Deviance
is a concept that has come to pose as a controversial issue to sociologist. It
is however, viewed from two broad perspectives. First it is a rural breaking
behaviours and secondly as a label applied to some persons in a particular
context. Haralambos (1980) posits that the term deviance is relative that is,
it is only relative to the standards of a particular society at a particular
time in history.
Marshall Clinnard (1974), suggests that the term
deviance should be reserve for situations. Within clinnard’s definition the
following acts were classified as deviance, crime and delinquency
illegal drug
use, prostitution, mental illness, alcoholism, homosexuality. The above may not
be generally accepted by all sociologist but sociologist have come to see some
form of deviance in his definition and prostitution happens to be one of them.
For instance Jaja (2000) writes that prostitution is
placed in the category of public order crime by criminologists, this is
sometimes referred to as “victimless crime”. However, it is important to note
that some persons involve in public order crime do not see themselves as criminals.
Kehealani (2004) assets that in most western cities, prostitution is tolerated
and the police are only concerned with the curbing of crimes associated with
prostitution and such crimes are controlled by syndicates.
However, the work of Edwin Schur cited in Jaja (2002)
posits that there are inducted crimes tagged victimless but went on to explain
that there is lack of public consensus on laws governing such behaviours. This
is the reason, why it is not easy to enforce laws against such acts as prostitution.
This poses as a problem because there are various factions/schools of thoughts
that have different opinions on whether prostitution should be tagged a crime,
deviance in accepted but the word crime attached to it is debatable.
Sheila Jeffrey’s (2004) porters that new prostitute
right movement has been introduced. Here, they see prostitution as sex work and
the men whole abuse women in prostitution are called clients. Bell and Sullivan
(1994) supports the above saying that some representatives of prostitutes
rights group have even argued that prostitution represents sexual liberation
for women.
Clark (2001) indicates that prostitution is termed as
a crime in Nigeria, giving section 223, 224 and 225 of the criminal code of
Nigeria as source. A crime is embedded in various forms like deviant
behaviours, anti-social pathology.
Havalambos (1980) sees deviant beahviour as a social
problem based on the premise that it is disruptive to social life. Clerk (2001)
gives the characteristics of prostitution in Nigeria assert that is relatively
new, since it only become rampant in the 1960s giving industrialization and
urbanization following the grant of independence as major catalysts.