The Social Patterning of Deviant Behaviors in School.

One of 52 theoretical papers on school crime and its relation to poverty, this chapter attempts to demonstrate that deviant behaviors in school are caused and patterned by the manner in which schools differentially constrain the ability of students legitimately to attain the goal of academic success. By applying a modified and extended version of Merton's model of deviance to an assessment of the available research on student deviancy, the authors show that the occurrence of deviance among students, in both overall rates and types of deviant responses made, is socially patterned within the social system of the school, reflecting the socioeconomic status, racial, and sexual attributes of the student body. (Author/MLF)