Describe the concept of primary and secondary deviance and explain how secondary deviance involves resocialization into a deviant role. Explain your view of this theory
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• Primary deviance involves norm violations or crimes that have very little influence on the actor and can be quickly forgotten.
o For example, a college student takes a "five-finger discount" at the campus bookstore. He successfully steals a textbook, uses it to get an A in a course, goes on to graduate, is admitted into law school, and later becomes a famous judge. Because his shoplifting goes unnoticed, it is a relatively unimportant event that has little bearing on his future life.
• Secondary deviance occurs when a deviant event comes to the attention of significant others or social control agents who apply a negative label.
o The newly labeled offender then reorganizes his or her behavior and personality around the consequences of the deviant act.
o The shoplifting student is caught by a security guard and expelled from college. With his law school dreams dashed and his future cloudy, his options are limited; people who know him say he "lacks character," and he begins to share their opinion. He eventually becomes a drug dealer and winds up in prison.
• Secondary deviance involves resocialization into a deviant role as it produces a deviance amplification effect.
• Offenders feel isolated from the mainstream of society and become firmly locked within their deviant role. They may seek out others similarly labeled to form deviant subcultures or groups.
• Ever more firmly enmeshed in their deviant role, they are locked into an escalating cycle of deviance, apprehension, more powerful labels, and identity transformation.
• The concept of secondary deviance expresses the core of social reaction theory: Deviance is a process in which a person's identity is transformed.
• Efforts to control the offenders, whether by treatment or punishment, simply help lock them in their deviant role.
• Student views will vary.
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