Interactionism

• To understand criminality, we must first understand how someone got that label in the first place.
• Differential enforcement of the law: social control agencies label certain people as criminals. Piliavin and Briar found that police decisions were based on stereotypical ideas of dress, manner, gender, class and ethnicity: young black males are more likely to be stopped by police (9 times more likely to be stopped and searched)
• Cicourel found that police have typifications that they use to pinpoint who to keep an eye on. These match with the stereotypes presented by Piliavin and Briar.
• Edwin Lemert distinguished between primary and secondary deviance. Primary deviance involves acts that have not been publicly labelled - these are trivial, and the 'deviant' individuals that commit them will not see themselves as criminal. Secondary deviance is when the master label takes over, and the criminal is forced into certain groups that will only encourage this behaviour. Self fulfilling prophecy.
• Deviance amplification spiral: 'crackdowns' only increase hysteria and cause more criminality. Cohen found that media exaggeration only led to more public concern, and people picking sides.
• Jack Young's study of hippie cannabis users supported Cohen's original research on deviance amplification spiral.
• Initially, drug use was not a major part of hippie culture, and went undetected by the law. This is primary deviance.
• However, when the police labelled the hippies as addicts and conducted many raids, they retreated into marginalised groups, where hard drug use was a central activity.
• Interactionists reject crime statistics from police sources, arguing that they represent what the police do rather than what the criminals do. They are merely a social construction.
• Int. strength: the law is not a fixed set of instructions, but a social construct we must explain to get to the root of criminal behaviour.
• Int strength: explains the biased crime statistics that consist primarily of WC young black males. Police typifications etc.
• Int strength: application in real world. Attempts to control crime might make things worse. Another way of handling it?
• Int limitation: determinist - once someone is labelled, they will go down the path of a self fulfilling prophecy.
• Int limitation: negative impact of labelling gives criminals a victim status, and takes this away from the victims.
• Int limitation: what causes primary deviance?
• Int limitation: where does the power to label come from? Interactionism focuses on the police creating labels, but governments and classes make the laws.
• Int limitation: why are labels only applied to the working class, and not members of the upper class, despite controversy? For example, Jimmy Savile was always known as an 'eccentric' figure, and rumours did spread, but no one believed them. If it was a working class man, would the results have been different?
• Decriminalisation - minor offences should be decriminalised. For example, cannabis. That way, young people don't get labels, and won't find themselves unemployed (hypothetically speaking) and develop primary deviance into secondary deviance.
• Diversion policies aim to keep offenders out of the justice system to prevent labels being attached to them. Some are informal, such as police discretion not to charge someone, while others are formal, such as the requirement to attend anger management classes.
• Re-integrative shaming: Braithwaite identifies two types of shaming or labelling. Disintegrative shaming: where both crime and criminal are bad. Reintegrative shaming: the act is bad, but not the person.
• Evidence shows that some crime control policies based on labelling theory can deal successfully with minor offences and young offenders.
• Some countries have successfully implemented decriminalisation of minor offences, such as medical marijuana in Colorado.