Deviance And Crime

Deviance and crime happen in our daily life and society. Why we always pay attention to deviance and crime? According to Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”, the feeling of being safe is the seconds most important to us after the physiological needs. To know why deviance and crime happen in our daily life, firstly we need to know what is deviance and crime. Deviance is violation of norm while crime is violation of laws. Deviance can be crime but we must remember not all crime is deviance and not all deviance can be crime because deviance is not a subset to crime. Usually crime were more punishable because crime is something people do that break the law that been supported by codified social sanctions while deviance is less punishable because deviance

For us, we need to know what count as deviance and crime in Saudi society is not same as what count as deviance and crime in our society. Every society has different thought and understanding about deviance and crime. We were outsider to their society and to say something about this case we need to understand their norms, folkways and culture. We need to know and understandtheir culture because not everyone practice and have the same culture as we do. Different society have different cultural value. So in this case I like to use social construct theory on deviance and crime. From social construct theory what were count as deviance and crime depend on who interpreted it. Not all society has the same idea what is deviance and what is crime. There is no specific idea and definition what are count as deviance and crime, “There are no purely objective definition; all definitions are value laden and biased to some degree” and what is defined as crime by law “is somewhat arbitrary, and represents a highly selected process” (Barak, 1998: p. 21). In Saudi women who drive were count as deviance and also count as crime according to their laws but not in our society. Why these differences were happen? These were happen because the laws and norms were created by individual or group that has power in the society. Different society will have different thought toward the idea of deviance and crime. The process of constructing and applying the definitions about deviance and crime can be understood of a moral enterprise. Becker was suggested that we call these people who were involved in these activities as a moral entrepreneur. There are two kinds of the moral entrepreneurs which are the rule creator and the rule enforcing. The rule creators can be done by individuals acting either in a group or by alone. They were doing these because they perceive threats and feel fearful, distrustful, and