Deviance

What exactly is deviance, and where is the line between deviance and nondeviance? Many people would likely express the absolutist view that certain things are deviant in all places, for all groups, and at all times (Little 2007). However, from a sociological perspective, no act, belief, or human characteristic is inherently deviant (Perrin 2007). Thus, even genocide, while morally reprehensible and indefensible, has not been defined as deviance in some societies and at certain points in time. Therefore, to the sociologist, deviance is socially defined. Deviance is any action, belief, or human characteristic that is considered a violation of group norms by a large number of members of a society or a social group and for which the violator is likely to be censured or punished (Ben-Yehuda 2012; Goode 2007a). Crime is deviance that is a violation of the criminal law (Whitehead 2007). If a powerful group wants to have a form of behavior defined as deviant (or a crime), it is likely to be so defined. At the same time, a powerful group is likely to use its power to resist the efforts of others to define the powerful group’s behaviors as deviant. For example, in the wake of the collapse of the home mortgage market in 2008, bankers fought, largely successfully, against being seen as deviant and even as criminal for their fraudulent predatory loan policies (Braithwaite 2010). However, borrowers who lied about their financial situation were less successful in avoiding being seen as deviant, and they suffered far greater negative consequences (Nguyen and Pontell 2011). They were likely to lose their homes, often their jobs, and sometimes even their health. Those who have social, political, legal, and/or financial power have a great deal of influence over who is (or is not) defined as deviant and suffers the negative consequences of such a definition.

Shifting Definitions of Deviance

In addition to being influenced by power relationships, what is thought to be deviant varies from one time period to another, from one geographic location to another, and from one group to another. Being tattooed used to be seen as a stigmatizing form of deviance, or it was assumed to signify membership in some deviant (or countercultural) group, such as a biker gang, but for many it now seems normal, or at least far less stigmatized (Dombrink and Hillyard 2007; Larsen, Patterson, and Markham 2014). Indeed, about 45 million Americans now have tattoos. We readily accept the sight of athletes—especially professional basketball players—covered with tattoos. Once restricted largely to men, tattoos are more popular today with women. Some women, such as Kat Von D, have even gained fame as tattoo artists, a historically male-dominated occupation (Maroto 2011). And tattoo parlors, once limited to the marginal areas of town, are now found on Main Street, as well as in the shopping mall. Tattoos have become just another product of our consumer society (Patterson and Schroeder 2010; Trebay 2008).

Global Flows and Deviance

Deviance can be seen as a global flow. People defined as deviant can move around the world quickly and easily. In addition, definitions of deviance flow even more easily from society to society. For example, through its “war on drugs” the United States has made a strong effort to have the use of certain drugs defined as a form of deviance throughout the world and to make drug use illegal wherever possible. Global trends toward normalizing that which was defined at one time and in some places as deviant are even clearer and more pronounced. This is particularly the case with changes in the acceptability of various forms of sexuality. Ever greater portions of the world are accepting premarital sex, cohabitation before marriage, and, to a lesser degree, homosexuality. According to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), as of May 2014, “deviant” sexuality was protected by antidiscrimination laws in 70 countries, and same-sex unions were recognized in 32 countries (see Figure 6.2). However, the barriers to normalizing such forms of sexual behavior remain in place and are quite powerful in large parts of the world. As Figure 6.2 indicates, deviant sexual behavior is punishable by imprisonment in 78 countries and by death in 6. Such punishments are especially common in Islamic societies, which tend to be more absolutist on matters relating to sexual deviance and where deeply held religious beliefs serve as a barrier to normalization. In spite of the barriers, these behaviors exist, often covertly, in these societies and may well be expanding in the wake of increasing global acceptance.

Theories of Deviance

Deviance is a very good topic to study if you want to better understand the utility of, and contrasts between, the main types of sociological theories— structural/functional, conflict/critical, and inter/actionist.

Structural/Functional Theories

Émile Durkheim argued that because deviance and crime have existed in all societies at all times (and in that sense are “normal”), they must have positive functions for the larger society and its structures. In other words, deviance would not have existed in the past and continue to exist were it not for the fact that it was and is functional; deviance served and continues to serve various purposes.

