PART A
Working on your own, quickly categorise how each of the following acts are seen in the United Kingdom today.
Which ones are:
(a) seen as deviant AND are illegal?
(b) seen as deviant but are NOT illegal?
(c) illegal, but are not necessarily seen as deviant?
- Rape
- Using the firm’s telephone for personal calls
- Adultery
- Parking too long in a restricted bay
- Fiddling expenses
- Under age sex
- Living with 34 cats
- Bank robbery
As a group of three or four discuss your answers to Part A and explain how you arrived at those answers.
PART B
As a follow-up exercise, in your group, each person should take turns to suggest for each of the following categories, one example of something that is:
a) seen as deviant in Britain today
b) seen as deviant but is not criminal
c) illegal but may not be seen as deviant
d) not deviant/criminal today but was in the past
e) deviant/criminal today, but was not in the past
f) deviant/criminal here, but is not so in another society
g) deviant/crminal in another society, but not here
Are there any examples of behaviour that has been seen as deviant in all societies at all times?
PART C
Now use the above (Parts A and B) to help you write a short essay on the ‘relativity’ of crime and deviance.