Criminal and Deviant Behavior

When people hear the word “crime”, they often picture robbery, rape, murder, or other forms of violence. However, in today’s society, crime, also known as a deviant behavior that violates norms, occurs everywhere and is almost unavoidable in society. Nelson Mandela once said, “When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.” When the society becomes unbalanced, criminal activity occurs.  In this society, the criminal justice system is one that should guarantee the citizens it serves a safe environment by preventing an excessive number of criminals. However, if the system fails to reduce crime, the society can become unbalanced. People not only commit crimes as a deviant behavior, which breaks the law, but they also exhibit other deviance that violates social norms, both formally and informally. Such behaviors can exist in everyone and are often reviled, but in fact, thinking as a sociologist can reveal the reason why these behaviors exist in society. The interrelation of the readings on crime have helped me to understand the relationship between crime and deviance from a sociological perspective, as well as changing my perspective on crime.

Criminal behavior exists as an inevitable part of society; therefore, we should see crime as part of a normal pattern of behavior in society today. In the article of “The Functions of Crime”, Emile Durkheim outlined his theory that crime plays a normal role in the evolution of society. Durkheim believed, as a sociologist, that crime should not be avoided because it is perceived as detrimental to society. As most people believe crime is a scourge on society, Durkheim holds “crime must no longer be conceived of as an evil which cannot be circumscribed closely enough” (150). Even though crime contributes to disturbance among people, it helps us to balance society. According to Durkheim, the function of crime plays a huge social role: as a necessary factor that promotes change to the society, crime provides, through social reaction against it, the basis of morals and law. As the time goes on, crime changes as a functional value that can influence our society. The morality in our society changes continuously to reflect the crime that exists in every society. Even though laws exist in every part of society, crime does not disappear. To keep society evolving, there must be constant change, so we should consider criminals as performing a normal role in social life, instead of as “utterly unsociable creatures”. Thinking as a sociologist, I believe crime should be perceived as normal behavior because it happens in every society, and there is no place that is free of crime. Durkheim's article gave me a better understanding of crime, as well as its function in society, helping me to think sociologically.

In society, deviance is perceived as an illness, and by implying that crime is part of a deviance paradigm, society can treat crime in the same way. According to the article “The Medicalization of Deviance”, authors Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Schneider believe that social deviance requires treatment, not punishment, to garner changes for conformity. By considering deviant behavior as a medical problem, society can use the medicalization of deviance as a form of social control. Both the authors state that “medicine is the central restitutive agent in our society” (153). Medicine is created for social control and can serve as the agent that changes deviant behavior. Compared to the approach taken to address deviant behavior in the 19th century, the current approach is much more reliant on treatment than punishment. Because of the prevalence of prescriptive medication in the 20th century, many deviant behaviors have been treated effectively.  The rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, hyperactivity, and suicide have been reduced with medication. Even though we do not yet know how deviance arises, we can use medication to treat deviant behavior to balance society. The authors use the ideas to treat deviance to treat crime in the same way. Deviant and some criminal behaviors are defined as violations to social norms, given that we cannot control such behavior. The development of medication becomes a central control for social deviance and crime, both of which can be considered a form sickness in our society. With our medical technology today, most criminal behavior can be treated, instead of punished. The concept of deviance in this article helps me to understand how differently consequences to crime and deviance should be given in our society nowadays.

In today's society, the criminal justice system has not been effective, failing to deter crime and targeting the poorest segment of the population. In his article “The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison”, Jeffrey H. Reiman disagrees with the notion that the criminal justice system has been helpful to our society or effective in lowering the crime rate. In fact, the criminal justice system keeps failing and presenting the wrong idea that crime is exclusively the work of the poor. Reiman argues that the only function of the system is to “maintain a particular image of crime: the image that it is a threat from the poor” (168), which although useful in understanding some aspect of crime, hardly presents a complete picture of criminal activity. The criminal justice system gives society the wrong idea that some crimes only happen among the poor population, but not among middle-class or upper-class communities.  Nowadays, the wealthy can act as they wish, often controlling the laws and systems.  The rich grow richer and increasingly influential in controlling the criminal justice system, while the poor 's lack of influence only leads to their increasing incarceration numbers. As the author discusses the proposals that should be in a criminal justice system whose purpose is to maintain a stable and visible criminal population rather than to reduce crime, he demonstrates that such a system is already in place. The current criminal justice system effectively ensures the poor provide a steady source of criminals through creating biased laws, law enforcement that can act without discretion, and stigma for prisoners. Furthermore, by ensuring a “not only painful but also demeaning” imprisonment experience, refusing to provide suitable job training or rehabilitation, and stripping post-release civil liberties from prisoners, the criminal justice system does not deter crime.  Society has failed to create a criminal justice system that can rehabilitate or reduce crime; instead, it has enforced a system that ensures a stable criminal population comprised of the poor.

