CHAPTER TWO: THEORIES OF DEVIANCE AND CRIME

Introduction

In the previous section, you had learnt about the basic concepts which help you to understand the current
section concerned with describing and explaining the problem of deviance and crime in society. In this
section, you will learn the various theories of deviance and crime. Broadly, and for the purpose of
clarity, the diverse theories of deviance and crime are classified into two: Non-Sociological and
Sociological theories of deviance and crime. The rationale for such classification is due to the fact that
sociologists and professionals in other fields of study are also interested in studying deviance and
particularly the problem of crime. These include, among others, biologists, anthropologists, medical
personnel, psychologists, ecologists (geographers), economists and lawyers. In this section, however,
only the most important theories (which are mainly sociological) are selected and treated in detail.

Section One: Non-Sociological Theories of Deviance and Crime

Within criminology roughly three types of explanation for crime can be identified: sociological,
psychological and physiological. As a rough guide, the following distinctions can be drawn:

 Sociological theories locate deviance and crime as a response to society in which they occur.
 Psychological theories locate deviance and crime within the psyche or mind of the individual: the
product of inborn ‘abnormality’ or of ‘faulty cognition processes’.
 Physiological theories locate deviance and crime within the biological make-up of the individual.

A key difference between sociological and non-sociological ideas concerns the relationship of the
individual to his/her environment. Whereas sociological theories tend to understand crime and deviance
as a response to society or to the social environment,

Psychological and physiological theories tend to look towards the individuality of the criminal. The
criminal is seen to have ‘abnormal’ or special qualities or characteristics which make them
deviant/criminal.

Non-sociological theories have offered a whole range of interpretations in order to explain the
criminality of the individual based on:

 Biological ‘inferiority’

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  Chromosome abnormality
 Nutritional deficiency
 Extreme introversion
 Extreme extroversion
 Body shape
 A dominant sexual derive

2.1. Biological and Psychological Theories of Deviance

2.1.1. Biological Theories of Deviance

Deviant behavior has been seen in purely individual terms and as something to be explained by biology.
From this point of view, all ‘normal’ individuals conform to social expectations, and so those who differ
must have something wrong with them. A deviant body is seen as explaining a deviant mind and deviant
behavior.

Praveen Attri claims genetic reasons to be largely responsible for social deviance. The Italian school of
criminology contends that biological factors may contribute to crime and deviance. Cesare Lombroso was
among the first to research and develop the Theory of Biological Deviance which states that some people
are genetically predisposed to criminal behavior. He believed that criminals were products of earlier
genetic forms. Criminals were physically inferior in the standard of growth and therefore, developed a
tendency for inferior acts. He further generalized that criminals are less sensitive to pain and,
therefore, they have little regard for the sufferings of others. Thus, through his biological and
anthropological researches on criminals, Lombroso justified the involvement of Darwin’s theory of
biological determinism in criminal behavior.

The main influence of his research was Charles Darwin and his Theory of Evolution.

The Atavists or Hereditary Criminals: Lombroso also termed them as born-criminals. In his opinion the
born-criminals were of a distinct type who could not refrain from indulging in criminality, and
environment had no relevance whatsoever to the crimes committed by the atavists.

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Atavism, a term originally used by Charles Darwin, suggests that in the process of human evolution
some individuals can represent a genetic ‘thro

wback’ to a previous stage in the history of human growth.

With mankind some of the worst dispositions which occasionally without any assignable cause
make their appearance in families, many perhaps be revisions to a savage state, from which
we are not removed by many generations.

Taking up this idea, Lombroso contended that the criminal individual was born so. Physical indication
of criminal potential could be identified through specific bodily characteristics, all of which suggested
that the bearer was a throwback to a more primitive age. In his view, the criminal reflected a reversion
to an early and more primitive being that was both mentally and physically inferior. Lombroso’s
theory used physical characteristics as indicators of criminality. He enumerated as many as sixteen
physical abnormalities of a criminal some of which were peculiar size and shape of head, eye, enlarged
jaw and cheek bones, fleshy lips, long or flat chin, retreating forehead, dark skin, abnormal teeth, extra
nipples, extra or missing toes and fingers, large ears and overly prominent jaw bones, twisted nose and
so on.

The logical and quite frightening, conclusions of this idea, from a social point of view, is that criminal
types can be easily identified and therefore action can be taken against crime would have to involve
exclusion from society, or indeed capital punishment.

Lombroso theorized that people were born criminals or in other words, less evolved humans who were
biologically more related to our more primitive and animalistic urges.

Though he moderated his theory of physical anomaly (irregularity) in later years, his emphasis
throughout his work was on human physical traits which also included biology, psychology and
environment. He revised his theory of atavism in 1906 and held that only one-third of criminals were
born criminals and not all the criminals. Finally, he accepted that his theory of atavism was ill-founded
and held that they were in fact occasional criminals.

Criticisms of Lombroso’s position

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A number of criticisms of Lombroso have been made by contemporary sociologists. Two can be
summarized as follows:

 Those identified in society as criminals may be so identified owing to how they look physically,
rather than their physiological characteristics actually having a causal effect.
 Although those in prison may be more typical of a specific physical ‘type’, it may be that this is
the effect of social or environmental factors-such as diet, access to fitness-and therefore
associated with class and occupation (manual work) and subculture, rather than with a biological
predisposition towards criminality.

2.2. Psychological Theories of Deviance

2.2.1. Personality Theory

Psychological theories locate deviance and crime within the psyche or mind of the individual: the
product of inborn ‘abnormality’ or of ‘faulty cognition processes’. A well-known author who has
adopted the ‘psychological’ approach to studying crime and deviance is Hans Eysenck (1970). In his
work Crime and Personality, Eysenck attempts to correlate- or, to demonstrate a link between – criminal
and ‘personality type’ of the individual.

Eysenck claims that criminality is the result of gene and largely inherited predisposition i.e. some
individuals are more likely to become criminals given the sort of person they are. In adopting what he
would see as a scientific or positivistic approach, Eysenck claims that tests conducted in prison on
prisoners indicate that prisons have more extroverts amongst their populations. Therefore, he asserts,
extroversion is the inherited psychological basis of criminality.

Eysenck claims that extroverts are more likely, given their genetic make-up, to be under-socialized, and
therefore to lack the internalization of norms and values which guide the rest of the population. He
draws very specific differences between the two personality types of introversion and extroversion,
suggesting that all human personality exist along a continuum somewhere between these two points. At
the extremes of this continuum:

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 The typical extrovert… craves excitement, takes chances, acts on the spur of the moment,
and is generally an impulsive (spontaneous) individual… they prefers to keep moving and
doing things, tends to be aggressive and loses their temper quickly; their feelings are not
kept under tight control and they are not always a reliable people.

It is interesting to note that some of the above characteristics are remarkably similar to modern-day
definitions of hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder (ADD). On the other hand:

The typical introvert is a quiet, retiring sort of person, introspective, fond of books rather
than people: they are preserved and silent except with intimate friends… they do not like
excitement, takes matters of everyday life with proper seriousness, and likes a well-ordered
mode of life. They keep their feelings under close control, rarely behave in an aggressive
manner, and do not lose their temper easily.

