labelling

Question 1

the social construction of crime

Answer 1

Becker 1963:
-Individuals create deviance by ascribing norms and values of whats right and wrong
-Creation of ‘outsiders’, deviants who break the new rule
-Creation or expansion of a social control agency e.g. police, to enforce the rules and place labels on offenders

Question 2

Deviance is relative..

Answer 2

..It’s how society labels it and how they react e.g. homosexuality was deemed deviant or smoking weed, which is illegal in the UK but legal in some parts of the US

Question 3

Platt (1969)

Answer 3

Juvenile delinquency:
-Established juveniles as a separate category of offenders
-Allowed the state to extend its powers, into ‘status offences’, where their behaviour is only seen as offensive because of their age e.g. truancy

Question 4

Becker

Answer 4

-Social control agencies push for a change in law only to increase their own power e.g. US Federal Bureau of Narcotics campaigned for the passing of the Marijuana Tax Act 1937 which allowed the US govt to financially benefit off the use of marijuana as they can now tax it

Question 5

Piliavin and Briar (1964)- Who gets labelled?

Answer 5

-Found police decisions to arrest the youth were based on physical cues such as mannerism and dress sense.
-Officers decisions were also affected by the individuals gender, ethnicity and class + time and place e.g. higher rate of stop and searches against young black males

Question 6

Cicourel (1968)

Answer 6

The Negotiation of Justice
-Officers have ‘typifications’- stereotypes of what a typical delinquent is like- which leads them to concentrate on certain types
-Led to law enforcement showing a class bias, that in w/c areas, they’d find people who fit their stereotypes and patrol those areas more often
-Youths from a m/c background are less likely to be charged as they don’t fit the police’s typification, can use their economic and cultural capital to escape e.g. having a better lawyer
-Official crime statistics are a result of typifications that have been created by the law enforcement

Question 7

Evaluation of Cicourel

Answer 7

-The decision of guilty/not guilty is made by a cross section of society, the jury
-If the crime is serious enough, you’ll end up in prison
-It’s now a part of the policy that they must take extra consideration surrounding custodial sentences for ethnic minorities

Question 8

Social construction of crime statistics

Answer 8

-Interactionists argue that the outcome depends in the label that gets attached to that individual and its more likely to be affected by the stereotypes held about them
-Believe crime statistics aren’t a true reflection

Question 9

Dark figure of crime

Answer 9

-Crime which goes undetected, unreported and unrecorded