Profiles of Punishment and Privilege: Secret and Disputed Deviance During the Racialized Transition to American Adulthood

• NCJ Number: 217405
• Journal: Crime, Law and Social Change Volume: 46 Issue: 1-2 Dated: 2006 Pages: 65-85
• Author(s): John Hagan; Holly Foster
• Date Published: 2006
• Length: 21 pages
• Grant Number(s): SES-0001753; P01-HD31921
• Sponsoring Agency: American Bar Association; National Science Foundation; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article combines Loury’s (2002) thought experiments on racial inequality with Becker’s (1963) typology of deviance to analyze differences in privilege and punishment among White and African-American youth and emerging adults who engage in various forms of drug activity.

Abstract

The analysis reveals the differences in punishment and privilege between White and African-American youth and emerging adults that expose historical racism in the United States. The authors show how a significant number of White American youth and emerging adults regularly take part in “partying” behavior that statistically exceeds standard levels of acceptable behavior. Despite the clear evidence of drug activities, this portion of the excessive “partying” population, which is predominantly White and economically advantaged, are rarely exposed to official sanctions. These overwhelmingly White “secret deviants” are contrasted to a smaller but still significant number of African-American youth and emerging adults who dispute the label of “convicted deviant” bestowed on them by the juvenile and criminal courts. The authors argue that while the privileged position of the White, affluent party subculture both enables and empowers the excessively partying “secret deviants,” the selective punishment of other forms of drug activity and delinquency is profoundly disabling for African-Americans. The analysis suggests that concealed racial conventions have shaped the construction of the American collective conscience, which Loury has identified as one source of cognitive imprisonment. Data for the analysis were drawn from the Add Health survey, a longitudinal survey of adolescents from grades 7 to 12 that began in 1995. Participants were 10,828 adolescents who completed all 3 waves of the survey and answered questions regarding drug and alcohol use behaviors, sexual activity, individual and group fighting, and delinquency involvement. The current analysis relied on the statistical software package Stata and focused on whether drug and other delinquent behaviors clustered meaningfully into behavioral domains. Figure, tables, references