Primary and Secondary Deviance

Primary and secondary deviance are processes in the development of deviant roles and careers. Primary deviance occurs when an individual first violates conventional expectations for behavior, while secondary deviance involves the problems created by the reactions of family, friends, authorities, or institutions.

Primary and secondary deviance were first discussed by Edwin Lemert in his 1951 book Social Pathology. The concepts became important to the [Page 542]larger movement in sociology to de-emphasize individual qualities and behaviors and to concentrate attention on social responses. Rather than a quest to identify the causes of individual deviance, Lemert argued for the study of social actions and responses important to the production of deviance. He proposed that a sequence of interactions would lead from primary to secondary deviance. This process can be signified in eight steps: (1) primary deviation; (2) social penalties; (3) further primary deviation; (4) stronger penalties and rejections; (5) further deviation, perhaps with hostilities and resentment beginning to focus on those doing the penalizing; (6) crisis reached in the tolerance quotient, expressed in formal action by the community stigmatizing of the deviant; (7) strengthening of the deviant conduct as a reaction to the stigmatizing and penalties; and (8) ultimate acceptance of deviant social status and efforts at adjustment on the basis of the associate role.

Many primary deviations are insignificant instances of rule breaking and go unnoticed or unobserved. They may be repeated infrequently or not at all. Initial acts of rule breaking are therefore not considered sociologically important unless there are social reactions that create problems for a deviant individual. Nor are the origins of deviance especially relevant to sociology. Instead, the meanings assigned to acts and individuals and societal responses to these meanings are sociologically important. Or as Lemert (1951) observed, “Deviations are not significant until they are organized subjectively and transformed into active roles and become the social criteria for assigning status” (p. 75).

In the process of an individual adjusting to social reactions, deviance becomes more or less entrenched in identity. Social reactions to an individual deviant guide expectations for behavior and narrow the range of roles available for an individual to play. Secondary deviance thus occurs when an individual feels constrained by a deviant role, sees some rewards in playing out a deviant role, applies a deviant definition to the self, or engages in other deviant behaviors in support of a deviant role. A common illustration of the process of secondary deviance is the evolution of a drug user into a drug addict. A drug user experiences the pleasures of intoxication and camaraderie with other drug users, may commit crimes in support of an expensive drug habit, and perhaps participates in rehabilitation programs that require an acceptance and admission of one's addiction.

This kind of example reveals the centrality of the concept of secondary deviance to the labeling theory. As elaborated by Howard Becker in his 1963 book, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, deviance depends on public reactions. An individual who sustains “a pattern of deviance over a long period of time” and whose identity is organized around deviant behavior is one who has been caught, labeled, and subjected to the enforcement of rules for behavior. Social reactions to deviance contribute to difficulties in conforming to rules for behavior that might not otherwise be broken. In Becker's well-known example, the deceit and crime in which a drug addict engages are consequences of the public reaction to drug use.

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