Interactionism and Labelling Theory Flashcards
Who are Piliavin and Briar?
Piliavin and Briar found that police decisions to arrest a youth were mainly based on physical cues (such as manner and dress), from which they made judgments about the youth’s character.
Officer’s decisions were also influenced by the suspect’s gender, class and ethnicity.
What are typifications?
Commonsense theories or stereotypes of what the the typical delinquent is like.
What does Cicourel look at?
The negotiation of Justice.
What did Cicourel find?
He found that officer’s typifications led them to concentrate on certain “types.” This resulted in law enforcement showing a class bias, in that w/c areas people fitted the police typifications more closesly. As a result, police patrolled w/c areas more intensely leading to more arrests and confirming their stereotypes.
In Cicourel’s view, why was justice not fixed but negotiable?
An example is that when e m/c male was arrested he was less likely to be charged. This was because his background did not fit the idea of the police’s typical delinquent. His parents were also more likely to be able to negotiate successfully on his behalf, convincing the control agencies that he was sorry and would stay out of trouble in the future. As a result he was warned and released but not prosecuted.
What does Cicourel say about crime statistics?
He argues they do not give us a valid picture of the patterns of crim and cannot be used as a resource ( facts about crime). Instead we should use them as a topic for sociologists to investigate. We must not take crime stats at face value, instead we should investigate the processes that created them. This will highlight the activities of the control agencies and how they process and label certain types of people as criminal.
Who is Lemert?
Lemert distinguishes between primary and secondary deviance.
Primary - deviant acts that have not been publically labelled.
Secondary (master status) - the result of societal reaction, labelling.
How does this lead to further deviance?
Being caught and publically labelled as a criminal can involve being stigmatised, shamed, humiliated etc. Once an individual is labelled, others may come to see them as only in terms of the label. This becomes their master status. In the eyes of the world, they are no longer a colleague, parent or neighbour; they are now a thief etc.
This can provoke a crisis for individual’s sense of identity. So they may accept the deviant label and see themselves as the world sees them. This may lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the individual lives up to their deviant label.
