Interactionism and Labelling theory

Cicourel’s negotiation of justice 

Officers’ decisions to arrest are influenced by their stereotypes. They have typifications, which are the ideal criminal. The closer the offender is to this typification, the more likely they will be harsher on them and prosecute them. And the further away the offender is from this typification, the more likely the police will be lenient. So the typical delinquents are usually the working-class youths, therefore, the police patrol the working-class areas more, resulting in more arrests and confirming their stereotypes. When a middle-class youth is arrested, they are less likely to be charged as they do not fit the typification, parents are likely to be able to negotiate successfully on their behalf, and the police are likely to let them go as a one-off.  

Evaluation – not all middle-class people are let go.  

Social constructions of crime statistics 

Interactionists see official crime statistics as false and socially constructed. This is because the decision of whether a police officer decides to proceed depends on the label they attach to the offender. For example, working class individuals will have a higher chance of getting prosecuted, whereas they will not proceed to the next stage middle and upper classes. As a result, the statistics only tell us about the activities of the police, rather than the actual amount of crime in the city. The stats JS count the decisions made by officers. The dark figure of crime refers to the difference between official statistics and the real rate of crime. It is called the dark figure because we don’t know how much crime goes undetected and unreported. Some sociologists believe using victim surveys gives us a more accurate view. (drop down if you’ve been a victim of crime).

Primary and Secondary Deviance

Lemert

He distinguishes between primary and secondary deviance, so primary deviance is acts that have not been publicly labelled, and so they are often overlooked, however, secondary deviance is when society, does labels crime, so the offender is caught and labelled as a criminal. So they are stigmatised and humiliated, and excluded from normal society. Once they're labelled, others will see the offender only in terms of the label, and this becomes their master status. For example, a neighbour who commits murder will not be labelled as a neighbour anymore, instead, they will be called a murderer. This means that the individual's sense of identity and the only way they resolve this identity crisis is to accept the deviant label, and it will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because society is hostile to them, and they are seen as an outsider, they have no sense of community, so they join a deviant subculture.

Evaluation

Too deterministic, once labbled no going back, a deviant career is inevitable. It fails to say why people commit primary deviance in the first place.

Deviance Amplificantion Spiral

This is a term labelling theorists use to describe a process in which the attempt to control deviance leads to an increase in level of devicance. So greater attempts to control it, produces higher levels of deviance, so more and more control produces more and more deviance. Society would label, some mods and rockers and they label them as folk devils and this resulted them in more deviant behaviours in their part.

Reintergrative Shaming

Braithwaite

He distinguishes between two types of shaming disintergrative shaming and reintergrative shaming. Disintergrative shaing is when both the crime and the individual that committed it gets shamed and hated. In contrast to reintergrative shaming where just the crime gets shamed and hated and not the individual that commited it. In society reintergratvie shaming should be done to tackle deviance amplification spiral, so that just the crime is shamed not the person.