Crime is a behaviour/act that goes against a society’s law, and therefore has legal consequences attached if broken, e.g. prison sentence, penalty charge. Deviance is an act/behaviour that goes against a societies norms and values, however is not against the law and therefore not punishable by law. It is a relative term dependent on different societies and their norms and values; what is considered deviant also changes over times, for example it used to be considered deviant for women to smoke, whereas now that is accepted (western). There is a clear relationship between gender and crime according to official statistics. It has been revealed that men about six or seven times more likely to offend than women. In self-report studies the figures are not as large, however, men are still in the majority. Also when we look at victims of crime it appears that men are more likely to be victims of crime than women.
Messerschmidt says young men want to conform to the dominant form of masculinity which he called ‘hegemonic masculinity’. It’s the idealised form which is ‘defined through work in the paid labour market, the subordination of women, heterosexist and the uncontrollable sexuality of men’, (It’s a form of masculinity that most men aim to accomplish and is prized and prestigious). Messerschmidt argues that different men use crime and deviance to accomplish prestigious hegemonic masculinity. Depending on their status and class position, different men attempt to accomplish this masculinity in different ways. Young Middle class males are usually able to demonstrate some form of masculinity through success at school/college, while some assert their masculinity outside of school through vandalism, theft and heavy drinking, they are able to avoid negative labelling due to their affluent background. White working class young men are less likely to be successful in education