Primary and Secondary Deviance

Primary and Secondary Deviance

• Edwin Lemert, influenced by symbolic interactionism, is a key theorist in the social reaction approach.
• Lemert believed focus should be on the social control system and not just the offender, as social control can contribute to creating deviance.
• Social control can be formal (police, courts, prison) or informal (family, religion, school).
• Traditional sociology states deviance leads to social control, but Lemert argued types of social control can create deviance and crime.
• Lemert focused on secondary deviance.

Lemert: Primary and Secondary Deviance

• Primary deviation arises from various factors and is managed through normalization without significantly affecting the actor's psychology or status.
• Secondary deviation involves responses to problems stemming from societal reaction to primary deviation, which encompass moral issues such as stigmatization and punishment.
• Secondary deviation greatly affects an individual's psychology, social roles, and self-regard.
• Understanding deviance is found in the secondary processes.
• An individual may adopt the negative image offered by others through labeling, especially without a strong self-image.
• This adoption is enforced through a feedback process until the individual accepts the label as their identity.

Secondary Deviance

• Secondary deviance involves 8 steps:
• Breaking an established rule (primary deviance).
• Penalties due to the act.
• Continuation of the primary deviance.
• Increased punitive responses by social control agents.
• Continued deviance, with resentment over penalties.
• Community stigmatization.
• Amplification of deviant behavior as a reaction to stigmatization.
• Full acceptance of deviant status.
• Repeated labeling internalizes a self-concept, leading to primary deviation, societal penalties, further deviation, stronger penalties, possible hostility, a tolerance crisis where the community stigmatizes, strengthened deviant conduct, and ultimately, acceptance of deviant social status.

Lemert: Social Control

• Social control arises when others consider a person dangerous or morally repugnant, leading to unpleasant actions not applied to others.
• Examples include hurtful humiliation, court appearances, or imprisonment.
• The need to control deviants links to moral ideologies, laws, and policies.
• A deviant is required to accept the institution's rules.
• Violations of these institutional rules confirm the official judgment that the deviant is "unreformed".
• Prisons or asylums has a socio-psychological environment that seeks to normalize his actions/thought.
• To re-enter society, deviants must accept society's definition of them.
• Inhuman treatment exacerbated individuals to act out in maniacal ways, the asylum can make deviance an artifact of it's own control.

Lemert: Subculture

• Deviant groups become important when deviance requires goods and services provided by others, such as prostitutes or gamblers.
• Within a prison subculture, newcomers may adopt the recidivist view of being unable to succeed outside of prison.
• Accepting a stigmatized identity is sometimes positive, if it offers relief from life problems.

Lemert: Secondary Deviance

• Secondary deviants often struggle with their new self-image, but adjust when they embrace the stereotype.
• Clarity of definition of the deviance and moral blameworthiness, along with abilities and motivation, impact the adjustment to function in the world.
• Secondary deviance is behavior that becomes a means of defense, attack, or adaptation to societal reaction to primary deviation.
• Secondary deviance places the social psychology of the deviant at center stage.

Stigma: "Spoiled Identity" & Stigma Management

• Ervin Goffman studied micro-level interactions and provided insights helpful to deviance and crime studies.
• Goffman saw crime as a social problem and his works such as 'total institution' and 'stigma' relate to criminology.

Stigma: "spoiled identity"

• Goffman defined stigma as a deeply discrediting characteristic, understood as the relationship between an attribute and a stereotype.
• The attribute must be defined as a negative characteristic by the 'normal' people
• A stigmatized individual is perceived as having a tarnished character, reduced to a tainted one.
• A mark connects with other people, and those that observe the mark make distinctions based on it.
• They can face stereotypes, discrimination or avoidance by "normal" people.

Types of Stigma

• Goffman created a three-category typology of stigma:
• "Abomination of the body," including physical deformities and disabilities.
• "Blemishes of individual character," encompassing perceived weaknesses, dishonesty, mental disorders, homosexuality, radicalism, alcoholism, unemployment, and imprisonment.
• "Tribal stigma of race, nation, and religion," transmitted through family lineage and equally possessed by all family members, including class status.

Types of Stigma

• Goffman proposes two categories of stigma as "Discredited" and the "Discreditable"
• Social actors construct their reality through interactions and the employment of symbols.
• "Discreditable": refers to individual differences that are neither known nor immediately perceivable by observers
• Examples: criminal record, infertility, mental health, doing certain drugs, alcoholism
• One must manage information and how much is shared.
• Disclosure depends on the social context.
• "Discredited": the individual whose differences are evident or known immediately to the observer or to the public
• Examples: skin color, facial features, deformity
• Stigma is visible (stigma symbols) and requires tension management.
• There is an uncertainty as to how the "normal" people receive/view him/her.

Managing Stigma

• Passing: refers to techniques of managing the "stigma" as the management of undisclosed information about oneself.
• Options include, 'Dividing the social world' and telling intimate/loved ones BUT not to strangers or acquaintances.
• Withdrawal can be an option such as removing or distancing from social situations.
• Controlling the amount of information shared is another way to manage stigma.

Women's Management of the Stigma of Criminal Records

• Formerly incarcerated women in Ontario manage the stigma of criminal records regarding employment by projecting a positive self-image.
• Women assess employer policies and referrals before disclosing criminal record information.
• Strategies vary based on the situation:
• "If they don't ask, don't tell" which has risks along with anxiety.
• "Just be honest" resulted in never hearing back from employers.
• "Playing honestly" with phrases like, "got into a legal matter".
• "It's not who I am", resists the internalization of oppressive criminalized stigma.

Murderers' Relative: Managing Stigma, Negotiating Identity

• Relatives of people convicted of murder experience stigma due to the public's negative perceptions and common-sense notions about murder.
• Family toxicity and failed parenting are often a blame.
• Notions of violence and evil are automatically brought to mind.
• Families are aware of the public's perception; a new social status as murderer's relatives is formed.

Relative to Stigma Management

• Open Awareness Context:
• Managing space by avoiding public spaces.
• Managing self presentation, influencing impressions.
• Dissension: challenge the master status of "murderer"
• Collective support is sought by seeking a sympathetic audience.
• Closed Awareness Context:
• Managing information.
• Re-presentation: withholding specifics.
• Selective disclosure: decides to whom you reveal your information.
• Therapeutic disclosure: off-load one's troubles and garner support.
• Preventative disclosure: easier to be rejected by an acquaintance than by an inmate.

Impact of Labelling on Group Behaviour: Deviancy Amplification

• The deviancy amplification spiral, proposed by Leslie Wilkins, suggests that reactions to deviant behavior by official agents may increase the deviant behavior.
• A small initial deviation may spiral into ever-increasing significance through labeling.
• Social reaction to the 'deviant identities' of target groups can lead to more deviance.

Deviancy Amplification

• Deviancy amplification occurs through social reaction:
• Deviant groups are socially and spatially isolated.
• Information about their activities travels through media.
• Information is typically exaggerated.
• Fabricated information elicits a negative public response, demanding law enforcement.
• Public response creates new deviant identities and new context for further deviant acts as they react to the constructed reality.
• Deviant acts feed back to the public in distorted formats, further stimulating outrage and law enforcement demands.
• A cycle ensues.
• The amplification and distortion are conducted through media, police, and politicians.
• The new definitions of old crime such as "mugging" replaced "garroting".
• There is a perceived or symbolic threat to society.
• Police practice structures and amplifies, shifting the historical shift in official statistics and allocation of resources and focus.
• Public concern displaces other concerns.