An act's criminality is determined by the social construction of the rules and laws that are assigned to social practices. The goal of the social development of crime process is to create the accepted norms, which include both legal and illegal behavior. In determining how the community views a specific practice, the social construction of the offense depends on how society reacts to the behavior. (Siegel 179). The crowd played a part in the social development process by debating how society views criminal activity. The crime, in this case, was a marriage of an underage girl to an older man. The process involved two groups of people who determined the social inclination of the crime.
For the process of avoiding biases, one group of the social audience concentrated on supporting the social construct as a crime while the other group opposed the view. I was on the opposing side. The point of contention was the age considered by the society as young. Some girls in the community attend school at an older age. Therefore, being in school did not indicate an early age. The two groups of social audience discussed the subject into details raising the conclusion that it was wrong for any man to marry a young woman in school. At this point, the age of the woman was not as critical as the process of attending school. Therefore, the social construction of crime settled on marriage to students as a crime irrespective of the age. At the end of the process, both parties agreed that marriage denied the young women a chance for education and placed their marriages as a social construct (Lorber and Lisa 125).
Works cited
Lorber, Judith, and Lisa J. Moore. Gender and the Social Construction of Illness. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Print.
Siegel, Larry J. Criminology: Theories, Patterns, and Typologies. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013. Print.
