Interactionalism and Labelling Flashcards
What did Becker argue about labelling?
Social groups create their own rules and then apply them to people. Those that break the rules are labelled as deviant
What are moral entrepreneurs?
Those that lead the ‘moral crusade’ to change laws
What are the effects of changing laws?
The creation of a new group of outsiders who routinely break that law
The expansion of agencies of social control
What does Platt argue about juvenile delinquency?
The idea was created to protect children at risk by creating status offences so that young people’s actions are controlled
What is a status offence?
Where something is only a crime because of a person’s age such as drinking or smoking
What factors contribute to people being convicted of a crime?
Their appearance and background
The circumstances of the offence
Their interactions with agencies of social control
What did Piliavin and Briar find about decisions to arrest youth?
They were based off of physical cues such as clothing and manner as well as gender and class
What did Cicourel argue about the negociation of justice?
Middle class youths were more likely to be able to negociate their way out of prosecution as they don’t fit the profile of a typical criminal
How does police labelling affect which areas they patrol?
They are likely to hold negative views of working class people so patrol those areas more. As a result of this biased patrolling, they are more likely to catch working class criminals which strengthens their original view.
How do interactionalists see official crime statistics?
They see them as socially constructed as at each stage of the criminal justice system, agents of social control make the decision to continue with the prosecution. This means that official statististics only tell us about the interactions of the police and not about crime itself.
What is the dark figure of crime?
The difference between official statistics and the true ammount of crime as often it goes unreported so it’s impossible to know how much crime is really being committed.
Who came up with primary and secondary deviance?
Lamert
What is primary deviance?
Deviant acts that have not been publically labelled and are not part of an organised deviant way of life
They have little significance on status
What is secondary deviance?
When a deviant act is publically labelled and the people committing it have a deviant master status and are seen as outsiders. This leads people to turn more to deviant ways than before.
What is a master status?
A person’s controlling identity such as being a criminal
