DEVIANCE: The violation of rules or norms

CRIME: The violation of norms written into laws

"Blemishes" the discredit a person's claim to a "normal" identity

SOCIAL ORDER: A group's usual and customary social arrangements, on which its members depend and on which they base their lives


SOCIAL CONTROL: A group's formal and informal means of enforcing its norms

POSITIVE SANCTIONS: A reward or positive reaction for following norms, ranging from a smile to a prize.

NEGATIVE SANCTIONS: An expression of disapproval fro breaking a norm, ranging from a mild, informal reaction to a formal reaction such as a prison sentence or an execution

A term coined by Harold Garfinkel to describe an attempt to remake the self by stripping away an individual's self-identity in its place.

SOCIOBIOLOGY: Explain answers by looking within the individuals- something within the biological makeup of the person

GENETIC PREDISPOSTION: Inborn tendencies; in this contect, to commit deviant acts

PSYCHOLOGY: Look for abnormalities within the person - personalities disorders

PERSONALITY DISORDERS: The view that a personality disturbance of some sort causes an individual to violate social norms

SOCIOLOGY: Search for factors outside the person- how does the social influences and factors affect the individual.

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST:

DIFFERENTIAL ASSOCIATION: Edwin Sutherland's term to indicate that association with some groups results in learning an "excess of definitions" of deviance, and, by extension, in a greater likelihood that one will become deviant

CONTROL THEORY: The idea that two control systems- inner controls and outer controls- work against our tendencies to deviate

LABELING THEORY: The view, developed by symbolic interactionists, that the labels people are given affect their own and others' perceptions of them, thus channeling their behavior

TECHNIQUES OF NEUTRALIZATION: Ways of thinking or rationalizing that help people deflect (or neutralize) society's norms

FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE:

THREE FUNCTIONS:
1. Deviance clarifies moral boundaries and affirms norms
2. Deviance promotes social unity
3. Deviance promotes social change

STRAIN THEORY: Robert Merton's term for the strain engendered when a society socializes large numbers of people to desire a cultural goal (such as success) but withholds from many the approved means to reach that goal; one adaptation to the strain is crime, the choice of an innovative means (one outside the approved system) to attain the cultural goal

CULTURAL GOALS: The legitiamate objectives held out to the members of society

INSTITUTIONALIZED MEANS: Approved ways of reaching cultural goals

ILLEGITIMATE OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE: Opportunities for crimes that are woven into the texture of life- Street Crime, White Collar Crime, Corporate Crime.

STREET CRIME: Crimes such as mugging, rape and burglary

WHITE COLLAR CRIME: Sutherland's term for crimes committed by people of respectable and high social status in the course of their occupations; for example bribery of public officials, embezzlement, false advertisement, etc..

CORPORATE CRIME: Crimes committed by executives in order to benefit their corporation

CONFLICT PERSPECTIVE:

CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM: The system of police, courts, and prisons set up to deal with people who are accused of having committed a crime.

CAPITALIST CLASS: The wealthy who own the means of production and buy the labor of the working class

WORKING CLASS: Those people who sell their labor to the capitalist class

MARGINAL WORKING CLASS: The most desperate members of the working class, who have few skills, little job security, and are often unemployed

RECIDIVISM RATE: The proportion of released convicts who are rearrested

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: The death penalty

HATE CRIME: Crimes to which more severe penalties are attached because they are motivated by hatred (dislike, animosity) of someone's race-ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or national origin.

POLICE DISCRETION: The practice of the police, in the normal course of their duties, to either arrest or ticket someone for an offense or to overlook the matter

To make deviance a medical matter, a symptom of some underlying illness that needs to be treated by physicians.