NCJ Number
116987
Date Published
1988
Length
29 pages
Annotation
The effective analysis of sociological theories of deviance requires obtaining facts and cultivating intimate associations on case histories and deviant biographies that can provide sociological information that might otherwise have been withheld.
Abstract
Participant observation is employed with special frequency in the study of deviance as it helps sociologists understand cause and effect in a particular social setting. An alternative approach involves controlled interviews by sociologists in prisons and mental hospitals. This approach transforms an enclosed community into a sociological subject in its own right while it evaluates institutions as repositories of people who are of interest to sociologists. Victim surveys represent another source of information about deviance. Indirect sources of information, such as official statistics and newspapers, are also useful and sociologists often define them as compressed summaries of complicated interchanges between people. Crime rates can be examined in their own right, but it is also possible to assess them as part of the environment in which deviance is displayed. 99 references.