Interactionist Explanations of Crime

• Deviance is in the eye of the Beholder

  Becker (1963)

  • According to Becker, Deviance is defined as the label given to particular people who have broken the norms applied by specific social groups.
  • Deviants are often identified as “outsiders”.
• Becker

  • That in one sense there is no such thing as a deviant act. An act only becomes deviant when others perceive and define it as such.
  • There is no deviant act. Every behaviour seen as acceptable somewhere. 
  • During slave trade, slaves didn’t consider this normal behaviour and so not every behaviour is seen as acceptable somewhere.
  • Eg. International laws = standard of behaviour happening across the globe.
• Becker

  • Becker argued that societies create deviance by identifying certain acts as deviant and labelling those who commit them as outsiders.
  • Deviant labels act as master statuses, overwhelming all the other statuses an individual occupies. Others and the individual concerned come to see the person solely in terms of his master status. 
• Becker

  • Labelling produces a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the labelled individual adopts a deviant identity and embarks on a deviant career.
  • New laws are a result of the efforts or moral entrepreneurs who engage in moral crusades to get the law changed.
  • Deviance is produced by a process of interaction between the potential deviant and the agents of social control.
• Moral entrepreneurs - Becker

  • Moral entrepreneurs are people who actively seek to change the law. (eg. punks - get rid of monarchy)
  • Becker acknowledges that moral entrepreneurs cause two effects on the law:
  • Result in the creation of new subcultures that may be viewed as outsiders or rebels
  • The creation or expansion of a social control agency to enforce the role and impose label on offenders
• Labelling

  • In regards to criminal activity, not all offences are punished appropriately
  • The process of conviction determined the label and punishment of the offence (not always as people may be punished by media) Eg. Prince Andrew - still doubt despite not being convicted
• Labelling

  • Step 1: Criminal Act, Step 2: Arrest, Step 3: Charge, Step 4: Trial, Step 5: Conviction
  • However, this process dependent on 3 factors: Initial interaction with social control, profile (appearance, background etc.), Context (circumstance of the offence)
  • Piliavin and Briar (1964): process of labelling especially applicable to arrest of young people
• Cicourel

  • Compares rates of delinquency in two American cities with similar social structures and found that official rates of delinquency weren't the same.
  • He argues that this was because of differences in the juvenile justice processes in the two cities. 
• Cicourel

  • Youths who broke social rules were treated differently according to whether they did or did not fit the picture held by relevant officials of the typical delinquent. Only those who fitted the picture ended up being identified as delinquents.
  • Consequently, Cicourel argued that “what ends up being called justice is negotiable”.
  • Recognition of the possible negative consequences of labelling has led to the adoption of policies of reintegrative shaming in some social contexts.
• What is Cicourel’s view of the over-representation of lower class youths in delinquency statistics?

  • It is not the result of their delinquent adaptation to social strain, but the outcome of a biased law enforcement process
  • Delinquents are produced by the agencies of social control. Certain individuals rather than others are selected, processed and labelled as deviant. 
  • In Cicourel’s words, “what ends up being called justice is negotiable”.
• Negotiation of justice

  Cicourel (1968)

  • Arrests are dependent on typifications
  • Typifications: stereotypes/agreed labelled characteristics 
  • According to Cicourel, this highlights a bias in law-making
  • Agents of social control reinforce this bias
• Social construction of crime statistics

  • The impact of labels and typifications is reflected in official statistics
  • There are two categories in which statistics may fall in:
  • Alternative statistics: victim surveys, British Crime Survey
  • Dark figure of crime: unreported crimes, unrecorded and undetected
• Lemert

  • Labelling theory came from the prominence in the 1960s and 1970s.
  • Argues that everyone breaks social rules, but only some are publicly identified as deviants or criminals. They distinguish between the discreditable and the discredited.
  • Lemert distinguished between primary and secondary deviation. Primary deviation was widespread but had little importance for the individual’s self-conception. Societal reaction to primary deviance, however, had a major impact and led to secondary deviance.
• Lemert

  • Lemert backed up his claims with a study of stuttering among the Native Americans in which he argued that is was the societal response to children’s speech defects that produced stuttering through raising children’s anxiety levels. 
• Impact of labelling

