ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL FACTORS AND CONDITIONS OF DEVIANT BEHAVIOR IN THE MODERN SOCIETY

The topicality of the study is determined by the ongoing public debate regarding the degree of influence that social causes have on deviant behavior. The aim of the article is to evaluate the social factors and conditions of deviant behavior among the prisoners of Eastern Latvia at the present stage of its social development. This is a pressing matter as it deals with the problems of security of individuals and society from criminal attacks as well as the optimization of public spending on crime control in general. It becomes especially urgent in the conditions of fiscal austerity resulting from the financial and economic crisis. Sociologists believe that the only effective way of deterring an individual from criminal behavior is providing him/her with a decent living standard. However, in the conditions of insufficient financial resources such standards are not easy to guarantee even for the law-abiding citizens. Creating privileged living conditions for those who have committed criminal acts could result in sharp condemnation from persons complying with generally accepted standards of behavior. Moreover, the increase of tax burden on the majority of citizens in order to improve the living conditions for those not paying any taxes could disrupt the balance of values in a society. The authors support the sociological approach to the theory of deviance. At the same time, new challenges of the industrial society encourage the search for other determinants of deviant behavior in order to develop new, more effective measures to neutralize it. Empirical studies that used objective assessment of the relationships between social and personal determinants of criminal behavior allowed the authors to establish a number of consistent patterns that could change traditional approaches to crime control issues.