Daniel Penny’s Trial Tests Whether New Yorkers Have Lost Patience With ‘Defining Deviancy Down’

What stands out in respect of the Penny case is how many commentators have suggested that Jordan Neely’s behavior was unexceptional and just part of the daily fabric of New York City life.

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Marine veteran Daniel Penny, left, charged in the New York City chokehold death of Jordan Neely. Getty Images / Instagram

The trial of Daniel Penny, accused of killing a homeless man, Jordan Neely, is bringing into sharp relief issues far beyond Penny’s guilt or innocence. They recall Senator Daniel Moynihan’s essay from 1993, “Defining Deviancy Down,” in which he grappled with the problems of crime and social disintegration increasingly prevalent in urban America during the prior decades.  

According to Moynihan, society was always willing to tolerate a certain level of crime, provided that it could be controlled and kept at that level.  A community’s tolerance of crime, or deviance, was measured by the apparatus it put in place to accomplish such control, including the police, courts, and prisons. What society would tolerate was a function of public policy.

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