What is the difference between deviant behavior and criminal behavior

Felony includes serious crimes like murder, rape, and, robbery , which typically result in serious punishments. Misdemeanours, on the other hand, refer to comparatively minor crimes with lesser punishments.

Some examples include shoplifting, vandalism, indecent exposure in public and trespassing. Furthermore, criminology is the scientific study of crimes and criminals. According to some criminologists, crimes can be categorized into five categories as violent crimes, property crimes, white-collar crime, organized crimes and consensual or victimless crimes.

Violent Crimes — Crimes where intended harm is inflicted against another individual during the commission of the crime. For example, murder, rape, sexual assault, and robbery. For instance, burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, larceny , arson, shoplifting, and vandalism. White-collar Crimes — Nonviolent crimes committed for financial gain.

Some examples include wage theft, bribery, Ponzi schemes, insider trading, and fraud. Organized Crimes — Crimes committed by groups of professional criminals transnational, national, or local who work together as part of a powerful and secret organization. Consensual or Victimless Crimes — These refer to illegal actions or crimes that have no direct victim. There is no victim because the parties involved are acting voluntarily. For example, prostitution, drug use, suicide, public drunkenness, etc.

Criminology is the wider area that is used to evaluate the context of crime. The scientific study of criminals and crime is used for evaluating the basis and reasons of crime done by people. It makes use of different theories and school of thought in order to analyse the reasons behind criminal activities. The main purpose of this paper is to consider one criminology theory or school of thought. The criminology theory that is used for analysing the requirements of this paper is rational choice theory.

Cullen, Agnew, and Wilcox state that when society fails to provide legitimate and legal means for individuals to obtain the goal of monetary success, individuals then turn to other means to achieve such goals.

When individuals come across these stressors and strains, they turn to crime to reduce such stressors and strains. Unreachable opportunities, monetary unhappiness, society support, risks taken, and other factors were considered in this study when examining the relationship between monetary goals and the actual commitment that impact crime.

This study took place in Toronto, Canada and three hundred homeless youths living in the streets were interviewed. Gang violence and activity has arisen in the past decades, with exceeding concerns and amongst youth being the primary target.

Law enforcement try to gain a better understanding to why people are falling into criminal activity. Throughout the following essay we will be summarizing the background of one of the most notorious gang known internationally, MS In addition, we will also be explaining ways different criminology theorist and theories apply to these particular group of people.

In Belize today, our Society is being plagued by crime daily and very often as you listen to the daily news someone is dead either my being shot, hit and run, suicide or some other form of death.

Other times minor incidences are reported and often times we wonder why did this even make the news? It is nothing unusual it is just petty deviance. Therefore, we need to define the difference between crime and deviance in a simple way; crime is the breaking of legal norms, while deviance is the breaking of social norms. Crime and deviance can be categorised by …show more content… Structural strain theory, a type of functionalist theory, predicts that societal inequalities actually force and compel the individual into deviant and criminal behaviour.

Conflict theory explains deviance and crime as a consequence of unequal power relationships and inequality in society. Symbolic interaction theory explains deviance and crime as the result of meanings people give to various behaviours. Differential association theory, a type of symbolic interaction theory, interprets deviance as behaviour learned through social interaction with other deviants.

Another type of symbolic interaction theory, argues that societal reactions to behaviour produce deviance, with some groups having more power than others to assign deviant labels to …show more content… To put it simply, crime is constructed by the use of social laws and the decisions of those with power to make some of these social laws and the decisions of those with power to make some of these social laws into criminal laws.

Crime can be seen as a social construction as what is legal or illegal in one society or culture may not be in another, the same can be said of deviance. Permissions Icon Permissions. Article PDF first page preview. Issue Section:. You do not currently have access to this article. Download all slides. Sign in Don't already have an Oxford Academic account? You could not be signed in. Sign In Forgot password? Don't have an account?

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