The most important function of deviance in Durkheim’s view is that it allows societies, or groups, to define and clarify their collective beliefs—their norms and values. Were it not for deviance, norms and values would not come into existence. More important, the norms and values that limit or prohibit deviance would grow weak without the need to be exercised on a regular basis in response to deviant acts. The public as a whole, officials, and even potential deviants would grow progressively less aware of, and less sensitive to, the existence of these prohibitions. Thus, in a sense, society needs deviance. If periodic violations of standards of conduct did not occur, those standards would become less clear to all concerned, less strongly held, and less powerful (Dentler and Erikson 1959; Jensen 1988). The most important structural-functional approach to deviance was developed in the mid-1900s by Robert K. Merton. The issue is the way people relate to the institutionalized means (e.g., getting a college degree and working hard) needed to achieve such cultural goals as economic success. Of greatest interest in this context is the relationship between means and ends. Merton identified five possible relationships between means and ends and associated them with five types of adaptation:

Conformists are people who accept both cultural goals, such as making lots of money, and the traditional means of achieving those goals, including hard work. Conformists are the only ones among Merton’s types who would not be considered deviant.
Innovators accept the same cultural goals the conformists do, but they reject the conventional means of achieving them. Innovators are deviants in that they choose nonconventional routes to success. Bernie Madoff would be one example, though an extreme one. He was highly successful as a financier before he turned to illegal activities, through which he bilked his clients out of $65 billion. Other innovators choose legal routes to success. An example is Shaun White, who helped to create and competed in the new extreme and highly dangerous sport of snowboarding. It has become a lucrative and perfectly legal career for him and others.
Ritualists realize that they will not be able to achieve cultural goals, but they nonetheless continue to engage in the conventional behavior associated with such success. Thus, a low-level employee might continue to work diligently even after realizing that such work is not going to lead to much economic success. Merton saw such diligent work with no realizable goal as a form of deviance.
Retreatists reject both cultural goals and the traditional routes to their attainment. Retreatists have completely given up on attaining success within the system. One example is Theodore Kaczynski, who gained notoriety as the “Unabomber.” At the time of his arrest in 1996, Kaczynski had been living for some 20 years in a cabin in a remote area of Montana without water or electricity, using a bicycle as his only means of transportation. To demonstrate his anger at modern society’s “industrial-technological system,” he had mailed off more than a dozen bombs, which killed 3 people and injured 23 others. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Rebels are like retreatists in that they reject both traditional means and goals. However, they substitute nontraditional goals and means to those goals. In a sense, that makes them doubly deviant. Revolutionaries such as Ernesto “Che” Guevara can be seen as fitting into the rebel category. Guevara rejected success as it was defined in Cuba during the 1950s. Instead, he chose to assist Fidel Castro in his effort to overthrow the country’s dictatorial system. Furthermore, he chose unconventional means—guerrilla warfare waged from the mountains of Cuba and, eventually, Bolivia—to attain his goals.

Adaptations of means to ends exemplify a structural-functionalist approach, because some of the adaptations are highly functional. Conformity certainly has positive consequences in the sense that it allows the social system to continue to exist without disturbance. Innovation is functional because society needs innovations in order to adapt to new external realities. No society can survive without innovation. Even rebellion can be seen as functional because there are times when society needs more than gradual innovation—it needs to change radically.

Conflict/Critical Theories

Proponents of structural/functional theories trace the source of deviance to the larger structures of society and the strains they produce. Conflict/critical theorists, especially conflict theorists, are also interested in those structures and their effects on people, but they adopt a different orientation toward them. A major focus is the inequality that exists in those structures and the impact that it has on individuals. In conflict theorists’ view, inequality causes at least some of the less powerful individuals in society to engage in deviant—and criminal—acts because they have few, if any, other ways of succeeding in society (Goode 2007b). In this, they are similar to the innovators in Merton’s taxonomy of adaptations to strain. Conversely, those in power commit crimes, especially corporate or white-collar crimes (Simpson 2002; Simpson and Weisburd 2009), because the nature of their high-level positions in various social structures (business, government) makes it not only possible but also relatively easy for them to do so. Further, conflict theorists argue, those in power in society create the laws and rules that define certain things as deviant, or illegal, while others are defined as normal. They do so in a self-serving way that advantages them and disadvantages those who lack power in society.

