Images of deviance

During the present century we have been taught to regard the sexual offender, the drug taker or the vandal not as degenerate but as sick: he has a 'kink', a 'warped mentality' or a 'twisted mind'. The attitude of society towards those who deviate from it's rules has turned from the punitive to the therapeutic. But too often the psychiatric remedies proposed (such as electric shock, brain surgery and compulsory hospitalization) smack of the same authoritarianism under a liberal guise. The seven papers in this volume were given at the York Deviancy symposium and adopt a sceptical position to crime, deviance and social problems. The subjects studied range from marijuana smoking to football hooliganism, from industrial sabotage to the functions of coroners. In all these the parts played by the press, television and the police are inextricable. These writers are not unanimous in every detail, but each is concerned with the criteria by which behaviour is considered deviant and the standing of the deviant in society.