What do a gay rights activist of the 1960s, a student who screams out curse words in class, a man who gets into a fight at a bar, and a businessman who engages in financial fraud have in common? After reading this chapter, you know that they all are engaging in deviance. When people think of deviance, they often think of crime, but deviance is a broader concept. This chapter has shown that deviance includes any violation of social norms, not just the breaking of formal laws. Because social norms change over time, whether an action is seen as deviant or not can also change.

In this chapter, we explored the concept of deviance and crime in greater detail, highlighting the ways that deviance is socially constructed and how society responds to different kinds of deviance and crime. Both of these concepts are socially constructed, varying across time periods and societies.

Let’s return to the original discussion of cannabis now that we have a new lens through which to understand it. It is not only a question of whether it is legal and where it is legal, but also a question that must be informed by race and class. Given the vast racial disparities in the criminal justice system, policies related to cannabis legalization must address the harm that the war on drugs has done to Black and Latino communities. At the same time, there are clear class issues at play too; when wealthy individuals open recreational dispensaries, they are entrepreneurial, but when impoverished individuals sell cannabis on the underground market, they are criminals.

There are a few ways that communities and governments have tried to address the equity issues related to cannabis. In some cities, such as San Francisco, the district attorney has automatically expunged all cannabis charges from individuals’ records now that cannabis is recreationally legal in California (Serna 2019). In other places, such as Los Angeles, community groups have offered free expungement clinics (My Prop 47 2011). At these clinics, free legal services are provided so that people who were previously charged with cannabis crimes can also expunge them from their records.

Other ways that governments have tried to address this is through cannabis equity programs. The goal of these programs is to provide opportunities for marginalized groups to participate in the legal cannabis market. An example of this can be seen in the City of Los Angeles’ Social Equity program. Their mission is “to promote equitable ownership and employment opportunities in the cannabis industry in order to decrease disparities in life outcomes for marginalized communities, and to address the disproportionate impacts of the war on drugs in those communities” (City of Los Angeles Department of Cannabis Regulation 2022). This mission clearly takes into account the systemic inequalities in the criminal justice system that we discussed in this chapter.

All considered, questions of equity around cannabis (and the criminal justice system more broadly) are ones that don’t have easy solutions. But, if we use our sociological imagination, we can critically think about how policies impact communities in different ways. It was through communities, governments, and individuals identifying issues with cannabis legalization that these innovative approaches to equity were developed. There are likely many more challenges that will come to the criminal justice system in our lifetimes. With each new reform, we should continue to ask how we can make our society more equitable and address injustices of the past.

By looking at the criminal justice system in the United States and abroad, you should begin to see the ways that groups have vastly different experiences within social institutions. Now that you have a better sense of the basics of sociology, we’ll dive deeper into learning about social inequality, highlighting how individuals have different life opportunities based on their class, gender, race, and sexuality. In the next chapter, we’ll begin by learning about social stratification and social class.

Review of Learning Objectives

Licenses and Attributions for Conclusion

Open Content, Original

“Conclusion” by Alexandra Olsen is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

“Deviance, Crime, and Social Control Question Set” was created by ChatGPT and is not subject to copyright. Edits for relevance, alignment, and meaningful answer feedback by Colleen Sanders are licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open Content, Shared Previously

Definitions for Crime, Criminal justice system, Deviance, Differential association theory, Labeling theory, Primary deviance, Secondary deviance, Social control, Social disorganization theory, and Strain theory from “Ch.7 Key Terms” by Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, Asha Lal Tamang in Introduction to Sociology 3e, OpenStax, which is licensed under CC BY 4.0.