Deviance and the Poor

Conflict theories form the basis of research on vagrancy laws in medieval England (Chambliss 1964). In the feudal system, serfs were forced to provide labor for landowners, but with the end of feudalism, and therefore of serfdom, a new source of labor was needed. Not coincidentally, the former serfs now lacked permanent homes and sources of income and wandered about the countryside. Those in power saw them as a likely group to provide the needed labor at little cost, and so they created vagrancy laws. Under these laws it was illegal for those without work or a home to loiter in public places; some of the itinerants were arrested. As a result, many people who otherwise might not have worked for the landowners were forced to do so in order to avoid arrest and imprisonment. Contemporary conflict theorists, heavily influenced by Marxian theory, have come to see deviance as something created by the capitalist economic system. Today’s definitions of deviance serve the interests of the capitalists, especially by further enriching them. Conversely, these definitions adversely affect the proletariat, especially the poor, who grow even poorer. This view is well summed up by Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton in The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison (2012). As the title of their book implies, the best examples of this process lie in the realm of crime rather than that of deviance, although to be seen as a crime an act must first be defined as deviant. For example, as we saw above, at the close of the Middle Ages it was in the interest of elite members of society to define vagrancy as deviance and as a crime. Such a definition seems fair and evenhanded until we realize that elite members of society are rarely if ever going to be without work and a home. They are therefore unlikely to be defined as vagrants. It is only the poor who are going to find themselves in that situation, with the result that they are just about the only ones who are going to be affected by the laws against vagrancy. As the great novelist Anatole France ([1894] 2011) once commented sarcastically, “The law, in all its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges on rainy nights, to beg on the streets, and to steal bread.” Conflict theorists do not argue that have-nots never commit crimes or deviant acts. Rather, they argue that it is because of the laws (e.g., those against sleeping under bridges) created by societal elites that the actions of the have-nots are singled out for notice and for sanctions. Furthermore, the costs to society of elite deviance are much higher than the costs associated with crime and deviance among society’s have-nots. Compare, for example, the approximately $65 billion the disgraced and now imprisoned Bernie Madoff cost his clients by engaging in illegal activities to the few dollars a con artist or a mugger wrests from his victims.

Deviance and the Elite

Great efforts are made to legitimate elite crimes and acts of elite deviance (Simon 2012) and, failing that, to pay little or no attention to them. Those who rank high in such hierarchies as business, government, and the military have a much greater ability to commit deviant acts (such as sexually harassing subordinates), to have these acts be seen as legitimate, and to get away with them. However, there are limits to the ability of elites to get away with deviant and criminal behavior. There are times when the acts are so extreme that they can no longer be hidden. They come to light and become great public issues. Once this happens, even the most elite members of society have a difficult time escaping negative judgment and perhaps even punishment and imprisonment.

Inter/Actionist Theories

Inter/actionism can also be used to analyze deviance. For example, to the rational choice theorist, a person chooses deviance because it is a rational means to some desired goal. Gang members join gangs because of the camaraderie and perceived protection they offer (Melde, Taylor, and Esbensen 2009), as well as for access to a world in which members can obtain money and achieve recognition and high status (Bell 2009; Decker and Curry 2000). Ethnomethodologists are concerned with the ways in which people “do” deviance—that is, the everyday behaviors in which they engage that produce deviance. People need to adopt methods of speech and forms of behavior that make their deviance invisible to most others. In a classic ethnomethodological study, Harold Garfinkel (1967) describes the painstaking steps taken by Agnes, a transgender woman, to “pass” as a woman. She not only changed her manner of dress, posture, and demeanor but also underwent bodily changes. However, there are times when those who are deviant want to talk and act in ways that make it clear that they are deviant. For example, gang members may use certain phrases, dress in certain ways, and display certain tattoos to make their allegiance clear to other members of the same gang—and to members of opposing gangs (see Chapter 4). However, when they interact with the public or the police, gang members may speak and dress in ways that conceal, or at least attempt to hide, their membership in the gang.

