Sociology Now, Census Update

CHAPTER REVIEW 201

because we are afraid to get caught but because, deep down, we
believe that the system of laws is legitimate and that we all will
benefit somehow from everyone obeying them.
In the future, we’ll continue to obey most of the rules and also
decide which ones we can break and legitimate their breaking to
ourselves. Our society will likely continue its anticrime spending
spree, and the number of prisoners will continue to spiral upward.
The crime rate will shift unevenly; some crimes will increase and
some decrease. And we’ll continue to debate the age-old questions
of guns and the death penalty.
The sociological questions will remain the same: How do peo-
ple make the sorts of decisions about what laws to obey and which
ones to break? Who decides what laws are, how they are to be
enforced, and how equally the law is to be applied? How does our
understanding of deviance and crime reflect and reinforce the
inequalities of our society even as the institutions that administer
them—the police, courts, and prisons—also reflect and reinforce
those inequalities? What are the possibilities of more equitable
understandings and policies?

J Global crime occurs in every arena, from

fake Harry Potter books made in China, to cyber-

crime rings that steal identities or financial

information, to young girls kidnapped to serve as

sex slaves around the world.

Chapter

Review

1.How do we define deviance? Deviance is any failure to

follow a norm, or social rule. Deviance sometimes takes

the form of behavior and other times is as simple as

group membership.

2.What is social control? Following or breaking norms

often leads to reactions called sanctions. Sanctions can

be positive or negative and formal or informal. As a

mechanism of social control, sanctions are used to get

individuals to follow the rules, and like norms, they exist

in degrees. The sanction for breaking a folkway will be

informal (such as a smile or a frown) while the sanction

for breaking a law will be formal (such as jail or a fine).

Because social control contributes to smooth social func-

tioning, all groups and societies have some form of it.

3.How do sociologists explain deviance? Differential

associationexplains deviance as an excess of definitions.

When an individual sees that there is a reward for

deviance, the deviance is defined as rewarding. Control

theoryassumes that individuals are rational actors and

weigh the costs and benefits of any action. If benefit out-

weighs cost, an individual is more likely to be deviant.

The more connected individuals are with others and with

institutions, the less likely they are to engage in deviance.

Inner and outer controls work through attachment, com-

mitment, involvement, and belief. According to labeling

theory, something or someone has to be labeled as

deviant before it is considered deviant. Once a person

is labeled as a criminal, he or she will always be viewed

as one. Conflict theoryexplains reactions to deviance in

terms of inequality, as those with more power are less

likely to suffer negative consequences.

4.How do sociologists explain crime? Crimes are viola-

tions of norms that have been codified in law. Strain the-

oryexplains crime as a result of a tension between the

accepted goals of society and the accepted means of

obtaining those goals, means to which everyone does not

have equal access. Possible reactions to the strain include

conformity, innovation, ritualism, rebellion, and retreat.

Thebroken windows theoryof crime holds that minor

acts of deviance spiral into more serious ones.

Opportunity theoryshows how crime is related to spe-

cific opportunities and availability. Conflict theorysays

that crime is a result of inequality.

5.How is deviance related to gender, race, and age? Most

people arrested for crimes are male, especially those who

are arrested for blue-collar crimes. Women are less likely

to be arrested, to be convicted, and to serve time. At the

same time, the United States arrests and convicts more

women proportionally than the rest of the world. Most

arrests, however, are among working-class and poor men.