Crime and deviance

Crime

Illegal act punishable by law - if detected can result in formal consequences

Deviance

Seen as abnormal to the majority - behaviour which does not conform to society’s mainstream norms and values. Likely to receive informal actions/ consequences.

Social construction of crime

• Acts of crime and deviance are not fixed, universal or permanent

• Crime, deviance and age of criminal responsibility varies from time, culture and situation

Crime being socially constructed by time

• Suicide used to be illegal in the UK until the 1960’s, punishable by death.

• At one time homosexuality was seen as a mental illness, illegal and contagious

Crime being socially constructed by culture

Adultery can lead to the death penalty in some countries

Crime being socially constructed by situation

Killing someone is not always a crime, eg being a soldier

Social control

• The methods which persuade or force individuals to conform to the the main social norms and values which are learned through early socialisation - prevents deviance

• Can be formal and informal

• Sanctions are a way of enforcing social control and can be positive or negative, ranging all the way from positive sanctions being pocket money or a knighthood to negative sanctions being sitting in the corner or life imprisonment

Formal social control

• These are agencies specifically set up to ensure that people conform, for example police, courts

• You have to obey because of bad sanctions like prison time or fines

Informal social control

These are groups which sanction but are not primarily involved in enforcing social control, for example parents, education system and workplace

Official crime statistics

• Police recorded statistics

• Published every 6 months by the home office

Strengths of official statistics

• Provide an overview of social life

• Enable easy comparisons between social groups and countries

• They help us to make historical comparisons and to establish trends

• The government is the only institution large enough and representative enough to collect massive data sets on public issues

• Allows the researcher to remain detached from the respondents

• Often freely available to the researchers and the general public

Weaknesses of official statistics

• Some lack validity, eg not all crimes will be reported

• Lack validity because they are collected by the state and manipulated to make things look better than they actually are, eg unemployment statistics

• May serve the interests of elite groups - data is only collected on things which do not harm those in power

• The way that some social trends are measured change over time - making historical comparisons difficult

Crime survey for England and Wales (British crime survey)

• Survey in which a sample of people are asked if they have been victims of crime and if so whether it has been reported to the police

• Since 2009 interviewed children aged 10-15 years

• People are interviewed about their experience of crime in the last 12 months and their attitudes to crime related issues (eg police, perceptions of crime and anti-social behaviour)

• Random sampling of addresses from the royal mails list of addresses in England and Wales - equal chance of being chosen

Strengths of crime survey

• Captures the ‘dark figure of crime’ - crimes that are unreported to the police

• Has higher validity than the official police recorded statistics as it relies upon first hand information from those that have been victims of crime

• Gives a more complete picture of crime and can be used to create initiatives and lead to policy reforms

• Uses a large sample that is representative of the population

• Repeated annually using similar questions and can compare the amount of crime from one year to the next making it reliable

• Collects data on people’s perceptions of crime which is useful in policy formation

Weaknesses of crime survey

• Fails to capture victimless crimes such as prostitution and drug use

• Is an estimate of the amount of crime in the UK

• Relies upon the subjective interpretation of individuals as to whether a crime has been committed

• Relies upon people remembering the past 12 months and whether they have been the victim of a crime

• Respondents may not be aware that they have been the victim of a crime, e.g. fraud

Self report studies

Anonymous questionnaires in which people are asked to own up to committing crimes, whether or not they have been discovered

Strengths of self report studies

• More accurate picture

• Reveal the dark figures of crime

• Challenge stereotypes - reveal that female offending is underestimated in OCS

Weaknesses of self report studies

• Validity issues - respondents may lie, forget or misunderstand questions

• Fear of disclosure can lead to underreporting

• Asking about criminal behaviour can create discomfort or pressure for participants

• Samples may under-represent groups who are hard to access, unwilling to cooperate, or do not view certain acts as criminal

Functionalists view on official crime statistics

• Accept statistics as accurate and representative

• Useful for establishing patterns of crime

Marxism view on official crime statistics

• Biased view of crime - underrepresent the crimes of the powerful

• Gives the impression that the main criminals are the working class

Feminism view on official crime statistics

Under present the extent of female crime and crimes by some men against women such as domestic abuse

