Labelling Theory and deviance

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  • Created by: Harriet
  • Created on: 05-06-13 18:05
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  • Labelling Theory
    • The Social construction of crime
      • Differential enforcement
        • Social control agencies tend to label certain groups as criminal
        • Piliavin and Briar- based on dress, gender, class, ethnicity, time and place
      • Cicourel: Typifications
        • The police have stereotypes of the 'typical delinquent'
          • people fitting this typification are more likely to be stopped arrested and  charged
          • W/C juveniles more likely to be charged
      • Crime statistics: a topic not a recource
        • As police  have typifications,official statistics are invalid
        • We should look at them as a topic to investigate the process by which they are constructed
      • Becker- No act is deviant in itself: deviance is a social construct
    • The effects of labelling
      • Lemert: Primary and  secondary deviance
        • Secondary deviance- results from societal reaction and labelling. Labelling can exclude people from society or allow the label to become their master status
        • Primary deviance- deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled. Have many causes, often trivial and mostly go uncaught
      • Self-fulfilling prophecy
        • Being labelled may lead to a crisis of he individuals self-concept, resulting in a SFP-secondary deviance
        • Young- Study on hippy marijuana users.
          • Drug use was insignificant in the hippies lifestyle. But after the police labelled them as junkies, they developed a deviant subculture where drug use was the central activity= SFP
      • Deviance amplification spiral
        • The attempt to control deviance leads to it increasing, resulting in greater control and,in turn, yet more deviance
        • Cohen- Mod's and Rockers: after media exaggeration moral entrepreneurs called for a 'crackdown'. The police responded by arresting more youths, leading to them being marginalised resulting in more deviance
    • Evalutaion
      • Too deterministic
      • It implies that if somebody is not caught they have not deviated
      • It gives offenders a victim status
      • Marxists-It fails to make the links between the labelling process and capitalism

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