Kai Erikson (1966) illustrated this boundary-maintenance function of deviance in his study of the Puritans of seventeenth-century New England. By today’s standards, the puritans placed tremendous emphasis on conventional morals, their persecution of Quakers and execution of woman as witches represented continuing attempts to define and redefine the boundaries of their community. In effect, their changing social norms created “crime waves” as people whose behavior was previously acceptable suddenly faced punishment for being deviant (Abrahamson 1978; N.Davis 1975)