CRIME AND DEVIANCE

SOCIOLOGY REPORT

DIPLOMA IN SOCIAL SERVICES (LEVEL 5) ASSIGNMENT ONE, SOCIOLOGY

DUE 23 SEPTEMBER 2014, WORDCOUNT 2096

Joe Clark
edwardthelizard@hotmail.com

CRIME AND DEVIANCE

INTRODUCTION

There are two types of law, civil and criminal law, Civil law is defined as "The system of
law concerned with private relations between members of a community rather than
criminal, military, or religious affairs" (Oxford Dictionary 1989) and sanctions for
violation are restitutory, while criminal law is defined as "those statutes dealing with
crimes against the public and members of the public, with penalties and all the
procedures connected with charging, trying, sentencing and imprisoning defendants
convicted of crimes," in the Legal dictionary on line. Within the scope of this report I
will cover criminal law only. From a sociological perspective criminal law is a
representation of social norms written into policies and enforced by agents of the state.
Criminal offence is a deviance from a social norm where a party or party's suffer harm
or loss as determined by current social policy, and as a deterrent to and a punishment
of, sanctions are imposed on offenders, or sometimes a course of rehabilitation is
imposed by the judicial system as an alternative corrective measure to sanctioning.
Sanctions are imposed financially and through various methods of incarceration as well
as supervised and monitored behavioral modification to various degrees. The law
prevents deviance from norms and imposes social conformity by way of stratification
of behaviors that society deems normal and respectable. (McLennan, McManus,
Spoonley, 2011)

1. CONFORMITY
"Social solidarity is a wholly moral phenomenon which by itself is not amenable to
exact observation, and especially not to measurement. To arrive at this classification,
as well as this comparison, we must substitute for this internal datum, which escapes
us, and external one which symbolizes it, and then study the former through the latter.
That visible symbol is the law." (Durkheim, translated by Halls 1997)
Within the individual moral schema are formed from knowledge gained in social
interactions, implying that both positive and negative experience during social
interaction provides a cognitive template of function to avoid unpleasant experiences
in future situations. Schema are a goal orientated cognitive process and involve the use
of multiple brain functions relating to cognition, sensory activity and communication.
They are activated without conscious control when incoming data matches their
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pattern.(Narvaez & Bock, 2002) Schema are formed from learned information and
when incoming information drastically contradicts established schema to a degree that
supersedes assimilation and accommodation cognitive dissonance occurs, this is
experienced as psychological discomfort. Action in objective environment is taken to
rectify this discomfort when cognitive dissonance can no longer be maintained, the
stronger or most reinforced schema will be acted upon, also being conducive to a
reward process. Punishment and reward are processes by which moral schema are
constructed. Varying degrees of this unification of behavior are described as
conformity, obedience and compliance. Conformity being relevant to morally
corrective measures, obedience relating to authoritarian punitive measures
dehumanizing the victim, and compliance being conscious agreement for reciprocal
exchange, although withholding information in an agreement of a compliant
interaction will bring a behavioral outcome by manipulation. (Gleitman, Gross,
Reisberg, 2011)
2. CONFORMITY AND THE PARADOX OF SOCIAL CONTROL
Crime experienced by an individual as a victim is an event where there has been harm
or loss for that individual exceeding the context of current social norms. A function of
the law is to protect the interests of individuals, with the wellbeing and possessions of
that individual being central to that focus and in accordance with social norms. The
system in place in Aotearoa NZ is one of regulations derived through a democratic
process. "With the growth of a centralized Government what was previously a civil
offence becomes a crime against the State whose welfare was threatened by them."
(Woolley, 1963) This being due to regulation by a central government requiring social
conformity in which citizens are granted cultural identity and amenities as well as
infrastructure for the pragmatic function and advance of civilization. A large part of this
conforming ideology is the implication of an economic system, the current economic
system in place is capitalism, which sociologists have argued is criminogenic. This is
shown by research finding that criminals originate from subcultural groups and people
in relative deprivation within a particular society, which is an aspect of the functioning
of capitalism, in left realist criminology an argument is made that disproportionately
severe repressive actions taken to solve the criminal deviance problem serve to make it
worse by further creating the splintering of society into subcultures in what is
described as the paradox of social control. Prisons and social agencies have also been
identified as accentuating deviancy amplification (Giddens 2009) Also taken into
consideration in this perspective is the effect of moral panic, which is what sociologists
call the overreaction by the public to a certain type of harmful behavior or perceived
social risk, which can create overt social disorder, and also through the means of
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dispositional attribution in social cognition form stereotypes and subcultures which are
prone to deviance. (Gleitman, Gross, Reisberg, 2011)

