The effects of labelling Flashcards
Primary and secondary deviance
What is primary deviance?
- Lemert (1951)
- Primary deviance refers to deviant acts that have not been publically labelled
- Pointless to seek the causes of primary deviance, since its so widespread
- often trivial e.g. fare dodging and mostly goes uncaught
Primary and secondary deviance
What is secondary deviance?
- The result of societal reaction - that is of labelling
- Being caught and publicaly labelled as a criminal can involve being stigmatised, shamed, humiliated
- Once a person is labelled, others may come to see them only in terms of the label, this becomes their master status
- This can provoke a crisis for the individual’s self-concept, one way to resolve this is to accept the label, may lead to a SFP
Primary and secondary deviance
What is a deviant career?
- Secondary deviance is likely to provoke further hostile reactions from society and reinforce the deviant’s ‘outsider’ status, may lead to more deviance and a deviant career
- E.G. ex convicts find it hard to go straight since no one will employ them, seeks out other outsiders for support, may involve joining a devaint subculture
Primary and secondary deviance
Jock Young’s study?
Deviant career
- Uses the concept of secondary deviance and deviant career in his study of hippy marijuana users in Notting hill
- Initially drugs were normal to the hippies
- However, persecution and labelling by the control culture (police) led the hippies to see themselves more as outsiders
- They created a deviant subculture, wearing longer hair and more way out clothes
Primary and secondary deviance
Evaluation?
- Work of Lermert and Young illustrates the idea that it is not the act itself, but the hostile societal reaction to it, that creates serious deviance
- However, althoigh a deviant career is a common outcome of labelling, labelling theorists are quick to point out that it is not inevitable. Downes and Rock (2003) - we cannot predict whether someone who has been lableed will follow a deviant career
Deviance amplification spiral
What is the deviance amplification spiral?
A term labelling theorists use to describe a process in which the attempt to control deviance leads to an increase in the level of deviance. This leads to greater attempts to control it and, in turn, this produces yet higher levels of deviance
Deviance amplification spiral
What is Stanley Cohen’s (1972) Folk devils and Moral panics study about?
- Study of societal reaction to the ‘mods and rockers’ disturbances involving groups of youth
- Press exaggeration and distorted reporting of the events bagan a moral panic, with growing public concern
- The police responded by arresting more youths, while the courts imposed harsher penalties
- The demonising of the mods and rockers as ‘folk devils’ caused their further merginalisation as ‘outsiders’ resulting in more deviant behaviour
Deviance amplification spiral
Folk devils vs. the dark figure?
- Folk devils are in a sense the opposites of the dark figure of crime
- While the dark figure is about unlabelled, unrecorded crime that is ignored by the public and the police, folk devils and their actions are ‘over-labelled’ and over-exposed to public view and the attention of the authorities
Labelling and criminal justice policy
Studies have shown how increases in the attempt to control and punish young offenders can have the opposite effect, for example, in the US?
- Triplett (2000) - notes an increasing tendency to see young offenders as evil and to be less tolerant of minor deviances
- The CJS has re-labbelled status offences such as truancy as more serious offences, resulting in much harsher sentences
- Resulted in an increase in offending
Labelling and criminal justice policy
What do these findings indicate?
- Labelling theory has imporant policy implications
- They add weight to the argument that negative labelling pushes offenders towards a more deviant career
- To reduce deviance we should make and enforce fewe rules for people to break, e.g. decriminalising soft drugs can reduce the number of people with criminal convictions
Labelling and criminal justice policy
Most labelling theorists see labelling as negative, however Braithwaite (1989) identifies a more positive role for the labelling process. What two tyoes of shaming does he distinguish?
- Disintegrative shaming, where not only the crime, but also the criminal is labelled as bad
- Reintegrative shaming, by contrast, labels the act but not the actor
Labelling and criminal justice policy
The policy of reintegrative shaming avoids what?
- Stigmatising the offender as evil while at the same time making them aware of the negative impact of their actions upon others, and then encourages others to forgive them
- This makes it easier for both the offender and the community to seperate the offence from the offender and re-admit the wrongdoer back into society