Labelling theory view on official crime statistics

• Official statistics are ‘social constructs’

• Useful to reveal the stereotypes, labelling of the public and of the criminal justice system

• Official statistics further fuel stereotypes which generates a self fulfilling prophecy

Functionalist society - socialisation and social control

• Socialisation - values and a shared culture is internalised into its members and they feel they know what is right and wrong to do that in that society

• Social control - rewards and punishment for doing the right and wrong thing, more opportunities with a clean criminal record, and prison if you are deviant

Durkheims beliefs on crime

• Crime is inevitable because some people are just not socialised adequately because we are all individuals and have different experiences, influences and circumstances

• Also modern societies promote a diverse and specialised labour force, and a diversity of subcultures, which can divide individuals and groups making the value consensus blurred creating crime and deviance which can then result in anomie

Functionalists - positive functions crime serves

• Boundary maintenance - reaffirm society’s shared values and norms and enforce social solidarity and enable everyone to join together to show what is acceptable and what is not, eg courtroom trials

• Safety valve - crimes can act as a release of stress in society

• Warning device - statistics like truancy and suicide highlight serious issues in society

• Adaptation and change - all change starts with deviance as change is a deviation from norms

Davis - prostitution as a safety valve

• Prostitution, though condemned, was actually functional for society. He argued that its existence helped to preserve the family, which, in the view of functionalist sociologists, is the key social institution of all societies

• Implicitly, Davis accepted the Freudian view that men’s powerful sexual drive inevitably threatened the stability of the family. Prostitution served to preserve the family by offering an outlet for male sexual needs that were not being met within a marriage - know as a safety valve to release sexual tensions outside of the family

• Prostitution provided impersonal sexual gratification, which in contrast to having an affair, was unlikely to lead to an emotional attachment that would threaten the marital relationship

Functionalists - negative functions crime serve

Anomie - lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group

Strain theory

Merton adapted Durkheim’s anomie and developed ‘strain theory’ to explain why anomie occurs. Merton argues that deviance is a result of strain between our goals and the means we have to get these goals.

Responses to strain

• Conformity

• Innovation

• Ritualism

• Retreatism

• Rebellion

Conformity

• Most people continue to accept the culture and norms even if they aren’t successful

• Have goals and means

• Eg work hard legally to succeed

• Doesn’t result in crime

Innovation

• People accept the goal of success but lack the ability to achieve, reject legitimate way of success and find alternative ways

• Have the goals but not uses illegitimate means

• Eg theft and fraud

• Results in crime

Ritualism

• Reject the culture of success but stick to the rules

• Don’t have the goals but have the means

• Eg stick to rules without aiming for success

• Doesn’t result in crime

Retreatism

• Reject both the goals and the rules, drop out of society

• Eg drug addiction, homelessness

• Likely to lead to crime

Rebellion

• People who reject the rules and norms and wish to replace them with the whole new/ different ones

• Eg political radicals, revolutionaries

• Can lead to crime

Strengths of Merton’s strain theory

• Links personal behaviour to wider social structure.

• Explains economic and utilitarian crimes effectively.

• Offers a useful framework for analysing modern capitalist societies.

Weaknesses of Merton’s strain theory

• Not all working-class individuals turn to crime — it doesn’t explain individual differences.

• Over-relies on official statistics, underestimating middle-class and white-collar crime.

• Doesn’t explain non-economic crimes such as violence or vandalism.

• Marxists argue it fails to challenge capitalism itself, which relies on inequality and exploitation.

Subcultural theories of deviance

• A Subculture is a group that has values that are different to the mainstream culture. Subcultural theorists argue that deviance is the result of whole groups breaking off from society who have deviant values (subcultures) and deviance is a result of these individuals conforming to the values and norms of the subculture to which they belong.

