Crime and Deviance - Interactionism and Labelling Theory Flashcards
(31 cards)
What is the focus of research for Labelling Theorists?
- How and why some people and actions come to be labelled as deviant, and what effects this has on those who are labelled.
Why do Interactionists and Labelling Theorists reject official statistics as a valid picture of crime?
- They regard them as social constructs.
What does the term “constructionist view” mean, according to Interactionists?
- Crime is the product of interactions between suspects and police, rather than the result of wider external social forces.
How does an action become deviant, according to Labelling Theorists?
- It is only considered deviant when others label it as such.
How does Becker define a deviant and their behaviour?
- Deviant: Someone who has been successfully labelled as deviant.
- Deviant behaviour: Behaviour that has been successfully labelled as deviant.
What are “moral entrepreneurs”, according to Becker?
- People who can lead a moral campaign to change the law.
What are the two outcomes that Becker gives, in regards to moral entrepreneurs?
- The creation of a new group of ‘outsiders’ (outlaws or deviants who break the new rule).
- The creation or expansion of a social control agency (police, courts, probation officers… etc) to enforce the rule and impose labels on offenders.
What example does Platt give, in regards to moral entrepreneurs?
- The idea of ‘juvenile delinquency’ was originally created as a result of a campaign by upper-class Victorian moral entrepreneurs, aimed at protecting young people at risk.
- This established ‘juveniles’ as a separate category of offender with their own courts, and it enabled the state to extend its powers beyond criminal offences involving the young, into so-called ‘status offences’ (where their behaviour is only an offence because of their age status).
Whether a person is arrested, charged, and convicted depends on what three factors?
- Their interactions with agencies of social control.
- Their appearance, background, and personal biography.
- The situation and circumstances of the offence.
What conclusion did Labelling Theorists reach when investigating how laws are applied and enforced?
- Agencies of social control are more likely to label certain groups of people as deviant or criminal. E.g. Piliavin and Briar: Police decisions to arrest a youth were mainly based on physical cues (such as manners and dress), as well as the suspect’s gender, class, and ethnicity.
What does Cicourel mean by “the negotiation of justice”?
- Officer’s decisions to arrest are influenced by their stereotypes about offenders, making justice not fixed but negotiable.
- Law enforcement shows class bias because officers arrest based on their “typifications” (stereotypes) of a typical delinquent.
What is an example of the negotiation of justice? (Cicourel)
- When a young middle-class male was arrested, he was less likely to be charged.
- His background did not fit the idea of the police’s ‘typical delinquent’.
- His parents were more likely to negotiate successfully on his behalf. E.g. Monitor him and convince the control agencies that he was sorry.
- The man was then ‘counselled, warned, and released’ rather than prosecuted.
What do Labelling Theorists say about using official crime statistics as a resource versus as a topic?
- Cicourel argues that official crime statistics cannot be used as a resource since they don’t give us facts about crime.
- Instead, they should be treated as a topic for sociologists to investigate, in order to gather data about control agencies and how they process and label certain types of people as criminal.
Why are official crime statistics a social construct, according to Interactionists?
- These statistics are not a reflection of actual criminal behaviour, and instead a product of the interactions and decisions of those within the criminal justice system (police officers or prosecutors).
What is meant by “the dark figure of crime”?
- The difference between the official statistics and the ‘real’ rate of crime, because we do not know for certain how much crime goes undetected, unreported, and unrecorded.
What are the six stages in the social construction of crime, according to Interactionists?
- Stage 1: Suspect stopped by the police.
- Stage 2: Arrested
- Stage 3: Charged
- Stage 4: Prosecuted
- Stage 5: Convicted
- Stage 6: Sentenced
What is the difference between primary and secondary deviance, according to Lemert?
- Primary deviance: Deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled and mostly goes uncaught. E.g. Fare dodging.
- Secondary deviance: Continuous deviant acts that leads to a label being given to the deviant. E.g. Continuous use of drugs or alcohol can lead to the labels ‘drunk’ or ‘addict’.
What is meant by a “master status”?
- When an individual who has been labelled, internalise the label and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- The label becomes their master status when it affects all aspects of their life.
What is meant by a “deviant career”?
- People’s long-term involvement with deviant acts.
What were the findings of Young’s study of hippy marijuana users in Notting Hill?
- Negative police perceptions of hippies as “dirty” and “drug addicts” caused the hippies to unite and develop more deviant norms in response to feeling socially excluded and criminalised.
What does the work of Lemert and Young show about defining deviance?
- It is not the act itself, but the hostile societal reaction to it, that creates serious deviance.
How can a deviant career be argued as evitable? (Downes and Rock)
- Someone who has been labelled can always choose not to deviate further.
What is meant by “the deviance amplification spiral”, according to Labelling Theorists?
- When attempts to control deviance leads to an increase in the level of deviance.
- This leads to greater attempts to control it, which produces even further levels of deviance.
What is an example of the deviance amplification spiral? (S. Cohen)
- The societal reaction to “Mods and Rockers”.
- Police arrested more youths, and the courts imposed harsher penalties, as a result of the moral panic caused by press exaggeration and distorted reports.
- At the same time, society was ‘demonising’ the mods and rockers as ‘folk devils’, furthering their marginalisation and encouraging deviant behaviour.
- He found that the deviance amplification spiral is always present where there is moral panic.