Studies show that antisocial behavior is remarkably consistent over time; or, to be more precise, the
relative ordering of individuals is remarkably consistent over time. Psychologists assume that behavioral
consistency depends primarily on the persistence of individuals' underlying tendencies to behave in
particular ways in particular situations. These tendencies are termed personality traits, such as
impulsiveness, excitement seeking, assertiveness, modesty, and dutifulness. Larger personality
dimensions such as extraversion refer to clusters of personality traits.

Eysenck viewed offending as natural and even rational, on the assumption that human beings were
hedonistic, sought pleasure, and avoided pain. He assumed that delinquent acts such as theft, violence,
and vandalism were essentially pleasurable or beneficial to the offender. In order to explain why
everyone was not a criminal, Eysenck suggested that the hedonistic tendency to commit crimes was
opposed by the conscience, which he viewed as a conditioned fear response.

Under the Eysenck theory, the people who commit offenses have not built up strong consciences, mainly
because they have inherently poor conditionability. Poor conditionability is linked to three dimensions
of personality: extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism. People who are high on extraversion build
up conditioned responses less well, because they have low levels of cortical arousal. People who are
high on neuroticism also condition less well, because their high resting level of anxiety interferes with
their conditioning. Also, since neuroticism acts as a drive, reinforcing existing behavioral tendencies,

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neurotic extraverts should be particularly criminal. Eysenck also predicted that people who are high on
psychoticism would tend to be offenders, because the traits included in his definition of psychoticism
(emotional coldness, low empathy, high hostility, and inhumanity) were typical of criminals. However,
the meaning of the psychoticism scale is unclear, and it might perhaps be more accurately labeled as
psychopathy.

Criticisms of Eysenck’s Position

A number of sociologists criticized the ideas of Eysenck on both methodological and theoretical
grounds. These criticisms can be summarized as follows:

 Research in prison on inmates is not necessarily the same thing as research in all criminals in
general. Many criminals are not caught, or are not imprisoned, and some people who are
innocent are wrongly imprisoned.
 Perhaps Eysenck is measuring the effects of imprisonment on the personality, and not the
characteristics which led to imprisonment.
 Those who have the characteristics identified as being ‘extrovert’ by Eysenck, although not
committing more crime than introverts, may be easily stopped by the police, arrested and
sentenced more because their behavior is of a more ‘obvious’ nature.

 Psychoanalytic Theory
 According to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), who is credited with the development of
psychoanalytic theory, all humans have natural drives and urges repressed in the unconscious.
Furthermore, all humans have criminal tendencies. Through the process of socialization,
however, these tendencies are curbed by the development of inner controls that are learned
through childhood experience.
 Freud hypothesized that the most common element that contributed to criminal behavior was
faulty identification by a child with her or his parents. The improperly socialized child may
develop a personality disturbance that causes her or him to direct antisocial impulses inward or
outward. The child who directs them outward becomes a criminal, and the child that directs them
inward becomes a neurotic.
 Cognitive Development Theory

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 According to this approach, criminal behavior results from the way in which people organize
their thoughts about morality and the law. In 1958, Lawrence Kohlberg, a developmental
psychologist, formulated a theory concerning the development of moral reasoning. He posited
that there are three levels of moral reasoning, each consisting of two stages. During middle
childhood, children are at the first level of moral development. At this level, the preconvention
level, moral reasoning is based on obedience and avoiding punishment.
 The second level, the conventional level of moral development, is reached at the end of middle
childhood. The moral reasoning of individuals at this level is based on the expectations that their
family and significant others have for them. Kohlberg found that the transition to the third level,
the post conventional level of moral development, usually occurs during early adulthood. At this
level, individuals are able to go beyond social conventions. They value the laws of the social
system; however, they are open to acting as agents of change to improve the existing law and
order. People who do not progress through the stages may become arrested in their moral
development, and consequently become delinquents.
 1.3 Common Assumptions of Biological and Psychological Theories of Deviance
 Both psychological and biological explanations of deviant behavior share a number of basic
assumptions:
 A. Both see the deviant as being somehow different from the majority of people in a given
society. In effect, deviants are different in a way that can be directly traced back to the deviant.
In this respect, such ideas tend to reflect the idea that definitions of crime and deviance are
largely unproblematic. That is, they tend to assume that “everyone knows” what we mean by
deviant behavior. In this sense, such ideas tend to neglect the development of any realistic
conception of the nature of legal and moral norms. The social world - when it’s possible nature is
even recognized - is seen as something static and largely unchanging. In simple terms, the
concept of "society" tends to be seen as little more than a collection of relatively isolated
individual personalities.
 B. Both forms of explanation treat the deviant as being abnormal in a normal society. In this
respect, the majority of people are seen to be law-abiding and little attention is given to the idea
that the distinction between deviant and non-deviant behavior is highly problematic. For many
sociologists the idea that people are not simply "criminal" or "noncriminal" in terms of their
behavior is not one that can be easily sustained.

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 For geneticists, individual abnormality is rooted genetic make-up - people are inherently predisposed
towards obeying or disobeying social rules. For psychologists such as Eysenck (basing their
psychological theories on a particular conception of human genetics), explanations of abnormality
reside in such things as the psychological mediation of social norms through individual experiences
in society. This leads to ideas such as deviant socialization - the idea that we learn to be deviant –
and incorrect or faulty socialization through the family, mass media and so forth. In this respect, the
deviant is seen as a victim of forces beyond his / her control and the motor of abnormality, here, is
individual experience rather than individual genes.

C. Both types of explanation use the idea of abnormality as a means of explaining deviant behavior.
The deviant personality is abnormal because the abnormal personality is deviant - a form of circular
argument (a tautology) whereby the thing that is to be explained (deviant behavior) becomes both
the cause and the effect of the explanation.

Section Two: Sociological Theories of Deviance and Crime

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 Now let’s turn to the sociological theories that better help us to explain, describe, and understand the
problem of deviance and crime in a society. In this section we will discuss both macro and micro level
sociological theories such as the Chicago School; the Structural-Functionalist (theory of Emile
Durkheim and Robert Merton); Conflict theory; Social-Psychological theories of deviance; Symbolic
Interactionist perspectives of deviance.

2.1 THE CHICAGO SCHOOL

The University of Chicago established the first department of sociology in the U.S. in 1892, and was the
department of the American school of thought in sociology. The group of scholars associated with the
department is collectively referred to as the Chicago School.

All social scientists during the 20th century dealt with issues like the development of big cities, rapid
industrialization, mass immigration, the effect of World War II, the great depression and more. Though
members of the Chicago School looked to the city of Chicago as a source of questions and answers, the
urbanization of America made many scholars to believe that the city was responsible for most of the
problems in society. The methods by which this school studied individuals and the city were
contributions to sociology and criminology by themselves. Developing empirical research, they moved
beyond social philosophy and arm-chair speculation. Two major methods of studying were employed
by the Chicago School.

The first was the use of official data (crime figures, census reports, housing, and welfare records).
This information was applied to the geographic lay out of the city indicating areas of high crime and
poverty. The charts and the figures were maintained over periods of time to study the causes of crime
and the reasons why certain parts of the city were crime prone.

The second method of study was the life history method to study folk psychology in Germany which
was later developed into ethnography at the University of Chicago. The methods shifted away emphasis
from abstractions to the real aspects of social life. The life history of case criminals and deviants started
to be presented along with the psycho-social process of becoming a criminal. Sociologists started to
become research explorers who meet, talk with and virtually live together with their subjects.

