Reactions to Deviance
Reactions
• Whether it involves cheating on a sociology
quiz or holding up a liquor store, any violation
of norms invites reactions
Street Crimes and Prisons
• 1 out of every 143 citizens is in prison
– Almost all prisoners are 18-44 and almost all of
them are men and close to half are African
American
• For about the past 20 years, the US has
followed a “get tough” policy– “3 strikes your out” laws
• When someone is convicted of a 3rd felony, judges are
required to give a mandatory sentence, sometimes life
imprisonment
The Decline in Violent Crime
• Drop in crime rate b/c:
– Judges have put more and more people in prison
– Legislators passed the three strike laws and
reduced early releases of prisoners
Recidivism
• A major problem with prisons is that they fail
to teach their clients to stay away from crime
• Recidivism rate- the percentage of former
prisoners who are arrested
• For criminals sent to prison for violent crimes,
within 3 years of release, 2 out of 3 are
rearrested and ½ are back in
prison
The Death Penalty and Bias
• Capital Punishment, the death penalty, is the
most extreme measure the state takes
– MAJOR CONTROVERSY
• Death penalty is not administered evenly
– Geography
– Social class
– Gender
– race
Legal Change
• Crime varies from one culture to another,
from group to group within a society and from
one time period to another
• Lets look at some weird laws…
• Hate crime is a good example….
Medicalization of deviance
• Deviance is a sign of mental sickness
• Thomas Szasz- says mental illness is neither
mental, nor an illness but problem behaviors
– Some have organic causes but when someone
because deviant and when others cant find an
explanation, “sick in the head” is often taken as a
cause for their unacceptable behavior
ADD as an example
• No one explains where this came from and
why it didn’t exist 50 years ago.
• It is diagnosed by a teacher or parent
complaining about a child misbehaving
– This isn’t a new problem for parents/teachers but
now their problem behavior has become a sign of
mental illness
Behaviors not mental illness
• Everyone struggles with problems as they go
through life.
• Some people fail to cope well with life’s
challenges and become depressed uncooperative
or hostile
– These are behaviors not mental illnesses
• Szasz concludes that “mental illness” is a myth
foisted on a naïve public by a medical profession
that uses pseudoscientific jargon to expand its
area of control
What is the origin of bizarre behavior
• Szasz’s extreme claim forces us to direct our
attention to how people learn such behaviors
we deem “mentally ill”
– Social experience not some illness of the mind
The need for a more humane
approach
• Deviance is inevitable
– Our prisons are filled with poor, and reflect patterns
of broad discrimination in our larger society
– White collar criminals continue to get away with a slap
on the wrist, while street criminals are punished
severely
• We need to address the larger issues
– Finding ways to protect people from harmful
deviance, tolerating those behaviors that are not
harmful, and developing systems of fair treatment