Understanding Deviance and the Need for Re-Socialization

Every society runs on an invisible rulebook. We queue without being told, lower our voices in a library, and feel a pang of guilt when we jump a red light. These unwritten and written expectations are social norms, and most of us follow them without a second thought. But not everyone does, and not always. When behaviour strays from what a group considers acceptable, sociologists call it deviance. Understanding why deviance happens, how harmful patterns take root early in life, and how people are guided back toward shared values through re-socialization tells us a great deal about how communities hold themselves together.

What is deviance?
Formal and informal deviance
Where does deviance come from?
The impact of deviant socialization
How early negative influences take root
From minor problems to serious patterns
Re-socialization for correction
How re-socialization works
Correction through rehabilitation
Why this matters

What is deviance?

Deviance is any behaviour, belief, or condition that violates the norms of a particular group and provokes a negative reaction. The key word is “norms”. A norm is simply a shared expectation about how people should act in a given situation. Break it, and you risk disapproval, ridicule, or punishment. The sociologist William Graham Sumner argued back in 1906 that deviance is the violation of established cultural or social norms, whether those are everyday customs, deeply held moral standards, or formal laws.

One important point often surprises people: deviance is relative. There is no single act that is deviant everywhere and always. A behaviour treated as a serious offence in one society may be perfectly ordinary in another, and what counts as deviant in one decade can become acceptable in the next. Even an act as serious as killing is judged differently when a government permits it during warfare or in self-defence. Deviance, in other words, is not a fixed quality of an action. It is defined by the rules other people impose in a specific social context.

Formal and informal deviance

Sociologists usually sort deviance into two broad categories. Formal deviance breaks codified laws, such as theft, fraud, or assault, and typically invites legal consequences. Informal deviance violates unwritten social customs rather than statutes. Examples include littering, jaywalking, public intoxication, and loitering. These rarely lead to arrest, but they can still draw ridicule or social exclusion from peers. The consequences imposed by others, whether a fine or a disapproving stare, are called sanctions.

It also helps to remember that deviance is not always harmful. From a functionalist viewpoint, breaking a norm can push a society forward. Many reform movements began with people who refused to follow rules that were unjust. So while deviance carries a negative everyday connotation, sociologists treat it neutrally: it is simply behaviour that departs from the expected.

Where does deviance come from?

If most people learn to follow norms, why do some break them? Sociology offers several explanations. Strain theory, developed by Robert Merton, holds that deviance is often a response to a gap between socially approved goals and the legitimate means available to reach them. When success, such as wealth or status, is expected of everyone but the honest routes to it are blocked for some, a few people turn to unconventional or illegitimate methods to get there. Merton called such people innovators, in contrast to conformists who play by the rules.

A second influential idea is labelling theory. The sociologist Edwin Lemert distinguished between primary and secondary deviance. Primary deviance is the initial rule-breaking act, often minor and easily forgotten. Secondary deviance is what happens when a person is repeatedly labelled “deviant” by others and gradually absorbs that label into their sense of self. Once someone is treated as a troublemaker or a criminal, they may begin to see themselves that way and act accordingly. The label, not just the original act, shapes their future behaviour. This insight matters enormously when we think about how to respond to young offenders.

The impact of deviant socialization

Most of us absorb norms through socialization, the lifelong process of learning the values and expectations of our society. Family, school, friends, and the wider community all act as agents of this process. But socialization can also work in the wrong direction. When the early influences in a child’s life are negative, unstable, or harmful, the child may learn norms that clash with the wider society. This is sometimes described as deviant socialization, and its effects can echo for years.

How early negative influences take root

Research consistently links difficult early environments with later behavioural problems. Strong associations have been found between childhood adversity and outcomes such as depressive symptoms, antisocial behaviour, and substance use during the transition to adulthood. Adverse experiences like neglect and exposure to domestic violence can disrupt normal emotional and cognitive development, increasing the likelihood of aggression and impulsivity.

The risk factors tend to cluster together. A longitudinal study found that lower socio-economic status, not living with both biological parents, a poor family climate, and severe parental strain were each associated with stronger antisocial behaviour in children and adolescents. Harsh parenting, household conflict, poverty, and a parent’s own substance use frequently appear together, compounding one another. No single factor is destiny, but the more risks a child accumulates, the steeper the climb becomes.

From minor problems to serious patterns

What begins as small misbehaviour can escalate if it goes unaddressed. Childhood conduct problems are recognised risk factors for later difficulties, including school failure, depression, and substance use, and evidence suggests early conduct problems can lead to more serious forms of antisocial behaviour that persist through adolescence. According to developmental models of delinquency, covert acts such as shoplifting can progress to more serious offences, while overt aggression like fighting can escalate or harden into a stable pattern over time.

