Interactionism Topic 2

What does Interactionism look at?

Interactionism/Labelling theory looks at how and why some people or activities are labelled as criminal or deviant. Crime and deviance is a social construct for them and focus less on ‘wider forces’

What is the social construction of crime?

• No act is criminal or deviant in of itself, it is the act of labelling which makes it so

What does Becker argue?

• Social groups create deviance by creating rules whose infraction constitutes as deviance.

• A deviant individual is simply someone who has been labelled as such

How do laws and rules get made?

• Becker argues that moral entrepreneurs begin a crusade to see laws and rules introduced and policies in the belief it will benefit those to whom it is applied

What does becker argue this new law leads to?

• It leads to the creation of new groups known as outsiders who break the rules

• It leads to the creation and the expansion of social control agencies such as the police to monitor our behaviour.

What does Platt argue?

• Platt argues that the idea of ‘juvenile delinquents’ were created due to campaigns by upper class Victorian Moral entrepreneurs wanting to protect young people and therefore led to the establishment of juvenile courts where the state extended their power into ‘status offences’ (where the behaviour is only an offence due to their age) such as truancy or promiscuity

What does Becker note in relation to social control agents and changes in the law?

• Social control agencies also like to campaign for changes in the law to gain more power such as the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics campaigned for the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 to ‘protect’ young people but in reality is was just to expand its sphere of influence.

• Sometimes it not the inherent harm of behaviour that leads to changes in the law, but the intentions of the powerful

What factors influence whether someone is labelled?

• Their interactions with social agents of control

• Their appearance background

• The situation and circumstances of offence

• Blair found that police decisions to arrest youth was based on physical cues rather than youths character

What is the negotiation of justice + sociologist?

• Cicourel believes that justice is not fixed but negotiable, where police have ‘typifications’ of criminals on the typical delinquent where juvenile delinquency is caused by lax parenting or broken homes.

• This leads to the police targeting more areas compared to others, and that MC parents are able to plead on their child’s behalf and WC parent s are less likely to do this

What is the social construction of crime statistics?

• Crime stats cannot be used as a resource as they represent the actions of social agents of control and not of actual criminals and their acts, and instead should be used as a topic of research for sociologists as there is a dark figure of crime and that we should use alternative statistics such as victim surveys instead

What is the effect of labelling?

• By labelling someone deviant or criminal you increase the likelihood of such behaviour

What is primary deviance + sociologist?

• Lemert argues primary deviance are acts that are not publicly labelled, often go unnoticed, widespread and meaningless and is carried out by a lot of people which can be seen as a ‘moment of madness’ and so society and the individual are not labelled as deviant

What happens when deviance is noticed?

• Some deviance is noticed and labelled by society, being caught leads to shame and humiliation. Once an individual is labelled it becomes a ‘master status’ or overriding identity.

• This leads to self identification as a deviant and leads to a self fulfilling prophecy

What is Secondary deviance?

• Lemert argues that acting out a label provokes a hostile reaction from society which could lead to a deviant career and joining a deviant subculture.

• Lemert and Young show it is not the act itself but the hostile reaction from society which causes deviance and that social control agencies actually cause deviance in this fashion despite seeking to uphold law abiding behaviour

What do Downes and Rock argue?

• We cannot predict whether someone who has been labelled as deviant will follow a deviant career as they are always free to choose not to deviate further

What is Deviance Amplification + sociologist?

• Cohen argues that deviance amplification spiral is a term used to describe a process in which the attempt to control deviance leads to an increase in the level of deviance.

• This leads to greater attempts to control it and in turn thus produces yet higher levels of deviance,

• More and more control produces more and more deviance in an escalating spiral process

What is an example of the deviance amplification spiral?

• The Mods and Rockers where a moral panic received press exaggeration lead to growing concern with moral entrepreneurs calling for a ‘crackdown’.

• The police responded by arresting more youths and imposing higher penalties, which seemed to confirm the truth of the original media reaction and provoked greater public concern in an upward spiral of deviance amplification.

• The demonising of the mods and rockers as ‘folk devils’ caused further marginalisation and resulted in more deviant behaviour on their part

What is Labelling and Criminal Justice Policy?

• Triplett. There is a new and increasing tendency to see young offenders as evil and to be less tolerant of minor deviance.

• Increased violence amongst the young has led to greater stigmatization.

• Labelling theory is important for policy creation if labelling pushes people towards a deviant career, then logically it is better to have fewer rules to break, such as decriminalising soft drugs and end the naming and shaming culture

What is Reintegrative shaming + sociologist?

• Braithwaite. He argues for a positive role in the labelling process in future, identifies two types of labelling or shaming.

• Disintegrative shaming is where both the criminal and the act is labelled as bad and so is ostracised from society

• Reintegrative shaming where we label the act but not the actor. This recognises the bad act but provides an opportunity for the individual to earn back trust, which prevents negative labelling secondary deviance and breaks the self fulfilling prophecy cycle

What are the criticisms of labelling theory?

• Focuses on less serious crimes such as drugs but ignores WCC

• Deterministic implying once someone is labelled a deviant career is inevitable

• Provides the criminal with ‘victim’ status which ignores the real victims of crime

• Marxists argue it fails to account for the origin or source of labels, disregards wider power structures