• In contrast to Social Control theorists, it is the pull of the peer group that encourages individuals to commit crime, rather than the lack of attachment to the family or other mainstream institutions. Subcultural theory also helps explain non-utilitarian crimes such as vandalism and joy riding which strain theory cannot really explain. Deviance is a collective response to marginalisation

Cohen: status frustration

• Blocked opportunities to succeed lead young working class males to form delinquent subcultures

• Unable to achieve status in education - working class boys suffer from status frustration

• Look to obtain status by forming subcultural groups with similar peers and construct an alternative status hierarchy

• This involves subverting the norms and values of society to give status to criminal and deviant activities - usually non-utilitarian

• This brings them into conflict with authorities and further harms their opportunities for status through legitimate means

Miller: the working class subculture

Miller does not see the deviant behaviour occurring due to the inability of the lower-class groups to achieve mainstream success. He believes that lower class groups possess their own culture and values. He says there are 4 'Focal Concerns in w/c subcultures:

• Toughness: this involves a concern for masculinity and finds expression in courage in the face of physical threat and a rejection of timidity and weakness-an attempt to maintain their reputation'. - eg fights, murder

• Smartness: street smart'-this involves the 'capacity to outfox, outwit and dupe others'. - eg fights, robbery

• Excitement: Involves the search for 'thrills'.- es joyride, robbery

• Fate: They believe that little can be done about their lives - what will be will be... - eg theft, drugs

Cookware and Ohlin: three subcultures

They focused on how peoples' opportunities to be deviant are different (based on where they live and the opportunity structure available): not everyone gets the same chances to be successful criminals; some have better opportunities to enter into a criminal career.

• Criminal subcultures

• Conflict subcultures- these tend to commit violent crime to release frustrations. Gang / turf wars. In areas that have little social unity or informal social control.

• Retreatist Subculture- have failed to succeed in both the legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures and are therefore double failures. Their activities centre mainly around illegal drug abuse.

Criminal subcultures

• Criminal Subcultures are characterised by utilitarian crimes, such as theft.

• They develop in more stable working class areas where there is an established pattern of crime. This provided a learning opportunity and career structure for aspiring young criminals, and an alternative to the legitimate job market as a means of achieving financial rewards.

• Adult criminals exercise social control over the young to stop them carrying out non-utilitarian delinquent acts – such as vandalism – which might attract the attention of the police.

Conflict subcultures

• Emerge in socially disorganised areas where there is a high rate of population turnover and a consequent lack of social cohesion.

• Conflict subcultures are characterised by violence, gang warfare, ‘mugging’ and other street crime. Both approved and illegal means of achieving mainstream goals are blocked or limited, and young people express their frustration at this situation through violence or street crime, and at least obtain status through success in subcultural peer-group values.

• This is a possible explanation for the gang culture which is increasingly appearing in run down areas of the UK, and possibly explains the UK riots of 2011.

Retreatist subcultures

• Emerge among those lower class youth who are ‘double failures’ – they have failed to succeed in both mainstream society and in the crime and gang cultures above.

• The response is a retreat into drug addiction and alcoholism, paid for by petty theft, shoplifting and prostitution

Matza: subterranean values and drift

• Matza presents an interesting functionalist alternative to subcultural theories where he digests that in fact we all share the 'delinquent' values that lead some people to criminal and deviant behaviour but most of us, most of the time, are able to keep them suppressed. This is a learned skill, however, so we are more likely to commit crime or engage in deviant behaviour when we are young. As such people, are neither conformist nor deviant; instead, people are able to 'drift between both throughout their life.

• Matza suggests that the proof for the existence of subterranean (underground) values comes from the fact that people seek to neutralise their deviant acts. If people really had a different set of values, they would believe their deviant behaviour was correct. However, people quickly seek ways to justify their behaviour.

Matza - techniques of neutralisation

• Denial of responsibility - “it’s not my fault”

• Denial of injury - “no one got hurt”

• Denial of the victim - “they deserved it”

• Condemnation if the condemners - “you’re just as bad”

• Appeal to higher loyalties - “I had to help my family”

Evaluating functionalism

• Durkheim talks about crime in very general terms. He theorises that ‘crime’ is necessary and even functional but fails to distinguish between different types of crime. It could be that some crimes may be so harmful that they will always be dysfunctional rather than functional.

• Functionalists suggest that the criminal justice system benefits everyone in society by punishing criminals and reinforcing the acceptable boundaries of behaviour. However, Marxist and Feminist analysis of crime demonstrates that not all criminals are punished equally and thus crime and punishment benefit the powerful for than the powerless

• Interactionists would suggest that whether or not a crime is functional cannot be determined objectively; surely it depends on an individual’s relationship to the crime.