3. CRIME
In the criminogenic perspective of capitalism the traits of competitiveness,
consumerism, individualism, self-seeking, narcissism and greed have been identified as
factors triggering deviance. It has been argued that these arise from a rebellion to
conformity and difficult socioeconomic conditions causing psychological discomfort,
and violation of the norms is to rectify that discomfort. (Giddens 2009)

Policy is drafted in accordance with moral values, and according to Theorists of the
New Criminology, to protect the interests of the ruling class. (Giddens 2009) Currently
in Aotearoa NZ we have policy pertaining to violence, drug use possession and
manufacture, property access ownership maintenance and damage, sexual conduct in
a professional and personal context, organized crime, operation of motor vehicles
marine vessels and aircraft, organized crime, financial obligations and transactions,
construction of buildings and infrastructure, heavy transport maintenance and
operation, livestock and animal management and treatment, public conduct and
speech, safety equipment, interactions within the family, schooling and education,
employment, international travel, horticulture, consumer activity, cyber activity,
medicine and health, interaction with the environment, camping, use of dangerous
goods, mental illness, discrimination, political activity, birth, death, marriage, crossing
the road, and many more.
Social norms surrounding these issues are constructed and enforced by moral
development, these are then written into policy and enforced by authoritative
measures. In addition to punishment for violation the label of deviant, or the more
common social identity, criminal is applied, and stigmatization follows that, which
contribute to the building of a deviant self-identity. (Giddens 2009)

The only people able to legally use violence are agents of the state in the enforcement
of policy and participants in sporting events such as martial arts and boxing. In some
cases it is allowable to use violence in defense against illegally used violence.
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4. DEVIANCE
Deviance from norms is also seen by many as necessary for evolution of a society,
these changes in society however must avoid harming people or initiating moral panic
among the constituents of that society for them to be accepted. Bearing in mind the
concept of mental schema and the psychological discomfort experienced when they
are challenged is often experienced as harm, and also acting on that discomfort often
harms others. This interaction being viewed from a perspective of change as positive
becomes the converse of the paradox of social control, the paradox of social evolution.
Conflicting norms or policies in regard to evolution mirror conflict theory, excessive
repressive policy embeds conflict in society not allowing the change to emerge from
conflict but instead embeds a state of cognitive dissonance in the microcosm and the
macrocosm.
Socioeconomic conditions are seen as the most prolific cause of relative deprivation
and associated with deviance from societal norms in a way that is disruptive to the
functioning of society implying the economy is the most repressive system in society.

5. POLICY FORMATION
"Neither hard choices nor inventive solutions are likely to come from politicians. They
are short termist, seldom skilled, policy analysists and are foremost concerned with
reelection. In any case their role is to translate the public will into requests for state
action. That is they state the 'must do'. It falls to the state servants to delineate the
'can do'. They after all are constant while the politicians are transitory." (Colin James
quoted in Cheyne, O'Brien, Belgrave, 2000)

