Sexual deviance among male college students: prior deviance as an explanation

Much research on sexual deviance on university and college campuses is limited by its narrow focus on group affiliation and leads to much speculation and conjecture. This article suggests that an alternative explanation is more suitable for explaining such an important and complex problem on college campuses. It argues that prior deviance serves as a more robust predictor variable of sexual deviance. Logistic regression analyses indicate a direct relationship between prior deviance and sexual deviance. The results lend support to the argument that group affiliation is not a suitable explanation for such a complex societal problem-sexual deviance. Limitations of the study and directions for future research on sexual deviance are discussed.     

Corporate criminology: Explaining deviance of business and political organizations

Explanations of criminal behavior historically have focused on the behavior of individuals. The criminality of organizations, or corporate criminology, has only recently received systematic attention from researchers and policy makers. Four existing theories of organizational crime, and subsequent evaluations of their explanatory power, are comparatively assessed with special attention given to their implications for control strategies. It is suggested that strategies based on causal factors will achieve greater success than prevailing approaches to corporate criminality.     

Speculators: Culture,economy and the legitimation of deviance

This article is a continuation and development of the author's thesis regarding deviant activity in the financial markets of the City of London. The thesis proposes that deviant activity in financial institutions has become legitimated in the sense of the failure of external regulatory controls to enforce order against the internally generated subcultural codes of practice which have developed consequent upon the forces of economic imperative (the ideology of excellence in the enterprise culture) and globalisation (the technological revolution). The thesis originally dealt with the period between 1984–1989 which was one characterised as “Casino Capitalism”. The current development of the thesis examines its continued relevance and proposes number of additional supporting elements and examples in its deployment as a critique of deviant financial activity.     

Sailing Alone: Teenage Autonomy and Regimes of Childhood

Should society intervene to prevent the risky behavior of precocious teenagers even if it would be impermissible to intervene with adults who engage in the same risky behavior? The problem is well illustrated by the legal case of the 13-year-old Dutch girl Laura Dekker, who set out in 2009 to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone, succeeding in January 2012. In this paper we use her case as a point of entry for discussing the fundamental question of how to demarcate childhood from adulthood. After summarizing the case, we identify a ??demarcation dilemma?? that frames much of the public and expert debate. On the one hand, it seems morally imperative ??to treat like alike??, which means that both children and adults should be allowed to undertake all actions for which they have the relevant competences. On the other hand, requiring proportional treatment of children and adults seems to neglect the special nature of childhood as a distinct stage in life that ends at a specific age. We introduce the notion of a ??regime of childhood?? to deal with this problem. This regime includes several dimensions, including the limited liability for children, the supervisory responsibilities of parents, the role of age-based thresholds, and the overarching purpose of childhood as a context for developing autonomy. We argue that, all things considered, there are good reasons not to shift to a regime that offers individual children the option of qualifying for adulthood on the basis of age-neutral criteria.     

Instittutional attachments and self-control: Understanding deviance among Hispanic adolescents

This study tested the ability of the general theory of crime and social control theory to account for self-reported deviance among a sample of 298 Puerto Rican high school students. The following hypotheses were examined: (1) Low attachment levels (to parents, religion, school, and friends) will positively and significantly predict deviance, (2) Individual with low levels of self-control will be more likely to report involvement in deviance, and (3) Low self-control will mediate the relationship between attachments (parents, religion, school, and friends) and deviance. Results indicated support for social control theory and did not support the general theory of crime. Self-control was not significantly predictive of deviance whereas many of the institutional attachment variables were important predictors of deviance among Hispanic high school students (attachment to parents, school, and friends). Theoretical and policy implications of the findings supportive of social control theory are discussed.     

Police drinking behavior and organizational deviance: An exploratory approach

Contemporary literature on police officer subculture has focused on correlates of cynicism while ignoring behavioral manifestations within law enforcement organizations. This paper explores the relationships between trouble due to drinking, cynicism, absenteeism, rank and deviation from police officers. Antecedent variables examined by regression analysis are observed to explain forty-eight percent of the total variance in police officer drinking scores and is highly significant. The relationship between a modified version of the Niederhoffer cynicism scale and the trouble due to drinking scale [r=−.22] is in an opposite direction than expected from anomie theory and seems to suggest that drinking behavior is an alternate adaptation to the stresses and strains of policing for older, higher ranking officers.     

Judging gender: difference and dissent at the Supreme Court of Canada

Over 25 years ago, Justice Bertha Wilson asked “Will women judges really make a difference?” Taking up her question, we consider the place of difference in gender and judging. Our focus is on those ‘differences of opinion’ between judges that take the form of written and published judicial dissent. We present and interrogate recent statistics about practices of dissent on the Supreme Court of Canada in relation to gender. The statistics are provocative, but do not provide straightforward answers about gender and judging. They do, however, pose new questions, and suggest the importance of better theorizing and exploring the space of dissent.     