Here, the most important contribution to the study of deviance was that of Robert Park’s work under the
assumption that the city is similar to the body with different organs. Park sent his students to study the

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various organs which are the various social worlds of metropolis. From these data, R. Park and E.
Burgess produced a conception of the city as a series of concentric zones radiating from the centre of
the city. The farther one moves away from the centre, the fewer social and criminal problems. The basic
idea was that the growth of the city was not random, but a pattern. The first (inside) zone was the
Central Business District, with firms and factories and with few residences. The next zone was the
Zone of Transition, because factory owners always expand to the surroundings. This zone was not
desired for residence because of the uncertainty on behalf of the settlers plus the noise and chemical
pollution of the nearby factories. However, immigrants choose to settle here because it is the cheapest
place to rent a house and the nearest to the factories. When they afford to move and cover transport
costs, they move out to the next concentric zone known as the Working Men’s House. Other outer or
Suburb Zones are very expensive to live in and therefore are residential quarters of the rich. Subsequent
research showed that social problem and crime follow this pattern where most of the problems are
found in the inner circles of the city. Any progression outside brings about fewer problems. Clifford
Shaw & Henery McKay documented that the rates of delinquency, infant mortality and tuberculosis
seem to decrease as one moves away from the centre.

The observations made by the researchers provided a picture of the city as a place where life is
superficial, people are anonymous, relationships are transitory and family/kinship ties are very weak.
The School saw the weakening of primary social relationships as a process of social disorganization. In
turn, social disorganization was the primary cause for the emergence of crime. If relationships were
good, cohesive and stable, then social organization would be well founded. Otherwise, social
disorganization brings about the reproduction of criminal and deviant act, behavior or attitude.

Robert Sumpson and B. Groves listed four major elements of social disorganization:

a) Low economic status (poverty);

b) A mixture of different ethnic groups (heterogeneity);
c) Highly mobile residents; and
d) Disrupted families and broken homes.
Thus, social disorganization, they argue, is an explanation for the distribution of the rates of crime and
delinquency.

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Another contribution of them is to see how social disorganization and criminal tendency is reproduced
through generations longitudinally. This explanation of them is called the Culture Transmission theory
which holds the view that delinquent tradition and values are taught from older deviants to the young
ones in the areas that are the inner circles of the city.

Criticisms

The first critic against the Chicago School is concentration on slum areas, the concept of social
disorganization and deviance showed that any criminal behavior as an entirely low class enterprise while
excluding middle class and upper class deviance. The lower class was the most deviant because it was
disorganized and it was disorganized because it was the most deviant. This is a circular argument
which is fallacious.

Second, most of the scholars in this school came from a traditional rural life that appreciates middle
class value and viewed industrialization as a gross irritating phenomenon. This bias was mentioned as
a reason for them to brand social change as social disorganization.

Third, many subcultures of deviant behavior like youth gangs, organized crime, homosexuality,
prostitution, and white-collar crimes are highly organized even the norms and values of such groups are
highly organized. Therefore, the concept of social disorganization has failed to explain organized
crimes.

2.2. THE STRUCTURAL- FUNCTIONALIST THEORY OF DEVIANCE

Here, in this subsection, we are going to discuss the works of two functionalists: Emile Durkheim and
Robert Merton. We begin with Durkheim’s analysis and then go through Merton’s explanation of
deviance/crime.

2.2.1. Emile Durkheim: the Historical Context of Durkheim’s Work

Durkheim’s major concern was with the analysis of social order; how stability is created and how the
collective will be maintained in the face of individualism. These concerns are hardly surprising if we
consider specific socio-cultural contexts within which Durkheim worked. Sociologists, like artists,
musicians, and scientists, are shaped by the world they live in, even if their object of study is this world.

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The historical influences on Durkheim are identified to be rapid social change unlike anything in Europe
before:

The crucial stages of industrialization were over by 1870 and 1882-1900 was a period of
commercial and industrial depression. France was establishing itself as the second colonial power
through gaining administrative control over important parts of North Africa, Indo-china and West
Africa. Culturally, it was increasing in self-confidence and optimism as it gradually asserted itself
against the influence of German culture…In penal policy, the use of the guillotine was giving way to
the birth of parole. As in other spheres, the old ways sat uneasily next to the new. Times were
changing and consequently so were ways of seeing.

Durkheim’s image of modern society needs to be understood within these changing times. Durkheim’s
sociology was an attempt to engage with problems of the era and so solutions can come only after
understanding and reflection. Durkheim’s concern with order and consensus is not, then, one of
presumption. He does not assume that consensus is unproblematic; on the contrary, his sociology is
concerned to understand how order, which in times where rapid social, cultural and economic
changes is thrown into darkness, is restored.

Deviance, crime and disorder were thus vital for Durkheim’s explanations of the future of social life
during his time.

For Durkheim, deviance is functional for society provided its social expression is not too much or too
little. At first glance, this claim may appear to contradict much of functionalist thought concerning the
importance of social stability.

However, Durkheim recognized that all societies experience some level of deviation from norms and
values, and in periods of social change new moral codes develop. During their creation the newer rules
may be out of step with the old ones for a time. As Durkheim explains:

A society can only survive if it is periodically renewed: that is to say, if the older generation let go new
ones. Therefore, it is necessary for the first to die. Thus the normal state of societies implies the illness
of individuals; a certain rate of mortality, like a certain rate of criminality, is indispensable to
collective health.

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Moreover, for Durkheim a small amount of deviance can have a reinforcing function in bonding society
together against ‘the common enemy’. Individuals are shown how not to behave and thus have their
collective sentiments enhanced:

Never do we feel the need of the company of our compatriots so greatly as when we are in a foreign
country; never does the believer feel so strongly attracted to his fellow believers as during periods of
persecution (maltreatment). Of course, we always love the company of those who feel and think as
we do, but it is with passion, and no longer solely with pleasure, that we seek immediately after
discussions where our common beliefs have been directly attacked. Crime brings together honest
men and concentrates them. We have only to notice what happens, particularly in a small town,
when some moral scandal has just occurred. Men stop each other in the street, they visit each other,
and they seek to come together to talk of the event and to expand resentful in common.

Thus, Durkheim suggests that too much crime and deviance will lead to instability, yet too little does not
allow a social group to bond together. Equally, deviance is often a forerunner of a new set of collective
sentiments.

Durkheim’s Definition of Crime

For Durkheim, crime is a category which can be defined only by reference to the specific social norms
and values of the society in which it occurs. Durkheim does not regard some actions as deviant
absolutely; he recognizes that given the whole total of human social experience, actions accepted in
some societies are condemned in others. Crime is that which contradicts the collective sentiments of the
social group:

… an act is criminal when it offends strong and defined states of the conscience collective. We must not
say that an action shocks the conscience collective because it is criminal, but rather that it is criminal
because it shocks the conscience collective. We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime
because we condemn it. As for the intrinsic nature of these sentiments, it is impossible to specify them;
they have the most diverse objects and cannot be encompassed in a single formula (Durkheim,
1988/1893).

