Toward a Transnational Classification of Crime and Deviance

Abstract

A Norm Resistance Scale was constructed to measure four main aspects of deviance perception: the respondent's definition of the act as criminal or deviant; the intensity of the respondent's reaction; his preferences for official societal sanctions; and his general opinion concerning decriminalization. The scale was administered to urban and rural samples from five countries selected to represent a diverse array of political, social, economic, and cultural factors. Evidence was found for general agreement concerning the extent to which the control of a wide variety of deviant acts might be resisted. However, when cross-cultural comparisons were made for specific acts, wide differences were found both across countries and within countries, and the cross-country differences were the greater. Factor analysis was used to investigate similarity in underlying structure of deviance perception across countries. Although the data were not conclusive, they did suggest that two important factors-deviance protest and moral indignation-were operating on differing levels across all countries.