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Accounting For Deviant Behaviors Among Marathon Runners
Deviant Behavior
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Objectives
Sports programs are widely implemented as measures of crime prevention. In contrast to their popularity, there is little systematic knowledge about their effectiveness. This systematic review and meta-analysis have been carried out to fill this gap. In a systematic review, we gathered data on evaluated prevention programs specifically designed to prevent crime and delinquency. We then conducted a meta-analytic integration with studies using at least roughly equivalent control groups for the program evaluation.
Method
To retrieve relevant literature, we conducted a comprehensive international literature search until June 2021 drawing on scientific databases. We also applied snow-balling searches and contacted practitioners in the field. Studies were eligible if they evaluated sports programs designed to prevent delinquency on primary, secondary, and/or tertiary level. We focused on crime-related outcomes and potentially underlying psycho-social factors. We made no restrictions regarding characteristics of the participants or other aspects such as duration of the program.
Results
24 studies were eligible for our systematic review, from which only thirteen were included into our meta-analytic integration. We found a moderate effect of participation in sports programs on crime-related outcomes ( d = 0.36, p < .001). Participants showed a significant decrease in outcomes such as aggressiveness or anti-social behavior. We also analyzed psychological outcomes such as self-esteem or mental well-being, which also significantly improved when participating in sports programs ( d = 0.87, p < ..05).
Conclusions
Sports programs seem to be an effective measure of crime prevention. However, future research needs more sound evaluation designs and moderator analyses to better understand the functioning and improve the implementation of sports programs.
Microdosing classic psychedelics (e.g., LSD [lysergic acid diethylamide] and psilocybin) is the practice of taking small amounts of these substances to bring about various positive life changes. Little is known about the subjective experiences and perceptions of those who engage in the practice. Accordingly, we use the sociology of accounts as a theoretical framework to explore the ways that those who microdose excuse or justify their practice. Using data from semistructured interviews with 30 people who had microdosed, we find that none provided excuses for their microdosing, but all offered one or more justifications. When discussing their microdosing, participants emphasized six key justifications: denial of injury, self-sustaining, self-fulfillment, appeal to normality, appeal to loyalties, and knowledgeableness. Findings provide insights into the subjective experiences of those who microdose, including the ways that they attempt to align their actions with societal expectations.
Despite widespread condemnation of drug use in sport, recent flurries of riders’ confessions have emphasized the normalization and omnipresence of doping within cycling. This has particularly occurred since the Festina affair in 1998, and Lance Armstrong’s confession about drug use in 2012. Whilst there is an array of reasons for cyclists’ doping, little is known about how this is understood in relation to their performances. This paper addresses this by analyzing 112 doping cyclists’ confessions, adopting an interactionist perspective on deviance and a position of ‘sport as work’. Findings show how doping is legitimated by cyclists on three levels of their performance. These include maintaining their performance to themselves, presenting their performance to their team and supporting the grand spectacle of cycling. It is concluded that doping becomes a form of ‘performance egoism’ that allows cyclists to legitimate their performances.
Purpose: to gain insight into the organisation of informal street selling in the capital of Belgium, its association with formal and illegal selling and the perceptions, choices and decisions of the sellers.
Design/methodology/approach: a qualitative approach (case study) was employed, including interviews, observations and document analyses.
Findings: our results point to different types of informal street selling, which are mainly executed by (illegal) migrants as a survival strategy. The case illustrates the different interrelations between the formal, informal and criminal economy. Notwithstanding the precarious situation of many informal sellers, (informal) street selling is preserved by the government as a social safety net. Moreover, informal selling is neutralised by the suggestion that it is a better alternative than stealing or committing crimes which inflict physical harm and feelings of insecurity.
Research limitations/implications: our results have limited generalisability, but are theoretically and methodologically important.
Practical implications: implications for migration policy (e.g. more preventative actions in countries of origin, shorter procedures, development of migration regulations accounting for other policy domains, e.g. employment market).
Social implications: preservation of a street market for the urban poor and a survival function for sellers whose livelihood is precarious.
Originality/value: the study fills a gap in the literature as there is limited empirical research on informal economy and Belgian informal street selling. Results are discussed in relation to international literature, thus overcoming a purely national perspective.
Sykes and Matza's neutralization theory, though a popular framework for understanding deviant behavior, remains badly underdeveloped in the criminological literature. In particular, few attempts have been made to connect it to narrative and sociocognitive research in psychology and related fields. From the perspective of this wider context, it appears that one reason neutralization theory has received only mixed empirical support is that it has been understood as a theory of criminal etiology. This makes little sense (how can one neutralize something before they have done it?). It also makes the theory difficult to test. Neutralization should instead be seen as playing a role in persistence in or desistance from criminal behavior. Additionally, the theory's central premises need to be substantially complicated. The notions that all excuses or justifications are ''bad'' and that reform involves ''accepting complete responsibility'' for one's actions are not tenable. Sykes and Matza were right to draw attention to self-understandings and attributions, but criminology was wrong in seeing neutralization theory as the last word on cognition in criminal behavior.
When offenders are asked to explain their crimes, they typically portray themselves as decent people despite their wrongdoings. To be effective at managing the stigma of crime, motivational accounts must be believable to the social audience. Thus, variation in patterns of accounts is likely due to the social position of the actors. Here we examine whether gender constrains the way individuals describe their crimes by analyzing the motivational accounts of male and female white collar offenders. Results show that while men and women both elicit justifications when discussing their crimes, they do differ in the frequency with which they call forth specific accounts and in the rhetorical nature of these accounts. When accounting for their crime, white collar offenders draw on gendered themes to align their actions with cultural expectations of masculinity and femininity. These findings suggest that gender does constrain the accounts that are available to white collar offenders.
