Crime And Deviance 1

To find a clear definition of deviance is a challenge. From a reactivist perspective, deviance cannot be defined specifically. It is relative to time, place and even between different social groups (Clinard & Meier, 2011). Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction creates deviance (Becker, 1963). A normative approach would suggest that deviance is behaviour in which acts against a social norm, For example, laughing is not behaviour in which you would expect at a funeral (Clinard & Meier, 2011). Very similar to the normative approach is the statistical definition of deviance. Anything that varies too widely from the average, for instance, being left handed is deviant as most people are right handed (Becker, 1963). Where as, an absolutist approach would argue that society has a particular set of values and anyone who violates these values is deviant (Clinard & Meier, 2011). In this essay multiple theories of deviance and its relation to crime, will be explored to discover how useful labelling theory is for the understanding of the subject.
Biological theories focus on the physical characteristics of criminals and how this attributes to their criminal behaviour. Lombroso did not agree that criminal behaviour was taught or learned. He argued that criminals were born and were no more than sufferers of atavism; evolutionary throwbacks, and could be distinguished by their physical features, for instance their large jaws, ears, or their unnatural amount of fingers and toes (Lombroso, 1911). Although this did prove true within his study, differences between criminals and non-criminals were inevitable. The study compared prisoners of war with soldiers, who were well fed and well looked after (Wright, 2004). This theory was disproved by Goring (1913) who found there were no differences in England when using Lombroso’s stigmata to compare inmates (Wright, 2004). Lombroso’s theory may have been influenced by Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in ‘On