Deviant Behavior and Social Control Essay Example for Free

Deviant Behavior and Social Control Essay Durkheim said, â€Å"We must not say that an action shocks the common conscience because it is criminal, but rather that it is criminal because it shocks the common conscience. † The strain theory by Robert K. Merton suggests that American are geared toward deviance because of a lack of legitimate options to attain the monetary goal that Americans emphasize (Tischler, p. 146). Travis Hirschi posed the control theory which focuses on the importance of the people around you to mold you into a regular lifestyle. He said that there are four main points to why someone will become deviant or not: attachment to others, commitment to conformity, involvement in conventional activities, belief in the moral validity of social rules. If someone displays these four points than they will probably be a functioning member of society. Sociologists suggest the techniques of neutralization, which are ways we will justify the deviant act to ourselves so that we are able to complete it. The five techniques are denial of responsibility, denying the injury, denial of the victim, condemnation of the authorities, and appealing to higher principles of authorities. Lastly, there is the labeling theory which states that individuals will commit secondary deviant acts after the fact that they have already been deemed a deviant by society. A flaw in this theory is that it does not give reason for why the original deviant act was committed. Every theory previously posed does have legitimate facts behind why it could be the cause for deviant behavior, but no single one is completely correct. Although the mesomorphic body type may be deemed as a more aggressive person, this would not be the only reason why the person was deviant, so the biological theory cannot stand alone. The psychological theories have a lot of mental disease that makes them more prone to deviant activity, but it is also proven that these traits are overcome by a good social environment and in some cases the proper medication. Just like the psychological theories, the sociological theories are proven that the environment that one is raised or lives in is a highly important factor, but it is possible for someone in a good environment to be deviant and vice versa. 2. What types of crime exist in the Unite States? There are four main categories of crime in the United States and these crimes range from rape to robbery to embezzlement to public drunkenness. The first category of crime is violent crime which consists of acts such as murder and assault. These crimes usually come with the longest prison sentences, and the good news is that these types of crime have been on the decline over the past few years. Next we have property crime which consists of three quarters of the crime in the United States. Car theft and burglary are examples of property crimes. According to the FBI, a white-collar crime is â€Å"characterized by deceit, concealment, or a violation of trust. † Bernie Madoff, the Enron corporation, and ponzi schemes are what we consider to be white-collar crimes. Finally, we have what are called victimless crimes. These are crimes that break what is considered law, but have no direct victim. Prostitution, drug use, and DUI are all what can be considered victimless. They use the term â€Å"victimless† but the argument can be made that the victim is the person committing the crime because their actions usually harm themselves. 3. What parts of the court and prison system are effective, and what parts are ineffective? Only two out of the four major goals of prison are effective. The first of which is to separate criminals from society, is accomplished by the physical act of taking criminals off the street and putting them behind fences that are twenty feet high with barbed wire, towers with armed guards, and impenetrable buildings of brick and mortar. This is honestly the only thing that our courts succeed in doing, but when you separate them from society, you put them with fellow criminals who have new crimes to teach. The second goal that can be considered effective is that prison is a legitimate punishment for criminal behavior. For me, being in prison is a mental and physical hell because it causes you to be broken down while in a small cell with a bar door and no window and no means of escape. For others it may not be like this though, because as mentioned before in the theories of deviance, a criminal may have psychological problems where they are unable to conform and prison makes them conform so they begin to enjoy what they are unable to have on the outside. Also, most criminals peers are other criminals, so while incarcerated they do not feel completely separated from their usual world. The other two primary goals of the prison systems can be considered highly ineffective. Deterring criminal behavior is the third goal of prisons and as the statistics show, this is not commonly achieved. If prison were a good deterrent than we would not have the crime rate that we have today. If the reward of the crime is greater than what the punishment will be, a crime will be committed. The last goal of the prisons is to rehabilitate. The facts are concrete when showing that prison and the programs within have minimal success rates. My personal observations over the past two weeks concur with the facts. I would estimate that close to ninety percent of the inmates who are in here for drug and alcohol related offenses talk about getting high or drunk on the day they are released, and with fellow inmates. The inmates who are guilty of burglary or robbery and other related offenses admit that they don’t know any other way of life, and that they will continue their criminal ways when released. There will never be a perfect society in which there is no deviant behavior. There is, however, ways in which we can continue to develop a better understanding of what causes the deviant behavior and ways in which we can prevent it. The prison system is continually developing new trial programs to help addicts and alcoholics, along with incorporating programs for criminals to get started on a career path instead of a criminal path. I do not believe that these will ever be one definite answer to why one becomes deviant, but let’s hope that as future progresses the rate at which deviance occurs decreases.

