SOC 255 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Loose Coupling, Cross-Dressing, Social Inequality
Document Summary
Samaha chapter 1: formal and informal criminal justice. Not all deviance is criminal: not all crime is deviant. Deviance can be criminalized or not, and can be positive or negative. Deviant but not criminal: picking one"s nose in public, cross-dressing, telling racist and sexist jokes. Positive deviance: rake your neighbor"s yard, the recent pay it forward campaign at. Criminal but not all that deviant: smoking marijuana, speeding, failure to file a tax return, loitering. When norms are formalized into a legal code - we officially have crime. Laws are norms that are codified and enforced through the use of coercion backed by the authority of the state. The institutions of the state (police, courts, corrections) can use force to gain compliance. Policing is an arena for the testing of state power, an arena where a balance is sought between too much control and too little. Policing provides both protective and repressive functions, often in the same act.
