Interactionism and Labelling Theory

Question 1

What are labelling theorists interested in?

Answer 1

How and why certain acts come to be defined or labelled as criminal in the first place.

Question 2

According to labelling theorists, what makes an act deviant?

Answer 2

Its not the nature of the act that makes it deviant, but the nature of society’s reaction to the act.

Question 3

Define moral entrepreneurs.

Answer 3

People who lead a moral ‘crusade’ to change the law.

Question 4

According to Becker, what are two effects of a new law?

Answer 4

• The creation of a new group of ‘outsiders’: outlaws or deviants who break the new rule.
• The creation or expansion of a social control agency (such as police, courts, probation officers etc) to enforce the rule and impose labels on offenders.

Question 5

Briefly describe one example of the creation and impact of a new law.

Answer 5

Platt: ‘Juvenile delinquency’ - created as result of campaign by upper-class Victorian entrepreneurs, to protect young people at risk.

• Enabled state to extend powers beyond criminal offenses involving young, into so-called ‘status offenses’ (where behaviour is only an offense bc of age)
• E.g: truancy + sexual promiscuity

Question 6

Briefly outline the factors that determine whether a person is arrested, charged and convicted.

Answer 6

• Their interaction with agencies of social control
• Their appearance, background and personal biography.
• The situation and circumstances of the offense.

Question 7

According to Pilkiavin and Briar, what affects police decisions to arrest a youth?

Answer 7

• Mainly based on physical cues (e.g manner + dress)
• Gender, class and ethnicity
• Time and place
• E.g those stopped late at night in high crime areas ran a greater risk of arrest.

Question 8

Briefly explain what Cicourel means by typifications.

Answer 8

Officers common sense theories or stereotypes of what the typical delinquent is led them to concentrate on certain ‘types’.

Question 9

Why do officers’ typifications result in a class bias?

Answer 9

• People in w/c areas fit typification’s more accurately.

- Led to police patrolling w/c areas more intensively, resulting in more arrests + confirming their stereotypes.

Question 10

Give an example of how bias is reinforced by other agents of social control.

Answer 10

• Probation officers held commonsense theory that juvenile delinquency was caused by broken homes, poverty + lax parenting.
• Tended to see youths from such backgrounds as likely to offend and were likely to support non-custodial sentences for them.

Question 11

Briefly explain why Cicourel claims that justice is negotiated.

Answer 11

• When a m/c youth was arrested, he was less likely to be charged as he didn’t fit police’s ‘typical delinquent’.
• Also parents were more likely to negotiate successfully on his behalf, convincing control agencies he was sorry, they would monitor him + ensure he stays out of trouble.
• Result: ‘counselled, warned and released’ rather than prosecuted.

Question 12

According to Cicourel, why should we use official crime statistics as a topic rather than as a resource?

Answer 12

• They don’t give us a valid picture of crime patterns and cannot be used as a resource. Therefore, they should be treated as topics.
• We shouldn’t take crime stats at face value; instead, we should investigate processes that created them.
• This will shed light on activities of control agencies and how they process + label certain types of people as criminal.

Question 13

Briefly explain why interactionists see official crime statistics as socially constructed.

Answer 13

• At each stage of the criminal justice system, agents of social control make decisions about whether or not to proceed to the next stage.
• Outcome depends on label attached to individual suspect or defendant in the course of their interactions.
• Labels affected by typification’s or stereotypes.

Question 14

Explain what is meant by the dark figure of crime.

Answer 14

The difference between the official statistics and the ‘real ‘ rate of crime. We don’t know for certain how much crime goes undetected, unreported and unrecorded.

Question 15

Which other two types of statistics do sociologists use to study crime?

Answer 15

Victim surveys: where they’re asked what crimes they’ve been victim of.

Self-report studies: Where they’re asked what crimes they have committed.

Question 16

What does Lemert mean by a primary deviance?

Answer 16

Deviant acts that haven’t been publicly labelled.

Question 17

Briefly explain what is meant by ‘master status’.