The Harlem Renaissance, Jazz and Billie Holiday Essay -- Billie Holida

The Harlem Renaissance, Jazz and Billie Holiday In Harlem, the people sit on their front porches in protest of the summer Sunday sun, fanning themselves with the morning paper as the day slides away. Out on the streets, neighbors call to each other. A woman’s voice is audible from an open window, singing nonsensically as she scrubs. Her melodies tumble out the window and intertwine with the trembling harmonica rising from the heat of the pavement and venture into the store on the corner. The boisterous laughter of men on the porch mixes with the skip of the jump rope slapping the sidewalk and the shrieking of children. All the faces on the streets, inside the houses, and emitting the shrieks are not the same ones to be found along Fifth Avenue, across town. This small portion of Manhattan is entirely black, except when the sun sets. Dusk somehow radiates calm to the slightly jittery Whites that pour into the city for an evening of entertainment. Only in darkness is when the Whites feel safer in making the pilgrimage to Harlem. Differentiating skin color isn’t a chore when pedestrians are only a possibility-- when the sun doesn’t make lightness or darkness so apparent. People parade into the city dressed up to the nines, out to hear the latest style of music, dance the latest dance, or see the latest revue. Creation spewing from this cultural Mecca is insatiably sought after and people of all ethnicities wish to embrace it as their own. High heels and wingtips carry stocking feet into various downtown dumps and dives for a change of pace, clamoring for Black artists to whom they would never give the time of day if the sun were out. Yet the patience of nighttime is incontestable. The rhythms and rhymes coinciding with th... ... to break into show business at all. The great "Lady Day" lived her whirlwind life, making decisions that would have made any mother’s head spin. But her unbelievable life helped pave the way for other Black female artists, so that they had a strong female example that didn’t back down in the face of Racial and Sexist tensions and worked so hard to overcome them that the stress was too much, and she sought solace in narcotics because the pressure was too great. Today, the legacy of Billie Holiday lives on. People are continuously intrigued by her life, inspired by her music, and impressed with the difficulties she faced. Armed with her music, Billie Holiday faced the world on the offensive, constantly battling those who presented her with obstacles. Though she did not fight flawlessly, her ambitions and her dreams carried her through life as best they could.

Symbolism In English literatureâ€â€œGravity” Essay

Symbolism is a good tool to use when we come across difficult abstract concepts such as life and death.For example, in her article entitled â€Å"Gravity†, David Leavitt tells us a story about how a mom named Sylvia encourages her HIV infected son Theo to live longer. When Theo started to have bad eye sight in his childhood Sylvia just let him wear her flamboyant glasses despite that people around them all think that Theo looks strange. After Theo grew up, between a drug that could sustain his life and a drug that could save his sight, Theo chose the second one. Sylvia worried that Theo would give up the hope for living, so she tried to encourage Theo to live by a strange way which similar to the way she help him with his sight when he was a child. She threw a very heavy crystal bowl to Theo when they were shopping in a gift store. Theo caught the bowl without thinking. Theo realized that by throwing the bowl, on one side, Sylvia tended to prove that he is still alive. On the other side, Sylvia wanted to encourage him to live longer. The crystal bowl in the story represents exactly what Theo was going through. It symbolizes both life and death. It represents life because it was heavy and valuable â€Å"(The crystal bowl is) Four hundred and twenty- five dollars† (l. 88) This shows that the crystal bowl is very valuable just like that human’s life is very precious. In the same time, crystal bowl represent death because it could easily been shattered. Theo was surprised that he actually did not shatter the bowl â€Å"Theo looked at the floor, still surprised not to see shards of glass around his feet.† (l. 96-97) If the crystal bowl were broken, it would have not value or meaning just like it has lost its life. So, the Crystal bowl in the story represents death. If the bowl shattered, it just like a person lost his/her life. The crystal bowl also represents the character and hopes of Sylvia. The crystal in the story is very showing and pricy. â€Å"(The crystal bowl is) a large ridges crystal bowl, a very fifties sort of bowl, stalwart and square-jawed.† (l. 84-86) It represents Sylvia’s flamboyant and materialism characters. The author tells us that Sylvia has a flamboyant character by describing Sylvia’s bold and flashy glasses†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ harlequins with tiny rhinestones in the corners†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (l. 9) The author also implies that Sylvia is quite materialism by showing us that she care a lot abo ut the price of a graduation gift her sister given to her son  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Don’t you remember that cheap little nothing Bibi gave you for your graduation? It was disgusting.†(l.50-51) On the other hand, the crystal bowl represents the strength of Sylvia’s hope for Theo to live because the crystal bowl is heavy â€Å"’That’s heavy,’ Sylvia said, observing with satisfaction how the bowl had weighted Theo’s arms down†(l.93-94) The heavier the stronger, so the heaviness of the crystal bowl represent the strong will and hope of Sylvia. The author shows us that Sylvia is a strong willed woman who has done extremely stressful things in a role â€Å"The DHPG injections she (Sylvia) took in stride—she’s seen her own mother through her dying, after all, Four times a day, with the equanimity of a nurse, she cleaned out the plastic tube implanted in his chest, inserted a sterilized hypodermic a Sylvia and slowly dripped bag of sight-giving liquid into his vein†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (l.17-20) It shows that Sylvia has tremendous strength just like the toughness the crystal bowl appeared to be. The author also shows us that Sylvia’s hope for Theo to live is very strong. Even though Sylvia was stressed out †Yet she (Sylvia) had also, at about three o’clock one morning, woken him up to tell him she was going to the twenty-four- hour supermarket, and was there anything her wanted†(1. 122-124) This shows that Sylvia was on the edge of mental broken-down. But Sylvia still keeps strong hope for The o to live â€Å"†¦ it had occurred to him (Theo) that she (Sylvia) was trusting his two feeble hands, out of the whole world, to keep it from shattering.† This shows that after all, Sylvia strongly hoped that, showing Theo that he was still strong by throwing the crystal bowl and letting him catch it, Theo would not continue on giving up his life but choose to live longer. The crystal also symbolized the general message which the author is trying to convey to the readers: life should be fully lived. The author shows that Theo was dying and tended to giving up his life. He felt â€Å"†¦wide and unswimmable the gulf was becoming between him and the evereceding shoreline of the will †¦Ã¢â‚¬  (l. 35-36) Even though he felt that way, he still caught the heavy crystal bowl without thinking. It shows the underlining deep and significant meaning of the story â€Å"There are certain things you’ve already done before you even think how to do them†¦ the bowl, which Theo was holding before he could even begin to calculate its brief trajectory†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (l.131-133) This shows us that all human have an instinct for living. By showing us this, the story conveys a message to the readers that even though life is  violable like the fragile crystal bowl; it doesn’t mean that we should give up. Instead, we should look at the positive side of life. Just like the crystal bowl also heavy and strong side, human lives also have a strong side because very one have instinct for living. Therefore, we should have faith to ourselves and stop complaining our own misery but start to look at life in a positive way, and realize that our lives should be fully lived.

