ABSTRACT
This chapter explores whether a meaningful grouping or classification of criminal and deviant acts according to public perceptions of them is possible. It investigates the extent to which a classification might apply cross-culturally. The chapter explains whether a patterning of the components of deviance perception applies to particular act classifications. The type of relativism to which many of remarks and data analysis so far have been addressed is that usually termed by moral philosophers as descriptive relativism, the extreme form of which is cultural relativism. It was therefore necessary to analyze the relationships among all components of deviance perception in relation to each other, in an effort to take into account other possible intervening variables. In the case of the Sardinian sample the reverse trend occurred, with an increase in relationship among the components of deviance perception when considered only in relation to the acts of social responsibility.