This is where Lemert’s idea of secondary deviance becomes practical. A child who is punished harshly, excluded from school, and treated as a lost cause may internalise that identity. The original act fades in importance; the reaction to it, and the self-image it produces, takes over. Understanding this chain reaction explains why simply punishing deviant behaviour rarely solves the underlying problem, and why correction has to involve relearning, not just penalties.

Re-socialization for correction

If harmful norms can be learned, they can also be unlearned. This is the promise of re-socialization: the process of shedding old values, attitudes, and behaviours and adopting new ones. While ordinary socialization unfolds gradually across childhood, re-socialization tends to happen more rapidly and deliberately, usually in a new environment where the old rules no longer apply. Joining the military, immigrating to a new country, or entering a rehabilitation programme all involve a degree of re-socialization.

How re-socialization works

The sociologist Erving Goffman studied re-socialization in what he termed total institutions, places that exert near-complete control over the lives of their residents, where all activity happens in one location under a single authority. Prisons, military boot camps, monasteries, and certain residential facilities are classic examples. Goffman described re-socialization in these settings as a two-part process. First, staff work to break down a person’s former identity, sometimes through measures like surrendering personal possessions, wearing standardised clothing, and following rigid routines. Second comes the systematic rebuilding of a new self, usually through a structured system of rewards and punishments. Earning the privilege to make a phone call or read a book becomes a powerful motivator to conform.

Goffman called the stripping away of the old identity the mortification of the self. The new identity that replaces it is then aligned with the institution’s norms. Importantly, re-socialization is neither inherently good nor bad. What matters is the purpose it serves. The same process that reforms an offender into a responsible citizen can, in a harmful institution, be used to control or diminish people. The ends define its value.

Correction through rehabilitation

Re-socialization need not be harsh. Outside total institutions it can be gentler, and modern approaches to correcting deviant behaviour increasingly favour rehabilitation over pure punishment, especially for the young. The reasoning is rooted in the sociology we have already covered: young people are still developing, their identities are not yet fixed, and harsh treatment risks pushing them deeper into a deviant self-image rather than away from it.

India’s approach to young offenders illustrates this shift clearly. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 was framed around the social re-integration of children rather than their punishment. It treats anyone below 18 as a child who lacks the full maturity of an adult, and it recognises that many children who break the law come from poverty, broken homes, or the streets, treating them as products of their circumstances rather than simply as criminals.

The law builds in mechanisms designed around relearning and reintegration. Instead of adult jails, children are placed in observation homes during inquiries and may be sent to special homes for rehabilitation. Cases are heard not in adversarial courtrooms but before Juvenile Justice Boards in a child-friendly setting, focused on understanding a child’s background and needs. The system also provides after-care support for young people leaving institutional care, helping them find employment, accommodation, and a path back into society. In effect, the entire framework is an exercise in structured re-socialization: it removes a child from harmful influences, introduces positive norms and skills, and supports the transition back to ordinary life.

The reach of re-socialization extends well beyond the justice system. Deaddiction programmes help people unlearn the habits and social circles tied to substance dependence. Vocational training and counselling reshape how individuals see their own potential. Even joining a disciplined organisation can re-socialize an adult into new values of teamwork and self-restraint. In each case, the principle is the same one Goffman identified decades ago: change the environment and the relationships, and you can change the norms a person carries.

Why this matters

Deviance, the impact of negative early socialization, and re-socialization are really three parts of a single story about how societies maintain their shared values. Norms hold communities together, but they are learned, not inborn, which means they can be learned poorly or learned again. Recognising that someone’s harmful behaviour often grew from difficult circumstances, and that identity is shaped by how others respond, points toward correction rather than condemnation. A society that understands re-socialization is better equipped to reach for rehabilitation, to break cycles of deviance, and to bring people back rather than push them away.

What do you think? If a person’s deviant behaviour is largely shaped by the environment they grew up in, how much responsibility should fall on the individual versus the society around them? And do you think structured re-socialization, as used for young offenders, could be applied more widely to help adults break harmful patterns?

References

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Table of Contents

What is deviance? 🔗

Formal and informal deviance 🔗

Where does deviance come from? 🔗

The impact of deviant socialization 🔗

How early negative influences take root 🔗

From minor problems to serious patterns 🔗

Re-socialization for correction 🔗

How re-socialization works 🔗

Correction through rehabilitation 🔗

Why this matters 🔗