Crime and Deviance - Interactionism and Labelling

Question 1

What do labelling theorists argue about crime and deviance?

Answer 1

Crime and deviance is socially constructed.
- it is the product of interactions between suspects and police officers rather than the result of wider external factors such as blocked opportunities.

Question 2

What does Becker argue about deviance?

Answer 2

• ‘deviant behaviour is in the eye of the beholder’
• societal reaction constructs what we perceive to be deviant
• a deviant is someone whom the label has been successfully applied to

Question 3

Beckers view on how/why laws are made?

Answer 3

• moral entrepeneurs lead movement to change law/bring about new one
• certain groups feel like outsiders/deviant if they break new rules
• expansion of social control agencies (police/court/probation officers) to enforce rules and impose labels on offenders.

Question 4

What determines who is punished?

Answer 4

1. interactions with agencies of social control
2. appearance and background
3. situation and circumstance

Question 5

What does Piliavin and Briar say?

Answer 5

• police decisions to arrest youth based on appearance and judgements of youth’s character
• ASBO’s (anti-social behaviour orders) disproportionately used against EM
• those stopped at night in high crime rate areas more likely to be arrested
• therefore, crime stats are invalid (soft) as police are selective

Question 6

Cicourel’s negotiation of justice?

Answer 6

• not fixed but negotiable
• e.g., m/c more likely to negotiate way out of being charged (mainly because of background and not fitting idea of polices ‘typical delinquent’
• officers have typifications (common sense theories of who appears delinquent)
• concentrated on w/c, showing class bias, as they patrolled w/c areas

Question 7

Cicourel’s topic vs resource?

Answer 7

• stats don’t give valid picture of patterns of crime so cant be used as a resource
• should treat stats as topic for sociologists to investigate such as the processes that created them

Question 8

Interactionists - the social construction of crime stats?

Answer 8

• the procedure that CJS make is based on the label they attach to individual suspect
• dark figure crimes = difference between official stats and real rate of crime, can never know how much crime goes undetected, unreported and unrecorded
• official stats also gathered from victim surveys and self report studies to gain more accurate view of amount of crime
• however, can be limiting as people forget, conceal, or exaggerate