Topic 2

Question 1

What causes crime and deviance according to labelling theorists?

Answer 1

Labelling theorists argue that crime and deviance is caused by the societal reaction to the act

Question 2

Which labelling theorist says crime is in the eye of the beholder?

Answer 2

Becker

Question 3

Who is a deviant according to Becker?

Answer 3

A deviant is someone to whom the label has been successfully applied

Question 4

What does Becker mean by Moral Entrepreneurs?

Answer 4

Moral entrepreneurs are those people who lead a moral campaign to change the law

Question 5

What does Becker argue are the two consequences of the role of moral entrepreneurs?

Answer 5

• The creation of a new group pf outsiders- outlaws or deviants who break the new rule
• The creation or expansion of a social control agency (such as police, courts) to enforce
  the rule and impose labels on offenders

Question 6

Which sociologist argues that ‘juvenile delinquency’ was originally created as a result of the campaign led by upper-class Victorian moral entrepreneurs aimed at protecting young people at risk?

Answer 6

Platt

Question 7

Which organisation does Becker argue led a campaign for changes to drug laws to increase their own power?

Answer 7

Social control agencies e.g US Federal Bureau of Narcotics

Question 8

What are some of the factors that are considered in whether a person is arrested, charged and convicted?

Answer 8

• their interactions with agencies of social control
• their appearance, background and personal biography
• the situation and circumstances of the offence

Question 9

Which sociologists found that police decisions to arrest a youth were made on physical cue which they made judgements on the youth’s character?

Answer 9

Piliavin and Briar

Question 10

Which sociologist argues in the Criminal justice system, justice is negotiated?

Answer 10

Cicourel

Question 11

What does Cicourel mean by Typifications?

Answer 11

Typifications is the stereotypes of what the typical delinquent is like

Question 12

How did Cicourel show that social control agents reinforced typifications?

Answer 12

The probation officers held the stereotypes that juvenile delinquency was caused by broken homes, poverty and lax parenting.

Question 13

Why does Cicourel argue that we should see official statistics as a Topic versus Resource?

Answer 13

Official statistics do not provide a valid picture of the patterns of crime and cannot be used as a resource instead they should be used as the topic

Question 14

Why do interactionists see official statistics as socially constructed?

Answer 14

Official statistics are seen as socially constructed as they only tell us about the activities of the police and persecutors rather than about the amount of crime out there in society
or who commits it

Question 15

What is the meaning of the dark figure?

Answer 15

The dark figure is the difference between the official statistics and the real rate of crime

Question 16

What are 2 other data sociologists can use to find a more accurate view of crime?

Answer 16

Victim surveys and self-report studies

Question 17

Which sociologist distinguishes between primary and secondary deviance?

Answer 17

Lemert

Question 18

Which type of deviance are the trivial deviant acts e.g. fare dodging that have not been publicly labelled as deviant?

Answer 18

Primary deviance

Question 19

Which type of deviance is caused when a person labelled as deviant accepts their master status of deviance and criminal?

Answer 19

Secondary deviance

Question 20

What is the meaning of master status?

Answer 20

Master status is the process of being caught and publicly labelled as a criminal which leads to being stigmatised, shamed, humiliated, shunned or excluded from normalsociety. This label becomes part of their self-concept

Question 21

What does Lemert mean by self-fulfilling prophecy?

Answer 21

Self-fulfilling prophecy is when an individual acts out or lives up to their deviant label, thereby becoming what the label says they are

Question 22

What is the process of joining a deviant subculture for deviant career opportunities, role models, and rewards due to the inability to access legal employment called?

Answer 22

Deviant career

Question 23

How does Jock Young’s study of marijuana users demonstrate the concepts of secondary deviance and a deviant career?

Answer 23

The persecution and labelling by the police led the hippies increasingly to see themselves as outsiders. They retreated into closed groups where they began to develop a deviant subculture e.g. wearing worn-out clothes. The drug became a central activity, attracting further attention from the police and creating a self fulling prophecy

Question 24

What do labelling theorists call the process where the attempt to control deviance leads to an increase in the level of deviance?

Answer 24

Deviance amplification spiral

Question 25

What is the difference between folk devils and the dark figure?

Answer 25

Folk devils and their actions are over-labelled and over-exposed to public view and the attention of the authorities while the dark figure is an about unlabelled, unrecorded crime that is ignored by the public

Question 26

Which 2 studies show that in the attempt to control and punish young offenders has had the opposite effect?

Answer 26

- the USA, Triplett (2000) - De Haan (2000)

Question 27

Which sociologist distinguishes between the two types of shaming?

Answer 27

Braithwaite

Question 28

According to Braithwaite what is Reintergrative shaming?

Answer 28

Reintegrative shamming; label of the act but not the actor

Question 29

According to Braithwaite what is disintegrative shaming?

Answer 29

In disintegrative shaming; the crime and the offender are labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society

Question 30

Why do Interactionists reject Durkheim’s positivist approach and reliance on official statistics to study Suicide?

Answer 30

Interactionists reject Durkheim’s positivist approach as they argue that to understand suicide, we must study its meanings for those who choose to kill themselves

Question 31

Why does Douglas argue suicide statistics do not tell us the reasons why people commit suicide?

Answer 31

Douglas argues that official statistics do not tell us the real rate of crime or suicide in society

Question 32

Why does Douglas recommend we use qualitative methods such as suicide notes, and unstructured interviews with deceased relatives instead of statistics to study suicide?

Answer 32

Douglas states that these methods will allow us to get behind the labels coroners attach to deaths and discover their true meaning

Question 33

Who argues that it is impossible to find the true cause of suicide as we can never get the deceased meaning?

Answer 33

Atkinson

Question 34

What is a crucial criticism (AO3) of Atkinson’s “ Coroner commonsense Knowledge” theory?

Answer 34

Atkinson focuses only on interpretations rather than real facts about it (such as how many deaths are really suicides)

Question 35

Why does Lemert note that mental illness labels are produced due to the self-fulfilling prophecy of paranoia?

Answer 35

Lemert notes that some individuals don’t fit easily into groups. As a result of the primary deviance, others label the person as off and begin to exclude them

Question 36

What does Goffman call the process where the identities of people are symbolically killed and replaced with a new one ‘inmate’ after entering total institutions?

Answer 36

Modification of the self

Question 37

Give examples of total institutions.

Answer 37

Armies, prisons, monasteries, boarding schools

Question 38

Give 4 strengths of labelling theory.

Answer 38

- labelling theory shows that the law is not a fixed set of rules to be taken for granted, but something whose construction we need to explain. - it shows that the law is often enforced in discriminatory ways - it shows crime statistics are more a record of the activities of control agents than of criminals - it also shows that society’s attempts to control deviance can backfire and create more deviance, not less

Question 39

Give 4 Criticism (AO3) of labelling theory.

Answer 39

- The labelling theory is deterministic as it implies that once someone is labelled, a deviant career is inevitable - the labelling theory focuses on less serious crimes such as drug-taking - the labelling theory fails to explain why people commit primary deviance in the first place before they are labelled. - the labelling theory emphasises the negative effects of labelling which gives the offender a kind of victim status. Realist sociologists argue that it ignores the real victims of crime