Offenders are they ordinary people in unusual circumstances or have they specific characteristics that differentiate them from other "normal" people? We have tried to investigate this issue first in the psychological literature of the domain and then through a field investigation in Timisoara Penitentiary.Offending is usually considered to be a psychological fact even if he is mainly sociological. For instance neurosis is individually manifested, but it has a social reason and has to be understood as a result of this social process. When offending is described there are described groups with behaviors unaccepted by the society. Being examined offenders are found mentally disabled or retarded but this is not what makes them deviant. Not the origin of their disturbance makes the deviate but belonging to a group considered deviant. Deviance is breaking a rule, a bad integration of an individual who didn't integrate the general accepted values but also is a result of the development of social protection institutions that reject groups not conformed to "good social functioning". That's why the differences between exclusion, marginalization, ill adaptation and deviance are not very clear and each "rejected incapacity" will lead at the end to delinquency.
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