Answer 17

• Once an individual is labelled, others may come to see him only in terms of the label. This becomes his master status or controlling identity, overriding all others.
• In the eyes of the world, he’s no longer a colleague, father or neighbour; he’s now a thief, junkie or pedophile - an outsider.

Question 18

Briefly explain what is meant by ‘self-concept’.

Answer 18

The individual’s belief about himself or herself, including the person’s attributes and who and what the self is.

Question 19

Briefly explain what is meant by ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’.

Answer 19

The individual acts out or lives up to their deviant label, thereby becoming what the label says they are.

Question 20

Briefly explain what is meant by ‘secondary deviance’.

Answer 20

Lemert refers to the further deviance that results from acting out the label given as secondary deviance.

Question 21

Briefly explain what is meant by ‘deviant career’.

Answer 21

Example: the ex-convict finds it hard to go straight because no one will employ him, so he seeks out other outsiders for support and gains a deviant career.

Question 22

Briefly explain what is meant by ‘deviant subculture’.

Answer 22

A subculture which has norms and values that differ from the majority of people in a society.
- Offers deviant career opportunities and role models and rewards deviant behaviour.

Question 23

Briefly explain what is meant by ‘control culture’.

Answer 23

Control culture is essentially the police and other similar institutions. They persecuted and labelled hippies and made them view themselves as outsiders.

Question 24

Briefly explain the deviance amplification spiral. Use Cohen’s example to help you.

Answer 24

Term labelling theorists use to describe a process in which the attempt to control deviance leads to an increase in the level of deviance. Leads to greater attempts to control it. More and more control produces more and more deviance.

S. Cohen: Folk Devils and Moral Panics - Mods and Rockers.

• Press exaggeration + distorted reporting created moral panic.
• Moral entrepreneurs calling for ‘crackdown’.
• Police responded by arresting youths.
• Courts imposed harsher penalties.
• Confirmed media reaction + provoked more public concern in upward spiral of deviance amplification.

Question 25

Why can folk devils be thought of as the opposite of the dark figure of crime?

Answer 25

Dark figure is about unlabelled, unrecorded crime ignored by public and police. Conversely, folk devils and their actions are ‘over-labelled’ and over-exposed to public view and authorities.

Question 26

According to Triplett, how have attempts to control and punish young offenders had the opposite effect?

Answer 26

In the USA, there’s an increasing tendency to see young offenders as evil and less tolerant of minor deviance.

Question 27

Why is labelling theory important when considering criminal justice policy? Give an example.

Answer 27

Adds weight to the argument that negative labelling pushes offenders towards a deviant career. To reduces deviance: make and enforce fewer rules to break.

For example, by decriminalising soft drugs, number of people with criminal convictions may be reduced and hence the risk of seondary deviance.

Question 28

Define Braithwaite’s two types of shaming.

Answer 28

• Disintegrative shaming: where not only the crime, but also the criminal, is labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society.
• Reintegrative shaming: by contrast, labels the act but not the actor - as if to say ‘he’s done a bad thing’ rather than ‘he’s a bad person’.

Question 29

According to Braithwaite, which of his two types of shaming leads to lower crime rates and why?

Answer 29

Crime rates tend to be lower in societies where reintegrative shaming is the dominant way of dealing with offenders as it:

• Avoids stigmatising offender as evil while making them aware of negative impact of their actions + encourages others to forgive them.
• Avoids pushing them into secondary deviance.

Question 30

Why did Durkheim study suicide?

Answer 30

He aimed to show that sociology is a science.

Question 31

Why do interactionists reject Durkheim’s approach?

Answer 31

They argue that to understand suicide, we must study its meanings for those who choose to kill themselves instead of relying on official statistics.

Question 32

According to Douglas, what interactions and negotiations might take place in order for a death to be officially labelled as a suicide?

Answer 32

Whether a death comes to be officially labelled as a suicide rather than an accident or homicide, depends on the interactions between social actors such as the coroner, relatives, friends, doctors and so on.

Question 33

Why might relatives try to cover up a suicide?

