Cicourel: the negotiation of justice Flashcards
What are officers’ decisions to arrest influenced by?
Their stereotypes about offenders.
What are typification’s?
The stereotypes of what the typical delinquent is like.
What did Cicourel find about officers and typifications?
Their typifications led them to concentrate on certain ‘types’.
What did typifications result it?
Enforcement showing a class bias, in that working-class areas and and people fitted the police typifications more closely.
What did this class bias lead to?
Police patrolling working-class areas more intensively, resulting in more arrests and confirming their stereotypes.
What did Cicourel find about other agents of social control within the criminal justice system? (example)
They reinforced this bias. Probation officers held the commonsense theory that juvenile delinquency was caused by broken homes, poverty and lax parenting.
How did probation officers see youths from working-class backgrounds?
As likely to offend in the future and were less likely to support non-custodial sentences for them.
What does Cicourel believe about justice?
Its not fixed, its negotiable. E.g. when a middle-class youth is arrested he was less likely to be charged because his parents was more likely to negotiate successfully on his behalf, ensuring he would stay out of future trouble.
What likely happens to middle-class youths when arrested and their parents negotiate for them?
They are ‘counselled, warned and released’ rather than prosecuted.
What is an advantage of Cicourel?
He shows that the law is not a fixed set of rules and is often enforced in discriminatory ways.
Why do Marxists criticise Cicourel?
They argue that this focuses on ‘middle range officials’ such as policemen who apply the labels, rather than on the capitalist class who make the rules in the first place.
What is a disadvantage of Cicourel?
He fails to explain the origin of the labels, or why they are applied to certain groups, such as the working class.
