Sociologists of deviance tend to harbor an individualistic bias: their unit of analysis is, typically, one or more persons who enact non-normative behavior. Much deviant behavior is indeed enacted on an individualistic basis, though in analyzing and writing about deviance sociologists never lose sight of group or collective influences; but they often pay insufficient attention to the actions engaged in by entities substantially larger than the acting individual or individuals (Simon, 2012). Collective deviance refers to the putative untoward actions of large collectivities whose members act in co-ordination, as a whole. When an automobile manufacturer knowingly makes and sells cars with remediable defects that demonstrably cause injury or the loss of human life, the corporation has engaged in collective deviance, since its actions, if exposed, are likely to generate negative reactions from the buying public, the media, and sectors of the government. When governments authorize and mandate human rights abuses – when a larger, more powerful nation illegally seizes the territory of a smaller, weaker one, when authorities warrant and operatives carry out the torture of prisoners or captives, or when a government rigs and steals a supposedly democratic election – we have, again, an instance of collective deviance on our hands, since relevant audiences or members of other collectivities such as human rights agencies, the public at large in democratic regimes, progressive politicians, or sectors of the media are likely to become aware of and denounce such actions. When a criminal organization uses the threat of illegal violence to earn profits that it could not otherwise realize in order to sell illegal goods, for example illicit drugs, to corrupt police and public officials, to intimidate witnesses, and to ensure that victims do not seek redress from legal authorities, that organization is engaged in collective deviance. In such cases the individual acting parties enact the relevant behavior, but they do so within a dense, constraining, and compelling network whose leadership, authority structure, and hierarchy brook no refusal to act in the illegitimate fashion. In other words, it is the institution that acts – the corporation, the nation-state, the criminal mob – and not merely separate and dispersed individuals.