Too much deviance and crime, or rather, too little collective sentiment and order, becomes a problem for
society: individuality rises and the status-quo breaks down. This situation is referred to as anomie by

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Durkheim: the loss of shared and dominant guiding principles or ‘normlessness’. In these situations,
social actors have the potential to behave in an unrestrained way, ignoring the group and its rules.

Durkheim suggests that the rise of anomie is the principal concern for the industrial age, given the wide-
ranging and rapid social changes that have occurred. This concept is of great value, both within
functionalist sociology (particularly in Durkheim’s own analysis of suicide) and taken up by other
writers since Durkheim’s death.

Criticisms against Durkheim’s Position

This section considers briefly three main criticisms of Durkheim’s analysis of deviance, and of his
functionalist position in general.

First, Durkheim’s ideas on crime and deviance are teleological: they suggest that there is a purpose to
the existence of all social phenomena, the necessary purpose of deviance being to bond the social group.
This is difficult to imagine because it treats society as a living thing, an object which forces individuals
to follow the wider social pattern.

Secondly, it is difficult to test the functionalist theory of crime. It seems crime may invalidate the
functionalists’ claims of social stability by showing people how not to behave. Thus, functionalists are
able to ‘prove’ stability in life, even where conflict is shown to exist instead.

Thirdly, functionalism fails to provide an adequate answer to the question ‘functional for whom?’ Here,
crime may be defined as that which goes against the good of the community, but who decides what the
good of the community is? It is at this point that Marxist analysis suggests that functionalism supports
the ideological interests of the ruling group in society.

In view of these criticisms, one might raise question like: will functionalist ideas in deviance continue to
be influential? Despite the many critics of functionalism welcoming the claims of its death as a theory,
we must not look too far into the future and assume that this is a certain trend. Bear in mind that some
critics and commentators are at pains to stress the death of a particular theory for their own personal and
ideological reasons.

2.2.2. Robert Merton’s: Strain Theory

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Functionalist-based ideas such as anomie had also an effect on the work of Robert Merton. Writing in
the mid-1930s, Merton understood crime and deviance to be a response to the inability to achieve social
goals. This is often referred to as a ‘strain theory’ of crime since Merton highlights a tension or strain
between the cultural goals of a society and the legitimate or institutionalized means to achieve these
goals.

Anomie is a concept closely related to two theoreticians, Emile Durkheim and Robert Merton. Durkheim
introduced the term in his book The Division of Labor in Society (1893). Durkheim used the concept to
describe a condition of deregulation in society. The general rules of society get broken down and people
do not know what to expect from each other. This deregulation or normlessness was defined by
Durkheim as anomie. Robert Merton borrowed the concept of anomie to explain deviance in the U.S.
His concept, however, differed from that of Durkheim’s. Dividing societal norms into two, societal goals
and the acceptable means to achieve them, he redefined anomie as a split between these two. Deviance,
therefore, is a situation whereby culturally defined norms or aspirations are separated from the socially
structured means to realize them. In other words, deviance is argued as a product of anomie.

Merton’s work can be seen to be influenced by the ‘American Dream’: provided one works hard,
success such as a good job, money, a good house and a luxurious lifestyle can be yours. Merton
highlights the idea of the internalization through socialization of the norms and values of society.
However, he proposes that when the values or cultural goals are internalized, many people fail to live up
to them, or to achieve them. A dysfunction of this ‘strain’ or tension is deviance.

Merton noted that certain goals are strongly emphasized as aspirations in society; for example, financial
success. Society also emphasizes certain means to reach these goals such as entrepreneurship, hard
work, and education. When these goals are overstressed, Merton said the stage is set for anomie. Not
everyone has equal access to the achievement of legitimate financial success and as a result, people may
search illegitimate ways of doing things. Because of social disorganization, the approved means to reach
the goals are not equally available to certain groups of society in most developed countries. These
people are members of the lower class or minorities that are marginalized from the opportunities for
success. When this inequality exists, Merton views the social structure as anomic. Given this there are
several segments of society in which the legitimate avenue to success are severely restricted without a
corresponding reduction in the emphasis on achievement. The individual deviant is that person caught in

15
the strain to reconcile aspirations with opportunities. According to Merton, anomic conditions are not
constant; as social conditions change, so does the degree of anomie.

Robert K. Merton, in his discussion of deviance, proposed a typology of deviant behavior. Accordingly,
he was proposing a typology of deviance based on the following two criteria:

1) A person's motivations or his/her adherence to cultural goals;

2) A person's belief in how to attain his/her goals.

And based on the aforementioned criteria’s (i.e. based on the individual’s decision to accept or reject the
institutional means and the culturally approved goals),

◇Merton identified four types of deviance: innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion. In another
ways, individuals respond to the structural strain in different ways. These include: conformity,
innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion. These modes of adaptation to strain are presented in
the following diagram:

1) Conformity involves the acceptance of the cultural goals and means of attaining those goals
(e.g., a banker). Most members of society conform to the institutional means to attain the cultural
goals; otherwise the very survival of society would be questionable.

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 2) Innovation involves the acceptance of the goals of a culture but the rejection of the traditional
and/or legitimate means of attaining those goals (e.g., a member of the mafia values wealth but
employs alternative means of attaining his/her wealth).
3) Ritualism involves the rejection of cultural goals but the routinized acceptance of the means for
achieving the goals (e.g., a disillusioned bureaucrat who goes to work every day because it is
what he does, but does not share the goal of the company of making lots of money).
4) Retreatism involves the rejection of both the cultural goals and the traditional means of
achieving those goals (e.g., a homeless person who is homeless more by choice than by force or
circumstance, or a drug addict).
5) Rebellion is a special case wherein the individual rejects both the cultural goals and traditional
means of achieving them, and actively attempts to replace both elements of the society with
different goals and means (e.g., a communist revolution).

What makes Merton's typology so fascinating is that people can turn to deviance in the pursuit of widely
accepted social values and goals. For instance, individuals in the U.S. who sell illegal drugs have
rejected the culturally acceptable means of making money, but still share the widely accepted cultural
value in the U.S. of making money. Thus, deviance can be the result of accepting one norm, but
breaking another in order to pursue the first.

How is it possible that society ‘causes’ problems or tensions for some of its members? Merton is highly
critical of driving social values in western societies, based as they are on what he sees as competition
and greed. He suggests that this encourages individuals to break the law:

In societies such as our own (America), then, the pressure of prestige-bearing success tends to
eliminate the effective social constraint over means employed to this end. ‘The-end-justifies-the-
means’ doctrine becomes a guiding tenet for action when the cultural structure unduly praises the
end and the social organization unduly limits possible alternative to approved means.

In short, Merton’s anomie theory explains how the social structure itself contributes to the creation of
deviance on all levels although the primary focus of the theory is on the lower class. The social
disjunction between cultural aspirations and the approved methods of attaining these aspirations, the
lower class is more likely to exhibit a deviant, non-approved behavior.

