You're A Bad Boy, Mr. Bolen!

            Dean was born in Inglewood, California, which is a suburb of Los Angeles, on December 2, 1986. California was his home, and he loved it there. Life, however, was not always easy. His parents married right out of high school and didn’t have a lot of money. They lived in a small two bedroom apartment in a neglected part of Inglewood. It was not uncommon to hear of robberies, assaults, and shootings in the neighborhood. It was a part of life when you grow up in a poor neighborhood. To support the family with what they could, Dean’s dad worked as a painter, and his mom worked as a dental assistant, which meant they were not home a lot. Five days a week Dean would be dropped off at his Grandma’s house, who was the person responsible for rearing him from five in the morning until seven at night when his mom finished her job. Unfortunately, Dean was not the only child Grandma was rearing. Grandma was also responsible for rearing her son Phil’s three boys: Richie, Ronny, and Ryan. Dean’s Uncle Phil decided that he did not want to take care of his kids anymore, so he left them with Dean’s grandma. At this time, Grandma was in her sixties and did not have much control over the children. While growing up in Grandma’s house, Ronny and Dean became good friends. Ronny was five years older than Dean, but by the time Dean was three years old, he went everywhere with Ronny.

            Ronny and Dean were best friends and cousins. They did everything together, which included getting in to trouble. With no oversight, they were free to do as they pleased. Ronny was always finding new ways to get into trouble, and Dean went right along with him as he looked up to Ronny. In return, Ronny taught Dean everything he knew, and at the young age of eight, Dean learned how easy it was to steal from people at Redondo Beach. Ronny taught Dean the secret, and they would spend their summers stealing people’s stuff right off the beach. Luckily, they were never caught. Dean’s parents were too busy to notice all the new things he had to play with at home, and Dean was too busy enjoying all of his new stuff to worry about getting in trouble. When the summers ended, Ronny and Dean had to find new people to steal from, and the school seemed like a perfect place. Unfortunately, this did not go unnoticed.

            One afternoon after school with nothing to do, Ronny and Dean snuck back into the school around four-thirty expecting that everyone would be gone, but they did not account for the security guard. As they were running in and out of classrooms breaking windows and writing profanity on the walls, the security guard was tracking them down and eventually caught up to them. The security guard kept Ronny and Dean in his office while he called Grandma to come and get them. Luckily, grandma did not punish the boys as she believed it was simply kids acting like kids. Ronny and Dean spent the next three years causing mischief. However, Dean’s run of luck finally came to an end in the summer of 1997 when Dean decided to go to the beach without Ronny because he was sick. Without Ronny’s help, Dean was quickly spotted by the officers patrolling the beach and picked up for theft. Unfortunately, the officers did not bother to call grandma, but instead, they took Dean down to juvenile lock up. For the first time, Dean spent the night in a juvenile detention center.

            When Dean’s parents picked him up the next morning, they made the decision to move north to Washington State, which had adverse affects on Dean. The only life he had known was taken from him because of the impulsive decision of his parents. He went from being an insider with his cousin Ronny, to being an outsider in his new environment. He was not well received when he moved to Washington State. He was alone. His days were spent at home alone while his parents worked. This isolation eventually led Dean to lash out as he could not handle the isolation. He snapped. He eventually made friends and spent the next five years of his life causing trouble and teaching those around him how to create mischief. Dean brought his skills up North.                  

            When looking at Dean’s life through a sociological lens, two theories might help explain why Dean engaged in deviant acts: Control Theory, and Differential Association. According to Travis Hirschi’s (1969) Control Theory, “delinquent acts result when an individual’s bond to society is weak or broken.” Dean spent his youth rearing himself. His parents were too busy for him, and his grandma was too old to watch over him. Dean was free to do as he pleased, which consisted of causing mischief with his cousin Ronny. When looking through Hirschi’s (1969) Control Theory, he states that one must be involved in conventional activities to avoid deviant acts. With no oversight in Dean and Ronny’s lives, they were able to do as they pleased. They had the free time needed to commit deviant acts. According to Hirschi (1969), “to the extent that he [or she] is engrossed in conventional activities, [which consist of activities like work, school, homework, planned outings] he [or she] cannot even think about deviant acts, let alone act out his [or her] inclinations.” Dean clearly did not have anyone to engage him in the conventional activities needed to abide by society’s standards, and his involvement in society simply was not there. He had the time needed to commit the deviant acts he engaged in with his cousin Ronny while lacking any attachment to society.

