Preview

Deviance In The Criminal Justice System

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
833 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Deviance In The Criminal Justice System
Deviance is any form of behavior that violates the norms of a society. Behavior that is considered deviant is usually condemned and often punished. Crime is a more dangerous and extreme form of deviance. The term can be defined as a deviant type of behavior that is prohibited by law and is punishable by the government. Many laws divide crimes into categories depending on the seriousness of the offense, the age of the offender, the punishment that can be administered and the actual court. According to sociologists there are multiple explanations for crime and sociologists have created different theories. Also, there are many types of activities that are considered crime and the criminal justice system has the responsibility to keep all citizens of a country safe and secure. To explain deviance, many scientists have contributed to theories and ideas. There are biological, psychological, and sociological explanations. The sociological theorists have different perspectives. According to functionalists, deviance is a common part of human society and it has both positive and negative consequences for social stability. Sociologists with a conflict perspective view …show more content…
It performs its function in four steps, apprehending suspected offenders, determining their innocence or guilt, deciding their punishment and keeping the guilty separated from other citizens. The three major elements of the criminal justice system are the police, courts, and the correctional system. The police officers have control over who is arrested for committing a crime and they have to make a lot of choices. Once the police make an arrest, the courts take responsibility for determining guilt or innocence and assigning some type of punishment. If the person is found guilty, the courts assign a punishment called correction. The punishment can be a fine, but if a more serious crime was committed, it can also mean imprisonment for the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Deviance incorporates behaviors, norms and traits considered a violation of the societal norms or those that trigger negative reactions from the society. There is a wide array of social deviance definitions depending on aspects such as time, situation and the culture. It is also important to note that while some forms of social deviance involve large groups of the community such as piercings and tattoos while, others are only perpetrated by very minute portions of the community such as those who commit murders. Interaction also results in the formation of certain deviant behaviors while others result from conflict or genetic markers. The criminal justice system…

    • 1239 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Functionalist explanations of deviance begin with society as a whole looking for the origins of deviance in the nature of society, not the biological or psychological make up of an individual. Functionalists favour quantative methods to look at society, using statistics to see society as a whole, rather than looking at the individual's effect on society.…

    • 377 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Deviance is not usually a crime, but may be seen as one. Deviance is when someone breaks the norms and values of a society, but the act is not illegal. Crime is where a person beaks the law of land, they either do something they shouldn’t, or they don’t do something they should. Crime and deviance can be measured with the use of Official Crime Statistic (OCS). OCS is the crimes which are reported by the victim, and then further recorded by the Police. Not all crimes are recorded by the Police, which lead to a dark figure in the overall collected OCS. To avoid dark figures there are other methods to measure crime and deviance.…

    • 1364 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The non-sociologist definition of crime and deviance would be that deviance is uncommon behaviour, something that offends the morals or the majority of society, without being harmful or serious enough to be criminal. Whereas a criminal act is an act which causes harm to someone else enough to warrant a decision-maker passing a law which forbids the act.…

    • 1431 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Mr Stefan Sledmore

    • 1499 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Pease (1994) said, ‘Crime comprises those actions which are deemed so damaging to the interest of the community that the state determines that it must take a direct role in identifying and acting against the criminal.’ Downes and Rock (1998) said ‘Deviance may be considered as banned or controlled behaviour which is likely to attract punishment or disproval.’ In short, ‘Deviance’ is a asocial construct that can change across time and place and ‘Crime’ is an action that breaks the law.…

    • 1499 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    There has been a pleather of research regarding the issue of crime and deviance. A definition of crime and deviance can be explained in relative terms which are dependant on any particular society’s interpretation of crime and deviance. Cultures differ from one society to another and the general consensus of right and wrong can also evolve throughout time. Definitions of crime and deviance can evolve with factors such as time, pace and society. However the general definition of crime is that its an act that breaks the law and deviance refers to behaviour that most people see as differing from acceptable social norms or standards of society. The purpose of this Essay is to outline and assess what each perspectives view of crime and deviance is. The perspectives that will be in this essay are Functionalists, Interactionists and conflict theories.…

    • 1033 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Week 1 and 2 Notes

    • 7946 Words
    • 32 Pages

    Our criminal justice system [The aggregate of all operating and administrative or technical support agencies that perform criminal justice functions. The basic divisions of the operational aspects of criminal justice are law enforcement, courts, and corrections] consists of three component agencies. The police, the courts, and the corrections system all work together to ensure that justice is carried out. None of these three components operates independently of the others. If someone is arrested by the police, their guilt or innocence is determined by the courts, and any potential punishment after conviction is handled by the corrections system.…