• Functionalists assume that society has universal norms and values that are reinforced by certain crimes being punished in public. Postmodernists argue society is so diverse, there is no such thing as ‘normal’. 

• The Functionalist theory of crime is teleological. It operates a reverse logic by turning effects into causes. I.e. in reality the cause of crime is the dysfunctional system. However in functionalist theory crime becomes the necessary cause which makes a system functional.

Marxist view on crime

Marxists believe that Capitalism is criminogenic. This means that they believe that crime is an inbuilt feature of capitalist society that emphasises economic self-interest, greed and personal gain. Crime therefore is a rational response to the competitiveness and inequality of life in the capitalist system.

Ways capitalism is criminogenic

• Capitalism encourages individuals to pursue self-interest rather than public duty

• Capitalism encourages individuals to be materialistic consumers, making us aspire to an unrealistic and often unattainable lifestyle.

• Capitalism in its wake generates massive inequality and poverty, conditions which are correlated with higher crime rates.

Utilitarian crime

Crimes committed which have a physical gain such as money or an item, eg a watch

Non-utilitarian crime

Crimes which has no physical gain such as vandalism or murder

Absolute deprivation (Marxism)

Measure of property that describes the loss or absence of the means to satisfy the basic needs of survival

Relative deprivation (neo-Marxism)

People are deprived compared with others in society. Excluded from participating in the consumer society.

Reasons working class commit crime

• Poverty - need it to survive

• Feel alienated from society and nor listened to

• Capitalist advertising encouraging material society which they cannot afford

• They are experiencing absolute poverty

Reasons upper class commit crime

• Capitalism is ruthless competition and they must win at all costs

• They wish to maintain wealth/ power

• Their crime is invisible - can get away with it and are allowed to get away with it

How the structure of society explains why crime occurs

• Laws are made by bourgeoisie

• Laws are ideologically constructed

• All laws are essentially for the benefit of the ruling class

Marxism - laws are created by the bourgeoisie for the bourgeoisie

• Ku: Sayers - “rich largely shapes the laws”

Marxism - laws are selectively enforced and targets the working class

• Ku: snider - In capitalist societies such as the UK, laws that threaten the interests of large corporations by undermining their profit are rarely passed. Only passing health and safety laws, pollution etc. when forced to do so by public crisis or union agitation.

• App: Carson sampled 200 companies and found that ALL had broken health and safety laws but only 1.5% of these cases had resulted in prosecution.

Marxism - ideological functions of crime and laws

• Ku: laws divert attention away from the exploitative nature of capitalism and focuses attention instead on the ’evil’ and frightening nature of certain criminal working class groups. Laws are instruments of the ruling class and they reflect the values and beliefs found in ruling class ideology.

  • Push blame onto the working class, making them believe they’re at fault

  • Laws appear to protect the working class

  • Pearce - Create laws which make working class think laws are fair for all classes ‘the caring face’ - this reproduces false class consciousness

• App:

  • Criminal behaviour order

  • Health and safety at work act (caring face)

  • Laws against hunting using dogs

• An: this maintains a healthy workplace which is distracted by the illusion of casualties and preventing a revolution

Evaluating Marxism

• Strength - Marxism effectively explains how crime is linked to the unequal distribution of wealth and power in capitalist societies. It shows how laws are made by and for the ruling class, often criminalising the working class while ignoring white-collar and corporate crimes

• Criticism - Marxism tends to reduce all crime to class struggle and economic factors, ignoring other influences like gender, ethnicity or individual agency. It overlooks crimes committed by the working class that don’t challenge capitalism, eg dometic violence.

• Alternative - interactionist theories focus on how individuals are labelled as deviant and how this affects their identity and behaviour

• Limitation - Marxism doesn’t adequately explain crimes that occur within the working class or those unrelated to capitalism, such as hate crimes, gang violence, or interpersonal abuse

Neo-Marxism - New criminology

• Suggests that social structures shape criminal behaviour (poverty and lack of opportunity) but the individuals also showed agency assigned meaning to their crimes. They see criminals as victims of social stigma and actively resisting elements of capitalism.

