Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Sociology Deviance3 Deviance3 In the article “Hitchhiker gets 16 years in stabbing of man,” Ellen Miller writes about a young hitchhiker who gets a 16-year prison sentence for stabbing a good Samaritan who gave them a ride. The man who was attacked, Chuck Harris, gave the three hitchhikers, who were standing in the rain, a ride to his house There he fed them steak dinners, offered to let them stay the night, and offered to give them fifty dollars each for work. But instead, two of the three hitchhikers stabbed Harris with butcher knives, which they got from Harris’ kitchen with intentions to take his money and steal his car. The other two assailants will be sentenced next week. This article is sociological in nature. Not only did these boys attempt murder, they committed a deviant act. After being caught, society stepped in and made it clear that their act was deviant through a jail sentence. Many sociological terms can be applied to this article. For example, deviance, social control, negative sanction, differential association, street crime, and white-collard crime can all be illustrated in this story. Deviance refers to any violation of norms. It is not the act itself, but the way in which society views the act that makes it deviant. In our country, the hitchhikers who stabbed Harris are considered deviant. In other countries, this act may be considered normal and an everyday occurrence. Also, our army is over in Afghanistan right now attempting to kill anyone supporting the Taliban. American society is accepting these killings as revenge on what they did to America. However, as soon as murder is not related to war, society views murder as a deviant act. Social control, a groups formal and informal means of enforcing its norms, failed in this story. The hitchhikers knew that stabbing Harris and robbing him was wrong. But obviously, in the minds of the hitchhikers the risks of obtaining a car and money were greater than the punishment of murder and robbery. 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 one’s 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 weren’t 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 Merton’s strain theory, which stresses that deviance may occur when a society socializes a large number of people to desire a culturally approved goal, but does not allow them to achieve it through a socially approved mean. The goal of the hitchhikers was to have a nice car and have money. However, they were not able to achieve this through a job or inherited wealth. A strain theorist would say that these kids were innovators. They wanted the culturally approved goal of wealth, but they had to rob and attempt murder to achieve this goals. The acts that the hitchhikers committed were considered deviant acts. Society will forever judge them based on their crimes and the actions they choose. These people were a product of society. And from a sociological point of view it was a good article to read and dissect. Bibliography: Word Count: 810
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