Inherited Deviance

Inherited Deviance

In today’s culture, deviance is a factor in everyone’s life. Everyone ranging from young adolescents to middle-aged can be involved in deviant behaviors. Children can be deviant to test their parent’s temper, young adults participate in deviant acts to look a certain way, and adults for example could lash out in deviance to gain attention from a spouse. In class, deviance was defined as cultural norms being purposefully violated. The doer knows a specific action is wrong but they still decide to partake in it.

Deviant behavior to me is relatable to gangs. People are willing to be involved in deviant behaviors in order to be initiated into a gang. Once, a new member is welcomed into a gang, they must continue to lash out in violence to stay on good terms or perhaps move higher up to gain power. Of course a gang member should be able to identify gang participation as deviant because cultural norms don’t encourage violence of any kind. Norms guide or should guide all human activities, but when a person joins a gang their norms change to fit the gang which is still identified as going against cultural norms.

Gangs have become more and more deviant because society perceives them that way. In class, we discussed how people become deviant because others define them as deviant; how others perceive us is eventually the role we take on. So essentially, gangs think they are super scary and dangerous because others describe them as such.

In bigger cities such as: Chicago, gangs are a bigger issue, especially to the younger adolescents who witness it growing up. To some people in the city, the cultural norms could be different reflecting gang violence. The kids growing up in a home where their father, brother, or cousins are affiliated with gangs changes their norms to oppose the ones of society. Although parents and peers are supposed to give informal social control, in cases like these the control could lead the child down a deviant path.  There are other people who can give formal social control such as criminal justice systems who enforce gang relations as deviant behavior, but if a young boy were to grow up watching a parent or sibling be influenced by a gang then that is what they see as a norm. Norms guide almost all human activities, so of course that child would end up joining a gang. A child in this position could also cause projective labeling: others may be able to predict future deviant behavior.

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/fullpage/chicago-gang-violence-numbers-17509042

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/61/4/614/