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Criticisms of Merton’s Position

Although Merton develops many different explanations of deviant behavior, he treats deviant responses
as exclusively the actions of individuals. He therefore fails to take into consideration the highly
communal aspects of some deviance. He ignores the evidence that deviant subcultures exist. These
subcultures may well respond to the world along similar lines to those outlined by Merton, but they must
be seen as collective responses;

This theory assumes a universality of the legitimate means. This is not the case for delinquent and
criminal acts vary both in time and place. The entire concept of deviance is a very relative concept;

Anomie theory assumes that the deprivation of the means on the part of the poor and the lower class
population makes it highly vulnerable to engage in deviant activities. It is true that members of the lower
class or minority groups are more likely detected, labeled and arrested for offences. However, more
organized and occupational crimes do occur amongst members of the upper class;

The theory also forgets concerns about deviant subculture, peer pressure, issues of self-image and
upbringing; but simply argues that it is a free will to act in a deviant manner so as to achieve desired
goals. Many forms of deviance like drug addiction, sex work or homosexuality are not only engineered
by the drive to achieve success through illegitimate means; and finally,

The analysis on retreatism is over simplified that shows people converted to be hermits of their own
world by free choice. In reality, however, this is not the case. For example, people who develop
addiction or tolerance to drugs that demand an increased intake to get more excitement next time,
financing the habit itself forces people to engage in theft or other serious crimes to secure the income.
Accordingly, recidivism becomes an order of the day which at one time might force the individual to
abandon innovation and end up a drifter. So, retreatism depends on how each life world gets trapped into
this method of adaptation.

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 2.1. DEVIANT (DELINQUENT) SUBCULTURE THEORY

This theory is the contribution of the criticism of Merton’s social strain theory of deviance. Merton was
criticized for his research depending only on American society in which there was no consensus on
values and goals since it is a pluralistic nation. He is also criticized for his analysis that deviance is
mostly found in the lower class in a society. However, the delinquent subculture theory argues that
deviance is found in any culture and subculture.

Subculture is a culture with in a culture. It occurs when some people feel unable to get what they want
with in a culture. When they experience such conditions, people form a sub-culture that can fulfill their
own interest. This newly established sub-culture then becomes a deviant sub-culture from the stand
point of view of the people of the main stream culture.

Deviant sub-cultures use deviant ways of differentiation of themselves from the mainstream society.
This can be achieved through some behaviors like clothing, tattooing, hair styles, and other violent and
criminal acts. Deviance provides sub cultures a sense of belongingness and common identity. Thus
members of these deviant subcultures have their own norms. If a member violates this norm, he/she
becomes deviant of the deviant sub culture. Therefore deviance with in a subculture itself is subject to
sanctions. Some deviants of the deviant subculture get solace and support when they join the deviant
group, (e.g. juvenile delinquency). Some examples of delinquent sub culture are gambling, drug abusers,
trounce, etc.

Opportunity Structures

Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin (1960) argued that deviance is more complex than Merton had
explained. In addition to limited means to achieve legitimate goals, a person also has to have access to
illegitimate opportunities. However much a person would like to embezzle “what they deserve for their
hard work” from their employer, they will not be able to do so without access to the corporate funds.
According to Albert Cohen (1971), deviant subcultures arise to support criminal behavior. Blocked
opportunities lead to subcultures that value other attributes (e.g., stealing rather than buying). These
subcultures provide a way of life that supports criminal behavior.

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In his study of gangs, Cohen found teens stealing for “kicks” and committing vandalism. Gang values
(e.g., achieving instant gratification rather than long-term thinking, an emphasis on the importance of the
gang over others) replaced those of the larger culture. A more recent ethnography of life in a South
London neighborhood also looked at streetwise teens (Foster 1990). Criminality and the expectation of
participation in delinquent activities become part of the culture of the neighborhood itself. Streetwise
teens graduated from petty crimes to involvement in a black-market economy as adults.

2.3. CONFLICT THEORY

There are a number of strands of thought usually merged together to be called the conflict theory. These
theories share one fundamental assumption that society is more appropriately characterized by conflict
than consensus. This assumption allows for several varieties of conflict theory that can be seen in a
continuum. At one end, there are writers who assume a number of groups varying in size, interest and
authority positions and struggling to see that their interests are maintained.

On the other extreme, class conflict versions argue that two classes are present in society engaged in a
struggle to arrest the means of production and also control state power. In most cases, all of these
theories are influenced by the writings of K. Marx. He said very little about crime and deviance but
argued that historic inequality between classes in society lead to a conflict of interest between these
groups to a basic resource control. Since Marx felt that a group’s position in society is shaped by its
consciousness, capitalism made the working class believe that the system is on its favor (false
consciousness), but later acquiring true class consciousness, the proletariat rises up to fight the system.

For Marxist criminologists, the class struggle affects crime on three fronts:

1. The definition of crime found in the law is the instrument of the ruling class that serves to
perpetuate the existing concept of property rights. So, the law itself is the tool of the powerful class.

2. All crime as a product of the class struggle. The emphasis on capital accumulation drives into
intense and greedy competition where inanimate market forces gamble to reduce the man into poverty
and destitution. The chance to get ahead manifests itself in the pursuit of property or wealth either as a
conformist or else a criminal.

3. They argued that criminology should consent in the study of relationships to the mode of
production as an explanation of crime.

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 Richard Quinny came up with a category of deviance that surface with industrial capitalism. Instead
of calling them deviants/criminals, he referred them to as ‘problem populations’. These are:

a. The poor stealing from the rich;

b. Those that refuse to work;

c. Those that retreat to drugs;

d. Those who refuse to go to schooling; and

e. Those that actively propose a non-capitalist society.

The last group of people is activists or revolutionaries known as the social dynamite that threaten the
status quo. Criminology, therefore, needs to study the modes of resistance that a number of groups
exhibit to show their discontent against a capitalist system. Marxist criminology looks a far-fetched
argument because the original works of Marx were not about crime and deviance at all. The school was,
therefore, subject to a number of critics.

Criticisms against Conflict Theory

1. Conflict theory is restricted to explain that all crime is a product of an exploitative productive
relation that prevails between two classes. It failed to explain other conflicts between various
interest groups along sex, religion, age, occupation, race and ethnic classes.

2. Not all laws are constructed to benefit the bourgeois or the powerful class discriminately. Laws
against crimes like homicide, burglary or assault, for instance, are meant to protect every
member regardless of economic status.

3. Although the conflict theory points to the criminal law as the cause for defining a resistant act as
criminal, it appears illogical to again assume the law as responsible for criminal behavior; it
might interpret the act not invoke it.

4. Perhaps more than any approach, conflict theory has an ideological bias that would help or
hamper its acceptance. This theory emphasizes that science shouldn’t be divorced from practice,
so should thought from action.

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2.4. Social-Psychological Theories of Deviance

Social-psychological explanations of criminality view the criminal behavior, as a learned one acquired
through a process of social interaction. Sometimes they are referred to as Social-process theories, in
order to draw attention to the processes by which an individual becomes a criminal. These explanations
bridge the gap between the unqualified environmentalism of the sociological theories and the narrow
individualism of the psychological and biological approaches. Thus, they stress those reciprocal
transactions between people and their social environments that would explain why some people behave
criminally and others do not.
Social-psychological theories can be divided into two categories:
 Control Theories,

 Learning Theories.

2.4.1. Control Theories

Control theories assume that the motive to deviate is relatively constant across people, and hence people
will frequently behave antisocially unless they are trained not to. Some never form attachments or bonds
with significant others, so that necessary controls are never internalized. There are two important
theories under these explanations.

Control theory, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, attempts to explain ways to train people to engage in
law-abiding behavior. Although there are different approaches within control theory, they share the view
that humans require nurturing in order to develop attachments or bonds to people and those personal
bonds are key in producing internal controls such as conscience and guilt and external controls such as
shame. According to this view, crime is the result of insufficient attachment and commitment to others.

