NCJ Number
142320
Journal
Studies in Symbolic Interaction Volume: 11 Dated: (1990) Pages: 351-371
Date Published
1990
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This is a review of the literature on the temporal perception of criminal offenders, with an application of past research to a uniform theory of social time.
Abstract
There are no recent studies of this topic, and most of the research has been done during the 1960's. Related studies have produced two major insights. First, several works have indicated that offenders, particularly juvenile delinquents, perceive time in a "deviant" way, thus implying an overall association between deviant behavior and perceptions of existence, passage, and duration that are not shared with the social mainstream. Offenders, particularly juveniles, have been found to overestimate the passage of time, and their perceptions of the future are constricted in both range and clarity when compared with the future perception of nonoffenders. Second, some of the works on time and crime have shown that the offender's different perception of time is not always learned in a subcultural context and that it can emerge in a spontaneous, sometimes even isolated, course of action. These two aspects of deviant temporality merge into one concept when analyzed from a theoretical standpoint that distinguishes between social and intersubjective time on the one hand and cultural, pseudo-objective time on the other hand. The proposed association between temporal perception and deviant behavior can also serve as an illustration of the general assumption of an association between the perception of time and human behavior, whether it is deviant or conformist. 71 references