Interactionism and Labelling Theory

• Interest in how and why certain acts are labelled as criminal in the first place
• No act is inherently criminal or deviant in itself
  • It only becomes so when others label it

It is not the nature of the act that makes something deviant, but society's response to it. 

• Deviant behaviour is behaviour people so label 
• Moral entrepreneurs - people who lead a moral crusade to change the law 
• Effects of new law:
  • Creates new groups of outsiders - outlaws or deviants who break the new law
  • Creation or expansion of social control agencies to enforce the rule and impose labels on the offender e.g. police/courts
• Social control agencies themselves can also campaign for change in law to increase their own power
  • US Federal Bureau of Narcotics campaigned for Marijuana Tax Act 1937 to outlaw marijuana use - to extend their sphere of influence 
  • NOT the harmfulness of a behaviour that leads to new laws, but the efforts of powerful individuals/groups to redefine a behaviour as unacceptable. 

• Juvenile delinquency was created in Victorian era 
  • Enables state to extend power beyond criminal offences involving young, to 'status' offences where the crime is only due to their age
  • Truancy
  • Sexual promiscuity 

• Their interactions with agencies of social control
• Their appearance, background, personal biography 
• The situation and circumstances of the event 

• Factors leading to judgements of character
  • Gender
  • Class
  • Ethnicity
  • Time
  • Place 
  • Physical cues (manner, dress, etc)
• All effect police decisions to arrest a youth
• Those stopped late at night ran a greater risk of arrest
• A study of anti-social behaviour orders found they were disproportionally used against ethnic minorities.

Typifications: common sense theories and stereotypes about what the typical delinquent is like

• W/c areas - people controlled and patrolled more - more arrests - stereotype confirmed
• Youth from broken homes (poverty, lack of parenting) are more likely to commit crimes so probation officers are less likely to support non-custodial sentences for that type of person. 
• M/c youth less likely charged due to typification and parents ability to negotiate - negotiation of justice
  • He will be counselled, warned, released - not prosecuted

Official crime statistics should be a topic, not a resource

• Do not give a valid representation of crime statistics
• Should not be taken at face value
• We should investigate processes/activities of social control agencies

Social construction of crime statistics

• Different agencies of social control decide outcome of punishment 
• Labelled according to personal typifications/stereotypes
• Statistics show activity of police/prosecutor, not amount of crime or who commits it 
• Dark figure of crime - difference between crime statistics and real rate of crime 
  • We don't know how many are undetected or unrecorded
• Alternative statistics 
  • Use victim surveys or self report studies instead

• Primary Deviance: deviant acts not publicly labelled 
  • Often trivial - fare dodging 
  • Mostly goes uncaught
  • Primary deviants generally don't see themselves as deviant 
• Master Status: once an individual is labelled, it becomes his master status
  • Controlling identity, overriding all others
  • Everybody comes to see him in terms of his label - theif, junkie, **********, outsider
• Self Concept: sense of identity
  • Master status causes self concept crisis - leads to SFP
• Secondary Deviance: results from acting out label/master status
• Deviant Career: results when secondary deviance promotes more hostile reactions from society 
  • Reinforces outsider status
  • Leads to more deviance - a deviant career
• Deviant Subculture:
  • Provides support from other outsiders
  • Offers deviant career opportunities and role models
  • Rewards deviant behaviour and conformity to deviant identity

• Control Culture: social agents of control who lead outsiders to truly see themselves as deviant 
  • Create deviance in trying to stop it
• Hippie marijuana users in Notting Hill:
  • Initially drugs were only an example of primary deviance 
  • Control culture led hippies to increasingly see themselves as outsiders
  • This developed their deviant subculture through SFP

Criticism: Downes and Rock: we cannot predict whether someone who has been labelled will follow a deviant career because they are free not to deviate further.

In attempting to control deviance, we only increase the amount of deviance - leading to more attempts to control it and so on. 

• Cohen: mods and rockers
  • Press exaggeration and harsher penalties = more deviance
  • Public view confirmed
• Folk devils vs. the dark figure
  • Folk deviles and their actions are over-labelled and over-exposed to the public view and attention of the authorities
  • In law enforcement and the justice system, folk devils draw focus and attention away from detecting and punishing the dark figure - e.g. crimes of the powerful

• Attempt to control/punish young offenders can have opposite effect
  • Deviant amplification spiral
• Increasing tendency to see young offenders as evil = less tolerant of minor deviance 
  • Justice system relabels minor offences as more serious - gives harsher punishments - e.g. truancy
  • Results in an increase in offending (supports Lemert's secondary deviance)
  • De Haan: similar outcome in Holland - deviance results from increasing stigmatisation of young offenders 
• Negative labelling pushes offenders towards deviant career
• To reduce criminalisation we need to make/enforce fewer rules for people to break
  • Decriminalising soft drugs = less people with criminal convictions = less secondary deviance 
• Avoid publicly naming and shaming offenders
  • Creates perception of them as evil outsiders
  • Excludes them from mainstream society
  • Pushes them into further deviance 

• Types of shaming 
  • Disintegrative shaming: crime and criminal labelled as bad - offender excluded from society
  • Reintegrative shaming: labels act as a bad thing but not the person - 'he has done a bad thing' not 'he is a bad person' 
• Reintegrative shaming avoids stigmatising the person as civil so makes it easier for society to forgive them
  • Easier to separate the offence from the offender
  • Avoids secondary deviance
  • Pushes offender back into society 

• Too deterministic: once labelled, deviant career is inevitable
• Emphasis on negative effects = victim status to offender: ignores real victims
• Focuses on less serious crimes: e.g. drug use
• Assumes offenders are passive victims of labelling: ignores people who actively choose crime
• Fails to explain why primary deviance occurs, before labelling
• Implies that without labelling, deviance would not exist: if someone is not labelled for committing a crime, they have not deviated
• Fails to analyse source of power in creating deviance: fails to explain origin of labels and why they are applied to social groups.