Interactionist theories of crime

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What is selective law enforcement?
Agencies of social control (asc) choose who they prosecute, because they can't prosecute everyone.
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Becker on selective law enforcement
Police operate within pre-existing biases about what constitutes trouble, influencing their responses to behaviour they come across. What action is taken will depend on stereotypes of offenders not the actual offences
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What did Cicourel want to find out?
Used the phenomenological approach to understand how law enforcers make sense of what they see, how their subjective perceptions and stereotypes decide whether a criminal label is attached, and the social construction of crime statistics
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Cicoureel's USA study
Studied juvenile delinquency in two US cities, crime higher in working class than middle class
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How did Cicourel find working class and middle class were treated differently?
Working class were prosecutes harsher but middle class were treated favouribly, and were more often cautioned, counselled and released.
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What did Cicourel conclude?
Suggested that we need to look at the choices made by the police over where they patrol, who they are suspicious of and who they chose to stop and search
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Lemert
Distinguished between primary and secondary deviance
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What is primary and secondary deviance
Primary deviance is deviance that has not been publically labeled as deviant, either becuase no one has found out or its not eprcieved as being bad (speeding), secondary deviance has been labelled as deviant
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Becker- Master status
Labels may lead to the master status,this overides all other labels such as husband, father, manager etc. and becomes the dominant label. For example a peadophile label is attached to those caught downloading child ****
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Becker- Self fuffiling prophecy
Labelling can lead to self fuffiling prophecy and then the deviant career, as they are rejected from social groups and become outsiders, institutions like prisons help labels stick even more
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Becker- Deviant career
Deviant career occurs becuase your excluded from alternative legitimate opportunities, and he individual identifies with a deviant group facing similar issues
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Cohen- Folk devils and moral panic
Looked at the truth behind mods and rockers. Violence reported badly was actually very minimal, by labelling the groups they started acting up to the labels and that made it worse. Media played a big role in this
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Young- Hippies in Notting Hill
1967-69, studied hippis taking marijuana, it was onl a minor problem, media created moral panic causing polie to crack down forcing the hippies underground making the problem much worse and raising fear of drugs and police suspicion of them
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Braithewait- Disintegrative shaming
Where the crime and criminal ar labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society
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Braithewait- Reintergrative shaming
Labels the act but not the actor, the person is made aware of the negative impact of their actions and it encourages others to forgive them and accept them back into society.
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Strengths- Interactionist
It offers a more detailed micro insight which the structural theories don't
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Strength- Importance of meanings attached to crimes
It shows the importance of the reactions of others in defining crimes, others attaching labels thus meaning effect crime majorly
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Strength- Moral panics
The work of Young and Cohen shows the importance of media sensationalism and moral panic in creating crimee and further fear of crime
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Strength- Moral entrepreneurs
It highlights the role of moral entrepreneurs like the media in defining and creating deviance and moral panic which is largely ignored by structuralists
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Strength- Affect of deviance on self concept
It shows how being labelled as a deviant can significantly affect self concept and therefore how you behave in the future
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Weaknesses- Victim status
It gives the offender a victim status, as they are just a result of bad labelling thus removing the blame for deviance from the deviant onto those who define the deviants
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Weaknesses- Problems with concept of primary deviance
This concept suggests an act isn't deviant until it is defined as such, but there are some acts which people perfectly know are deviant it doesnt mean its not occuring if it has not been labelled
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Weaknesses- Other factors in criminality
It tries to explain deviance purely based on labelling, there must be something previous to the origional label which makes them commit again
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Weaknesses- too deterministic
Doesn't allow that some people chose deviance, and the attachment of the label, not allways a simple soicetal reaction
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Weaknesses- Labelling doesnt allways lead to a deviant carreer
Labelling doesnt always lead to a self fufiling prophecy and deviant label, stigma attached by socoetial reaction may reduce deviance not increase it. Becker recognises that people can chose to avoid deviant career through rehabilitation
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Weaknesses- Victims
Like most of the other approaches it tends to ignore victims as a factor in criminality and crime
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Weaknesses- NO social policy created from it
No social policy solutions to crime beyond making fewer rules and non naming and shaming offenders which isn't much consoldation fro the victims
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Weaknesses- Why are some labelled and some not
Fails to explain why some people and acts are against the law or not, points out issue of power in labelling but not as Marxists would have done, structures of power (ASC) which create wider framework for labelling process
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

Becker on selective law enforcement

Back

Police operate within pre-existing biases about what constitutes trouble, influencing their responses to behaviour they come across. What action is taken will depend on stereotypes of offenders not the actual offences

Card 3

Front

What did Cicourel want to find out?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

Cicoureel's USA study

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

How did Cicourel find working class and middle class were treated differently?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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