• Taylor, Watson and young developed the concept of a fully social theory of deviance. They developed a more holistic approach to researching deviance, seeing deviance as being influenced by both structural forces and individual agency.

Considerations of fully social theory

Considered a range of factors to understand the individual’s motivation for criminal behaviour:

• Wider social origin of the act - this refers to the power structures in society and how fair society is. For example, a lack of opportunity and relative deprivation may influence their decision to deviate.

• Immediate origins of the act - the particular circumstances that have caused a person to deviate. For example, this could be the loss of a job or frustration over lack of opportunity for promotion.

• The meaning of the act to the deviant - what was the purpose of the act to the individual. For example, stealing to feed their family or assault someone that insulted them.

• Immediate origins of the societal reaction - the reactions of those connected to the deviant. For example, how did the family/friends react? Were they sympathetic to their plight or were they ostracised?

• The wider origins of the societal reaction - How does the rest of society react to the act of deviance? For example, is there a public outcry?

• Impact of societal reaction on future behaviour - Will the person committing the act be labelled? Will the act become a master status? For example, will it impact their future? How will this impact on further acts of deviance?

Stuart Hall’s application of critical criminology

Black muggers in the 1970's UK. His key findings:

• There was what Marxists call a 'crisis of capitalism' (an economic reason). The resulting unemployment had a disproportionate impact on black people, some of whom chose to enter the informal economy (aspects of which involved crime) rather than do "white man's shit work".

• The ruling class sought to divide the working class to prevent anti-capitalist political activism: turning white workers against black workers. Also, a moral panic about street crime by black people was fostered, leading to a crack down by the police and crime wave fantasy This all acted to prevent a revolution or radical political change.

Realists key differences

• Crime as a real problem

• Crime causes fear

• Focus on the victims

• Try to offer realist solutions

Left realism

• Generally linked to Labour Party policies

• Approach = ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’

• 3 causes of crime: marginalisation, relative deprivation, subcultures

Right realism

• Associated with Conservative Party and new right policies

• Emphasis on being tougher on the criminals than on the causes of crime

• 3 causes of crime: bio-social, inadequate socialisation and the underclass, rational choice

Right realism reasons for crime: Hernnstein and Wilson - biological differences

• Biological differences between individuals make someone more strongly predisposed to commit crime than others

• They picture young men as ‘temperamentally aggressive’ which is partly biologically based and makes them more prone to crime

Right realism reasons for crime: herrnstein and Murray - bio social approach

• Some people are biologically predisposed to commit crime, especially those with low intelligence.

• However, while biology may increase chances of committing, effective socialisation decreases it

Right realism reasons for crime: Murray - socialisation and the underclass

• Murray argues that crime rate is increasing because of a growing ‘underclass’ or what he refers to as the ‘new rabble’. He defines this group as being people who display deviant behaviour and who fail to socialise their children properly.

• According to Murray, the reason why the underclass is increasing in the UK and the USA is because of ‘welfare dependency’ – the over generous benefits system which offers no incentive to work, allowing more people to become dependent on the state (however, it is worth noting here that the coalition government made this ‘underclass’ a target of their policies and introduced benefit caps and cuts to ensure that people have an incentive to work, which the conservative government have vouched to continue, thus dating Murray’s theory).

• He suggests that this has led to a decline in the nuclear family and an increase in single mothers, as people can live off benefits. Murray suggests that single mothers are not capable of socialising their children effectively and that boys lack male role models, leading to increased criminality amongst the underclass.

Right realism reasons for crime: diluvia and Walters - socialisation

Crime is a result of growing up surrounded by deviant, delinquent and criminal adults in a practically perfect criminogenic environment - that is one that seems almost consciously designed to produce vicious, predatory unrepentant street criminals

Right realism reasons for crime: Clarke - rational choice theory

Clarke argues that individuals have free will and the power of reason. He suggests that the decision to commit crime is a choice based on rational calculation of likely consequences. If an individual believes they have more chance of getting away with something than getting caught, then they will commit a criminal act – it is a rational decision.

