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Condemnation of the Condemners

Definition

A neutralization that shifts attention from the offender's act to the motives and hypocrisy of police, teachers or other authorities who disapprove of it.

Related terms

Denial of Responsibility
A neutralization in which the offender frames the act as caused by forces outside their control, such as a bad upbringing or...
Drift
A temporary, reversible state between full control and full freedom in which a person is loosely committed enough to conventional norms to...
Inner Containment
Reckless's term for the internal buffers, chiefly a favourable self-concept, goal orientation, frustration tolerance and internalised norms, that hold a person to...
Outer Containment
Reckless's term for external structures, such as family supervision, school attachment and community reinforcement, that hold a person to lawful conduct from...
Techniques of Neutralization
Learned justifications, drawn from conventional morality itself, that let an offender suspend the moral bind of the law before or after an...
Denial of Injury
Arguing that no real harm was done, such as treating vandalism as mischief.
Denial of the Victim
Reversing the moral direction of the act by claiming the victim deserved it or that no true victim exists.

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