of means to achieve
those goals (Durkheim’s anomie)
• Those without the necessary resources to achieve
culturally defined goals turn to criminal deviance
 Theories of Criminal Deviance:
Subcultural Theory
• Albert Cohen (1955) challenged and refined some
aspects of Merton’s work
• Individuals from lower-class backgrounds
experiences status frustration:
– Failure to succeed in middle-class institutions
• Can become socialized into an oppositional
subculture, a delinquent subculture
– Develops values in opposition to mainstream society
• e.g., non-utilitarian crimes committed for group’s respect
– Delinquency is a learned behavior
 Theories of Criminal Deviance:
Labelling Theory

• Howard Becker developed labelling theory to explain

– How subcultural values, beliefs, and practices become
defined as deviant by mainstream society
– How labels become internalized by both majority and
deviant individual or group
• Labels may take on a master status, a status that
dominates all others
– e.g., image of the “Indian drunk”
 Theories of Criminal Deviance:
Social Control Theory
For Travis Hirschi, a key factor was social bonding.
• “…delinquent acts result when an individual’s bond to society
is weak or broken” (Hirschi, 1969}
• The “bond” encompasses attachment, commitment,
involvement, and belief
e.g. if a child is bonded with such social institutions as
family, religion, athletic teams, and school, then that child is
unlikely to engage in delinquent activities and has
accepted the positive social values of the institutions and
therefore will not commit anti-social acts
 Crime in Canada:
Going Up or Down?
• A 2017 report by the Canadian polling firm Ekos (completed in 2015)
reveals that many Canadians believe the crime rate is rising, and that
the increase is being driven by violent crime.

• Why do Canadians tend to overestimate the rate of crime generally and

of violent crime in particular?
 Insert Visuals
Let’s take a look at actual trends in the crime rate.

• Figure 6.4, 6.5 and/or 6.6

 Crime in Canada:
Going Up or Down?
• No one explanation has emerged in the literature, although many
factors have been considered (Ford, 2016; Gramlich, 2017; Hayes, 2017;
Zimring, 2007).
• Here are a few of them:
-Demographics
-Incarceration
-The “Crack Years” are over
-The number of crimes is under-reported
 Summary
• Deviance can be examined from one of two positions:
essentialism and social constructionism

• Deviance is not natural but is socially constructed,

artificial, and varies from culture to culture and changes
over time

• The social construction of what is considered deviant is

often contested or challenged within a culture
 Summary
• There is a power element found in deviance, with those
who hold power in society getting to define what is
deviant and what is “normal.”

• Looking at criminal deviance in Canada presents us with a contradiction:

the crime rate is dropping, and yet people fear crime more than ever.
 Learning Outcomes:
Test Your Knowledge
 Distinguish between overt and covert characteristics of
deviance.
 Discuss the reasons that deviance is sometimes associated
with ethnicity, culture, “race,” gender, sexual orientation,
disability, and class.
 Explain how deviance is socially constructed and contested.
 Define some of the leading theories of criminal deviance,
including strain theory, subcultural theory, labelling theory,
and social control theory.
 Discuss recent trends in Canada’s crime rate.
 Source
• Steckley, J. (2023) Elements of Sociology. (6th Edition).
Oxford University Press Canada.

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