crime - interactionism and labelling theory

Question 1

What is the social construction of crime?

Answer 1

No crime is inherently criminal or deviant in itself, it only comes to be so when others label it that way (not the nature of the act but society’s reaction)

Question 2

What is a deviant to BECKER?

Answer 2

Someone to whom the label has be successfully applied

Question 3

What does Becker call people who lead a moral campaign to change the law?

Answer 3

Moral entrepreneurs

Question 4

What are the two effects moral entrepreneurs have?

Answer 4

• create a new group of outsiders
• creation/expansion of a social control agency enforce rule and impose labels on offenders

Question 5

What does PLATT argue about ‘juvenile deliquency’?

Answer 5

result of a campaign by upper-class Victorian moral entrepreneurs aimed at protecting young people at risk e.g. laws against truancy and sexual activity based on age

Question 6

What factors contribute to someone being arrested?

Answer 6

• their interactions with agencies of social control
• their appearance, background and personal biography
• the situation and circumstance of the event

Question 7

Who found that police decisions to arrest youth were mainly based on physical cues (e.g. manner and dress)? and what other factors influenced police?

Answer 7

Piliavin and Briar
- gender, class and ethnicity

Question 8

What idea did CICOUREL find officers used to make arrests?

Answer 8

Officers TYPIFICATIONS (stereotypes) led them to concentrate on certain ‘types’ e.g. led to law enforcement being class bias and patrolling WC areas heavily =results in more arrests + confirming stereotypes

Question 9

In CICOURELs view why is justice not fixed but negotiable? what is his example?

Answer 9

When a young middle class male is arrested, he is less likely to be charged - partly because his background did not match their typifications and partly because his parents are likely to be able to negotiate successfully on his behalf - typically ends up being warned rather than persecuted

Question 10

What does Cicourels study demonstrate about official statistics?

Answer 10

They give an invalid picture of patterns of crime and cannot be used as a resource about facts of crime - instead should be treated as a topic for sociologists to investigate

Question 11

How do interactionists see crime statistics?

Answer 11

As a social construction - social control agencies make decision (based on labels) on whether to go to the next stage, consequently official statistics only tell us about the activity of the police and prosecutors

Question 12

What is the dark figure of crime?

Answer 12

The crime that goes undetected, unreported and unrecorded and does not make it to official statistics

Question 13

What other ways can sociologists find out about the true extent of crime? but what are their limitations?

Answer 13

Victim survey and self-report studies
People may not be honest, they may exaggerate, conceal or forget

Question 14

What are the stages of the justice system?

Answer 14

1 - suspected by police
2- arrested
3 - charged
4 - prosecuted
5 - convicted
6 - sentenced

Question 15

Who distinguishes between primary and secondary deviance?

Answer 15

Lemert (1951)

Question 16

What is primary deviance?

Answer 16

Deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled, can be easily rationalised and mostly goes uncaught e.g. fare dogging

Question 17

What leads to secondary deviance?

Answer 17

Labelled deviance that is the result of societal reaction. Being caught and publicly labelled as a criminal can involve being stigmatised, shamed, humiliated, excluded from society - ultimately it becomes their master status (controlling their identity) = self-fulfilling prophecy

Question 18

What is secondary deviance?

Answer 18

Further deviance that results from acting out the label

Question 19

What is secondary deviance likely to provoke?

Answer 19

A deviant career (only option as no one will employ them due to negative labels) - confirms their deviant identity

Question 20

How did YOUNG use the concepts of secondary deviance in his study of hippies?

Answer 20

Initially, marijuana was peripheral to the hippies’ lifestyle (primary deviance) however labelling by the control culture (police) led to them being seen as outsiders - retreated into closed groups and developed subcultures

Question 21

What negative consequences can control processes have?

Answer 21

Can lead to serious deviance due to society’s hostile reactions

Question 22

What doe Downes and Rock note about deviant careers?

Answer 22

They are not inevitable, people can choose not to deviate further

Question 23

What is the deviance amplification spiral?

Answer 23

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

Question 24

What is an example of the deviance amplification spiral?

Answer 24

Cohens folk devils and moral panics - Mods & Rockers

Question 25

What are folk devils?

Answer 25

Individuals over labelled and over exposed to public view and the attentions of authority

Question 26

How could making fewer rules help reduce deviance?

Answer 26

Less rules for people to break e.g. legalising soft drugs might reduce the number of people with criminal convictions

Question 27

What does BRAITHWAITE say about two types of shaming?

Answer 27

Disintegrative - crime and criminal labelled as bad (individual excluded from society) Reintegrative - labels the act but not the actor (avoids stigmatising offender + makes it easier for them to re-enter society) - crime rates tend to be lower in societies where integrative rather than disintegrative shaming is dominant

Question 28

Summarise DOUGLAS: the meaning of suicide

Answer 28

- interactionist approach - distrusts official statistics (socially constructed) - whether a death becomes labelled as a suicide depends on the interactions/negotiations between social actors i.e. coroner, relatives, friends, doctors etc - e.g. relative may feel guilty and press for a verdict of misadventure over suicide - thus statistics tell us nothing about the meaning behind an individual's choice to commit suicide

Question 29

How does ATKINSON argue coroners decide whether a death is a suicide?

Answer 29

Look for things to do with a 'typical suicide' e.g. mode of death However, this approach can be used against him as if all we can do is use interpretations, there is no good reason to accept it

Question 30

How does Lemert, through his study of paranoia, show the effects of labelling?

Answer 30

- labelled as odd and begin to be excluded > become the 'social audience' where they begin discussing the best way of dealing with the difficult person - confirms individuals beliefs, reaction by individual confirms the audiences fear = psychiatric intervention = becoming apart of official statistics and paranoia becomes their master status

Question 31

Explain ROSENHANs 'pseudo-patient' experiment

Answer 31

researchers themselves admitted to a number of hospitals claiming to have 'heard voices' = diagnosed as schizophrenic which became their master status; even when acting normally, they were treated by staff as mentally ill

Question 32

Explain GOFFMANs 'total institutions'

Answer 32

Individuals internalise their their new identity and symbolically kill their previous identity - achieved through degradation rituals such as removing belongings

Question 33

Evaluations of labelling theory

Answer 33

- too deterministic - ignores real victims of crime - fails to explain why people commit deviance in the first place - implies without labelling deviance would not exist