Although talk is the fundamental material of human relations, the sociology of talk remains undeveloped. This article presents an analysis of one kind of talk, the employment of accounts--statements made to explain untoward behavior and bridge the gap between actions and expectations. Accounts may be classified by content as excuses and justifications, each with its own subtypes. Excuses and justifications are socially approved vocabularies which neutralize an act or its consequences when one or both are called into question. The honoring of an account represents the restoration of equilibrium. There are also strategies for avoiding accounts. More broadly, accounts are manifestations of the underlying negotiation of identities within speech communities.
The use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) is one of the most important issues in the world of sports. At its very heart, this issue speaks to athletic integrity and competitive fairness. When athletes engage in doping, they are committing acts of deviance. The main purpose of this research, accordingly, is to explain why athletes use illegal PEDs. Specifically, we use Tittle’s control balance theory as a conceptual framework. A sample of 852 professional athletes from Iran was used to test assumptions related to control balance theory, and the findings of the study generally indicated that the components of control balance theory predicted athletes’ doping behavior. In addition, the moderating relationships of the control balance model indicated that the relationship between the control deficit and PED use was moderated by the variance in self-control, opportunity, motivation, constraint, perceived benefits, and provocations. Specific results, policy implications, and study limitations are discussed.
Research in organizations has tended to focus only on performance in the workplace and until recently has not paid much attention to behavior outside of the workplace. Conversely, the limited research on crime in the National Football League (NFL), the type of organization we study, has focused largely on misbehavior off-the-field. We confluence these lines of research by focusing on both on-duty and off-duty behaviors. We examine the relationship between on-duty behavior, measured through both the number of penalties and total penalty yards accumulated by an NFL player, as well as their off-duty behavior, measured through criminal arrests. Findings show that a higher number of penalties and a higher total number of penalty yards is associated with more total arrests, more nonviolent arrests, but has no effect on violent arrests. These findings hold in the regular but not post-season.
Purpose
In the past few years, media attention to crime and violence committed by NFL players has increased. This paper compares NFL arrest rates to U.S. general population arrest rates from 2000 to 2013.
Methods
The current study uses online databases that contain information of NFL player arrests and UCR arrest data to calculate rates of arrest for violent crimes, property crimes, and public order crimes, for both the NFL and general population. Two-sample test of proportions are used to assess differences between the arrest rates for NFL players and the general population.
Results
Findings indicate that the general population has higher rates of arrests than the NFL population for property crimes and public order crimes, but NFL arrest rates for violent crimes are higher than for the general population in six of the fourteen yearly comparisons.
Conclusion
This study provides data on crime in the NFL. It offers some but not strong or consistent support to those that are concerned about violence among NFL players, but it does not support the claim that NFL players are more criminal than the general population.
The purpose of this article is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. To do so entails a critical assessment of existing perspectives on sex and gender and the introduction of important distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender. We argue that recognition of the analytical independence of these concepts is essential for understanding the interactional work involved in being a gendered person in society. The thrust of our remarks is toward theoretical reconceptualization, but we consider fruitful directions for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation.
Objectives
To examine whether a diverse range of both structured and unstructured routine activities is associated with offending, and whether activities have crime-specific effects.
Method
Data on 15-year-olds from the fourth wave of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime were analyzed (minimum n = 3,064). Principal components analyses identified core routine activities. Random intercepts logistic regression models examined their associations with assault, fare evasion, shoplifting, vandalism, and drug use.
Results
Core routine activities identified were hanging around with friends locally, hanging around away from home, nightlife, cultural and consumer activities, and involvement in youth clubs and sports. All had associations with offending, though effects varied by offense. For example, involvement in youth clubs and sports was positively associated with assault and fare evasion; involvement in nightlife was positively associated with assault and drug use; and hanging out with friends locally was positively associated with assault, shoplifting, and vandalism.
Conclusions
It is theorized that the varied targets and facilitators present in different activity settings help account for study results. Findings are limited by the cross-sectional character of data analyzed and may be influenced by selection effects. They would benefit from further testing with longitudinal data.
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Sociologists of crime and deviance have devoted considerable time and effort, in recent years, to the study of deviants' accounts of their activities. There are good reasons why students of deviance in particular should be interested in what can be learned from their subjects' explanations of their social practices. Actors are normally called to account for or to explain their activities precisely when these actions are seen by significant others to be in some sense “unreasonable”. Moreover, accounts are central to the processes of law. The purpose of legal judgements is to attribute or withold responsibility. In order to assess an individual's guilt, where criminal activities are concerned, lawyers, judges, and juries pose such questions as: “Did the defendant perform an illegal act?”; “if so, can he or she explain his or her actions in reasonable terms?”; “Was the act in question pre-meditated?” (that is, “motivated”); and, perhaps most important of all “What is the relationship between the accused's account of his or her involvement in an act, and their real involvement?”
Despite its longstanding popular appeal, the idea that athletic activity is a deterrent to crime and delinquency suffers from a distinct lack of empirical support. This paper tests the hypotheses that the relationship between high school sports participation and deviance varies by both type of deviant behavior and level of athletic involvement. The analysis is based upon longitudinal data focusing on the effects of involvement in high school sports, the country's largest institutional setting for youth sports participation, in early adulthood. We find that the relationship between athletic involvement and deviance varies significantly depending upon the deviant behaviors examined. Specifically, we find that shop-lifting decreases with sports participation, while drunken driving increases. Moreover, these effects extend further into the life course (age 30) than has been demonstrated in any previous study and hold across all our measures of sports participation. Several potential explanatory mechanisms are evaluated. The implications of these enduring, bifurcated effects are discussed.
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