Effects of labelling - Criminal Justice Policy Flashcards
Briefly describe the effect of the CJS from labelling
Studies have shown how increases in the attempt to control and punish young offenders can have the opposite effect.
Triplett (2000)
Triplett (2000) found people see young offenders as ‘evil’ and are less tolerant to minor deviance. The criminal justice system has re-labelled status offences (activities that are deemed offenses when committed by juveniles), such as truancy as more serious offences, resulting in much harsher sentences.
Dehaan (2000)
found the increasing stigmatisation of young offenders in the Holland criminal justice system led to more deviance.
According to Labelling theorists, how could we reduce crime and deviance?
Logically, to reduce crime and deviance, we should make and enforce fewer rules for people to break
Why are drug offences lower in the Netherlands?
The Dutch government’s notoriously tolerant drug policies almost certainly help to keep crime rates down as well. Cannabis, for example,has been effectively decriminalised since the 1970swhich means that convictions related to possession or use are exceptionally uncommon. While there are many problems associated with harder drugs like heroin or cocaine in the Netherlands, the police generally target supply chains rather than users, which also cuts down prosecution rates.
how does decriminalisation reduce crime rates?
By decriminalising soft drugs, we might reduce the number of people with criminal convictions and thus labels. This will reduce secondary deviancy, thus reducing crime rates!
As there will be no laws to be broken for soft drugs, this will avoid labelling recreational drug users as evil ‘outsiders’. This will prevent them from being ostracised from society and will discourage them from partaking in further deviance; reducing the prospect of them having a deviant career or joining a deviant subculture. Thus, reducing crime rates!
Braithwaite (1989)
disintergrative and reintergrative shaming
Disintergrative Shaming
In disintegrative shaming, the focus is not only on the actual act committed, but on the person as a whole. The shamed person is degraded in his/her entire person. The stigmatisation that goes along with this has an effect on the social interactions of the ashamed person. For example, access to the labour market is denied and other measures are taken that contribute to social marginalisation. As a consequence, the ashamed person is now denied the opportunity to participate in mainstream culture. This ultimately leads to the formation of subcultural structures in which those so excluded join together.
Reintergrative shaming
In reintegrative shaming, the act of shame is combined with an offer of reintegration into the community. Braithwaite assumes that this reintegrating shame is particularly promising when people from the perpetrator’s social environment are involved.
Evaluation of the effects of labelling and the criminal justice policy
strengths:
labelling theory can be seen as useful, because it really does emphasise that social construction of crime and deviance, it really shows us that what we consider criminal what we consider deviant. Despite there being some commonalities throughout the world, for example, don’t kill people murder is bad, no matter what country you’re in. That is a creation of society is not natural. Law is not a natural phenomena.
It also helps us to identify and explain the role of the powerful, those moral entrepreneurs in determining what is criminal and what is deviant.
And finally, it just show us how deviant careers criminal careers can be established. Somebody does something minor criminal, yeah, still criminal, or deviant or whatever. But that then escalates into a criminal career, a deviant career because that label has been attached to them, they’ve internalised it, and it has become a part of their master status. So in some ways, labelling theory can be really useful in helping to explain crime in society and the continuation of crime in society.
weaknesses:
deterministic - Remember, labelling is done externally. You don’t label yourself as a criminal. Somebody else does that to you, which means that you don’t have free will. It’s not my fault. I’m a criminal. Somebody told me I wasn’t I’ve kind of accepted that and then built on that. Okay. So it is deterministic. And because it is deterministic, that deviance in the criminal becomes victimised in the sense that they are not to blame for their behaviour. If you haven’t labelled me as a criminal, I wouldn’t then have continued with this criminal behaviour.
And it doesn’t explain why people commit the original deviance it says that the label is attached when you do something bad or you do something criminal, and somebody sees you, and the label is attached. But why did you do it in the first place?
it doesn’t explain where the stereotypes come from. It does to a little bit, but the stereotypes have to be there in the first place for the label to be attached to the group. But where did the stereotype come from in the first place, in order for it to be applied to a group?
analysis of labelling theory:
Functionalist theories take crime stats at face value, whereas labeling theory believes them to be a social construction and inaccurate.
Functionalist theories focus on WHY people commit crime, whereas Labeling theory focuses more on people’s response to it.