To more effectively address crime, society should alter its current view on crime and its current approach to reduce crime; by relating to the medicalization of deviance, the criminal justice system can provide society with a promising alternative to reducing crime. While Durkheim's article “The Functions of Crime” discusses viewing crime as an unavoidable aspect of society that helps to outline morality, Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Schneider's article "The Medicalization of Deviance" provides the perspective that crime should be considered an “illness” and not an evil in our society. Because society is imperfect, crime exists, and society should use medication to treat crime as it does to treat other deviant behaviors. The criminal justice system, which has thus far failed to reduce crime in society, should include medication as part of its approach to reducing future crime. But not every type of crime can be effectively addressed through medication, so society must still work to fix the criminal justice system so that it can deter or rehabilitate crime. In “The Richer get Richer and the Poor Get Prison", Reiman detailed steps to fix the criminal justice system. Society should remove biased laws that prohibit acts without unwilling victims from its books, limit the police and judges' power to make decisions, provide a valuable and dignified prison experience, and ensure prisoners can return to normal lives following release.  Durkheim, who wrote his article in 1895, stated that the punishment for crime should be “revised”, and “if crime is a sickness, punishment is the cure for it” (151).  Durkheim used the word crime as a “sickness”, but punishment as a “treatment”;  in “The Medicalization of Deviance”, Conrad and Schneider agree that Durkheim meant "treatment" but perhaps did not term it so because “Durkheim did not predict this medicalization, perhaps in part because medicine of his time was not scientific, not prestigious” (153). The interrelation of these readings helped me synthesize a different view of crime within society and how to address it.

All crimes and deviant behaviors should not be treated in the same way, but the treatment of deviant behaviors through medication can be applied to certain crimes. Some deviant behaviors can be treated because the behavior happens to be innate for some people. Psychological treatments and therapy can help with managing those forms of deviance. Other crimes, such as those that relate to personal circumstances, cannot be treated with psychological treatments or any other medication. Motivated by hatred, jealousy, or greed, people commit crimes, but such crimes cannot be addressed with treatments. However, in some cases, such as certain rapes or instances of substance abuse, the people who commit these crimes can possess different thinking and consciousness, which can be treated with medication. Punishments should still be meted to those who commit crimes. Even though our medication has advanced since the 19th century, there are some crimes that cannot be treated with medicine. Conrad and Schneider mentioned Durkheim's ideas of punishment and treatment, stating that Durkheim did not use medicalization in his article because he never believed medicine would be advanced to be a viable alternative to punishment. However, they believe Durkheim would have stated medicalization as a treatment to crime had the state of medicine been more advanced in 1895, when Durkheim wrote his article.  I slightly disagree with Reiman's article “The Richer get Richer and the Poor Get Prison” because I believe in the poor community, crime rates should be expected to be high. Because of their economic situation and need to survive, poor people do in fact commit more crimes, such as robbery. In every society, the criminal justice system fails to reduce crime, but we cannot change the fact that in poorer communities, more crimes do occur. However, I do agree with Reiman that as people become richer, their wealth and influence gives them the power to control laws and the system. Because of their ability to bribe judges or politicians and hire the best defense teams, rich criminals often face more lenient sentences or are exonerated of charges.

Through reading these articles, I learned to see the interconnectedness of crime, society's perception of crime, and the current criminal justice system's flawed attempts to address crime. In society, crime, playing a large role in social control, cannot be avoided. Our morality and laws are formed because crime exists in our society. Even though crime does play an important role in society, excessive crime should be avoided. The criminal justice system should be fixed so that it serves its proper purpose, to deter and reduce crime. All in all, these articles gave me a better understanding of crime from a sociological standpoint and introduced the progressive idea that by considering criminal and deviant behaviors to be “illnesses”, society can potentially reduce crime with medication.