y. Deviant acts are often thought of as threatening to society. Our lives are based on these arrangements, and this is why deviance often is seen as so threatening: It undermines predictability, the foundation of social life.Negative sanctions are one way that society enforces social control. The way in which our society deals with attempted murderers is prison. Other countries might cut off your hand liked Harris exclaimed in the article. Differential association, the belief that deviance or conformity is learned through ones association with certain groups, could explain why theses three kids attempted murder. One of the hitchhikers may have been a fairly good individual. However, through association with the other hitchhiker, he may have been encouraged to participate in the deviant act of attempted murder. The deviant act that the hitchhikers committed was a street crime, a crime such as mugging, rape, and burglary. This type of crime differs from white collar crime, which refers to crimes that are committed by people of respectable and high social status and that are committed in the course of their occupation. These kids werent committing crime through a business, but in a violent manner to achieve their goals. Sociological theories can also be applied to this theory. Both labeling and strain theory can explain why the hitchhikers acted in the way they did.Labeling theory, the view developed by symbolic interactionists, states that the labels people are given affect their own and others perceptions of them. Thus, channeling their behavior either into deviance or conformity. Maybe the hitchhikers were given the labels of being criminals throughout their lives. They accepted this label as who they were, and that influenced how they thought they should act. This may be one reason these kids committed deviant acts toward Harris.Another theory that may explain their deviant acts is Robert Mertons strain theory, which str...