Labeling

One variety of symbolic interactionism, labeling theory, is particularly useful in thinking about deviance. From this perspective, at least two things are needed for deviance to occur: A symbol, or in this case a “label.” In the realm of deviance, a number of labels are particularly powerful negative symbols: alcoholic, drug addict, pedophile, adulterer, and so on. Interaction between the person or group doing the labeling (the labeler) and the person or group to whom the label is applied (the labelee). During this interaction, one or more of these labels is applied to the deviant. Those who do the labeling are known as social control agents. Some of these agents (police, psychiatrists) are performing official functions, but far more often it is friends or family who label others as, for example, drunks or womanizers. When public figures are labeled as deviant, the media and their representatives are often the ones who do the labeling. From the perspective of labeling theory, a deviant is someone to whom a deviant label has been successfully applied (Becker 1963; Goode 2014; Restivo and Lanier 2015). This stands in contrast to the view of the public and many sociologists, who focus on what an individual does in order to be labeled a deviant. Also of interest in labeling theory is the way the person labeled as deviant is affected by the label (Dotter and Roebuck 1988; Gove 1980; Walsh 1990). The person can accept the label to varying degrees or make efforts to resist, reject, or shed the label. People also vary greatly in how they react to, and feel about, being labeled as deviant. For example, some might be mortified by being labeled sex addicts, but others might take pride in it.

Primary and Secondary Deviance

An important distinction that flows from labeling theory is that between primary and secondary deviance:

Primary deviance consists of early, random acts of deviance, such as an occasional bout of drinking to excess or an isolated act considered strange or out of the ordinary. Virtually all of us commit such acts; we all have engaged in various forms of primary deviance (Lemert [1951] 2012; Wallerstein and Wyle 1947). Isolated acts of primary deviance rarely, if ever, lead to the successful application of a deviant label. Primary deviance consists of acts and behavior, not identities or labels.
Of far greater interest to labeling theorists is secondary deviance, or deviant acts that persist, become more common, and eventually cause people to organize their lives and personal identities around their deviant status (Liberman, Kirk, and Kim 2014). Secondary deviance usually occurs after an individual has been stigmatized and judged for deviant behavior and possibly labeled as “deviant.” In response, the individual begins to see and define himor herself as deviant. Thus, if a person moves from occasionally having shortterm sexual encounters with strangers to being obsessed with such encounters and seeking them out whenever and wherever possible, that person may be labeled a sex addict. It is possible that the label of sex addict will become more important than all other definitions of the self. When that happens, sex addiction becomes a form of secondary deviance. In one recent study, body modifications such as tattoos and piercings were shown to be acts of primary deviance that were related to forms of secondary deviance such as drug abuse and juvenile delinquency (Dukes and Stein 2011).

While labeling theory tends to focus on others labeling an individual as deviant, it is possible, or even likely, that individuals will label themselves in this way (Thoits 1985, 2011), that they will do so before anyone else does (Norris 2011), and that they will act in accord with their self-imposed label (Lorber 1967). This is consistent with the view of the leading symbolic interactionist, George Herbert Mead (see Chapter 4), who saw the mind as an internal conversation with oneself. Such an internalized conversation may certainly lead to labeling oneself as deviant.

Key Ideas in the Labeling Process

Social control is the process by which a group or society enforces conformity to its demands and expectations. One way in which this is accomplished is through the creation and application of rules and labels. This leads to the distinction between rule creators and rule enforcers. Rule creators are usually elite members of society who devise its rules, norms, and laws (Ryan 1994). Without rule creators and their rules, there would be no deviance. Rule creators are usually (but not always) distinct from rule enforcers, who threaten to or actually do sanction the rule violators (Bryant and Higgins 2010). Another important idea here is that of moral entrepreneurs, or those individuals or groups of individuals who come to define an act as a moral outrage and who lead a campaign to have it defined as deviant and to have it made illegal and therefore subject to legal enforcement (Becker 1963; Lauderdale 2007; Nordgren 2013). Drugs provide a good example, especially globally, since moral entrepreneurs located primarily in the United States have taken it upon themselves to have particular drugs defined as illegal and their use as deviant. They have done so even though the use of many of these drugs (such as marijuana) is common and accepted not only in many societies throughout the world but also among a large portion of the American population.

