Topic 2: Interactionism and Labelling Theory

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The Social Construction of Crime:

*Labelling theorists argues that deviance is a social construction.

*Becker: a deviant simply someone to whom the label has been successfully applied, and deviant behaviour is simply behaviour that people so label.

*E.G. Moral Entrepreneurs are people who lead a moral crusade o change the law, which leads to the creation of a new group of outsiders who break the rules and the creation or expansion of a social control agency to enforce the rules and impose labels on offenders.

*Social control agencies such as police, courts etc tend to label certain groups as criminals.

*Piliavin and Briar found police decisions to arrest were based on stereotypical ideas about manner, dress, gender, class, time and place.

*E.G. Those stopped at night in high crime ares ran a greater risk of being arrested.

Cicourel: Typifications:

*Led social control agencies to concentrate on certain types, resulting in law enforcements showing a class bias, in that w/c areas and people fitted the police typifications most closely.

*Led to the police to patrol w/c areas are intensively, resulting in more arrests and confirming their stereotypes.

*However, m/c juveniles are less likely to fit the typification, and have parents who can negotiate successfully on their behalf. Thus they are likely to be counselled, warned and released rather than prosecuted.

*Shows how low enforcement is often biased and discriminating against certain groups in society, as well as showing the lw isn't set in stone and justice can be negotiated.

Social Construction of Crime Statistics:

*Due to police patrolling w/c areas intensively, resulting in more w/c arrests - crime stats recorded by police do not give a valid picture of crime patterns, thus we cannot take them at face value or use them as a resource.

*The dark figure of crime is the difference between official statistics and the real rate of crime so called because we do not know for certain how much crime goes undetected, unreported and unrecorded.

*Victim surveys or self-report studies are used to gain a more accurate view but people may like when asked if they have committed a crime.

Effects of Labelling:

1. Primary Deviance: refers to the deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled, which allows offenders to easily rationalise them away for example, as a moment of madness and don't see themselves as deviant.

*Eval: Fails to shows why people commit primary deviance in the first place before they are labelled.

2. Secondary Deviance: the result of social reaction where an individual is publicly labelled and results in the individuals being stigmatises and alienated by mainstream society.

*Their label becomes their master status and they are only seen in terms of the label. This may lead to the SFP.

*Their master status can then be responsible to an extent for a deviant career in which a labelled delinquent may join a delinquent subculture and therefore revolve their life around crime and build their career in this subculture - E.g. Hippy marijuana users

*Eval: Too deterministic - assuming that once labelled, a SFP is inevitable - individuals are always free to choose not to deviate further.

3. Deviance Amplification Spiral: the attempt to control deviance leads to it increasing rather than decreasing crime, resulting in greater attempts to control it and in turn yet more deviance, in an escalating spiral.

*E.g. Cohens study of the mods and rockers owns this - media exaggeration and distortion began a moral panic, which led to arresting of more youths and providing more concern. Labelling the mods and rockers as folk devils marginalised them, further resulting in more deviance.

Mental Illness and Suicide:

*Interactionists are also interested in deviant behaviour such as mental illness and suicide.

*Lermerts study of paranoia, notes that some individuals don't fit easily into groups.

*So some are labelled as odd a begin to exclude them, which leads to the beginning of secondary deviance- later leads to psychiatric intervention, resulting in being officially labelled as a mental patient, which becomes his master status.