Extreme Deviance

Most primary deviation is of transitory significance and involves a fairly insignificant punishment. Extreme Deviance focuses on behavior, beliefs, and traits that are so serious as to generate, in the words of Edwin Lemert, secondary deviation. Editors Erich Goode and D. Angus Vail tunnel to the core of the subject by emphasizing a set of central lessons, offering edgy, pedagogically dramatic illustrations of principles that are contained in no other collection of readings. The book is complete with vocabularies of motive, deviance neutralization, the acquisition of a deviant identity, and the formation of a deviance subculture.