Moral Panics

Moral entrepreneurs can stir up such a fuss that they can cause a moral panic, or a widespread and disproportionate reaction to the form of deviance in question (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994, 2009; Hier 2011; Krinsky 2013). It could be argued that today we are witnessing, in Europe and to a lesser degree in the United States, concern about Muslim immigrants that is quickly becoming a moral panic. This moral panic is related, at least in part, to the increasing threat of terrorism (e.g., the early 2015 murder by Islamist extremists of 12 people at the Paris satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and 4 people at a Jewish supermarket) posed by radical Islamic groups, especially al-Qaeda and Islamic State. However, it is important to remember that very few Muslims are terrorists. A good historical example of a moral panic is the witch craze that occurred in Europe between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries (Ben-Yehuda 1980, 1985). The idea of witches had existed before this time, but it was seen as a more complex phenomenon involving both bad and good witches. In any case, no assumption had been made about a conspiracy between women and Satan to corrupt the world. However, in this era, Dominican friars took the lead in defining witchcraft as such a conspiracy and as a crime subject to corporal punishment, in this case burning at the stake. The friars were the moral entrepreneurs in this case. They played a key role in generating a moral panic that came to involve large numbers of people. That panic, in turn, led to the painful deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women. Moral panics—such as the witch-hunting crazes of Renaissance Europe—rely in part on the use of labels to identify perceived threats. What might help to prevent the development of a moral panic? Granger Moral panics are, by definition, exaggerated. Thus, the threats posed by witches in the fifteenth century, the communists in the 1950s, and immigrants and even terrorists today have been made out by many, especially moral entrepreneurs, to be greater than they really are. One of the ways to do this is to create a “folk devil” who stands for that which is feared. Terrorism made Osama bin Laden a folk devil.

Stigmas

A stigma is a person’s characteristic that others find, define, and often label as unusual, unpleasant, or deviant (Goffman 1963). In his important book Stigma (1963), Goffman begins his analysis with physically stigmatized individuals, such as those missing a nose. He then introduces a wide array of other stigmas, such as being on welfare. In the end, readers come to the realization that they have been reading not only about people who are unlike them, with major physical deformities, but also about themselves: “The most fortunate of normals is likely to have his half-hidden failing, and for every little failing there is a social occasion when it will loom large, creating a shameful gap” (Goffman 1963: 127). Goffman’s idea of stigma has attracted many scholars and has been applied to many forms of deviance, such as prostitution (Scambler and Paoli 2008; Wong, Holroyd, and Bingham 2011), mental illness (Payton and Thoits 2011), Asperger ’s syndrome (Hill and Liamputtong 2011), and tattooing (Dickson et al. 2014). There are two types of stigmatized individuals. The individual with a discredited stigma “assumes his differentness is known about already or is evident on the spot.” In contrast, those with a discreditable stigma assume that their stigma “is neither known about by those present nor immediately perceivable about them” (Goffman 1963: 4). An example of a discredited stigma might be the bodily symptoms of having advanced AIDS, a lost limb, or being a member of a minority group viewed negatively by others, while discreditable stigmas include having done poorly in school or having a prison record. Of great importance is the symbolic nature of the stigma and the individual’s interaction with others, especially those thought to be normal. Because the physical nature of a discreditable stigma is not visible to others, neither are the stigma’s symbolic qualities. Nevertheless, the people with such a stigma want to make sure it remains secret and thus try to conceal the stigmatizing information during most interactions. In contrast, in the case of a discredited stigma (such as being morbidly obese), those with the stigma must deal with the tension associated with interacting with people who view them negatively because of the stigma. The idea of discreditable stigmas has wide applicability to the contemporary world. For example, the court records of juvenile offenders are often hidden from the public or expunged to avoid stigmatizing otherwise promising young people for a lifetime. People with mental illnesses or substance abuse problems often go to great lengths to hide the real reasons for unscheduled absences from work. Parents of mentally disabled children, especially the mildly impaired, “mainstream” their children in standard classrooms in part so the children’s disability will be more likely to be discreditable than discredited. The theme of hiding stigmatizing conditions is common in popular entertainment as well: In the movie Philadelphia (1993), actor Tom Hanks plays a high-powered lawyer in a prestigious law firm who is diagnosed with HIV during the early years of the epidemic. As the disease progresses, he tries but ultimately fails to conceal the signs, such as skin blemishes associated with Kaposi’s sarcoma. When it becomes clear to the leaders of his firm that he has AIDS, he is fired.