Twinkle, Little Star - 1512 Words

Twinkle, Little Star Entwined within two poems, one titled Bright Star and authored by John Keats, the other called Choose Something Like a Star penned by Mr. Robert Frost, emerges the similar theme of the human need for stability and sense of permanence. Although varied in literary devices, sub themes, and structure the like poems strongly convey this common ideal and do so with the powerful icon of the star, or the heavens. The star historically represents the eternalness of the heavens and the unattainable by human beings. Initially, Keats establishes the immediacy of his words in speaking directly to the star in question. The use of apostrophe in the very opening line, as Mr. Keats addresses the star, Â…would I were steadfast as†¦show more content†¦All of the above mentioned words are instructive and bland in reference to human emotion. Rather than wanting the unrealistic fortune of being the eternal star itself, Frost suggests knowing the secrets of its longevity i s of a more comprehendible nature. Accessing word choice and tones are not the only methods Frost and Keats use to align meaning in their work. Structure and movement are also woven masterfully in to guide a path from entertaining prose, to ultimate meaning. Easily the most obvious difference in style is that Bright Star is a Shakespearean sonnet. Fourteen lines in all and constructed with an (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG) rhyme scheme, the piece is armed with words and ideas of dream-like wishes and unreachable odds. Comparatively, Choose Something Like a Star follows a disjointed rhyme scheme and is categorized into no particular style of poem, equipped with 25 lines. Generally, the piece follows a mimicked system to that of Keats modeled by an (AABA AA CBCB) rhyme scheme; however it does include several couplets lodged about (hence, the AA). While a rhyme scheme incorporated at all always implicates a natural movement, it can also work reversely to create a more matter-of-fact approach to p rose. Specifically, Robert Frosts disorderly schemes remove the romantic effect of flow seen in Keats poem. It is not, essentially, as ‘nice to read nor as easy to maneuver. Keats steady pentameter reemphasizes the dreamlike essence that is so vividlyShow MoreRelatedRole of Music in My Life1518 Words   |  7 Pagesat kindergarten. I do a lot of performance that are related with music when I’m in my school age and I really enjoy it. I can say that music has become part of my life. Even in kindergarten, I had been taught by music such as ABC’s song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Happy Birthday song, If You Are Happy and others. There are so many different categories and genres of music such as ballad, rock, Jazz, hip hop, pop, techno and others. 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