SOC100H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: White-Collar Crime, Symbolic Interactionism, Labeling Theory
Chapter 5: Crime and Deviance 1
The Social Definition of Deviance and Crime
● Violating local norms can cause great offence & result in loss of a contract
● Norms vary widely and deviance is relative (what some consider normal, other consider deviant)
● People commit deviant acts only when they break a norm and cause others to react negatively
● From sociological point of view, everyone is deviant in one social context or another
The Difference B/w Deviance and Crime
● Deviance: Departure/Breaking from a norm that evokes a negative reaction from others.
● Crime: is deviance that breaks a law.
○ Law: is a norm stipulated and enforced by government bodies.
● Norm/laws changed dramatically and it is why we find what Martin Luther is heroic compared to the Nazis
● Anyone who advocates/ promotes genocide commits a crime under Canadian law
○ So now, an act considered a crime in one place, might not be considered a crime somewhere else
Sanctions (Punishments)
● Formal punishment: Penalization by the judicial system for breaking a law.
○ Serving time in prison, paying a fine, or performing community service.
● Informal punishment: A mild sanction that is imposed during face-to-face interaction rather than by the
judicial system.
○ involve raised eyebrows, harsh stare, ironic smile, gossip, ostracism, “shaming,” or stigmatization
○ Stigmatization: Process of negatively evaluating people bc of a marker that distinguishes them from
others. (the crime of the father stigmatized the whole family)
● Types of deviance and crime vary in terms of the severity of the social response
○ It ranges from mild disapproval to capital punishment
● Types of deviance and crime vary in terms of the perceived harmfulness of the deviant or criminal act
○ Actual harmfulness is not only issue here-perceived harmfulness is involved too
■ Coca Cola and the derivative of cocaine
● Deviance and crime vary in terms of the degree of public agreement about whether an act should be
considered deviant
○ Freezing newborn babies in the past was considered a normal act, now it’s a crime and deviant
● Death in some societies are classified as criminal offences in others
Measuring Crime ⇒ Variations of Crime
⇒ Victimless crimes: Violations of the law in which no victim has stepped forward and been identified.
(Crime isn’t reported to the police.)
● Ex, Communicating for the purposes of prostitution, illegal gambling, and the use of illegal drugs
● Many level 1 assaults go unreported because the assailant is a friend or relative of the victim
○ Many victims of sexual assault are also reluctant to report the crime because: they are afraid they will
be humiliated or not believed and stigmatized by making the crime public.
● Second, authorities and the wider public decide which criminal acts to report and which to ignore
● The authorities decide to crack down on drugs, more drug-related crime will be counted not because more
drug-related crimes are committed, but because more drug criminals are apprehended.
⇒ Self-report surveys: Surveys in which respondents are asked to report their involvement in criminal activities,
either as perpetrators or as victims.
● Compensate for many of the problems associated with official statistics
● Reports same rate of serious crimes as official statistics do but find 2-3 times rate of less serious crimes.
● Tells us that an act in violation of the law doesn’t automatically result in being officially labelled as criminal
⇒ Victimization Surveys: people are asked whether have been victims of crime
● When first done in Canada it examined householders experience with crime
● Found Canadians reported just 31% of victimization incidents to the police were crimes against persons
● The fall of crime is due to:
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Chapter 5: Crime and Deviance (SOC100 Winter 2018)
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○ (1) Well trained troops are fighting crime
○ (2) Introduction of community policy initiatives, enforcement efforts that target specific types of
crime, improvements in the field of forensics
○ (3) (Most people that commit street crime) are young men, Canada is aging and the number of young
people in the population has declined
○ (4) The unemployment rate has followed a downward trend Economic conditions have favoured a
decrease in a crime because the variable most strongly correlated with the crime rate is male
unemployment rate
○ (5) (Controversial), some researchers argue that declining crime rate may be linked to legalization of
abortion, fewer unwanted children.
● Putting more people in prison/imposing tougher penalties for crime help to account for lower crime rates has
not been claimed yet
“Criminal Profiles”
⇒ Age & Gender
● More criminal court cases accused man, women have more in other cases, process continued in youth courts
● Woman increasing in arrest due to fact that in course of socialization traditional
social controls/definitions of femininity are less being imposed on
women
● Most crime is committed by people who have not reached middle age.
● The 15 to 24-year-old age most prone to criminal behaviour, (18-year-olds having the highest crime rate)
⇒ Race is factor of being arrested
● Aboriginal people in Canada's prison is due to:
○ (1) Disproportionately large number of aboriginal people are poor
○ (2) Aboriginal population is younger than rest of population and young people are most crime-prone
○ (3) Aboriginal people tend to commit so-called street crimes
■ Arson, break/enter, assault, other illegal acts committed by people from lower classes.
