Conformity, Deviance, and Crime

This subject become more interesting as we navigate through it is chapters. In previous chapters we learned about the societies and cultures. We learned that the society cannot exist without culture and, also culture cannot exist without society. Every society consist individuals whom might have been raised in different environments and in different life condition that make them carrying different attitude toward certain different subjects.  We also learned that society is governed by norms; the norms could be formal or informal. The informal norms is the custom and tradition that public expect the individuals to follow it without been taught in formal schools, we learn those norms through our interaction with public. Violating those norms might have light consequences on the individuals such as blaming or complaining one thing is important about informal is it has been founded without deliberate interference of human. For instance how the American societies become individual society? Who make the decision that American society is untouched society?   

 The other kind of norm is formal norm or conformity, this kind of norm is generated by human and so called Conformity. If violating informal norm lead to light blame or complain, violating formal norms lead to formal punishment by law enforcement. If the person who violates informal norms is only rejected by the surrounding friends and he/she might be called “freek” or outdated, the person who violates the formal norm or conformity called deviance or criminal. There are many theories why people do violate the law, but I think the one most I think about it is the surrounding environment. Even though there is no society without crime and criminals, but surrounding environment might dictate the statistic and the size of crimes and criminals.

For instance, the crimes in the big cities are more than the smaller cities for many reasons. The life in the cities is more expensive in smaller cities and human needs more resources to live. The other thing is there are more culture groups in the cities than the smaller one. The men commit crimes more than women, because men have more power then the women. The young commit crimes more than old because the young generations interact with the society more than older people and they might have more physical power. The corporate companies still more than a homeless on the street, if the homeless or young teenager jump into a convenience store to still $200 or so, the corporate companies still billions of dollars in one fraud case. It is all related to the surrounding environment.

However, crimes and criminals are part of every society, matter of fact we all commit a crime in some way. If we look back to our life most of us have a speeding ticket which is considered   crime. The hardest part in this subject is labeling. In many occasion the individual who is labeled as a deviant, if you look it at it in another angle,he/ she is a victim. For example the person who still to feed his kids, the woman who kills the cheating husband, or the ignorant teen that jumps on the store to still a case of beer. In all cases those labeled deviants are victims of the environment more than they are criminals.