ABSTRACT
The study of social deviance within American sociology has traditionally been based on a model that consigns delinquent behavior to the instruments of social welfare. This model has sought to liberalize the visible agencies of social control (the police, judiciary, and welfare agents) by converting them for punitive instruments into rehabilitative instruments. This underlying premise that punishment and rehabilitation are the only two possible responses to deviance yields the conventional tendency to evaluate deviant behavior in therapeutic rather than political terms (Nettler, 1958–59, pp. 203–212).
