CRIME AND DEVIANCE TOPIC 2: INTERACTIONISM AND LABELLING THEORY

Question 1

what are labelling theorists interested in?

Answer 1

-how and why certain acts come to be defined/labelled as criminal in the first place

Question 2

according to labelling theorists, what makes an act deviant?

Answer 2

it’s society’s reaction to the act

Question 3

according to BECKER, what is a moral entrepreneur?

Answer 3

-lead moral campaigns to change the law-> enforce laws to control deviant behaviour e.g. teachers/parents as they have power to judge

Question 4

according to BECKER, what are the 2 effects of a new law?

Answer 4

-the creation of a new group of ‘outsiders’ (outlaws/deviants) who break the law

-the creation/explanation of a social control agency w.g. police to enforce the rule and impose labels on offenders.

Question 5

what does BECKER believe brings changes to law?

Answer 5

It is not harmful behaviour that leads to new laws, it is the efforts to redefine that behaviour as unacceptable

Question 6

what affects how you get labelled?

Answer 6

Factors such as interactions with agencies of social control
Appearance and background
Situation and circumstance of the offence

Question 7

according to CICOUREL what is the negotiation of justice?

Answer 7

Cicourel found that officers typifications of what a typical delinquent looks like leads them to concentrate on certain types of people.
= this resulted in law enforcement showing class bias in working class areas which =police patrolling working-class areas more intensively

Question 8

why is justice not fixed but rather negotiated?

Answer 8

officers may not charge people that do not fit into their typification, for example a middle-class youth.
=the parents of a m/c youth can negotiate successfully by convincing law enforcement that their child is sorry and ensure he or she will stay out of trouble

Question 9

what does CICOUREL believe about official statistics?

Answer 9

he believes they do not give us a valid picture of patterns of crime and cannot be used as a resource, instead we should treat them as a topic for sociologists to investigate

Question 10

what is PILIAVIN’S & BRIAR’S theory about arrests being made on the basis of physical cues? (social construction of crime)

Answer 10

• they found that police’s decisions to arrest a youth was based on physical cues such as manner and dress
  =police used these factors to make judgements about the youths character

Question 11

what is an example of the impact of physical cues?

Answer 11

-a study on anti social behaviour orders found that they were disproportionately used against ethnic minorities
=this demonstrates that social agencies are able to label certain groups of people as deviant or criminal

Question 12

what is the dark figure of crime?

Answer 12

the amount of unreported or undiscovered crime

Question 13

what are alternative statistics?

Answer 13

some sociologists use victim surveys or self-report studies to gain a more accurate view of the amount of crime

Question 14

what are some disadvantages of alternative statistics?

Answer 14

people may forget, conceal or exaggerate when asked if they have committed or been a victim of crime

Question 15

according to LEMERT, what is primary deviance? )effects of labelling)

Answer 15

-primary deviance refers to deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled.
=offenders can easily rationalise them as a ‘moment of madness’.
=primary deviants don’t see themselves as deviant

Question 16

according to LEMERT, what is secondary deviance?

Answer 16

-Secondary deviance is the result of societal reaction to deviance

-being caught and publicly labelled as a criminal can involve being stigmatised, shamed, humiliated or excluded from normal society.
=this label becomes his master status or controlling identity which overrides all of his previous ones.

Question 17

how does secondary deviance lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Answer 17

=this can cause a crisis for the individual’s concept of self. One way to resolve this is by accepting the label
=leads to a self fulfilling prophecy, where the individual acts out or lives up to their label.

Question 18

what’s an example of secondary deviance?

Answer 18

an ex-convict who is unable to get a job and treated as an outsider is more likely to take a deviant career where he offered opportunities and rewards for deviant behaviour.

Question 19

according to COHEN, what is the deviance amplification spiral?

Answer 19

the process in which the attempt to control deviance leads an increase in the level of deviance

Question 20

what is COHEN’S moral panic study (process of deviance amplification spiral)

Answer 20

A study of the societal reaction to disturbances caused by the Mods and Rockers- [example of deviance amplification]

1) the media exaggerated and distorted the events which caused a moral panic.

2) with growing public concerns moral entrepreneurs like the police responded by arresting more youths, while the courts
imposed harsher penalties.

3) the marginalised mods and rockers who were demonised as folk devils then exhibited more deviant behaviour= inc. in crime

Question 21

what are 2 negative effects of pursuing ‘folk devils’ (deviants) ?

Answer 21

• Secondary deviance / deviance amplification
• In terms of law enforcement, the pursuit of folk devils draws resources away from detecting and punishing dark figure crimes, such as the crimes of the powerful

Question 22

according to BRAITHWAITE, what are the 2 types of shaming?

Answer 22

The labelling process can play a positive role. He distinguishes
between two types of shaming:

• Disintegrative shaming, where not only the crime, but also the criminal, is labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society.
• Reintegrative shaming, by contrast, labels the act but not the actor - as if to say, ‘he has done a bad thing’, rather than ‘he is a bad person’.

Question 23

what is the impact on the offenders on community?

Answer 23

• This makes it easier for both offenders and community to separate the offender from the offence and reintegrate wrongdoers back into mainstream society.
  -At the same time, this avoids pushing them into secondary deviance.

Question 24

why are crime rates where reintegrative shaming is used more?

Answer 24

• Braithwaite argues that crime rates tend to be lower in societies where reintegrative rather than disintegrative shaming is the dominant way of dealing with offenders

Question 25

why is reintegrative more effective than disintegrative?

Answer 25

-the policy of reintegrative shaming avoids stigmatising the offender as evil while at the same time making them aware of the negative impact of their actions upon others, and then encourages others to forgive them.

Question 26

according to GOFFMAN, what is ‘mortification of the self’ ‘

Answer 26

-Goffman’s (1961) classic study ‘Asylums’ shows some of the
possible effects of being admitted to a ‘total institution’ such as a psychiatric hospital.

-on admission, the inmate undergoes a ‘mortification of the self’ in which their old identity is symbolically ‘killed off’ and replaced by a new one: ‘inmate’.

Question 27

how was ‘mortification of the self’ achieved?

Answer 27

-this is achieved by various ‘degradation rituals’, such as confiscation of personal objects. -Goffman notes the similarities with other total institutions such as prisons, armies, monasteries and boarding schools.

Question 28

how does labelling theory work within mental institutions?

Answer 28

1)inmates become institutionalised
2)internalising their new identity 3)unable to re adjust to the outside world,
4)adopt various forms of resistance or accommodation to their new situation

Question 29

what are 4 evaluations of the labelling theory?

Answer 29

• It tends to be deterministic, implying that once someone
  is labelled, a deviant career is inevitable.
• Its emphasis on the negative effects of labelling gives the
  offender a kind of victim status. Realist sociologists argue
  that this ignores the real victims of crime.
• It fails to explain why people commit primary deviance in
  the first place, before they are labelled.
• It recognises the role of power in creating deviance, but
  it fails to analyse the source of this power.
  = focuses on ‘middle range officials’ such as policemen
  who apply the labels, rather than on the capitalist class
  (Marxists) make the rules in the first place. = It also fails to explain the origin of the labels,
  or why they are applied to certain groups, such as w/c

Question 30

what is INTERACTIONISM’S main criticism of functionalism?

Answer 30

-they believe these theories take official definitions of crime and criminals as hard facts when really they are social constructs