Follow-up to Thursday's Lecture & Notes and Reminders

NOTES AND REMINDERS:
It is early Sunday afternoon and it appears that only 7 of you have posted your comment on those FBI crime figure trends. I'd like to see all of you post your comments by tomorrow (Monday, 9/12). As I mentioned in class, I'd like to use some of your responses as we get into the topic of crime statistics on Tuesday. I will be making a few additional comments about the issue of defining deviance and crime, and then get into crime statistics. I will also have a couple handouts for you on Tuesday.

I may not be in my office tomorrow (Monday, 9/12) until late in the day because I am having some work done on my house and I will have to be home for at least part of the day. I hope I'll be able to get in by late afternoon (3 or 4PM).

After venturing into the topic of the Kennedy Assassination at the end of class last Thursday, I mentioned that I've written a few papers on the subject which you are welcome to read. One of these papers is on my much-neglected faculty website. If you go there and click on the assassination of JFK, it will take you to a 40-page paper I wrote on "Time" magazine's coverage of this event from 1963-1999. That is the only paper, I believe, that is accessible online. I have hard copies of others in my office.

FOLLOW-UP TO THURSDAY'S LECTURE:

I trust that my getting off on a bit of a tangent with the Kennedy assassination did not confuse you as to the point I was trying to make about defining deviance. Recall, that after I basically rejected Matza's completely relativistic definition of deviance, in which almost anything might be considered deviant, I presented Goode's definition, which is better. But Goode's definition still hinges on peoples' attitudes and opinions, which I was arguing may be (and quite often are) based on myths, prejudice and certainly not fact. Ultimately, I believe we should seek a basis IN FACT for labeling behavior as deviant and punishing or condemning people because of it. This point is even more important when we talk about CRIME, because in the case of crime, the state or government gets involved in punishing or condemning people for engaging in these acts. And in the case of JFK, or some aspects of "business as usual," you have examples of deviant and criminal behavior which in fact deserve condemnation but isn't because people are confused or ignorant of the facts.

I will come back to this again, briefly, next Tuesday (9/13).

Finally, remember to weigh in on that first individual exercise, which is described in the previous blog post.