    • 7946 Words
    • 32 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Crime is a very fragile word that could be portrayed into many different understandings. The definition of a crime; According to "Dictionary.com" (2014), " is an action or an instance of negligence that is deemed injurious to the public welfare or morals or to the interests of the state, and that is legally prohibited" (Noun 1.) Law means having a set of rules and regulations in which communities and society as a whole abide by. Crime can be understood as acting against those laws (rules) that have a punishment in return for those actions. There are two models that are most commonly used by society to determine whether certain acts…

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    According to the University of Phoenix CJi Interactive activities (2014), the definition of a crime is “a conduct in violation of the criminal laws of the state, the federal government, or a local jurisdiction, for which there is no legally acceptable justification or excuse”. It is a complex and very difficult definition to agree upon because there are many points of view and controversies in defining what crime is. From a psychological standpoint, it suggest that the crime is a way of expressing the inability of an individual to follow the social norm. The psychological view…

    • 1065 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    2010). The criminal Justice helps to fight crimes and brought to justice those who commit a crime and punish the lawbreakers. Overall criminal justice plays a huge roll in many societies. Criminal justice system consist of three main parts: (a) Legislative, which create law; (b) Adjudication, the court interpret the law; (c) Correction, government agencies that administer a jurisdiction’s jails, prisons, probation and parole. These three agencies operate together both under the rule of law, and as the foremost importance means of maintaining the rule of law of…

    • 2159 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In Criminal Justice System there are few components. Every component plays an important role in our system functions. The Law Enforcement responds to crime which is reported and takes necessary measures to investigate and make an arrest if the suspect is found. When the suspect is booked, the court will get involved, a prosecutor will review facts of the case and charge the suspect, the defendant will go in front of a judge, it will either be settle for a plea bargain or taken for a chance of a trail. After that defendant will either enter into a jail or prison to serve their time or be placed on probation or alternative to incarcerating.…

    • 5065 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Culture is the feature and knowledge of a distinct people. A pattern of shared values, norms, language, traditions, symbols and their meanings that are passed from one generation to the next. Every culture has norms that establish expectations about what types of behaviors are appropriate for a particular individual in certain social situations. Deviance is an action or behavior that violates those social norms including formally-enacted rules or laws. Viewing deviance as a violation of social norms, sociologists have characterized it as any thoughts, feelings, or actions that members of a social group judge to be a violation of their values or laws (Wikipedia 2017). One kind of deviance is crime, which may be punished by the state with sanctions when a legal norm has been violated. Sanctions are…

    • 416 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The criminal justice system is used to maintain order and control. There are three main components of the criminal justice system; Law enforcement, courts and corrections. Law enforcement officers enforce the laws, maintain the safety of the public and apprehend the criminals; the court convicts the criminals, ensures due process, upholds the law and protects the rights of anyone facing processing; finally, they go to a correctional institution to carry out their sentence. The corrections component attempts to rehabilitate, reform and reintegrate convicted offenders.…

    • 445 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Crime and deviance are always been a matter of fact, the ‘collateral effect’ of living among other people. Norms and rules are set in each society, from rural ones to the largest urban environments, but this cannot prevent the attitudes by some individuals, that in the most of case gang up, to not follow these norms. They are the deviant ones and they are condemned to be considered not normal, sometimes just without choosing that. Paradoxically, most of actions and situations that are considered as normal, under a more peculiar analysis may be not so ‘normal’. For example, the norms that consider smoking as a ‘crime’ are the ones that ban this action in public places, since smoking is injurious both to yours and to the others’ health but, in…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Criminal Justice System

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The criminal justice system essentially has three main components consisting of law enforcement, the court system, and the correctional system. Law enforcement consists of police at many varying tiers of a complex system. Some of these police are your local or county police, sheriffs, state and federal law enforcement officers. The court system is a system that supports law enforcement, but it is designed to assist the defendant’s or alleged criminals also. This system has to be impartial in order to maintain its credibility on both sides of the law with prosecutors and defendants both represented equally within the system and its laws. The corrections system is designed to punish criminals and keep dangerous people separate from the rest of society.…

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays