The sociological study of deviant behavior has begun to focus less on the deviant and more on society's response to him. One of several implications of this perspective is that a major concern of the sociology of deviance should be the identification and analysis of different kinds of systems of social control. Particularly important is the analysis of the impact of different kinds of control systems on the way deviant behavior is perceived and expressed in societies.

By playing down the importance of intrinsic differences between deviants and conventional people, and between the social situation of deviants and that of nondeviants, the focus on social response implies much more than the commonplace idea that society defines the kinds of behavior that will be considered odd, disgusting, or criminal. It implies that many elements of the behavior system of a given kind of deviance, including such things as the rate of deviance and the kinds of people who are identified as a deviant, will be significantly affected by the kind of control system through which the behavior is defined and managed.

Social research frequently encounters the task of evaluating change produced in nonrandomly selected groups by events which are beyond the researcher's control. The social scientist must verify that there has in fact been a change, and that the indicated event is its cause. Illustrations are manifold: a state terminates capital punishment, and proponents of this type of punishment predict an increase in the murder rate; a school is integrated, and supporters of the reform expect to find an increase in the positive self-evaluation of Negro pupils; a natural disaster occurs in a community, and altruistic behavior is expected to increase. Because in these situations the investigator has no control over the assignment of individuals or groups to “experimental” and “control” situations, the logic of the classical experiment must be reexamined in a search for optimal interpretative procedures.

In late 1955 in Connecticut, the number of fatalities per 100,000 population in motor vehicle accidents reached a record high for the 1950s. On December 23, 1955, Governor Abraham Ribicoff took unprecedented action to reduce traffic fatalities. Ribicoff announced that persons convicted of speeding would have their licenses suspended for thirty days at the first offense, for sixty days at the second offense, and for an indefinite period (subject to a hearing after ninety days) at the third offense. Data on traffic fatalities before and after the Connecticut crackdown on speeding can be regarded as a time-series quasi-experiment with some significance for the social sciences. When supplemented with traffic fatality data for the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey, the collection of observations can be viewed as a multiple-group time-series experiment.

Punitive sterilization has once again returned to the lexicon of American legislative debate. While there is no denying that the America of the social Darwinians and the extreme hereditarians of the late 19th and early 20th century has vanished from our midst, the residue still remains. The early eugenics literature was often punitive in tone, aimed at “purging” the nation of its so-called criminal, degenerate, and other “cacogenic” classes, not by physical extermination but rather through the use of surgical castration or sterilization. Notwithstanding the fact that the early hereditarians were concerned with the alleged inheritance of criminality and social degeneracy, the main thrust of the eugenic sterilizations laws which were passed (beginning with Indiana in 1907) was the reduction and eventual elimination of insanity and feeblemindedness. These laws were clearly gauged to prevent America from being deluged or “inundated” by those socially undesirable classes or categories of persons that the state legislators of that period believed to be the most serious threat to the stability, even the survival, of the nation as they conceived it. The eugenic character of these early laws was often compromised by the inclusion of habitual criminals, rapists, sexual perverts, social degenerates, and other groups where the intent of the legislation was clearly punitive.

It is obvious that overpopulation is the most critical social problem of our time. As such, it is necessarily the greatest legal problem of our time and the greatest challenge which faces the legal profession today. Since the population problem is fast becoming the population crisis, it is essential that our laws and our legal order must now be subject to reexamination. We dare wait no longer in studying, formulating, and augmenting the proper and precise laws and legal machinery both to help restrain the population growth and to alleviate the ills inherent in overpopulation and unwanted population.

But we must, in our quest for the best laws, be wary of the trap of talking solely in terms of population curtailment. We must take as our guiding principle the words of population expert, John D. Rockefeller, III: “Our constant goal is and must be the enrichment of human life, not its restriction.” In other words, our new laws on the population problem must at the same time make for a better society.

The effort to provide aid for development, undertaken on an unprecedented scale by the United States after World War II, provides an excellent opportunity for social scientists to contribute to the clarification and implementation of public policy. The relationship between given policies and the desired process of development has not been adequately understood. Nor has the nature of development been clearly identified or conceptualized.

In recent years, there has been an increasing awareness of these problems in Congress. This is particularly manifest in the hearings, debates, and reports which led to the passage of title IX of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1966, and the public statements of the Congressmen who were responsible for the passage of the title. Efforts at implementation of this section indicate the complexity of the problem and the need for a major contribution from the social sciences if the policy embodied in the act is to be effectuated.