The Social Construction of Crime Flashcards
Overview
For labelling theorists, crime is a social construction. What is considered to be criminal or deviant is relative - it changes over time, place & culture depending on the society at the time.
Labelling theorists are interested in how & why certain acts come to be defined or labelled as criminal in the first place. They argue that no act is inherently criminal or deviant in itself, in all situations & at all times. It is the nature of society’s reaction to an act that makes it deviant. This is useful as labelling theory questions the concepts of ‘crime & deviance’ as they are not fixed concepts & this is ignored by other theories
Howard Becker
A deviant is simply someone who has had the label of ‘deviant’ successfully applied to them
This idea leads labelling theorists to look at how & why rules & laws get made. Becker calls people who lead a moral ‘crusade’ to change the law in the belief that it will benefit the people it is applied to moral entrepreneurs. E.g. the pro-life & pro-choice movements connected to abortion, which is an example of two sets of moral entrepreneurs working against each other on a single issue.
Who gets labelled?
Not everyone who commits an offence is punished for it. Whether a person is arrested, charged & convicted depends on a number of factors such as:
• Their interactions with agencies of social control such as the police & courts.
• Their appearance, background & personal history.
• The situation & circumstances of the offence.
This leads labelling theorists to look at how the laws are applied & enforced. Their studies show that agencies of social control are more likely to label certain groups of people as deviant or criminal.
E.g. Piliavin & Briar found that police decisions to arrest a youth were mainly based on physical cues (such as manner & dress), from which they made judgements about the youth’s character, as well as gender, social class, ethnicity & the time/place of the incident. Usefully, labelling theory shows the law is often enforced in discriminatory ways (e.g. towards certain ethnic minorities) by formal agents of social control in the Criminal Justice System.
