Solitary Deviance

Types of Solitary Deviance

Joel Best and David Luckenbill have suggested distinguishing between two types of solitary actors: loners and individual deviants. The distinction here is helpful for understanding the range of solitary deviant behavior.

Loners are those who have no regular association with others who engage in similar deviant activities and have no membership in related deviant subcultures. Therefore, even though a related deviant subculture may exist, the loner does not seek membership within the group. This does not speak to self-identity, however. Loners may develop rather complex self-identities that are organized around solitary deviant activities. Loners participate in deviant behaviors in relative isolation from other participants, but they do so in a larger community context. For example, someone engaged in embezzlement often does so in an organizational context and may develop a concept of self that is rather centrally organized around accomplishments as a successful thief. Embezzlers, as loners, also may come to identify themselves as occupying a position of superiority over the others who are the targets of their actions. Therefore, the success of some forms of deviance by loners depends on maintaining the secrecy of the deviant behavior.

Whereas the embezzler needs someone to embezzle, the individual deviant is the initiator of the deviant behavior as well as the target of the behavior. Individual deviants are those who can undertake deviant acts by themselves and direct the action to themselves. Deviant acts by individual deviants are victimless in the sense that no one other than the individual deviant himself or herself is involved. While one may argue that in cases of self-harm, the deviant and the victim are one and the same, the very idea of the individual deviant resists any traditional distinction between perpetrator and victim. Examples of individual deviants include self-mutilators, anorexics, bulimics, the homeless, the mentally ill, the depressed, and those who hold deviant worldviews (e.g., religious or political perspectives). While the deviance is individual, individual deviants can and do come together on the basis of their deviant involvements.

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