○ White-collar crimes: Illegal acts committed by respectable, high-status people in the course of work
■ Embezzlement, fraud, copyright infringement, false advertising
○ (4) Police, courts, and other institutions may discriminate against Aboriginal people
■ More likely to be apprehended, prosecuted, and convicted
○ (5) Contact with Western culture has disrupted social life in many Aboriginal communities
■ Ignoring powerful social forces that cause so many Aboriginal peoples to be incarcerated in
Canada
■ Led to weakening of social control over community members
■ Something races are inherently more law abiding than others
● These points also account for above average incarceration rate among black Canadians
● Police keep close eye on black people than they do on whites and Asians
Explaining Deviance and Crime
● Sociologist rely on symbolic interactionism, functionalism, conflict theories,
feminist theories for explanations
Symbolic Interactionist Approaches to Deviance and Crime
● People may learn deviant and criminal behavior when interact with others
● Traditional focus of symbolic interactionists: Identifying the social circumstances that promote the learning
of deviant and criminal roles.
○ Focuses on learning and labeling deviant and criminal roles
Learning Deviance
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Chapter 5: Crime and Deviance (SOC100 Winter 2018)
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● Howard Becker established the idea that becoming habitual deviant or criminal is learning process that occurs
in a social context. (failure to pass stage meant failure to learn deviant role & become a regular user)
⇒ These are 3 stages:
1. Learning to smoke the drug in a way that produces real effect
a. Learning the techniques
b. Some people don’t appreciate it and give up and others continue
c. Peers influence others to try it so they’re advance to 2nd stage
2. Learning to recognize the effects and connect them with drug use
a. People may stop if they do not realize the effects and stop doing it then
3. Learning to enjoy the perceived sensations
a. Novices redefine negative sensations as pleasurable
b. Find it not enjoyable
● Learning any deviant or criminal ole requires a social context in which experienced deviants or criminals
teach novices the "tricks of the trade"
● Follows more exposure to experienced deviants and criminals increases the chance that an individual will
come to value a deviant or criminal lifestyle and consider it normal
● Social environment has bearing on type of deviant/ criminal one becomes
Labelling Deviance
● A variant of symbolic interactionism
⇒ Labelling theory: Holds that deviance results not so much from the actions of the deviant as from the response of
others, who label the rule breaker a deviant.
● From the responses of others, who define some actions as deviant and other actions as normal
● Terms like deviant/criminal are not applied automatically when a person engages in rule-violating behaviour.
● Some people engage in “primary deviance” as they commit deviant act but not labelled as deviant by
authorities
● In example for the Saskatchewan boys, it’s called secondary deviance as authorities label them as deviant
○ Pamela George (victim) may find themselves labelled as deviant by authorities (and public) bc they
are members of a stigmatized group
● Authorities discretion in how seriously they treat a deviant act
● Labelling (attaching a tag to pupils) is important in who is caught and charged w/ crime
● Officers tended to use their discretionary powers when arresting adolescents with divorced parents vs with
intact parents - , they arrest kids w divorced parents
● Sociologist and criminologists collected data on social characteristics of adolescents who were charged as
juvenile delinquents proving children from divorced families were more likely to become juvenile delinquents
● Labelling process acted as self-fulfilling prophecy; what teachers believe about pupils, pupils achieve.
Functionalist Explanations
● Functionalists direct their attention to the social dysfunctions that lead to deviant and criminal behaviour.
⇒ Émile Durkheim
● Made controversial claim that deviance and crime are beneficial for society
● When someone breaks a rule, it provides others with a chance to condemn and punish the transgression,
remind them of their common values, clarify the moral boundaries of the group to which they belong, and thus
reinforce social solidarity
● Claim that deviance and crime help societies adapt to social change
○ Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested for supporting the idea that blacks should be allowed to vote
○ but later that year the passage of the Voting Rights Acts made it a crime to prevent blacks from voting
in the United States.
⇒ Robert Merton
● Developed Durkheim’s theory by emphasizing the dysfunctions of deviance and crime.
● Argues cultures often teach people to value material success.
○ However, societies do not provide enough legitimate opportunities for everyone to succeed
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SOC100H5 Full Course Notes
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Document Summary
Violating local norms can cause great offence & result in loss of a contract. Norms vary widely and deviance is relative (what some consider normal, other consider deviant) People commit deviant acts only when they break a norm and cause others to react negatively. From sociological point of view, everyone is deviant in one social context or another. Deviance: departure/breaking from a norm that evokes a negative reaction from others. Crime: is deviance that breaks a law. Law: is a norm stipulated and enforced by government bodies. Norm/laws changed dramatically and it is why we find what martin luther is heroic compared to the nazis. Anyone who advocates/ promotes genocide commits a crime under canadian law. So now, an act considered a crime in one place, might not be considered a crime somewhere else. Formal punishment: penalization by the judicial system for breaking a law. Serving time in prison, paying a fine, or performing community service.
