crime + deviance: interactionism + labelling

Question 1

how do labelling theorists explain deviance?

Answer 1

a deviant is just someone whom the label has been applied successfully
it isn’t the nature of the act that is deviant but rather society’s reaction to it

Question 2

what is Becker’s idea of ‘moral entrepreneurs’ ?

Answer 2

people who lead a moral campaign to change the law

Question 3

what 2 effects does Becker say the new law will have?

Answer 3

1)creation of a new group of outsiders who break this law
2)the creation/expansion of a social control agency

Question 4

what factors effect if a person is arrested, charged + convicted?

Answer 4

-their interactions with agencies of social control
-their appearance + background
-the situation + circumstances of offence

Question 5

what did Piliavin + Briar find about police decisions to arrest?

Answer 5

it was mainly based on physical cues from which they made judgements about a youths character
also influenced by gender, class + ethnicity

Question 6

what is Cicourels theory of ‘typifications’?

Answer 6

officers stereotypes of what a typical delinquent is
resulted in law enforcement showing a class bias
this led to police patrolling w/c areas more intensively, resulting in more arrests + confirming stereotypes

Question 7

what does Cicourel think justice is?

Answer 7

not fixed but negotiable
e.g. young white m/c boy less likely to be charged

Question 8

what do interactionists see official statistics as?

Answer 8

socially constructed

Question 9

so what do official statistics tell us?

Answer 9

about the activities of police + prosecutors, rather than the amount of crime or who commits it

Question 10

what is the dark figure of crime?

Answer 10

the difference between the official statistics + the ‘real’ rate of crime

Question 11

what does Lemert describe primary deviance as?

Answer 11

deviant acts that haven’t been publicly labelled, most uncaught + trivial e.g. fare dodging

Question 12

what does Lemert explain secondary deviance as?

Answer 12

is the result of societal reaction + labelling
being caught + publicly labelled as criminal can involve stigmatisation

Question 13

what is master status?

Answer 13

once an individual is labelled, others may come to see them as only in terms of this label
it becomes their controlling identity overriding all others

Question 14

what can master status lead to?

Answer 14

a self fulfilling prophecy where they live up to their deviant label

Question 15

what is a deviant career?

Answer 15

where the deviants ‘outsider’ status is reinforced, this leads to more deviance such as a deviant subculture with deviant career opportunities

Question 16

what is deviant amplification spiral?

Answer 16

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

Question 17

what are the 2 types of shaming Braithwaite finds?

Answer 17

-disintegrative shaming
-reintegrative shaming

Question 18

what is disintegrative shaming?

Answer 18

where both the crime + criminal are labelled as bad and offender is excluded from society

Question 19

what is reintegrative shaming?

Answer 19

label the act but not the actor
‘they have done a bad thing’ not ‘they are a bad person’

Question 20

what are the positives of reintegrative shaming?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

how did Durkheim study suicide?

Answer 21

used official statistics to claim to discover the cause of suicide

Question 22

why do interactionists criticise Durkheim’s positive approach?

Answer 22

they argue to understand suicide, we must study its meanings for those who choose to do it

Question 23

what methods does Douglas use to study suicide?

Answer 23

qualitative methods - analysis of suicide notes, unstructured interviews with deceased friends or relatives

Question 24

what does Atkinson argue about official statistics?

Answer 24

official stats are merely the record of the labels coroners attach to deaths

Question 25

what does Lemert find about paranoia as a self fulfilling prophecy?

Answer 25

-some individuals don’t fit easily in a group
-as a result of primary deviance, others label them as odd + exclude them
-individuals response is secondary deviance
-has the effect of confirming individuals suspicion that people are conspiring against them
-officially labeled as suffering from paranoia
-the label ‘mental patient’ becomes their master status

Question 26

why is labelling theory criticised?

Answer 26

-deterministic, assumes once labelled, deviant career = inevitable
-emphasis of neg effects of labelling gives offender victims status, ignoring true victims
-fails to explain why people commit primary deviance before they are labelled
-fails to analyse origin of labels