ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the various explanations of deviance furnished by the social sciences, and discusses the nature, extent, and classification of crime. In most contemporary societies, informal social control is not sufficient to contain deviance. Therefore, formal social controls must be instituted. One type of formal social control is the enactment of statutes, or laws, that define the actions that are prohibited to members because they are too destructive to the society. A different conception of what constitutes deviant behavior and how people are defined as being deviant is represented by the labeling theory. Criminality is such a complex form of behavior that to assign a single, biological cause to it is extremely shortsighted. The cultural transmission theory, also called the differential association theory, is a kind of learning theory, as it is based on the proposition that deviance is learned through symbolic interaction, much as all other human behavior.
