SOC101Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Youth Criminal Justice Act, Racial Profiling, Medicalization
Document Summary
Crime and deviance is not the object we study but in the minds of the people in the society. If you look across societies you get very many different meanings of different acts or phenomenon across societies. Intergenerational sex a crime and deviant in today"s society. Ancient greece parents would pray their young boy (12-13 yrs old) would be chosen by their teachers to have sex with them. Boys were outcasts if was not initiated fully. Question of power and distribution of power that determines which things are considered deviance and criminal. Deviance involves breaking a norm and eliciting a negative reaction from others. Informal punishment is mild and may involve raised eyebrows, gossip, ostracism or stigmatization, when people are stigmatized, they are negatively evaluated because of a perceptible sign that distinguishes them from others. Formal punishment results from people breaking laws, which are norms stipulated and enforced by government bodies .