Between normality and deviance: the breakdown of batterers' identity following police intervention

With the transformation of intimate violence from private trouble to social problem, police intervention in domestic violence cases became more prevalent. Research has focused mainly on battered women's perception of police intervention, their evaluations, and their level of satisfaction with the intervention. However, there is little research examining the perpetrators' subjective perceptions of such interventions. The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze battering men's perceptions of police intervention. The study is based on semistructured, in-depth interviews with 20 batterers who had repeated encounters with police. Findings show a continuum of self-management, ranging from attempts to preserve a normative identity in the first encounter to struggling against criminalization in the second encounter and adopting a victim identity in the third encounter. The findings are discussed in the context of gender identity and power relations.     

The effects of scandal on organizational deviance: The case of the FBI

This article is an inquiry into the role of scandal in controlling organizational deviance. It examines the dynamics of scandal and the limits of the scandal process in producing organizational reform. The history of scandal and reform in the FBI (1950–83) provides the empirical basis for the inquiry.

It is concluded that a strategy of increasing public access to “normally” concealed organizational information, which would strengthen public disclosure of organizationally deviant practices, is also a strategy for controlling organizational deviance. The study finds that some aspects of organizational structure and process are more subject to change through the mechanism of scandal than other aspects.     

Industry structure and organizational deviance: Multinational corporations and questionable foreign payments

Questionable foreign payments (QFPs) by multinational corporations (MNCs) are examined in the context of world industry structures. Corporate claims and existing theory view QFPs as a function of extortive corporate-governmental relations. There are three industry conditions cited which make extortion possible: competitive pressure, foreign dependence and governmental leverage. Top U.S.-based MNCs (N=197) which have and have not made QFPs are compared on indicators of world industry structure to test for these conditions. Findings show that corporations making QFPs are more heavily involved in foreign economies, but are less susceptible to competitive pressure and no more subject to governmental leverage than nonpaying corporations. Specifically, paying corporations are likely to be leading corporations in fairly concentrated, U.S. dominated, and high-technology markets. Paying corporations, then, are in better positions to control their environments than nonpaying corporations. We conclude that changes in world industry structures beginning in the 1960s have increased the likelihood of QFPs, especially for U.S. MNCs in high-tech industries.A previous version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society in Memphis, Tennessee, April, 1981, under the title, A Comparative Study of Multinational Corporations Making Questionable Foreign Payments. We would like to thank David Ermann, David Rudy and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments in revising this article.     

Constructing Joseph Fredericks: competing narratives of a child sex murderer

Joseph Fredericks--one of Canada's most notorious sex offenders--was defined through the institutions that dealt with him from his infancy to his death to the inquest held after his death. In this paper, we locate in historical context and compare the different narratives that were constructed of his life in each of these institutional settings from unwanted child to 'mental defective' to psychiatric offender to criminal recidivist to victim to iconic sexual predator. We show that each of these narratives claimed to capture the essence of Fredericks in terms of what were his core characteristics and what remedies were necessary for the problems he posed only to be superseded by new narratives based on different assumptions. Finally, we show how one of these conceptions of Frederick's essence influenced a shift in Canadian public policy for sex offenders toward the greater emphasis on community protection characteristic of public policy in the United States.     

Implications of changing social policy for the medicalization of deviance

Conclusion Since medicalization of deviance is ade facto rather than explicit social policy, it is affected by policy changes in the medical and criminal justice systems. I have pointed to some of the implications of changing social policy on medicalizing deviance. In summary, it appears likely that social policies such as decriminalization, decarceration, the production of more physicians and the enactment of national health insurance may encourage more medicalization. On the other hand, increased individual responsibility for health, the fiscal crisis in medical costs, and the punitive backlash may discourage medicalization and promote some demedicalization. What seems clear from this vantage point, however, is that medicalization of deviance, with few exceptions, remains a residual product of other social policies and its consequences are usually overlooked in policy deliberations. Since medicalization has important social consequences [32], it should be afforded consideration in policy discussions.My thanks to my collaborator Joseph W. Schneider and to Michael L. Radelet and David F. Greenberg for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Teen Court: A Way to Combat Teenage Crime and Chemical Abuse

Though some controversy surrounds the effectiveness of juvenile diversion programs, at least one program, the Teen Court Program in Odessa, Texas, seems to be having an impact. After 1,987 trials, the recidivism rate is less than 15 percent for traffic offenses and zero for first time Class C and Class B misdemeanors. The success of that program has lead to its expansion, and now the program includes first time drug offenders who not only go through the restitution phase of Teen Court but are required to attend, with their parents, a drug education and prevention workshop. After two years of operation, there has not been one repeat case of drug usage by a first offender referred to Teen Court. The procedures followed in the workshop and the results are discussed.