Right realism reasons for crime: Cohen and Felton - routine activities theory

• They argued that in most circumstances social control mechanisms, lack of opportunity and/ or the risk of getting caught prevented crime from taking place

• Crime therefore needed three conditions to take place:

  • Individuals who were motivated to offend

  • Availability of opportunity and targets

  • Lack of capable guardians such as parents or police who might prevent crime occurring

• Most crime in their view was opportunistic, rather than planned in advance

• Therefore, if individuals motivated to commit crime encountered easy opportunities to commit them in the routine activities of their daily lives then crime was more likely to occur

Right realism solutions: Wilson and kelling - broken windows theory

The local community and residents need to maintain and fix broken windows in their neighbourhoods to prevent it from being rundown and attracting crime and deviant groups to enter the area.

Right realism solutions: zero tolerance

• Proactively tackle even the slightest sign of disorder even if not criminal to prevent more serious ones from occurring

• By working with local residents to deal with undesirable behaviour, the police can help to prevent the deterioration of neighbourhoods and reinvigorate informal social cinreiks

Evaluating zero tolerance

• In New York major crime fell by 39%

• Works well in heavily populated areas with high policing levels and large amounts of petty crime

• Lots of accusations of heavy handed, aggressive policing - racial tension and racism in areas of New York

Right realism solutions: target hardening

Reduce the rewards and increase the cost of crime. Maximise their deterrent effect by greater use of prison and ensure that punishments follow soon after the offence, eg making it more difficult to break into buildings and gated communities with security guards

Evaluating target hardening

• Cheap and simple to implement

• Ignores the role of emotion and thrill as a cause of crime

• Leads to crime displacement - move crime to another place or time

Evaluating right realism

• Criticism - assumes that crime is always a rational calculation, IQ differences account for less than 3% of differences in offending, zero tolerance policies may mean crime does not decrease but moves

• Limitation - ignores the wider structural causes such as poverty, ignores corporate crime and focuses on petty crime

Left realism - multiple aetiology

• The idea that no single factor causes crime

• Crime is the result of a mixture of formal and informal controls, structural inequalities and the agency of the offender

Left realism reasons for crime: Lea and Young - relative deprivation

• Being deprived in relation to others. Lacking what other people around you have and feeling a sense of entitlement- leads to theft.

• Lea and Young - pointed out that it is not poverty or unemployment, which directly causes crime, it is the expectations people have and a feeling of resentment about what they could actually earn compared to their expectations that leads to crime.

• Young- blames modern society (TV etc.) for increasing this idea of relative deprivation.

Left realism reasons for crime: subcultures

• Subcultures develop amongst groups who suffer relative deprivation and marginalisation. Specific sets of values, forms of dress and modes of behaviour develop which reflect the problems that their members face.

• The outcome of subculture, marginalisation and relative deprivation is street crime and burglary, committed largely by young males.

• Lea and Young- They are still located in the values of the wider society-subcultures develop precisely because their members subscribe to the dominant values of society, but are blocked off (because of marginalisation) from success.

Left realism reasons for crime: marginalisation

• 'Being pushed out'. Marginalisation refers to the situation where certain groups in the population are more likely than others to suffer economic, social and political deprivation.

• Young people living 'in inner cities and social housing estates are likely to suffer from higher levels of deprivation than those from more affluent areas.

• Political marginalisation - refers to the fact that there is no way for them to influence decision makers and thus they feel powerless.

• Lea and Young believe that the lack of a role and a voice within society is a contributing factor to deviant behaviour. Leads to violent crime.

Left realism solutions: police reform

• Police reform to create a more consensual force that would better represent the population it policies.

• If there were genuine consensus policing and the public had more confidence in the police, they would report more crimes.

• The public would work with the police rather than feel threatened by them and ultimately this would improve policing for communities and reduce crime.

• The police are losing public support among youth, ethnic minorities & those in inner cities. The police must deal with local concerns as they over-police minor drug crime and under police racist attacks and domestic violence which is a local concern.

Left realism solutions: multi-agency approach

Local councils, schools, charities, housing dep etc working together

Left realism solutions: young - society changes

Tackle discrimination/ unfairness, decent jobs, improve housing and become a more tolerant society

Left realism solutions: ABSO

Protecting vulnerable groups from crime and low level disorder

Interactionist view on crime

• The labelling theory seeks to explain why only some people and some acts are defined as deviant or criminal, whilst others carrying out similar acts are not.

