Topic 2: Labelling theory

Question 1

Platt

Answer 1

The idea of juvenile delinquency was created via a campaign by upper class Victorian moral entrepreneurs to protect people at risk. This established juveniles as a separate category of offender with their own courts enabling the are to extend its powers beyond criminal offences involving the young to so-called status offences such as truancy and sexual promiscuity

Question 2

Piliavin and Briar

Answer 2

Whether a offender is punished depends on their interactions with social control agencies, their appearance and background and the situation and circumstances of the offence. They found that police decisions to arrests a youth were mainly based on judgements about the youth’s character. They are also influenced by gender, class, ethnicity and time and place. For example those stopped late at night in high crime areas increase the chance of arrest. A study of anti-social behaviour orders found they were disproportionately used against ethnic minorities.

Question 3

Cicourel

Answer 3

Officers's 'typifications' results in a class bias. Policies patrol working-class areas more intensively, resulting in more arrests and confirming the stereotypes.
Probation officers held the common sense theory that juvenile delinquency was caused by broken homes, poverty and lax parenting. Therefore they see youths from such backgrounds as likely to offend din future and are less likely  to support non-custodial sentences for them  
Justice is negotiable- middle class parents can
Official stats from the police cannot be used as a resource they must be treated as a topic from sociologists to investigate the processes that created them.

Question 4

Lemert

Answer 4

Primary deviance- acts that have not been publicly labelled. Does not have a single cause and is mostly trivial. Offenders can easily rationalise them as ‘a moment of madness’.
Secondary deviance- the result of labelling. A labeled person may be shunned and humiliated and the label will become their master status overriding all others. This can provoke a crisis for the individuals’ self concept which may lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy- the deviance that this results in is secondary deviance. This will provoke further hostile reaction perhaps leading to a deviant career to joining a deviant subculture.

Question 5

Young

Answer 5

Studied hippy marijuana users in Notting Hill. Originally the drugs were peripheral to the hippies’ lifestyle- primary deviance. However, persecution and labelling by the control culture lead the hippies increasingly to see themselves as outsiders. They related into closed groups developing a deviant subcultures of longer hair and way out clothes. Drug use becomes a central activity, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Question 6

Downes and Rock

Answer 6

We cannot predict whether someone who is labeled will follow a deviant career, because they are always free not to deviate further.

Question 7

Cohen

Answer 7

The defiance amplification spiral- more and more control creates more and more deviance.

Question 8

Triplett

Answer 8

Notes an increasing tendency to see young offenders as evil and be less tolerant of minor deviance. The CJS has relabelled status offences as more serious offences resulting in harsher sentences. This has increased youth violence rather than decreasing it.

Question 9

Braithwaite

Answer 9

Disintegration shaming- not only the crime but the criminal is labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society
Reintegrative shaming- labels the act not the actor
The second makes people aware of negative impacts of actions without stigmatisation encouraging others to accept them back into society avoiding secondary deviance. Crime rates tend to be lower in societies where reintegrative shaming is the dominant way of dealing with offenders.

Question 10

Becker

Answer 10

Society creates deviance through labelling.
Moral entrepreneurs- lead a moral crusade to change the law in the belief that it will benefit those to whom it is applied. However it invariably has two effects: the creation of a new group of outsiders and the creation/expansion of a social control agency to impose labels on offenders
Social control agencies may campaign for change in law to extend their own power. For example the U.S. federal Bureau of Narcotics campaigned for the outlaw of Marijuana in 1937 supposedly on the grounds of ill effects to young people, but really to extend the Bureau’s sphere of influence. It is the efforts of powerful individuals and groups to redefine behaviour as unacceptable that leads to new laws being created