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Deviance
The violation of norms (or rules or expectations
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Crime
The violation of norms written into law
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Stigma
"Blemishes" that discredit a persons claim to a "normal" identity
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Social Order
A group's usual and customary social arrangements, on which its members depend on which they base their lives.
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Social Control
A group's formal and informal means of enforcing its norms
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Negative Sanction
An expression of disapproval for breaking a norm, ranging from a mild, informal reaction such as a frown to a formal reaction such as a prison sentence or execution.
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Positive Sanction
A reward or positive reaction for following norms, ranging from a smile to a material reward.
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Genetic Predisposition
Inborn tendencies (for examples, a tendency to commit deviant acts)
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Street Crime
Crimes such as mugging, rape, and burglary
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Personality Disorders
The view that a personality disturbance of some sort of causes an individual to violate social norms.
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Differential Association
Edwin Sutherland's term to indicate that people who associate with some groups learn an "excess of definitions" of deviance, increasing the likelihood that they will become deviant
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Control Theory
the idea that two control systems--inner controls and outer controls--work against our tendencies to deviate
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Degradation Ceremony
A term coined by Harold Garfinkle to refer to a ritual whose goal is to reshape someone's self by stripping away that individuals self-identity and stamping a new identity in its place
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Labeling Theory
The view that the labels people are given affect their own and others' perceptions of them, thus channeling their behavior into either deviance or conformity
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Techniques of Neutralization
Ways of thinking or rationalizing that help people deflect (or neutralize) society's norms
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Cultural Goals
The objectives held out as legitimate or desirable for the members of a society to achieve
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Institutionalized Means
Approved ways of reaching cultural goals
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Strain Theory
Robert Merton's term for the strain engendered when a society socializes large number of people to desire a cultural goal (such as success), but withholds from some the approved means of reaching that goal; one adaptation to the strain is crime, the choice of innovative means (one outside the approved systems) to attain the cultural goal.
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Illegitimate Opportunity Structure
Opportunities for crimes that are woven into the texture of life
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White-Collar Crime
Edwin 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, security violations, embezzlement, false advertising, and price fixing.
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Corporate Crime
Crimes committed by executives in order to benefit their corporation
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Criminal Justice System
The system of police, courts, and prisons, set up to deal with, people who are accused of having committed a crime
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Recidivism Rate
The proportion of released convicts who are rearrested
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Capital Punishment
The death penalty
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Serial Number
The killing of several victims in three or more separate event
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Hate Crime
A crime that is punished more severely because it is motivated by hatred (dislike, Hostility, Animosity) of someone's race - ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or national origin
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Police Discretion
The practice of the police , in normal course of their duties, to either arrest or ticket someone for an offense or to overlook the matter
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Medicalization of Deviance
To make deviance a medical matter, a symptom of some underlying illness that need to be treated by physicians
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