Interactionist View of Crime and Deviance

Question 1

What does Cicourel state about the negotiation of justice

Answer 1

• Officers typifications ( police stereotypes)
• They resulted in law enforcement showing a class bias in that working class areas and people fitted the police typifications more closely
  • led police to patrol working class areas more intensively resulting in more arrests
• Other agents of social control within the criminal justice system reinforced this bias.
  • officers tended to see youths from such backgrounds and likely to offend in the future
• Justice is not fixed it’s negotiated.
  • for example if a middle class male was arrested he would be less likely charged because he doesn’t fit into the officers typifications . He would be “ counselled, warned and released “ rather than prosecuted

Question 2

What does cicourel argue about topic versus resource

Answer 2

• Official crime statistics do not give us a valid picture of patterns of crime and cannot be used as a resource
• Instead we should treat them as a topic for sociologists to investigate

Question 3

What do interactionist argue about the social construction of crime statistics

Answer 3

• Interactionists see the official crime statistics as socially constructed
  • at each stage agents of social control make decisions about whether or not to proceed to the next stage and the outcome depends on the label they attach to individual suspects .
• As a result the statistics produced by criminal justice system only tells us about the activities of the police and prosecutors
• Dark figure of crimes
• Alternative statistics

Question 4

What are dark figures of crime

Answer 4

Differences between the official statistics and the real rate of crime is sometimes called the dark curvier because we do not know for certain how much crime goes undetected and unrecorded

Question 5

what are alternative statistics

Answer 5

Some sociologists use victim surveys or self report studies to gain a more accurate view of the amount of crime

Question 6

what does howard Becker (1963) say about labelling and deviance

Answer 6

• Deviance depends on the definitions held in each society
• It’s not the act
• It’s all about society’s reaction to that act
• Deviance depends on :
  1) time
  2) place
  3) culture
  4) who’s doing the act
  5) who’s watching the act

Question 7

what’s an evaluation for becker

Answer 7

fails to explain origin of labels

Question 8

what does Lemert say about primary and secondary deviance

Answer 8

Primary deviance : deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled . Pointless to seek causes as it is so widespread and normalised.
Secondary deviance : result of societal reaction and is labelled. Being labelled as deviant or criminal can involve being stigmatised and shunned from normal society .
Once an individual is labelled , others may come to see them only in terms of the label .
This becomes their master status .
Provoke a crisis for the individuals sense of identity.
One way to resolve is for the individual to accept the deviant label , leading to self fulfilling prophecy.
Secondary deviance is likely to provoke a deviant career . E.g. ex convicts may find it hard to go straight because no one will employ them .
This may lead to joining deviant subcultures , offering deviant career opportunities and rewards , conforming to their deviant identity

Question 9

what’s an evaluation for Lemerts theory

Answer 9

Downes and Rock (2003) :
We cannot predict whether someone who has been labelled will follow a deviant career , because they are always free to choose not to deviate further

Question 10

what does Young (1971) say about effects of labelling

Answer 10

Study of hippy marijuana users in Notting Hill
- Initially drugs were seen as primary deviance
- Prosecution and labelling by Control Culture (police).
- Led to hippies developing deviant subculture .
- Drug use became a central activity , attracting further attention from police , creating a self fulfilling prophecy .

Question 11

what does becker say when he talks about the laws are social constructs

Answer 11

3M’s :
•Moral entrepreneurs = people who lead moral crusades to change laws
• Moral crusades = social action and campaigns to change laws and societies views
• Moral panics = an exaggerated over reaction to a perceived problem

Question 12

what’s stanley cohen’s folk devil and moral panics study in late 1960s

Answer 12

• Study of the media’s response to two groups of w/c teenagers , the mods and rockers
• the media over exaggerated and produced an inventory which contained 3 elements :
  • Exaggeration and distortion - media exaggerated the extent of violence and damage
  • Prediction - media assumed regular conflict and violence would result
  • Symbolisation - symbols of the mode and rockers were all negatively labelled

Question 13

what are some criticisms of the idea of moral panics

Answer 13

• McRobbie and Thornton :
  Moral panics are now routine and have less impact
• Assumes that the societal reaction is a disproportionate over reaction but who is to decide what is a proportionate reaction

Question 14

what are some contemporary examples of moral panics

Answer 14

• Aids
• Use of ectasy
• immigration

Question 15

what does Stuart Hall say about policing the crisis ( neo-marxism)

Answer 15

• 1970s saw a moral panic over Black “muggers “ that served the interests of capitalism
• “mugging” was soon to be associated by the media , police and politicians with black youth
• Selective policing came about
• Stop and search laws introduced

Question 16

what are some criticisms about hall’s study on policing the crisis

Answer 16

• Downes and Rock :
  Inconsistent in claiming that black street crime was not rising but also that it was rising because of unemployment
• they do not show how the capitalist crisis led to a moral panic
• Don’t provide evidence that the public were in fact panicking or blaming crime on black youth
• Left realists argue that inner city residents’ fears about mugging are not panicky but realistic

Question 17

what’s does Liazos state ( evaluation)

Answer 17

Labelling theory tends to focus on specific crimes and deviant behaviour and ignore for example the crimes of the powerful