The idea of discreditable stigmas has wide applicability to the contemporary world. For example, the court records of juvenile offenders are often hidden from the public or expunged to avoid stigmatizing otherwise promising young people for a lifetime. People with mental illnesses or substance abuse problems often go to great lengths to hide the real reasons for unscheduled absences from work. Parents of mentally disabled children, especially the mildly impaired, “mainstream” their children in standard classrooms in part so the children’s disability will be more likely to be discreditable than discredited. The theme of hiding stigmatizing conditions is common in popular entertainment as well: In the movie Philadelphia (1993), actor Tom Hanks plays a high-powered lawyer in a prestigious law firm who is diagnosed with HIV during the early years of the epidemic. As the disease progresses, he tries but ultimately fails to conceal the signs, such as skin blemishes associated with Kaposi’s sarcoma. When it becomes clear to the leaders of his firm that he has AIDS, he is fired. This movie, unlike some, realistically portrays the painful, destructive effects of revealing a discredited stigma.

Crime

As pointed out earlier, it is the fact that the law is violated that differentiates crime from deviance. Criminology is the field devoted to the study of crime (Brown 2007a; Maguire, Morgan, and Reiner 2012; Rosenfield 2011; Siegel 2014). Many, but certainly not all, criminologists are sociologists. There is a sociology of crime, but the field also includes those from many other disciplines, such as psychologists, economists, biologists, and anthropologists, as well as officials who once worked in the criminal justice system. In fact, the field today has become increasingly multidisciplinary, even interdisciplinary (Wellford 2012). While there is growing interdisciplinarity in the study of crime, sociology plays an important role in it. Clearly, a variety of sociological factors (including social class and race; Chilton and Triplett 2007a, 2007b) are involved in who commits crimes and which crimes they commit. The same sociological factors are involved in who gets caught, prosecuted, and incarcerated, as well as how much of their sentences they actually serve. And such factors are involved in what happens to people after they serve their sentences and whether or not they end up back in prison. The “father of criminology” is Cesare Lombroso, who published The Criminal Man in 1876 (McShane and Williams 2007). The title of the book reflects the fact that the focus of early criminologists was on criminals and their innate physical or psychological characteristics. In more recent years, criminology has shifted away from its focus on criminals and their defects and toward a concern with the social context of criminal actions and the effects of those actions on the larger society. A key figure in bringing a sociological perspective to criminology was Edwin Sutherland (1924). His work helped shift the focus in criminology from the criminal and his or her misdeeds to society, especially the societal reaction to those actions, including the labels placed on criminals. Sutherland’s most important contribution to the sociology of crime is differential association theory. The main point of the theory is that people learn criminal behavior. Therefore, whom a person associates with is crucial. One’s family and friends—the primary group—are important sources of attitudes toward crime, knowledge about how to commit crimes, and rationalizations that help one live with being a criminal. Today, we would need to add the fact that criminal behavior can also be learned through the media, especially the Internet (a major site for learning how to be a terrorist). Many criticisms were leveled at differential association theory; even Sutherland later came to criticize it on various grounds. For example, it did not explain why some people became criminals while others exposed to the same situations and information did not. One of Sutherland’s own criticisms was the fact that the theory did not give sufficient attention to the role of opportunity in committing crimes.

Summary

For sociologists, a person or action is deviant when socially defined as such. Durkheim argued that since deviance and crime have always existed in all societies, they are, in essence, normal and have positive functions for society. Merton’s version of structural-functionalism argues that deviance is more likely to occur when a culture values something, such as material success, but the societal structure does not allow everyone the ability to achieve this value in a socially accepted way. Conflict/critical theorists see inequality, in particular economic inequality, as the cause of much deviance. In this view, those in the lowest classes engage in deviant or criminal behavior because they otherwise have few ways of achieving normative societal goals, whereas those in the upper classes commit crimes because the nature of their positions makes it relatively easy for them to do so. From an inter/actionist perspective, deviance requires first a symbol or label, and second an interaction between a social control agent, the person or group doing the labeling, and the person or group to whom the label is applied. Another inter/actionist perspective comes from Goffman’s writings on stigma, a characteristic in a person that others find, define, and often label as unusual or deviant. Crime is a form of deviance that violates criminal law. The major components of the criminal justice system are law enforcement, the courts, and the correctional system. Increasing globalization has been associated with increases in global or cross-border crime, particularly the international drug trade. Illegal flows are aided by nation-states’ declining ability to halt them. The United States and Western Europe have played a central role in defining global criminal acts and the most appropriate ways to deal with them.

Reference

Ritzer, G. (2016). Essentials of sociology.(2nd ed., pp. 100-119)