The theory known as social bond theory or social control theory was presented by Travis Hirschi. It is,
in a strict sense, not a theory of crime causation, but rather a theory of pro-social behavior used so often
by sociologists and criminologists to better explain deviance and criminality. This theory proposes that
people who engage in delinquency are free of intimate attachments, aspirations, and moral beliefs that
bind them to conventional and law abiding way of life.

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Hirschi in 1969 identified four kinds of social bonds which promote socialization and conformity. These
include attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. He argued that the stronger these four bonds,
the least likely one would become delinquent. Hirschi first assumes that everyone has a potential to
become delinquent and criminal and it is the social controls, not moral values that maintain law and
order within a society. Without controls, as to him, one is totally free to commit criminal act.

Hirschi further assumed that a consistent value system exists in all societies. Moral codes are, then,
defied by delinquents since their attachment to society is weak. While others believed that delinquents
share the same values and attitudes as non-delinquents, Hirschi sees delinquents as rejecting such social
norms and beliefs.

Elements of the Bond

As it has already been explained earlier, Hirschi has identified four components of social bond:
attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief.

1. Attachment refers to one’s interest in others. One’s acceptance of social norms and the development
of social conscious depend on attachment to other human beings. Hirschi views parents, schools, and
peers as important social institutions for a person. Thus, attachment for him takes three forms:
attachment to parents, attachment to schools, and attachment to peers.

While examining attachment to parents, Hirschi found that juveniles refrain from delinquency due to
the consequences that the act would most likely produce, therefore, putting such relationship between
parents and child in jeopardy. However, the depth and quality of parent-child interaction are important
in determining the level of attachment.

The amount of time the child and parent spend together is equally important, including intimacy in
conversation and identification that may exist between parent and child. Hirschi’s research shows that
delinquents are much less closely attached to their parents than non-delinquents are. Consequently, he
concluded that the closer the child’s relationship with his/her parents and the more intimate the
communication with them, the less likely that child is to be delinquent.

While examining bonds between a child and school, Hirschi found that an ability to do well in school is
linked with delinquency through a series of chain events. He argued that academic incompetence leads
to poor school performance, which leads to a dislike to schools, which, in turn, results in rejection of

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teachers and authority that finally produces acts of delinquency (Keel, 2005). Conklin strengthened this
view by adding the idea that the most academically successful students are the least likely to be
delinquent for they are most attached to the school and its community. In relation to the third type of
attachment, Hirschi came up with the idea that delinquents are more likely to have delinquent friends
than non-delinquents.

This theory of social bond explains that one’s attachment to parents and schools overshadows the bond
formed with one’s peers. Hirschi revealed that adolescents who have weak relationship with their
parents tend to have weak relationship with their peers, and those closest to their parents have the
greatest number of close friends. Hirschi, still, has found another fourth dimension of attachment –
conventional lines of action. Young people who do not aspire to conventional lines of action are more
involved in adult activities during adolescence. Adult privilege without adult responsibilities might
compensate for a bleak outlook in the future.

Delinquents are more likely than non-delinquents to see their high school years and the year
immediately after as the times in their lives when they will be the happiest. They are, especially, likely
to engage in delinquency because their lack of orientation towards the future frees them from
conventional pursuits such as education and a career.

According to Hirschi, adolescents who have fewer attachments to family, schools, peers, and
conventional lines of action are more likely to involve in delinquency because they do not feel society’s
rules are binding on them and do not fear the disapproval of others.

2. Commitment and it involves time, energy, and effort placed on conventional lines of actions. In other
words, it is the support of and equal partaking in social activities an individual to the moral and ethical
codes of society. Hirschi’s control theory hold an investment in life, property and reputation are less
likely to engage in criminal acts which will jeopardize their social position. A lack of commitment to
such conventional value will cause an individual to partake in delinquent or criminal acts.

3. Involvement is all about the preoccupation in activities that stress the conventional interests of
society. Hirischi argued that an individual’s heavy involvement in conventional activities doesn’t leave
time to take part in unconventional activities; because he/she is tied to appointments, deadlines, working
hours, plans and the like. Consequently, the opportunity to commit deviant acts rarely arises. Thus,

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involvement in schools, family, recreation, etc., insulates all juveniles from potential delinquent
behavior that may be a result of idleness.

4. Belief it is dealt with assents to society’s value system which entails respect for laws and the people
and institutions which enforce such laws. Hirschi expressed that people who live in common social
settings share similar human values. If such beliefs are weakened or absent, one becomes more likely to
involve in antisocial acts. In addition, if people believe that laws are unfair, this bond to society weakens
and the likelihood of committing delinquent acts arises.

These variables explain the social bondage i.e. attachment to others in the society. Particularly, young
people are bonded to the society at several levels. However, the extent and strength of such bondage
differ in the following ways:

 The degree to which they are affected by the opinions and expectations by others.

 The payoffs they receive for conventional behavior, and

 The extent to which they subscribe to the prevailing norms.

As represented in the work of Travis Hirschi, the Social Control Theory proposes that exploiting the
process of socialization and Social Learning Theory builds self-control and reduces the inclination to
indulge in behaviour recognized as antisocial.

It is based on Functionalist theories of crime and proposes that there are three types of control:

 Direct: by which punishment is threatened or applied for wrongful behavior, and compliance is
rewarded by parents, family, and authority figures.
 Indirect: by which a youth refrains from delinquency because his or her delinquent act might
cause pain and disappointment to parents and others with whom he or she has close relationships.
 Internal: by which a person's conscience or sense of guilt prevents him or her from engaging in
delinquent acts.

Limitation of Social Control Theory

a) Control theory does not identify the social structure sources of motivations to break laws or
conventions. Even when other social forces such as poverty, deprivation, etc., impel them to

25
 engage in crime and delinquency, attachment to family, schools and peer groups can keep from
violating the laws for Hirschi. However, a complete theory of crime and delinquency need to
explain the way that social, cultural, and economic forces produce the motivation to break the
law.

b) Social control theory wouldn’t benefit from more dynamic analysis of social interaction. Rather
than describing attachments as they are of a given time, social control theory needs to examine
the way that attachments change over time. For example, the way that parents behave at one time
affects their children’s action at a later time, but those actions by the children can, in turn, affect
the way that their parents will treat them in the future.

c) Social control theory fails to take into account possible reciprocal relationship between social
bonds and delinquency, focusing instead on the way that weak attachment leads to delinquency.
Scholars argued that weak attachment to the family and school caused delinquency, but also that
delinquent behavior reduced the strength of bonds to family and school, which, in turn, increased
delinquency.

d) Social control theory wants to explain delinquency, not adult crime per se.

2.4.2. Learning Theories

As a type of social-psychological approach, learning theory focuses on mechanisms by which criminal
behavior is learned. One example is Edwin H. Sutherland’s (1947).

2.4.2.1. Differential Association Theory: Edwin Sutherland

Edwin Sutherland, in his work Principles of Criminology in 1939/47, developed an important
sociological theory known as Differential Association Theory. Sutherland is most influential
criminologist if the 20th century. His theory is more social psychological.

