Topic 2 Flashcards
What causes crime and deviance according to labelling theorists?
Labelling theorists argue that crime and deviance is caused by the societal reaction to the act
Which labelling theorist says crime is in the eye of the beholder?
Becker
Who is a deviant according to Becker?
A deviant is someone to whom the label has been successfully applied
What does Becker mean by Moral Entrepreneurs?
Moral entrepreneurs are those people who lead a moral campaign to change the law
What does Becker argue are the two consequences of the role of moral entrepreneurs?
- 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
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?
Platt
Which organisation does Becker argue led a campaign for changes to drug laws to increase their own power?
Social control agencies e.g US Federal Bureau of Narcotics
What are some of the factors that are considered in whether a person is arrested, charged and convicted?
- their interactions with agencies of social control
- their appearance, background and personal biography
- the situation and circumstances of the offence
Which sociologists found that police decisions to arrest a youth were made on physical cue which they made judgements on the youth’s character?
Piliavin and Briar
Which sociologist argues in the Criminal justice system, justice is negotiated?
Cicourel
What does Cicourel mean by Typifications?
Typifications is the stereotypes of what the typical delinquent is like
How did Cicourel show that social control agents reinforced typifications?
The probation officers held the stereotypes that juvenile delinquency was caused by broken homes, poverty and lax parenting.
Why does Cicourel argue that we should see official statistics as a Topic versus Resource?
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
Why do interactionists see official statistics as socially constructed?
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
What is the meaning of the dark figure?
The dark figure is the difference between the official statistics and the real rate of crime
What are 2 other data sociologists can use to find a more accurate view of crime?
Victim surveys and self-report studies
Which sociologist distinguishes between primary and secondary deviance?
Lemert
Which type of deviance are the trivial deviant acts e.g. fare dodging that have not been publicly labelled as deviant?
Primary deviance
Which type of deviance is caused when a person labelled as deviant accepts their master status of deviance and criminal?
Secondary deviance
What is the meaning of master status?
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
What does Lemert mean by self-fulfilling prophecy?
Self-fulfilling prophecy is when an individual acts out or lives up to their deviant label, thereby becoming what the label says they are
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?
Deviant career
How does Jock Young’s study of marijuana users demonstrate the concepts of secondary deviance and a deviant career?
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
What do labelling theorists call the process where the attempt to control deviance leads to an increase in the level of deviance?
Deviance amplification spiral
What is the difference between folk devils and the dark figure?
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
Which 2 studies show that in the attempt to control and punish young offenders has had the opposite effect?
- the USA, Triplett (2000)
- De Haan (2000)
Which sociologist distinguishes between the two types of shaming?
Braithwaite
According to Braithwaite what is Reintergrative shaming?
Reintegrative shamming; label of the act but not the actor
According to Braithwaite what is disintegrative shaming?
In disintegrative shaming; the crime and the offender are labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society
Why do Interactionists reject Durkheim’s positivist approach and reliance on official statistics to study Suicide?
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
Why does Douglas argue suicide statistics do not tell us the reasons why people commit suicide?
Douglas argues that official statistics do not tell us the real rate of crime or suicide in society
Why does Douglas recommend we use qualitative methods such as suicide notes, and unstructured interviews with deceased relatives instead of statistics to study suicide?
Douglas states that these methods will allow us to get behind the labels coroners attach to deaths and discover their true meaning
Who argues that it is impossible to find the true cause of suicide as we can never get the deceased meaning?
Atkinson
What is a crucial criticism (AO3) of Atkinson’s “ Coroner commonsense Knowledge” theory?
Atkinson focuses only on interpretations rather than real facts about it (such as how many deaths are really suicides)
Why does Lemert note that mental illness labels are produced due to the self-fulfilling prophecy of paranoia?
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
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?
Modification of the self
Give examples of total institutions.
Armies, prisons, monasteries, boarding schools
Give 4 strengths of labelling theory.
- 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
Give 4 Criticism (AO3) of labelling theory.
- 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