            While Control Theory helps explain Dean’s deviant acts, Differential Association helps to further explain why Dean committed these acts. According to Differential Association Theory by Edwin H. Sutherland, and Donald R. Cressey (1977), “Criminal behavior is learned… [and] a person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavorable to violation of law.” It is evident that Dean learned how to break the law from his cousin Ronny.  Dean did not engage in deviant acts nor did he know how to steal until Ronny taught him how to engage in those behaviors. It was clearly a learned behavior, and once Dean experienced the rewards of stealing, he did not want to stop. As Sutherland and Cressey (1977) state, “a person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law,” which Dean found to be true when he stole as he was provided with new things his parents could not afford to buy him. Stealing the stuff was worth the risk. Sutherland and Cressey (1977) also state that, “the principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate personal groups,” which was clearly the case with Dean. Ronny showed Dean how to commit deviant acts and how not to get caught by the authorities. Dean’s behavior was indeed learned through his association with Ronny. While there may be other ways to explain Dean’s life of deviance, Control Theory and Differential Association Theory help to explain why Dean may have engaged in the behaviors he did.   

Travis Hirschi. (1969). Causes of Delinquency. In Alex Thio, Thomas C. Calhoun, and Addrain Conyers (Eds.), Readings in Deviant Behavior (pp. 30-32). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Edwin H. Sutherland and Donald R. Cressey. (1977). Criminology. In Alex Thio, Thomas C. Calhoun, and Addrain Conyers (Eds.), Readings in Deviant Behavior (pp. 27-29). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. 

Word Count 1224

Part II

            “Hey, watch it.”

            “What the hell, man?”

            “You got a problem?”

            “Watch where you’re going a**hole!”

            These were a just a few of the several responses I received the other day when I went for a walk. On January 28, 2011, I spent my afternoon from 1:30 to 2:30 and then again from 5:00 to 5:30 walking around downtown Portland, Oregon. I paced back and forth on Yamhill Street between Southwest 3rd and 4^th avenue for roughly an hour and a half. As I walked up and down the street, I made every attempt to walk into people as they approached me. I chose not to move out of people’s way, which forced people to sidestep me or walk right into me as I was not about to move when people approached me walking toward them on the sidewalk. People throughout society generally expect individuals to move out of people’s way or step to the side when they are walking toward someone. This would be considered a social norm, and by violating that norm, I became deviant for a short period of time as deviance is defined by some sociologists as violating a social rule (Heckert, 2002). Howard S. Becker (1963) states that these are basic values and rules that society has agreed to follow. While my deviant acts may not have been a crime, it was what Alexander B. Smith and Harriet Pollack (1976) refer to as “deviance in poor taste;” my actions, while not illegal, were disapproved by society because it violated people’s personal space and did not provide the polite courtesy of stepping aside that society expects. By violating this rule, there was the possibility that I could annoy people, be insulted, or at the worst, get assaulted by someone with a short fuse. Fortunately for me, the latter did not occur. I faced threats from individuals and was referred to by derogatory names. My actions were not well received as people were upset and frustrated by my walking habits, and on more than one occasion, the person who I walked into was knocked to the ground as they were oblivious to the fact that I was not about to move for them. Even though I would apologize for walking into someone, I was still often chastised for my behavior as people assumed I was not paying attention to them. That afternoon I walked into twenty-three people. Of the twenty-three individuals, thirteen of them were males, and ten were females, and of the twenty-three people I walked into, fifteen made some sort of derogatory comment, six people reassured me that it was okay and they were not upset, and two kept walking but provided me with dirty looks at the time of the interaction. The first time I walked into someone I felt awkward, but that awkwardness went away when the individual I walked into referred to me in a derogatory manner. At that point, I was frustrated by the person’s reaction, and I did not feel any apprehension toward walking into people. I went about my deviance in a jovial manner after the first interchange.

Howard S. Becker. (1963). Group from Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. In Alex Thio, Thomas C. Calhoun, and Addrain Conyers (Eds.), Readings in Deviant Behavior (pp. 39-41). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.            

Alex Heckert and Druann Maria Heckert. (2010). A New Typology of Deviance: Integrating and Reactivist Definitions of Deviance. In Alex Thio, Thomas C. Calhoun, and Addrain Conyers (Eds.), Readings in Deviant Behavior (pp. 11-14). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.            

Alexander P. Smith and Harriet Pollack. (2000). Deviance as Crime, Sin, and Poor Taste. In Patricia A. Adler, and Peter Adler (Eds.), Constructions of Deviance: Social Power, Context, and Interaction (pp. 19-28). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.  

Word Count: 519