Differential Association theory changes focus from structure to process due to the fact that it is the
process of social learning in which criminals/delinquents and law-abiding people learn their behaviors
from their association with others.

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One popular set of explanations, often called learning theories, emphasizes that deviance is learned from
interacting with other people who believe it is OK to commit deviance and who often commit deviance
themselves. Deviance, then, arises from normal socialization processes.

Differential association theory, which says that criminal behavior, is learned by interacting with close
friends and family members. These individuals teach us not only how to commit various crimes but
also the values, motives, and rationalizations that we need to adopt in order to justify breaking the law.
The earlier in our life that we associate with deviant individuals and the more often we do so, the more
likely we become deviant ourselves. In this way, a normal social process, socialization, can lead normal
people to commit deviance.

The main focus of differential association theory was all criminal or negative deviant behaviors. It is
established upon the premise that people learn to commit or to deviate from normal through exposure to
antisocial definitions. By the same token, differential association theory states that people have greater
tendency to deviate from societal norms when they frequently associate with individuals who are more
favorable towards deviance than conformity (Kendall, 2003).

According to this theory people imitate or otherwise internalize the quality of this association from
interaction with others who participate in criminal lifestyle, so that the difference between offenders and
non-offenders lines in individual choices. Offenders and non-offenders strive for similar goals, but they
choose different avenues to achieve these goals. These choices are based on the lesson they take from
exposure to certain kinds of life experience (Martin, 2005).

Since those structural theories of deviance and crime were severely criticized for their failure to explain
all forms of deviance and crime, differential association theory rejected them, and appears as important
theory for the 20th century crime causation and explanation of deviance.

Differential association theory is generally constructed upon the following postulates:

a) Criminal/Deviant Behavior is learnt: According to Sutherland, criminal behavior is not

inherited, as such, also a person who is not already trained in crime does not invent criminal
behavior, and just as a person does not make mechanical inventions he has had training in
mechanics.

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b) Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other people in the process of communication:
this communication can either be verbal or nonverbal.

c) The principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate personal groups:
this shows the claim that crime is learned in face-to-face interaction in small groups. The
argument rejects the possibility that such behavior is learned from the media. Negatively, this
means that impersonal agencies of communication… movies and newspapers play a relatively
unimportant part in the genesis of criminal behavior (Adler, 2000).

d) When criminal behavior is learned, the learning includes: i) techniques of committing the crime
which are sometimes very complicated, sometimes very simple; ii) the specific directions of
motives, drives, rationalization, and attitudes.

e) The specific directions of motives and drives are learned from the definitions of the legal code as
favorable or unfavorable: this statement assumes that people orient their actions towards the law.
In other words, the law is not irrelevant to any individual who is deciding how to behave. As to
Sutherland, some situations are defined as favorable to violation of the law. For example, an
unattended bicycle may be seen as an opportunity for theft. However, the same situation can also
be defined as unfavorable to violation of the law with the unattended bicycle being seen as a
chance to alert the owner to the risk of theft.

f) A person becomes delinquent because of an access of definitions favorable to violation of the

law over definitions unfavorable to violation of the law: here it lays the principle of differential
association. It stresses contacts with criminal or noncriminal definitions, but does not require
contact with criminal or noncriminal individuals. People can learn definitions favorable to
violation of the law from law-abiding people and they can learn definitions unfavorable to
violation of law from criminals. According to the principle of differential association, an
individual holds both definitions favorable and unfavorable to violation of law, and that bit is
only when definition favorable to violation of laws exceed definitions unfavorable that a person
will turn to crime.

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 g) Differential association may vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity: this means that
associations with criminal and noncriminal behaviors vary in these respects. Here, what is
important is the nature of association with criminal and noncriminal patterns, rather than the
mere fact of associations. This implies that associations that are more frequent play a higher role
in the balance between definitions of favorable to violation of laws and definitions unfavorable
to violation of laws. Associations that endure over the longest time are the most significant in
determining criminal behavior. Likewise, associations that occur earlier in life, in childhood or
adolescence, are the most important in forming definition of the law.

h) The process of learning criminal behavior by association with criminal and anti-criminal patterns
involves all of the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning process: this shows the
idea that crime is a form of behavior that is learned in the same way as noncriminal behaviors.
The learning of criminal behavior is, thus, not restricted to the process of imitation alone.

i) While criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and value, it is not explained by those
general needs and values, since noncriminal behavior is an expression of the same needs and
values: thieves generally steal in order to secure money, but likewise, honest laborers work in
order to secure money. Here, Sutherland argues that criminal behavior cannot be explained by
the general desire to accumulate property or enhance status among peers because those motives
can also lead to noncriminal behaviors.

Thus, it will be wise keeping the ideas that only learning through differential association with
definitions favorable and unfavorable to violation of the law can explain criminal behavior.

Merits of the Theory

 This theory has survived because of its broad scope and its ability to organize masses of
research findings.

 The theory is appreciated with respect to its attempt to explain crime in places where it
would not be expected, for example, among law breakers who grew up in affluent

29
 environments and who were granted their material wants. Such people break the law,
because they learn it from the peer group or other such agents.

Criticism of the theory:

Many researchers have attempted to validate Sutherland’s differential association theory. Others have
criticized it. Much of the criticism stems from errors in interpretation:

 The theory does not explain all types of criminal behavior. It has difficulty in explaining crimes
of passion or impulsive violence.
 Differential association theory had been criticized for several reasons. For one thing, it is
criticized for its stress on the ratio of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions
unfavorable to violation of law.

 The theory might be mistaken in looking at definition of the law in general, because individuals
violate specific laws. Thus, a person might not need to hold an overall unfavorable view of the
law before committing a crime, holding unfavorable definitions of one specific law could be
enough.

 Sutherland examined the learning process by which people become criminals, but it leaves the
question ‘why people have the association they do?’ unexplained. It does not explain how the
associations are distributed throughout the social structure.

 The theory has also been criticized for overly simplified view of the way that people choose
models for their behavior. Differential association theory proposes that the choice of model does
not necessarily involve interaction with other intimate personal groups instead a person pursues
criminal behaviors to extend that he identifies himself with real or imaginary persons from
whose perspective his criminal behavior seems acceptable.

 Differential association theory might describe how some people initially become involved in
crime better than it explains why people continue in a criminal career. The cause may be the
direct rewards of crime.

 The theory has also been criticized for being too general and imprecise to test easily or to verify
fully. Even if the concepts of the theory could be defined in measurable terms, an enormous
movement of data would be needed to test the theory.

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2.5. INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVES OF DEVIANCE

Interactionist perspectives differ from those points of view on deviance discussed so far. Haralambos
(2005) attributed this difference to two reasons:

1. Interactionist perspective views deviance from theoretical angles.

2. It examines aspects of deviance which have been largely ignored by several approaches that are
discussed earlier. Those explanations addressed till now, emphasized on the motivation of
pressures and social forces that are expected to influence a person’s behavior.

Instead, Interactionist perspective focuses on the importance of the interaction between deviant and
those who define him/her as deviant. The main attention of this perspective is to explain how and why
particular groups and individuals are defined as deviant and the effects of such definition on their future
actions.