• Voluntaristic approach- focuses on how something affects the individual, rather than how it affects a group of people, or the entirety of society.

Beckers view on crime

• “It is not the nature of the act that makes it deviant, but the nature of society’s reaction to the act which makes it deviant”

• Becker believes that deviance is a social construction. Deviant behaviour is behaviour people label as deviant therefore a deviant is someone who has been labelled.

Moral entrepreneurs

Lead us to believe that they are creating a label to benefit society, eg police, law and parliament etc

Process of labelling: Negotiation of justice and typifications

Pilavin and Briar - arrests mainly based on physical cues and judgements about the young person's character. An officer's decisions to arrest were based on the suspect's gender and class as well as their ethnicity, and time and place.

Process of labelling: Typifications

Their common-sense theories or stereotypes of what a typical delinquent is like. Leads to police to patrol working class areas more as they expect deviance.

Impact of labelling: deviant careers

• Labelling can force people into a deviant career - much like an occupational career

• They are outside mainstream society and therefore continue to commit deviant acts

• Therefore, application of a deviant label doesn’t prevent crime it actually produces more

• App: drug dealing - career which doesn’t require background checks

• An: as a result there are blocked opportunists so they continue to be criminals

Impact of labelling: cohen - deviancy amplification spiral

• Labelling can force people into a deviant career- much like an occupational career. They are outside mainstream society and therefore continue to commit deviant acts. Therefore- application of a deviant label doesn't prevent crime it actually produces more.

• A small act of deviance can be tuned into something much bigger by societal reactions. It can be thought of as a spiral.

  1. Initial act

  2. Societal reactions

  3. Individual or group are demonised as folk devils

  4. Marginalised or alienated from society

  5. Individual or group turn to increased deviance

• App: The riots in the uk in the summer of 2011, for example, began in one area of London but quickly spread through the city and then to other counties. The later offenders were only aware of the riots through its reporting on 24 hour news broadcasts: therefore, the reporting of the original deviance amplified it

Impact of labelling: secondary device

• Being labelled can ultimately cause people to become deviant

• App: Young - studies hippies in Notting Hill. Drugs were peripheral to the hippie lifestyle. Persecution and labelling of police led the hippies to see themselves as outsiders. Retreated into closed groups and developed a deviant subculture- hair, clothes and drug use became a central activity.

Impact of labelling: master status

• Lemert - when a label has been successfully applied to a person, then all other qualities become unimportant- this becomes their 'controlling identity:

• In the eyes of the world that person is no longer a friend or a colleague; they are now a thief, junkie or pedophile- Outsider.

• App: Being caught and publicly labelled as a thief can involve being stigmatised, shamed, humiliated, shunned or excluded from normal society

• An: This can provoke a crisis in identity and one way to resolve it is to accept it and see themselves as the world sees them.

Disintegrative shaming

The crime and the criminal is labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society

Reintegrative shaming

Labels the act but not the individual. The offender is made aware of the effect his actions have had on society. They are encouraged to be welcomed back in society.

Evaluation of labelling theory

• Strength - label is useful as it helps to explain why criminals are labelled

• Criticism - It assumes offenders are just passive - it doesn't recognise the role of personal choice in committing crime

• Limitation - doesn’t explain the initial act

Foucault - surveillance

• He suggests we live in a 'prison-like culture' constantly monitored... or think we are. Prisons are a metaphor for how all of us are controlled and watched by those in power. Foucault uses the Panopticon to illustrate this.

• The Panopticon is a prison design where prisoner's cells are visible to guards, but the guards are not visible to the prisoners. Not knowing if you are being watched, means the prisoners must constantly behave as if they are being watched. Surveillance then turns into self-surveillance, control becomes invisible and 'inside the prisoner. They essentially police themselves because of this style.

Everyday surveillance

• Tesco club card

• Cookies

• CCTV

• Google maps

Liquid surveillance - postmodernists

Postmodernists believe society is fluid and constantly changing. Technology has allowed this to speed up. Due to this technology you are under the 'watchful' eye of society constantly. Wherever you move around you will be watched and tracked.