Crime and Deviance in New York and Charleston

Paper Summary:

The paper looks at how American culture viewed deviance by examining what was considered deviant in order to discover what was socially acceptable. New York and Charleston are chosen as cities to represent the North and the South of the country, respectively.

From the Paper:

"Crime was everywhere in New York; a simple fact of life. As much as the city was hailed for its economic successes it was repudiated as being "a reproach to all nations". From the bank-sneak, "the highest possible criminal development" , to the Confidence-operators, who "exist only because a fool and their money can easily be parted" , these "professional" crimes permeated every level of society. Beneath these elite criminals lay the "casual" criminals; the drunk and disorderly, cases of assault and battery, and mere disorderly conduct which often depended "exclusively upon the policeman making the arrest". Apart from these cases of individual thievery and violence, New York by the 40's and 50's found its criminal element becoming more organized. The new gangs of New York saw people going through "periods of training, apprenticeship, and maturation", all in effort to control different territories. The Daybreak Boys, one of the more famous gangs and who committed their crimes at the crack of dawn, were credited with 20 murders and the theft of $100,000 in property between 1850 and 1852."

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