Wayward Cops: The Functions of Deviance in Groups Reconsidered

Abstract

This study reports three deviant social types in small police departments: the the and the Functionalists traditionally have focused the abstract, collective functions of deviance but this work concentrates the practical and individualistic uses of marginal group members. It is argued that deviant roles provide institutionalized means by which non-deviant members may indirectly violate or evade norms when it is to their advantage to do so. It is for these reasons that may need their deviants. This study attempts to elaborate the uses and abuses of deviants in an occupational structure. Three occupational roles that emerge in small police departments and tend to be defined as deviant by the police themselves are the subject of this analysis. The three roles are: the door man, the mouth man and the wheel man. Dentler and Erikson observed that small need their deviants and that groups induce deviant behavior in the same sense that they induce other group qualities like leadership, fellowship, and so on (1959:101). In elaborating these propositions, however, Dentler, and Erikson, as well as those functionalists who have followed, have focused primarily abstract, collective functions of deviance and, with typical functionalist irony, treated deviance as indirectly serving to maintain and clarify normative boundaries. The ways deviants are used and abused has been ignored for the most part by functionalists. Exceptions to this general pattern, however, can be found. Fledgling investigations into the concrete, practical, and individualistic uses of marginal group members by its more acceptable members have traditionally assumed two forms. First, the uses of the socially marginal and usually powerless by the powerful has received some attention. In Greedy Institutions (1974), Lewis Coser focuses the political functions of eunuchs, royal mistresses, Court Jews, and Christian renegades to provide interesting historical examples of the uses of marginal social types. The marginality of these individuals meant they were dependent and loyal to their mentors-who used them in attempts to counter the power threats of impersonal bureaucracies. Ironically, the inherent tenuousness of deviant existence creates a diffuse obedience greater than that which one can demand