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Howard Becker (1963)
A deviant is simply someone to whom the label has been successfully applied and deviant behaviour is simply behaviour that people so label.
Becker effects of the new law by moral entepreneurs
The creation of a new group of ‘outsiders’ - outlaws or deviants who break thee new rule
The creeation or expansion of a social control aagency to enforce the rule and impose labels on offenders
Platt (1969)
The idea of juvenile delinquency was originaally created as a result of a campaign by upper-class Victorian moral entepreneurs, aimed at protecting young people at risk. Juveniles become a seperate category of offender with their own courts.
Becker notes on social control agencies
Campaign for a change in the law to increase their own power and extend the Bureau’s sphere of influence
US Federal Bureau of Narcotics successfully campaigned for the passing of the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937 to outlaw Marijuna use
Factors in which a person gets labelled
Interactions with agencies of social control
Appearance, background and personal biography
Situation and circumstances of the offence
Piliavin and Briar (1964)
Police decisions to arrest the youth were mainly based on physical cues from which they made judgments on the youth’s character but also influenced by the suspects gender, class and ethnicity, as well as time and place
Aaron Cicourel (1968)
Officers’ stereotyped typical delinquents (typifications) which fit closely to the W/C.
Other agents of social control in the CJS reinforced this bias.
Justice is not fixed but negotiable and statistics do not give a valid picture on crime patterns.
Statistics should not be taken at face value but we should investigate the processes that created them.
Social construction of crime statistics
The outcome of the crime depends on the label attatched to the defendant in the course of their interactions and typifications held about them.
The dark figure of crime - unreported crime
Alternative statistics - victim surveys and self-report studies
Edwin Lemert (1951)
Primary deviance, Secondary deviance, Master status, Deviant career
Primary deviance
Deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled and have little significance
Secondary deviance
The result of societal reactions such as labelling and stigmatisation
Master status
Controlling identity overriding all others, in the eyes of the world. This may lead to the self-fulfilling prophecy
Deviant career
Defiants gain an ‘outsider’ status which may lead to more deviance, seeking outher outsiders for support, invloving deviant subcultures that offers deviant career opportunities confirming the deviant identity.
Jock Young (1971)
Studied hippy marijuana users in Notting Hill and found that drugs were inessential to their lifestyle (example of primary deviance). Due to persecution and labelling, they saw themselves as outsiders and retreated to deviant subcultures where drugs became a central activity.
Downes and Rock (2003)
Individuals are free to choose not to deviate further and so it cannot be predicted that those who are labelled wil follow a deviant career
Deviance amplification spiral
A process in which the attempt to control deviance leads to an increase in the level of deviance. More control produces more deviance in an escalating spiral (Young)
Stanley Cohen (1972)
Studied societal reaction to the ‘mods and rockers’ disturbances involving groups of youths at English seaside exaggerated reports that began moral panic and moral entepreneurs calling for a ‘crackdown’. Police arrested more youths and they were demonised as ‘folk devils’. They deviated further as a result
Lemert (1967)
Social control leads to deviance
Triplett (2000)
Theres an increasing tendency to see young offenders as evil and to be less tolerant of minor deviance. The harsher sentences has lead to an increase of offending.
John Braithwaite (1989)
Disintegrative shaming - the offender is labelled and excluded from society
Reintegrative shaming - the act is labelled not the person
Durkheim (1897)
Used official statistics to study suicide, discovering the causes in how effectively society integrated individuals and regulated their behaviour
Jack Douglas (1967)
Crime rate and suicide rate is socially constructed in statistics rather than the real rate in society due to the official labelling of the act. Statistics tell nothing about the meanings behind the decision to commit suicide.
Max Atkinson (1978)
Its impossible to know for sure what meanings the dead gave to their deaths and therefore focuses on the assumptios coroners make when reaching their verdicts - ‘typical suicide’: modes of death, location, circumstance, life history
Lemert (1962)
Like crime, some individuals don’t fit easily into groups and due to this primary deviance, others label the person as odd and exclude them. The negative response begins their secondary deviance, giving further reason to exclude him. The reaction justifies their fears for their mental health leading intervention and official labels becoming their ‘master status’
Rosenhan (1973)
‘Pseudo-patient’ experiment - Researchers had themselves admitted to a number of hospitals to have been ‘hearing voices’, and were then diagnosed as schizophrenic, becoming their master status despite acting normally.
Goffman (1961)
On admission to an Asylum, they undergo a ‘mortification of the self ‘ where their old identity is ‘killed off’ and replaced with a new one achieved by various ‘degradation rituals’ such as confiscation. This is similar with other ‘total institutions’: prisons, boarding schools, armies etc. Some internalised their new identity, others rebelled.
Braginski et al (1969)
Studied long-term psychiatric patients and found that inmates manipulated their symptoms to appear ‘not well enough’ to be discharged but ‘not sick eough’ to be confined to the ward, in order to achieve their aim of free movement around the hospital.
Evaluation of labelling theory
Deterministic
victimises the offender
Focuses on less serious crimes
Ignores individuals actively choosing deviance
Fails to explain primary deviance
Implies that deviants are unaware of their deviance until labelled
