Interactionist and Labelling Theories

• Labelling theorists concern themselves in how and why certain acts come to be defined or labelled as criminal in the first place
• Becker says deviance is any act that has been successfully defined as deviant
• An example of Becker's theory is that injecting a drug is accepted by a nurse but deviant when a drug addict does it
• Young says Hippies being targeted for drug taking by the police, had made drug taking an integral part of the Hippie identity as it became a defiance against perceived injustices
• Cooley says the 'looking glass self' is when people label a person as criminal they begin to reflect that image
• Lemert says there is two types of deviance, primary and secondary
• Primary Deviance (Lemert) is deviant acts not being publicly labelled as deviant
• Secondary deviance (Lemert) is deviant acts that have been labelled as deviant publicly
• Circoucel says police create typification's of what a criminal is
• Typification's (Circourel) are stereotypes based on common sense theories of what a criminal is
• Goffmans study of asylums found that patients went through the mortification of the self and had to little privacy that their strange actions were to cope with tough and controlling environment they were in
• Cohen said Deviancy Amplification Spiral increases crime
• Deviancy Amplification Spiral means crime happens, media and police exaggerate, more crime happens
• Braithwaite says the labelling process can be positive
• Braithwaite says there is two types of labelling; Disintegrative shaming or Reintegrative shaming
• Disintegrative shaming is the crime and the criminal are labelled as bad and the offender becomes excluded from society
• Reintegrative Shaming is were the act not individual is labelled as bad, commonly practiced in New Zealand and Australia