Answer 33

Relatives may feel guilty about failing to prevent the death and press for a verdict of misadventure rather than suicide.

Question 34

Why might a coroner be reluctant to label a death as suicide?

Answer 34

A coroner with strong religious beliefs that suicide is a sin may be reluctant to bring in a suicide verdict.

Question 35

What methods does Douglas suggest should be used to study suicide?

Answer 35

Qualitative methods, such as analysis of suicide notes, or unstructured interviews with deceased friends/relatives, or people who’ve survived a suicide attempt. Allows us to ‘get behind’ labels coroners attach to deaths + discover their true meaning.

Question 36

What does Atkinson focus on in his work on suicide?

Answer 36

Taken-for-granted assumptions that coroners make when reaching their verdicts.

Question 37

How can Atkinson’s work be criticised?

Answer 37

If he is correct that all we can do is have interpretations of the social world, rather than real facts about it, then his account is no more than an interpretation and there’s no good reason to accept it.

Question 38

According to interactionists, what do official statistics on mental illness show?

Answer 38

A record of the activities of those such as psychiatrists with the power to attach labels such as ‘schizophrenic’ or ‘paranoid’ to others.

Question 39

Briefly explain how Lemert sees paranoia as a self-fulfilling prophecy and therefore the patient’s master status? How is this confirmed by Rosenhan’s study?

Answer 39

People labelled as ‘odd’ become excluded. Their negative reaction leads to further exclusion. People may begin discussing how to deal with them, intensifying ‘paranoia’. Reaction leads to fears about mental health. May lead to psychiatric intervention + being placed in hospital unwillingly. Gets labelled ‘mental patient’ (becomes master status).

Rosenhan:

• Pseudo-patient experiment
• Researchers had themselves admitted to various hospitals claiming they’ve been ‘hearing voices’.
• Diagnosed with schizophrenia (became master status).
• Treated as mentally ill despite acting normal
• E.g pseudo-patients kept notes of experiences, staff interpreted this as symptom of illness

Question 40

Briefly explain what Goffman means by mortification on the self.

Answer 40

• Psychiatric hospital
• Old identity symbolically ‘killed off’ + replaced w/ new one: ‘inmate’.
• Achieved by various ‘degradation rituals’

Question 41

Give an example of a degradation ritual.

Answer 41

Confiscation of personal effects.

Question 42

Identify two reactions that an inmate might have according to Goffman.

Answer 42

• Become institutionalised, internalising their new identity and unable to re-adjust to the outside world.
• Adopt various forms of resistance or accommodation to their new experience.

Question 43

How does Braginski et al’s work support Goffman’s ideas?

Answer 43

Found inmates manipulated their symptoms so as to appear ‘not well enough’ to be discharged but ‘not sick enough’ to be confined to the ward.
Result: Able to achieve their aim of free movement around the hospital.

Question 44

Briefly explain the positive aspects of labelling theory.

Answer 44

• The law isn’t a fixed set of rules to be taken for granted, but a construction we need to explain.
• The law is often enforced in discriminatory ways + crime stats are more a record of activities of control agents than criminals.
• Society’s attempts to control deviance can backfire + create more deviance, not less.

Question 45

Briefly outline the seven criticisms of labelling theory.

Answer 45

• Deterministic: implies once someone is labelled, a deviant career’s inevitable.
• Emphasis on negative effects of labelling gives offender victim status. Realist sociologists: it ignores real victims of crime.
• Tends to focus on less serious crimes e.g drug taking.
• Assumption that offenders are passive victims of labelling ignores fact that individuals may actively choose deviance.
• Fails to explain why people commit primary deviance before labelling.
• Implies without labelling, deviance wouldn’t exist.
• Recognises role of power in creating deviance but fails to analyse source of this power. Focuses on ‘middle range officials’ not capitalist class who (in Marxist view) make the rules.

Question 46

According to interactionists, what do the statistics tell us?

Answer 46

About the activities of the police and prosecutors, rather than about the amount of crime out there in society or who commits it.