The Saints and the Ruffians were two groups of high school boys that lived in the suburbs, both were persistently involved in underage drinking, daredevil driving, skipping school, petty theft, There their similarities ended. None of the Saints were ever arrested, but everyRuffian was habitually in trouble with the police and townspeople. Why the inequality in theirtreatment? The difference was the social class of the two groups. The Saints were able to hide behind a false wall of respectability. They came from “goodfamilies”, were active in school organizations, showed interest in going to college, and receivedgood grades. The townspeople and their families just saw their acts as “sowing wild oats” and“boys will be boys”. On the otherhand, the Ruffians didn’t have such an aura of respectability.They had beat up old cars, were usually bad in school, and were looked at with suspicion nomatter what they did. The Ruffians were labeled “troublemakers,” when the Saints were seen as “fun lovingkids.” Both of these groups were gangs of delinquents or deviants. A deviant person is one whosebehavior violates the standards of conduct or expectations of a group or society. Underagedrinking, daredevil driving, skipping school, petty theft, and vandalism were all acts of deviantbehavior. But, how was one group labeled deviant while the other was not? Many sociologist have turned to the labeling theory as a method of explaining thisdifference. The labeling theory does not focus on why people commit deviant acts to begin with,but it is concerned with the processes by which the label deviant comes to be attached to specificpeople and behaviors (Agnew 1989). The first time a child acts up in class, it may be caused by a bad mood or high energy.What happens in the future of this child depends oh how others see and interpret the act. This isthe key to the labeling theory, sometimes called...
