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SOC 100 Online: Principles of SociologyAssignment #For each of the following questions, use examples from each of the readings and/or videos whenever possible to support your answers. Whenever you are asked to give an example, you need to provide your own example; examples discussed in the book will...

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SOC 100 Online: Principles of Sociology Assignment #3 For each of the following questions, use examples from each of the readings and/or videos whenever possible to support your answers. Whenever you are asked to give an example, you need to provide your own example; examples discussed in the book will not be accepted.

1. How and why do certain acts come to be defined as deviant? Does what is considered deviant change over time? Why or why not? Answers should be approximately 1 paragraph (5 points) According to the text, acts are considered to be deviant when they violate already existing/established contextual, cultural, or social norms. It is something that is seen as bad and not for the good of society. I believe that what people consider deviant changes overtime especially when thinking about how segregation and equality has changed in the last several decades People had to be deviant to fight for what they think is right, and it finally paid off. With changing technology and different generations seeing the world from a different perspective, views on what is bad are definitely always changing.

2. (a) In the reading by Chambliss, who were the Saints and the Roughnecks? Was either of these groups engaged in deviant activity? If so, which group(s)? (b) Choose 2 of theories of deviance that you think help to explain why these youth were deviant, and discuss how each of these theories would explain the deviance among these youth. Answers should be approximately 3-4 paragraphs (5 points) (a) The saints where these white popular boys that were viewed as cool, good students that could never do any bad, but actually got away with a lot pretty much every single day of high school. The roughnecks, on the other hand, were lower-class boys at the same school of different races and lower on the popularity spectrum that did a lot of the same things the saints did, but were perceived as the troublemakers that were always up to no good. I believe that both were involved in deviant quality, but that the saints were set up on a pedestal and pretty much enabled to be as deviant as they wanted as long as they didn’t get caught. (b) The two theories that I want to discuss are the Power Elite theory (Conflict Theory) and the Labeling Theory of Symbolic Interaction. With the Power Elite theory, the saints were a part of the elite, so they were accepted and given all of the resources they need to succeed as well as get into trouble with. The cars, money, and benefit of the doubt were just granted to them because they were recognized as outstanding members of society. Rules were manipulated for them and, with the resources they had, they were able to commit all of their deviant acts in private and mostly discrete ways. The saints did not have money or transportation and the upperclass society already viewed them as delinquents, so they were easily caught, therefore they did not care what activities they did (legal or not) because there will always be people waiting for them to mess up and get them in trouble anyways. With the Labeling theory, it did not matter which group of boys were committing the act, the roughnecks were always under a microscope and were presumed to be up to no good just

because of their lower-class status. Since the roughnecks were already labeled as being the delinquents, they came to identify themselves as that and proved to society that’s exactly what they are. Even if they were to become outstanding citizens, societies views would barely change because that is the bias that will always be assigned to them. It really is sad that the roughnecks were never able to remove the labels from themselves and prove society wrong, but that is the exact point of the labeling theory, once something like this is assigned to them there really is no chance to make them believe anything else. There have to be “good” and “bad” kids in a society and it just so happened to be them.

3. (a) Define each of the different types of crime. (b) Which type of crime is considered most deviant in our society and why? (c) Which type of crime is considered least deviant and why? Answers should be approximately 2-3 paragraphs (5 points) (a) There are several different groups and subgroups of crime. One is violent crime; this is physically forcing a violent act on someone whether it be attacking someone or raping someone. Nonviolent crime, on the other hand, are offenses to other peoples’ property, public order, or even using drugs. It isn’t a crime to someone specifically, but a crime nonetheless. Street crimes are criminal offenses that take place in public places such as protesting or selling drugs on the streets. Corporate crimes are being brought to light more and more and they are those crimes committed by larger corporations in the business world. Finally, victimless crimes don’t exactly hurt someone else similar to nonviolent crimes, but they are not being committed against anyone in particular; some examples are prostitution, being publicly intoxicated (and disorderly). (b) Violent crimes are probably considered the most deviant in our society. Crimes such as murder and battery (normally) receive the longest sentences and the most backlash. It is hard to decide which crime is most deviant, though, because of the sheer number of crimes committed all around the world. You can’t say one is more deviant than the other just because way less people do it, I feel like an equal amount of people are murdering and attacking others as others are stealing, cheating, and selling drugs. If I had to make an educated guess, though, I think that victimless crimes are slowly becoming the less deviant act in society. Things like prostitution and taking drugs are becoming less talking about within my generation at least. There is a lot of talk about how “sex work is a legitimate way of making money” and drugs such as marijuana are becoming legalized. There is an attitude of “whatever makes you happy” going around that people can do whatever they want and should not feel judged for doing them. These are all fine until you start affecting other peoples’ lives, then this is considered more deviant.

4. (a) What are some of the reasons why societies punish criminals? (b) Which of these goals do you feel is most effective (and why)? Answers should be approximately 1-2 paragraphs (5 points) (a) Some reasons that societies punish criminals is to make an example out of them to turn others away from committing the same crime. Societies need to maintain order and stability, therefore there needs to be rules that are followed and people that are punished when breaking

those rules. If there was no sense of order in our communities, then everything would be a wild free for all of people doing whatever they wanted, and society would then come crashing down. (b) I feel like the goal of keeping society functioning is obviously the most important one here. People understand that there need to people police enforcing the law because (a) someone has to do it and (b) this allows everyone else to freely move through life trusting that they are safe and secure. When they see someone get punished for a crime, people that were thinking about committing the same one is most likely turned off from it out of fear of the same repercussions.

5. Sociologists can learn a great deal about a population’s values by looking at the behaviors that are considered crimes within a society. Look at the FBI’s 2017 Uniform Crime Report at this website (click on the tables on the right hand side of the page): https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-theu.s/2017/preliminary-report. (a) What types of crime does the FBI collect data on? Why do they focus on these types of crime and not others? (b) Are crime rates increasing or decreasing? Do these rates match public perceptions about crime? Why or why not? Answers should be approximately 2-3 paragraphs (5 points) (a) The FBI collects data mostly on violent crime as well as crimes against other peoples’ properties. From my hypothesis in question 3, I believe these are considered the most deviant crimes in society. They are the most punishable and are pretty easy to gather statistics on as well. A lot of the other types of crimes may go unreported like the text said. (b) According to the tables, it looks like murder is one of the only crimes that is actually decreasing. This could be because of the amount of death sentences given to murderers, so if someone is thinking about killing someone, they stop because the consequences are terrible. The other crimes are slowly rising, and this could be because societies are rapidly becoming more aggressive and violent/ have a lower temper. I think these rate sort of match the publics perception of crime especially with murder, but the public acts like they’re doing so much to set up more security and take more precautions against people committing these acts, but people are becoming smarter and the crime is not slowing down....