Effects of labelling

• Lemert

  Argues by labelling certain people as deviant, society encourages them to become more so; societal reaction causes ‘secondary deviance’.
• Primary deviance

  Deviant acts that haven't been publicly labelled, those who commit them don't usually see themselves as deviant > many causes often going uncaught
• Secondary deviance

  Results from societal reactions, labelling

  • labelling someone as an offender can involve stigmatising = excludes them from normal society
  • others may see offender as the label = becomes individuals master status
• Self-fulfilling prophecy

  • Being labelled may create crisis for individual's self-concept > SFP > live up to label > secondary deviance
  • Further societal reactions may reinforce individual's outsider status > join a deviant subculture offering support, role models and deviant career
• Young's study on hippy marijuana

  Drug use initially small part of lifestyle (primary deviance) > police persecution of them as junkies (societal reaction) > retreat into closed groups developing a deviant subculture where drug use became central activity (SFP)

  • control processes aimed at producing law abiding behaviour produced opposite
• Deviance amplification spiral

  Attempt to control deviance > increase in deviance rather than decrease > greater attempts to control > more deviance in an escalating spiral as with the hippies
• Folk devil and moral panic

  • Media exaggeration and distortion started a moral panic of growing public concern
  • "Moral majority" called for crackdown > police responded by arresting more youths > causes more conern
  • Demonises mods and rockers as 'folk devils' marginalising them, further resulting in more deviance