Social Norms And Criminalization Processes

We organize our world around the needs of the “norms” and we perceive the “others” as not belonging, being different in some fundamental way. When considering criminalization is it less important to focus on why some people break laws while others do not but to instead focus on why particular individuals/groups conduct is defined as crime while others are not. The process of othering in criminalization targets problem groups such as queer, welfare recipients, and people of color among others.
There is a broad intersection of social and criminalization processes as well as the dynamics of representation of crime. The bodies of subjects entangled with the law matter when we look at how legal processes unfold and the way crime is understood as a social fact. The way race, gender, sexuality, and class intersect with one another and with the processes of criminalization aid the understanding of the social basis for criminalization processes. As we understand, law regulates behavior. But as Gustafson notes, law also expressed the majority collective vision of social goods, ills, and moral values. The law is defined by and maintained by the “norms.” The inherent purpose of the law is to marginalize and punish those
Again in the case of the welfare recipients, we understand the historical process to be something that systematically excluded the “other” for most of its history. Flawed by the superiority of the norm, the welfare concept was the social control of poor families and neglect of black women in particular. The first maternalist welfare legislation was intended for white mothers only and the exclusivity of mothers’ aid programs coincided with the entrenchment of formal racial segregation. These reforms were intended to continually strengthen the social order. The “norm” reformers relied largely on rhetoric of moral