INTERACTIONISM AND LABELLING THEORY

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF CRIME

• Becker (1963) notes that deviance is in the eye of the beholder, and so he puts it as 'social groups create deviance by creating the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders.'
• A deviant is someone whom the label has been successfully applied, and deviant behaviour is simply behaviour that people label. This is useful to the labelling theory as it challenges the idea that deviants are diffwerent from 'normal' people as these 'normal' people wouldnt break rules and arent considered as deviant.
• Platt (1969) argues that the idea of juvenile delinquency' was originally created as a resuly of a campaign by upper class moral entrepreneurs, aimed at protecting young people at risk. 
• This established 'juveniles' as a separate category of offender with their own courts.

WHO GETS LABELLED?

• Not everyone who commits an offence is punished for it. Whether a person is arrested, charged and convicted depends on:

- interactions with agencies of social control

- their appearsnce, background and personal biography

- the situation / circumstances of the offence

• Piliavin and Briar (1964) found that policr decisions to arrest a youth were mainly based on physical cues from which they made judgments about the youth's character. 
• Officers decisions were also influenced by the suspect's gender, class and ethnicity, as well as by time and place. 
• Those who were stopped late at night in high crime areas had a higher risk of arres.

CICOUREL : THE NEGOTIATION OF JUSTICE

• Officer theories/stereotypes of what a typical delinquent is like led them to concentrate on certain types. This resulted in law enforcement which shown class bias as the W/C fit into the police officers perceptions and police were found more in W/C areas (selective policing)
• This is useful to the labelling theory as it reveal the way official crime stats are a prioduct of bias in law enforcement in the way that those who make the laws target those who are in higher powers typifications.
• Deviance is therefore socially constructed as those who are in a higher position (police) tend to typify those who are in the W/C.

THE EFFECTS OF LABELLING

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