  • Lemert (1951)
  • Primary deviance: An act that isn’t publically labelled as deviant (this type of deviance is not based on a deviant career)
  • He argues that it is pointless to seek the causes of primary deviance as the perpetrators do not see themselves as deviant and are not part of an organised deviant life.
  • Secondary deviance: a label based on societal reaction. This label becomes a master status.
  • Those who are caught are publicly labelled and often stigmatised.
• Lemert

  • Stuttering and societal reaction
  • Native American families born into ceremonial life, parents stressed importance of faultless performance - rigorous standards. If not met, children shamed parents.
  • All were anxious about speech irregularity, stuttering produced by societal reaction. In the community speech defects were noted and responded to. This generated anxiety in the children concerned and the anxiety increased the likelihood of stuttering.
• Master status

  • Becker suggests that labelling an individual can affect their master status.
  • Your master status is your ultimate status/main status according to society.
  • Because of this, a change to your master status can lead to crisis, causing self-fulfilling prophecy. This inevitably leads to deviance.
  • As your master status adapts, you are led to secondary deviance, which then confirms your deviant identity.
• Young (1971)

  • Conducted a study on hippies and marijuana use
  • Before marijuana was made illegal, smoking was a small element to the hippie culture
  • Since the labelling of hippies and marijuana smoking, hippies became a deviant subculture, with drug use at the centre of it
• Deviancy Amplification

  • Cohen (1972)
  • This is the idea that attempts to control deviance only increase it
  • More and more control produces more and more deviance
  • Eg. Mods and Rockers
• Other consequences of labelling

  • Braithwaite (1989)
  • Positive consequences of labelling through two forms of shaming:
  • Reintegrative shaming: Labelling only the act, not the person, This avoids stigmatisation of the offender, Encourages forgiveness, Avoids secondary deviance
  • Disintegrative shaming: Not only the crime but the criminal is also labelled as bad and is excluded
• Suicide

  There are two elements of Suicide in Sociology:

  • Positivist approach Durkheim (1897)
  • As a Positivist, Durkheim refers to suicide as a result of anomie
  • This is due to his macro approach to studying society
  • As a result, Durkheim used official statistics to link socialisation and behaviour, which determined that suicide only exists in societies that are experiencing anomie
• Suicide

  • Interpretivist approach Douglas; Atkinson
  • Douglas (1967)
  • Critical of the use of OS
  • Suicide is a social construct due to OS being an artefact and the label from loved ones, and then society 
  • Atkinson (1978)
  • Rejects Durkheim’s approach
  • “Suicide” is purely based on the Coroner’s Report and the label in which they have attached to the incident
• Strengths of Interactionist approach to crime and deviance

  • Provides insight into the nature of deviance that structural theories do not.
  • Challenges concept that deviants are not the same as “normal” people.
  • Shows the importance of the reactions of others when defining and creating deviance.
  • It reveals the importance of stereotypes in understanding deviance.
  • It reveals the way official crime statistics are a product of bias in law enforcement. 
• Strengths of Interactionist approach to crime and deviance

  • It reveals the importance of those with power in defining acts and people as deviant.
  • It highlights the role of moral entrepreneurs, like the media, in defining and creating deviance and generating moral panics.
  • It shows how labelling can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy and to deviant careers.
  • It shows how the deviant label can affect the self-concept of the deviant.
• Limitations of Interactionist approach to crime and deviance

  • It tends to remove the blame for deviance away from the deviant and into those who define him or her as deviant - the deviant becomes a victim too.
  • It assumes an act isn’t deviant until it is labelled as such, yet many know perfectly well that what they are doing is deviant.
  • It doesn’t explain the causes of deviant behaviour which precede the labelling process (primary deviance), nor the different kinds of acts that people commit - eg. taking drugs is a different act from murder.
  • It is too deterministic.
• Limitations of Interactionist approach to crime and deviance

  • It doesn’t explain why there are different reactions to deviance, nor where stereotypes come from in the first place. 
  • It ignores the importance of wider social factors in creating deviance, and assumes it is all down to societal reaction. 
  • It has little to say about the victims of crime.
• Limitations of Interactionist approach to crime and deviance

  • It has no real policy solutions to crime, beyond making fewer rules and not “naming and shaming” offenders. 
  • It does not explain why some individuals are labelled rather than others, and why some activities are against the law while others aren’t. It points to the issue of power in the labelling process, but not at the structures of power in society which create the wider framework for the labelling process.