labelling theories

Question 1

what is the social construction of crime?

Answer 1

labelling sociologist argue acts of deviance comes to be so when others label it as such, it is not nature is an act that makes it deviant but the nature of societies reaction to the act

Question 2

what does becker argue?

Answer 2

“deviance is in the eye of the beholder”
a deviant is simply someone to whom labels has been successfully applied and deviant behaviour is simply behaviour that people so label

Question 3

what are “moral entrepreneurs”? and what does becker argue about this?

Answer 3

people who lead a moral “crusade” to change laws
becker argues this new law has two effects which is creation of a new group of outsiders and the creation of a social control agency, such as police, to enforce rules and impose labels on offenders

Question 4

what does platt argue?

Answer 4

the idea of “juvenile delinquency” was created as a result of a campaign by upperclass victorian moral entrepreneurs to priests young people at risk

Question 5

who gets labelled?

Answer 5

not everyone is punished as it depends on factors such as their interactions with agencies of social control, appearance, background, biography, situation and circumstances of offence

Question 6

what did piliavin and briar find?

Answer 6

police decisions to arrest a youth were mainly based on physical areas, being judged on their character, being influenced on gender, class and ethnicity

Question 7

what did cicourel find?

Answer 7

officers ‘typifications’ of what the typical delinquent is, resulting in law enforcement, showing class bias
in his view, justice is not fixed but negotiable as white middle class are less likely to be charged

Question 8

what do statistics that police have recorded suggest about cicourel’s view?

Answer 8

statistics argue these do not give us a valid picture of patterns of crime and can’t be used as a resource

Question 9

what is dark figure of crime?

Answer 9

difference between official statistics and real rates of crime as we do not know for certain how much crime goes undetected, unreported and unrecorded

Question 10

what are alternative statistics?

Answer 10

some sociologists use victim surveys or self report studies to gain more accurate views of the amount of crime

Question 11

what is lermert’s primary deviance?

Answer 11

refers to deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled, arguing that is it pointless to seek causes of primary deviance as it is so widespread, it is unlikely to have a single cause, cases mostly go uncaught

Question 12

what is lemert’s secondary deviance?

Answer 12

the result of societal reaction of labelling where the offender is caught and publicly labelled as a criminal, may involve being stigmatised, shamed or excluded from normal society
once an individual is labelled this their master status which overrides all others as the individual accepts the label which could lead to self fulfilling prophecy

Question 13

what is lemert’s deviant career?

Answer 13

secondary deviance is likely to provoke further hostility from society and reinforcing deviants outsider status as ex convicts may find it hard to be employed, therefore seeking outsider support which could involved them joint deviant subcultures

Question 14

what does young argue?

Answer 14

uses concepts of secondary deviance and deviant career in his study of hippy marijuana users in notting hill as labelling but police led hippies to retreating to closed groups, developing subcultures and using drugs increasingly more

Question 15

what does lemert’s and young’s work show?

Answer 15

it’s not the act itself but the hostile reaction to it which creates serious deviance; therefore, social control processes that are meant to produce law abiding behaviour may produce the opposite

Question 16

what do downes and rock note?

Answer 16

we cannot predict whether someone who has been labelled will follow a defiant career as they are able to choose for no more deviance

Question 17

what is deviance amplification spiral?

Answer 17

labelling theorists use this to describe a process which the attempt to control deviance leads to an increased level of deviance which may lead to an increase to greater attempts to control it producing more deviance

Question 18

what is cohen’s folk devils and moral panics study of societal reactions to ‘mods and rockers’?

Answer 18

disturbances involving groups of youths at english sea readouts as press exaggeration and distorted reporting with growing public concerns lead to a ‘crackdown, as police responded by arresting youths while courts imposed harsher penalties
this seemed to confirm the truth of original media reactions, provoking more concern

Question 19

what did demonising the mods and rockers as ‘folk devils’ cause?

Answer 19

further marginalisation as ‘outsiders’ which resulted in more deviant behaviours on their part

Question 20

what’s do studies show about the criminal justice policy?

Answer 20

how increase in attempt to control and punish youth can have an opposite effect in the usa

Question 21

what does Triplett note? what does the criminal justice system do?

Answer 21

an increasing tendency to see young offenders as evil and to be less tolerant of minor deviance
the criminal justice system has relabelled status offences such as truancy as more serious offences, resulting in harsher sentences

Question 22

why does labelling theory have an important policy implication?

Answer 22

adds weight to the argument that negative labelling pushes offenders towards deviant careers; therefore to reduce deviance we should enforce fewer rules for people to break

Question 23

why should we avoid publicly “naming and shaming” offenders?

Answer 23

this creates a perception of them as evil outsiders, pushing them further into deviance and away from a ‘normal’ society

Question 24

what does Braithwaite identify?

Answer 24

a positive role for labelling processes which distinguishes between two types of shaming: disintegrative shaming which is the crime and criminal labelled as bad as offender is excluded from society, and reintegrative shaming which labels the act only

Question 25

what is the policy of reintegration shaking?

Answer 25

avoids stigmatising offender as evil but also making them aware of negative impacts on their actions upon others which makes it easier for offender and community to separate offender from offence and belong in society
this avoids pushing the deviant individual into secondary deviance

Question 26

what does Braithwaite argue about reintegrative shaming?

Answer 26

that crime rates are lower in this society

Question 27

what does durkheim study with an aim of in his study of suicide?

Answer 27

of showing that sociology is a science, using statistics he claimed to have discovered causes of suicide in how effectively society integrated individuals and regulated their behaviour

Question 28

why do interactionalists reject durkheim’s positivist approach of suicide?

Answer 28

to understand suicide we must study its meaning for those who chose to kill themselves this way

Question 29

what does douglas argue about suicide? what is his argument about statistics?

Answer 29

whether a death comes to be officially labelled as a suicide rather than an accident or homoside depends on interactions and negotiations between social actors such as coroner, family and friends
relatives may feel guilt about failing to prevent death and press for a verdict of misadventure rather than suicide
a coroner either strong religious beliefs may believe suicide is a sin
statistics tell us nothing about meanings behind an individuals decision to commit suicide

Question 30

what does atkinson argue about suicide?

Answer 30

official statistics are just a record of labels that coroners have attached to deaths arguing it’s impossible to know for sure what meanings the dead give to their deaths

Question 31

what did atkinson find out about suicides?

Answer 31

found that ideas about ‘typical suicides’ were important: certain methods (hanging), location and circumstances, life history (recent behaviour) were seen as typical of suicides

Question 32

what is a criticism of atkinson

Answer 32

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

Question 33

what is lermet’s study of paranoia?

Answer 33

noting some individuals don’t fit easily into groups
as a result of this primary deviance, others label the persona as odd and begin to exclude them; therefore fulfilling secondary deviance, giving them further reason to exclude him as pipelines fear for his mental health resulting in a label of a ‘mental patient’ if taken to a hospital which leads to self fulfilling prophecy

Question 34

what is goffman’s study of asylums?

Answer 34

this shows some possible effects of being in a ‘total institution’ as old identities are ‘killed off’ and replaced with a new one
goffman notes similarities between prisons, armies and boarding schools
goffman also shows that while some inmates become institutionalised, internalising new identities. and unable or o readjust to the outsider world

Question 35

what are some criticisms of labelling theory?

Answer 35

tends to be too deterministic
emphasises negative effects of a label which gives offender a victim status (realist sociologists argue this ignores real victims of crime)
tends to focus on less serious crimes
ignores individuals may actively choose deviance
fails to explain why people commit primary deviance before any labels
implies without labelling deviance wouldn’t exist