Deviant Behavior
In the United States, there are laws which determine the proper punishment for individuals who choose to commit crimes. If someone is under a certain age, then that individual is held less responsible for their choices than an adult who makes that same choice. However, if the crime is severe enough or if there is no appropriate remorse from the perpetrator, District Attorneys and prosecution may decide to try that person as an adult, even though they are under the age of eighteen. Theoreticians have argued about teenagers since the first stirrings of the psychoanalytic movement at the time of Freud. Can someone who is not yet a physical adult still make adult decisions and thus should their punishment fit their age or their action? Deviant behavior can manifest itself in three ways: power, money, and crime. Deviance in teenagers can be seen in all three categories.
In Marjie Lundstrom's article "Kids are Kids -- Until They Commit Crimes," the author discusses several cases wherein teenagers were tried as adults. One boy in Yuba City, CA robbed a bank after something he witnessed on television. Aged fifteen when he committed the crime, he will likely be in his 40s whence he is released. An even younger boy, fourteen-year-old Thomas Preciado, was tried as an adult when stabbed a minimart clerk to death. She uses precedent and similarity of conditions to illustrate her point. CNN reported a case where a nine-year-old was tried as an adult in the shooting case of his seven-year-old neighbor (Schwartz). In Pennsylvania, there is no low age limit determining who can be tried as an adult. Because the child lied about his actions afterwards, prosecutors claimed this showed adult...
Potentially any individual who is gifted, if stifled and/or offered negative role models of behavior could become a negatively deviant individual in adulthood or childhood. It is important to point out that many experts conclude that these young people are often feared, due to their differences and the complications of helping such a child are many. (Winner, 1996, p. 2) Deviant people -- whether atypical in personality, intellect, or both
On the other hand, this exposure to many different systems of morality can also be confusing, and can make any kind of deviant behavior seem acceptable in a relativistic fashion. Why obey the drug laws of the United States when in Amsterdam, there are no such regulations? Setting standards of deviance and normalcy is a negotiation between the rights of the individual and the needs of the community. Sometimes, the
This is a widely debated issue in the social and legal debate regarding sexuality. The more legalized an issue, such as in the case of heterosexual marriage the more accepted it is, and this is the underlying fear behind the legal challenges that have been waged both for and against homosexual unions in the present day. Marriage is a legal state, and has been for most of written history, it
deviant behavior? Explain the role of norms and societal reactions. *According to Stark, what is wrong with defining crime as "actions that violate the law?" Deviant behavior is any sort of conduct that goes against the norms of a specific community / culture. Norms serve to create and regulate a certain order in society; societal reactions keep these norms in check and modify them when appropriate (when the powerful functionaries
Divergent Responses to Deviant Behavior The objective of this study is to examine two theories of deviant behavior that represent today's changing trends. This work will additionally examine three theories that may be considered outdated including: (1) Sheldon's Theory of Body Types; (2) Lombroso's Theory; and (3) Y Chromosome Theory, and will explain why they have been discredited. Positivist Perspective The positivist perspective views deviance as "absolutely or intrinsically real, in that is
United States has the highest rate of confinement of prisoners per 100,000 population than any other Western country. Analyze this phenomena and discuss actions that you feel are necessary to combat this problem. The United States currently has the highest incarceration rate of any nation worldwide. For example, greater than 60% of nations have incarceration rates below 150 per 100,000 people (Walmsley, 2003). The United States makes up just about
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