In the formation of policy a cabinet is formed at a political level to address the

concerns or problems identified by members of society, experts and knowledgeable
persons are assembled as well as political administrators to construct and implement
that policy and it's execution in society. However in line with the Theorists of the
Criminology the interests of the ruling class are also represented in this process. To
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explore further where those interests enter the political structure is out of the scope of
this report at present.
Also worthy to note in patriarchal society gender in crime statistics indicates that male
perpetrated crime is more prolific in occurrence than female perpetrated crime,
although this is changing slightly in accordance with women taking a more public role
in the service of society. It could be argued that the norms behind the policies that
created this effect would be of males being more inclined to public service in society
and females being more inclined to domestic service and public adoration. This
dynamic eluded to by popular sayings such as "behind every successful man is a good
woman", and crime being seen as a crisis of masculinity, with men being higher in
incidences of offending in just about all areas of crime and a large amount of crime
being specifically perpetrated by males against females, and very little crime or relative
policy, citing females offending directly and specifically against males. (Giddens 2009)
The underlying social norms behind this being males are more prone to authoritarian
obedience in social conformity, which we identify as part of patriarchy, and females
more likely to use compliance as an interaction of social conformity. Relative to
unification in social function, conflict in schema formed in authoritative or punitive
social actions can produce violent action when cognitive dissonance breaks to rectify
psychological discomfort, whereas with operations based in compliant schema
formation, information withholding from an object that is psychologically
discomforting subject it to moral schema formed in conformity to induce isolation, or
rejection from the social paradigm used as a deterrent to ensure conformity. This is a
process that cannot be effectively regulated by policy, as policy can only effectively
regulate that which is acted upon, or prevention of actions, it cannot effectively
demand a subjective input from an individual, only in a behavioral sense.

CONCLUSION
Norms of a society are written into policy and enforced in such a way that society must
adhere to them or suffer punishment. This is an effective way of making society
conform, however if the polices are to repressive, resentment and rebellion occur and
often subcultures are formed around these effects, such as the gangs in Aotearoa NZ
that center mainly around criminal activity and have high incidences of incarceration
and involvement in the prison system but with little effect on their criminal
behavior.(McLennan, McManus, Spoonley, 2011) While harmful behavior at a personal
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level can hardly be called evolutionary, with the implementation of policy that
prohibits behavior involving personal risk, by way of negating a person partaking in
that behavior, takes away that persons ability to learn to manage those risks for
themselves and can be seen as stratifying societies level of competence in dealing with
these things to the minimum, or removing it all together. From a political point of view
this may be seen as eradication of harmful behaviors, and from a citizens perspective it
can often be seen as an infringement on civil liberties. This is no simple thing, for
example abrupt policies surrounding a complicated issue with potentially far reaching
social implications such as drug use are often said to cause more incidences of harm
than policies that encompass understanding of the physiological and social effects of
use, (Webb, 2006) but abrupt policy in relation to operating a motor vehicle is
publicized to directly reduce the amount of deaths on the road.

While norms consolidate society and allow for cohesive organized function, over
solidification of them will stagnate society and excessive violation of them will incur
unrest, each issue involving risk or perceived risk that policy is written to govern must
be carefully understood if policy is to encompass all society without isolating and
creating subcultures which propagate deviant behavior throughout society. Conflicting
polices administered by a government will cause conflict in society and control of this
by repressive policing methods will incur a state of cognitive dissonance in the people
subject to authority, producing outbreaks of violent behavior, or the need to vent such
frustrations, otherwise living in psychologically disassociated state in regard to social
issues.

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References
Cheyne, C., OBrien, M., Belgrave, M., (2000). Social Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2E.
Giddens, A. (2009). Sociology, 6E. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press
Gleitman, H., Gross, J., Reisberg, D. (2011). Psychology, 8E. New York, NY: W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc.
Halls, W. (1997) The Division of Labor in Society, New York, Simon and Schuster
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http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/civil-law
Webb, M. (2006). Emerging Drug Use Policy: Ministry of Social Development. Retrieved from
http://websearch.msd.govt.nz/search?q=drug+use+policy&output=xml_no_dtd&proxystyleshe
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