White-collar crime is just one type of crime. Crime, or the violation of a written law, is a specific kind of deviance. What constitutes a crime varies from society to society.

In our society, sociologists have identified three general categories of crime:

  1. Crimes against the person: These are crimes in which an act of violence is either threatened or perpetrated against a person. A mugging is an example of a crime against the person.
  2. Crimes against property: These are crimes that involve the theft of property or certain forms of damage against the property of another. Arson is an example of a property crime.
  3. Victimless crimes: These are crimes in which laws are violated, but there is no identifiable victim. Prostitution is often classified as a victimless crime.

Profile of a Criminal

Sociologists studying crime and deviance study statistics on who commits crime. Identifying a criminal profile can help sociologists understand the causes of crime and other deviance. Sociologists use the categories of age, gender, social class, and race and ethnicity to create this profile.

Age

Young people, roughly between the mid-teens and early twenties, commit almost 40 percent of all crimes. The likeliness to commit crime, particularly violent crime, decreases as one ages.

Gender

Men are arrested for crimes far more often than women. Men are arrested for approximately 70 percent of all property crimes and 80 percent of all violent crimes. Several theories, including the following, attempt to explain this situation:

  • In all known societies, men are allowed more behavioral freedom than women are. More freedom means more opportunity to engage in deviant acts.
  • Traditionally, police have been less willing to define a woman as a criminal, and the court system has been less likely to convict a woman and sentence her to jail or prison.

The gap between the number of arrests for men and the number of arrests for women is narrowing, however. This could be due to greater gender equality or, as some believe, to the rising number of women who commit crimes.

Social Class

Street crime, particularly violent crime, is more prevalent in poor, inner-city neighborhoods than in affluent communities. Violent crime in inner-city neighborhoods tends to be committed by the same group of seasoned criminals. Their victims are most often the law-abiding inhabitants of those neighborhoods. White-collar crime tends to occur in more affluent communities.

Race and Ethnicity

African Americans represent approximately 12 percent of the population in the United States and comprise 30 percent of property-crime arrests and 38 percent of violent-crime arrests. White people represent 66 percent of the arrests for property crimes and 60 percent of the arrests for violent crimes.

Quick Review

What Is Deviance?

  • Deviance is any violation of society’s norms.
  • Each society defines deviance differently. Deviance is a relative issue and may differ based on location, age, social status, and individual societies.
  • Social control is a way society has of encouraging conformity to norms. It consists of positive and negative sanctions.
  • Positive sanctions are socially constructed expressions of approval.
  • Negative sanctions are socially constructed expressions of disapproval.

Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

  • The symbolic interactionist perspective is one of the main frameworks that sociologists use to analyze society. Symbolic interactionists view society as a byproduct of everyday social interaction.
  • Edwin Sutherland’s theory of differential association asserts that deviance is a learned behavior that people learn from the different groups with which they associate. Some people form deviant subcultures based on a shared deviance.
  • According to William Reckless’s control theory, people have two control systems to keep them from acting outside society’s norms: inner and outer controls. Inner controls are internalized thought processes such as conscience. Outer controls include people who influence us.
  • Travis Hirschi elaborated on control theory and identified four factors that make individuals more or less likely to commit deviance. These factors are attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief.
  • Howard Becker’s labeling theory posits that deviant behavior is that which society labels as deviant.
  • Edwin Lemert distinguished between primary deviance, the initial act, and secondary deviance, the repeated deviance that occurs in response to people’s reaction to the primary deviance.
  • William Chambliss’s study of boys he called the Saints and Roughnecks showed the power of labeling.

Structural Functional Theory

  • Another sociological framework, the structural functional theory, focuses on society as a whole rather than the individuals within society.
  • Deviance is a normal and necessary part of any society.
  • Émile Durkheim said that deviance fulfills four functions for society: affirmation of cultural norms and values, clarification of right and wrong, unification of others in society, and bringing about social change.
  • According to Robert Merton’s strain theory of deviance, when people are prevented from achieving culturally approved goals through institutionalized means, they experience strain that can lead to deviance.
  • Denied access to institutionalized means to success, poor people turn to illegitimate opportunity structures.
  • Merton identified five reactions to goals and institutionalized means: conformists, innovators, ritualists, retreatists, and rebels.

Conflict Perspective

  • The conflict theory is Karl Marx’s theoretical paradigm that views society as struggle between groups over limited resources.
  • Conflict theory identifies two categories of people in industrialized societies: the capitalist class and the working class. Those in positions of wealth and power make up the capitalist class. The working class sells its labor to the capitalist class.
  • The two classes are always in conflict with one another. Capitalists establish the norms of society; laws support them.
  • Members of the capitalist class are less likely to be considered deviant because they make laws to benefit themselves.
  • Members of the elite are more likely to commit white-collar crime, nonviolent crime committed in the course of their occupations.
  • According to Alexander Liazos, people we commonly label as deviant are also relatively powerless.

Crime

  • The three general categories of crime are crimes against the person, crimes against property, and victimless crimes.
  • Age, gender, social class, and race and ethnicity are categories that sociologists use to create a criminal profile.
Sociology Deviance Crime & Quick Review
Sociology Deviance Crime & Quick Review