The interactionist perspective is very much interested in examining the meanings the various actors of
the social interaction bring to and develop within the interaction situation. Meanings, as to
interactionists, are not fixed and clear cut. They are modified and developed in the process of the
interaction. Thus, the definition of deviance is negotiated in the interaction situation by the actors
involved. However, all the approaches of deviance so far dealt (with their focus on the idea that the
deviant simply reacting to the forces which are external to him/herself and largely beyond his/her
control) are closer to positivist positions.

This perspective has been influenced very much by the idea of Charles Cooley’s Looking Glass-self
which examines the self as a product of our own interaction with others; and Herbert Mead’s significant
others and generalized others. However, we are not going to discuss these two theories of the self in
detail here. Some important Interactionist thinkers whose ideas are going to be discussed include
Howard Becker, Edwin Lemert, and Erving Goffman.

2.5.1. Howard Becker: Labeling Theory [The Symbolic Interactionist Stand]

Labeling theory is an off-shot older theory that asked strange questions about crime and criminals from
a new perspective. The theorists argue that earlier theories placed too much emphasis on the individual

31
deviant neglecting how people could react to deviance. Therefore, this same theory is also known as
social reaction theory. The theory also raised interest in how official agencies act towards a suspect and
apply the law for correctional administration.

Labeling theory, as its name implies, puts the focus on the process of naming behaviors and the people
that perform them. Under this theory, certain behaviors are illegal because we choose to say they are:
we label them as crimes.

If we arrest and imprison someone, we hope they will be “scared straight,” or deterred from committing
a crime again. Labeling theory assumes precisely the opposite: it says that labeling someone deviant
increases the chances that the labeled person will continue to commit deviance. According to labeling
theory, this happens because the labeled person ends up with a deviant self-image that leads to even
more deviance. Deviance is the result of being labeled

Labeling theory is very useful in encouraging us to take account of the fact that being defined as a
criminal is a social process. If you break the law and don’t get found out, you won’t be officially
labeled as a criminal. If you go around telling all your friends that you broke the law, they may call you
a criminal but until you’ve been found guilty in a law court, officially you’re not a criminal.

The intellectual heritage of labeling theory came from the Chicago School’s symbolic interactionism.
The writings of George H. Mead & W. Thomas influenced the founder, H. Becker. Howard Becker, a
prominent Interactionist thinker, has developed the Labeling theory of Deviance. He argues that social
groups create deviance by making the rules whose violation constitutes deviance, and by applying those
rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders. This idea signifies that deviance is not the
quality of the act the person commits, but rather the consequence of the application of rules and
sanctions to an ‘offender’ by others. Accordingly, Becker defined a deviant as one to whom the label
deviant has successfully been applied; and deviant behavior is a behavior that people label so.

Noting definitions that depend on statistical, legal or conventional views, Becker underlined the need to
come up with another concept of deviance. Deviance in his opinion is in the eye of the beholder;
because members of different groups have different conceptions of what is right and proper in specific
contexts. Next, he argues that there has to be some reaction to the act.

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Deviance must be discovered by outsiders that do not share a belief in the appropriateness of the
exhibitive behavior. The law, therefore, is nothing but a written agreement of a designated group of
people who consent to define certain acts as deviant or criminal. Once broken, the law signals to the
community at large to react back to the perpetrators. Becker emphasizes the fact of social reaction to the
‘deviant’ instead of asking why he/she broke the law. Becker responded that it is social groups that
created deviance by making rules whose nature itself provokes deviance and the application of the rules
to a particular group of people is simply the cause for deviance.

Since deviance is a consequence of the response of others to a person’s act, according to Becker, we
cannot assume that deviants are homogeneous when we conduct a research on people who have already
been labeled. He further argued that we cannot assume that those people who have actually committed a
deviant act or broken some rules, because the process of labeling may not be infallible or perfect, some
people may be labeled deviant who, in fact, have not broken a rule. Moreover, we cannot suppose that
the category of these labeled deviant will contain all those who actually violated a rule, as many
offenders may escape apprehension and thus failed to be included in the population of ‘deviants’ we
study. This shows that those people labeled deviant cannot have common factors of personality or life
situation. The only thing that these labeled people have in common, according to Becker, is the label as
well as the experience of being labeled as an outsider.

As a result, Becker became interested in the analysis of deviance only based on their similarity. He is
concerned with the process by which people come to be thought of an outsider, and their reactions to
that judgment. For him, we cannot say that others will label as though one has committed an infraction
of a rule, partly because one has not violated a rule does not mean that he may not be treated, in some
circumstances, as though he had. As to Becker, the degree to which other people will respond varies
across time, who commits the act, and who feels that he/she has been harmed by the act.

So far, Becker has discussed that deviance is not a quality that lies in the behavior itself, but in the
interaction between the person who commits an act and those who respond to it. Therefore, being
branded as deviant has important results for one’s further social participation and self-image. The most
significant consequence is a drastic change in the individual’s public identity.

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Deviance, therefore, originates not as a qualitative act of the individual him/herself, but as a
consequence of the application of the law. Deviance is born in the endorsement of both formal and
informal normative standards that label acts, ear-mark punishment and serve as binding tool.

As mentioned earlier, Becker concentrating on the reaction of outsiders to the transgressor is interested
to see how society defines certain acts as truly deviant and others conformist. To this end, he developed
a typology of deviant behavior based on the reaction of the outsiders.

The four types of deviances are:

1) The falsely accused;

2) The pure deviant;
3) The conforming; and
4) The secrete deviant.

 Falsely accused acts are those that either did not exist or conforming, but the audience reacted
as if the acts were deviant.
 Both conforming and pure deviant acts are those in which the perception or reaction of the
outsiders matched the reality of the act.
 Finally, secrete deviant acts are those in which deviance had occurred but the audience ignored
the fact. Becker believes that secrete deviant acts are quite common.

Labeling theory did not only try to shade light on the origin and process of deviance but also tried to see
the effects of a deviant act. There are two ways in which this may take place. First, the label may catch
the attention of the labeling audience making the label continue. Second, the label may be internalized
on the part of the individual, which leads to an acceptance of a deviant self-concept. The first time
offender could then turn out to be a career deviant.

In general, the theory assumes a kind of a deviance cycle, where individuals fall victims of a definition
premeditated by law-makers. The enforcement of the law further worsens the problem because the
individual becomes a secondary deviant who has internalized and normalized the act.

Criticisms against Labeling Theory

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Labeling theory is severely criticized for putting the cart before the horse. The law doesn’t create the
criminal motive but sets a condition to acknowledge deviant behavior. Arguing so, the theory denies that
there is a qualitative act which is a violation of norm attached with public harm in deviance. Labeling
theory, therefore, confuses conditions vis-à-vis causes.

Labeling theory did not clearly state an outline of the groups/outsiders that generate labeling and
therefore act as agents of social sanction. It only emphasizes the formal agency of control neglecting
institutions like the family, peer group, and school environment.

The writers were also unclear about the definition of labeling as they did not obviously state what sort of
reaction is equivalent to constitute deviance or conformity. Is it to be arrested, indicted or imprison that
makes society label the individual as deviant? If the reaction to homosexuality ignites an objection, does
it mean the act is non-deviant?
Some criminologists debate the content of this School arguing that it is not a full-fledged theory, but a
sensitizing perspective. This critic holds water, because the authors themselves never mentioned it as a
theory. Besides, the theory is an off-s
hot of symbolic interactionism plus modern day postmodernism.

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