Labelling Theory Flashcards
Interaction
Closely observing the small scale relationship between individuals to understand their behaviour.
Interactionists
Sociologists who believe in-depth qualititive research is best when studying human behaviour.
Key Themes
- Most people break the law
- Most offending is small scale
- Searching for the ‘causes’ of crime and deviance is insufficient
- It is better to explore in depth how society socially constructs deviance and how individuals interact with law enforcement agencies, ect. This will help us to udnerstand when our perception of crime comes from.
Howard Becher
No act or behaviour is naturally criminal. Criminal acts begin with an association being made between:
- A person’s behaviour
- Recognition that certain behaviour’s are ‘deviant’
- The criminalising of deviance in some cases
Crime and deviance are socially constructed.
The Relativity of Deviance - example
Age-gap love: is society’s attitude different towards younger women with older men and younger men with older women?
Edwin Iement - different statuses in life
We all hold a number of different statuses in life. To be a criminal is the master status.
Primary deviance: when somebody commits a crime but is not caught or labelled. There is no change to way they see themselves or how others see them.
Secondary deviance: once somebody is caught, labelled and punished, there is a change in the way a person sees themselves and the way that others treat them.
Aaron Cicourel - The Negotiation of Justice
- Police officers hold stereotypes about offenders which can influence their decision to make an arrest or not. Officers’ typifications leads them to concentrate on certain ‘types’, resulting in law enforcement showing a social-class bias. Police patrol working class areas more, leading to more arrests and ‘confirming’ their stereotypes.
- Justice is not fixed, but negotiable. When middle class youths are arrested, they are less likely to be charged, partly because their background doesn’t fit the police’s idea of ‘typical delinquent’ and partly becuase of parents being able to negotiate for their child’s freedom.
- It is important to look at how crime is socially contructed rather than trusting official crime statistics. It is better to look at how the CJS labels and processes those who it believes commits the crime.
Jock Young - Hippie Marijuana Users
Studied hippie marijuana users in Notting Hill, London during the 1960s. He argues that this case study provides good evidence to show just how powerful the labelling process can be in creating further deviance. Initially, drug use among ‘hippies’ was only very occassional and not a key feature to the lifestyle. Once wider society became aware of this drug use, police found themselves under pressure to ‘do something’ about the ‘problem’, creating a wider gulf between hippies and wider society, leading to suspicion and resentment on both sides to build up. The more they get labelled, the more hippies see themselves as ‘outsiders’, leading to increased marijuana use, leading to the formation of a deviant subculture. This made it difficult to re-connect with wider society. Drug use is now a key feature of the hippie lifestyle.
Jock Young - criticisms
- Ignores the intial drug use in the primary stage.
- The study isn’t representative as it only looks at hippies in Notting Hill in the 1960s.
- Was there other societal factors that led the hippies to the drug use rather than just labelling theory? It’s a deterministic theory.
- Society’s definition of deviant behaviour is constantly changing.
Stan Cohen - Mods, Rockers and Deviancy Amplification
In the 1960s, Cohen studied societal reaction to social disturbances. Focued on 2 distinct youth identities: Mods and Rockers. He observed the way in which young people interacted at seaside resorts during the summer months and bank holiday weekends. Found there were some minor disturbances as young people gather en mass, there was no evidence of ‘rivalry’ between Mods and Rockers that was suggested by the media. Headlines reporting on ‘wayward youth’ and ‘chaos and disorder among society’s young’ were largely unfounded. This was a classic example of labelling identifying a folk devil, feuling a moral panic and deviancy amplification, as the media reporting led to the Mod vs Rocker conflict.
Stan Cohen - Folk devil
Youth are targeted by the media and blamed for disturbances that hadn’t really taken place.
Stan Cohen - Moral panic
An exaggerated outburst of public concern over the morality of behaviour of a group in society which is feulled by the media.
Stan Cohen - Moral entrepenures
Individuals in a high position (police) working to tackle the problems of the folk devil and reinforcing right from wrong.
Stan Cohen - Deviancy amplification
Increased deviant behaviour that goes against the norms as a result of the label.
Do moral panics create crime?
Stages of a moral panic:
1) folk devil is indentified
2) group are stereotyped and poor behaviour is exaggerated
3) moral entrepeneurs condemn the group and demand ‘crack down’
4) self fufilling prophecy occurs
5) deviancy amplification sirals unwinds
Do moral panics create crime? - criticisms
Are the vast majority of people really influenced by media perceptions? Not everyone is suspectible to this moral panic.
Labelling and Mental Health
Labels can be helpful identifying, diagnosing and treating a person with mental health issues. But, labels can also have more negative, unintended consequences too. Labelling theorists point out that a mental-health related label is the end product of a subjective decision-making processes, but can easily be interpreted as hard fact. This is dangerous since a diagnosis can have serious implications on how a person sees themselves and how others see them.
Erving Goffman - Asylums
Spent tim studying the consequences associated with the label of being ‘mentally ill’. Focused on the life experiences of patients held in psychiatric hospitals (previously known as insane asylums). He found that the closeted, strict regimented environment quickly resulted in what he called the mortification of the self. That’s ‘treatment’ began by working hard with the individuals to surrender and lose the person they have found until now, in order to help them become the person they want to be. He found that every aspect of the patient’s behaviour was interpreted as a symptom. This way, the label ‘mentally ill’ had become a master status, defining the way the patient saw themselves and how others saw them too. This would do little to facilitate recovery by today’s standards.
Sebouhain - The power of language: re-thinking mental illness de-stigtimisation - April 2021
Words are powerful. How we use them is essential. Words like psychotic, manic, bipolar, delusional, are examples of mental illnesses/symptoms that are considered more severe and stigmatised. Carelessly using them in the public conciousness can be taken by people to who it may not be accurate or useful. Everyone wants language to understand their experiences, but many lack the depth of knowledge to understand what these disorders really are. The impulse to diagnose negative feelings and label them with this terminology is inaccurate, and indicates that there’s something disfuntional for feeling negative emotions. This results in people with these disorders still being stigmatised and misunderstood. It is largely a good thing that it’s making people feel less alone, but certain words used to describe these disorders are used to insult, further stugmatising the people who live woth these disorders.
Labelling theory and social policy-making
Research by labelling theorists has typically influenced government policy making in one of two ways:
- minimising labels where possible
- maximising labels
Minimising Labelling
By avoiding labelling, the stigma associated with the ‘master status’ is avoided thus preventing deviancy amplification.
Minimising Labelling - UK drug laws
In 2004, the government down-graded cannabis use to a ‘class c’ drug in an attempt to reduce the number of people labelled and processed through the CJS as an inescapable master status of drug user.
Minimising Labelling - UK drug laws - criticisms
This failed. More people took cannabis leading to it being classified as a ‘class b’ drug again.
Minimising Labelling - Tackling Street prostitution
A shift away from labelling and punishing street sex workers, towards helping and supporting them to escape street life, is a move that has been influenced by labelling theory.
