Relativist View Of Crime And Deviance

Growing up my family had a huge impact on the way I viewed crime and deviance. My parents have always had a pretty case by case opinion on deviance. I believe this philosophy is most closely related to a relativist viewpoint. Per our textbook, “The so-called intrinsically deviant characteristics do not come from the behavior itself; the originate instead from some people’s minds… the act appears deviant only because some people think it so” (Thio, Calhoun and Conyers, 2013, p. xv). My parents have never agreed with all people or a certain type of action/ behavior into one box. People are all different and their motives are all different, and thus, judgment without detailed understanding of why someone acted as they did seem wrong. For example,

Without this judgment, the behavior would just be another behavior. It’s almost to say that the intent of the behavior is more important than the act. Society judges what they believe is wrong in terms of why someone did what they did. War is still murder, the death penalty is still murder, yet many people in society believe that murder within the context or war or the death penalty is acceptable because in these forms, the intent of the act is not always emotionally malicious. Many times, people go to war in an attempt to protect their country, they don’t go to war to hurt people just to see them suffer, they go to make sure their own people don’t suffer. Often the death penalty is given to serial murders or rapists, the death penalty isn't given to see another person suffer, but rather to guarantee that those people never make someone else suffer in pain for their own gain again. Relativism often touches in this idea of intent. It is said that the behavior itself isn’t intrinsically one way or another, but instead it is the way in which people perceive the act that makes it good or bad. “Social constructionist hold the relativist view that deviant behavior by itself does not have any intrinsic characteristics unless it is thought to have those

I judge crime different than other people because my idea of deviance difference from others. I believe that social constraints should be handled on a case by case scenario because I have be raised to “label” crime differently than others; something that I believe applies to everyone. “The existence of deviance depends on the label. Deviance, then, is a mental construct (an idea, thought or image) expressed in the form of a label” (Thio, Calhoun and Conyers, 2013, p. xv). Furthermore, the social controls my family used to prevent me from committing deviant crimes was the use or moral judgment. I was taught not to commit crimes because the things we considered crimes in my family like stealing, hurting others ect were all considered morally wrong. ADD TO