The social construction of crime Flashcards
What do labelling theorists argue about certain acts?
- No act is inherently criminal or deviant in itself
- It only comes to be so when others label it as such
- Nature of the act doesnt make it deviant, but the nature of society’s reaction to the act
Who is a deviant for Becker?
Simply someone to whom the label has been successfully applied, and deviant behaviour is simply behaviour that people so label
Who are moral crusaders?
These are people who lead a moral crusade to change the law. However Becker argues that this new law invariably has two effects:
* The creation of a new group of outsiders - deviants who break the new rule
* The creation or expansion of a social control agency to enforce the rule
What does Becker note about social control agencies?
- They themselves may campaign for a change in the law to increase their own power
- E.G. the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics successfully campaigned for the passing of the Marijuana Tax Act 1937 to outlaw marijuana use
- Supposedly, this was on the grounds of its ill effexts on young people, but Becker argues that it was really to extend the Bureau’s sphere on influence
Who gets labelled?
Not everyone who commits an offence is punished for it. Whether a person is arrested, charged and convicted depends on factors such as?
- Their interactions with agencies of social control
- Their apperance, background and personal biography
- The situation and circumstance of the offence
Who gets labelled?
Labelling theorist’s studies show that agencies of social control are more likely to label who?
- Certain groups of people as deviant or criminal
- E.G. Piliavin and Briar (1964), found that polices decisions to arrest a youth were mainly focused on physical cues, such as manner, from which they made judgements about the youth’s character
Who gets labelled?
Officers’ decisions to arrest are influenced by their stereotypes about offenders, what did Cicourel find out about officers?
Cicourel : the negotiation of Justice
- That officers’ typifications - their commonsense theories or sterotypes of what the typical delinquent is like - led them to concentrate on certain ‘types’
- Resulted in law enforcement showing a class bias, in that w/c areas and people fitted the police typificatins most closely
Who gets labelled?
Cicourel also found that other agents of social control within the CJS reinforced this bias, For example?
Cicourel : the negotiation of Justice
- Probation officers held the commonsense theory that juvenlie delinquency was caused by broken homes, poverty and lax parenting
- Tended to see such youths as likely to offend in the future
Who gets labelled?
Justice is not fixed but negotiable, what does this mean?
Cicourel : the negotiation of Justice
- For example, when a m/c youth was arrested, he was less likely to be charged, this was partly because his background did not fit the police’s idea of a delinquent, and partly because his parents were more likely to negotiate successfully on his behalf
Who gets labelled?
What does Cicourel argue about crime statistics?
Topic versus resource
Official crime statistics do not give us a valid picture of the patterns of crime and cannot be used as a resource - that is as facts about crime
Who gets labelled?
How do interactionists see the official crime statistics?
- Socially constructed
- At each stage of the CJS agents (e.g. police officers) make decisions about whether or not to proceed to the next stage
- The outcome depends on the label they attach to the individual
- As a result, the statistics only tell us about the activities of the police and prosecutors, rather than the amount of crime out there in society
Who gets labelled?
What is the dark figure of crime and alternative statistics?
- The dark figure of crime - The difference between the official statistics and the ‘real’ rate of crime, we dont know for certain how much crime happens
- Alternative statistics - Some sociologists use victim surveys or self-report studies to gain a more accurate view of the ammount of crime
