Labelling

• •They reject official statistics on crime, making them part of their subject of study.•They reject structural causal explanations of crime and deviance (e.g. functionalist and realist).•They look instead at the way crime and deviance is socially constructed – how we come to label some acts deviant and not others.•They favour in-depth, qualitative approaches when investigating crime and deviance.  For example, informal interviews, observation and personal documents = interpretivist!
• •Cicourel argues that official statistics do not give a valid picture of crime – they should not be used as a resource for facts about crime.–But, he argues they can be used as a topic for investigation.•Investigating how crime stats are created sheds light on how control agencies (institutions which exert control over individuals such as the police, courts, prison service etc.) go about labelling types of people as criminal, but not others.
• •Labelling theorists are interested in moral entrepreneurs – powerful groups, individuals or organisations who change laws or social norms (e.g. a politician, campaign group, or newspaper).••They argue this has 2 effects:1.  Creation of a new group of ‘outsiders’2.  Expansion in power of control agencies (e.g. police) in enforcing this rule
• Cicourel used both participant and non participant observation in his 4 year study of criminal justice.

  As an observer, he observed police patrols and court proceedings.

  As a participant, he took on the role of unpaid probation officer.

  He argues first hand experience enabled him to uncover unconscious assumptions of control agents in a way that other methods would not allow.
• •Cicourel found that police officers’ typifications – stereotypes about ‘typical’ delinquents – led them to focus on certain ‘types 'of offenders.–Working class people and areas fitted these typifications most closely à police therefore patrolled these areas more à more arrests à confirming their stereotypes.–•
• Probation officers believed that juvenile delinquency was the result of broken homes, poverty and lax parenting. They were therefore less likely to support non-custodial sentences for young people from such backgrounds.
• Cicourel- Negotiation Of Justice

  •When a middle class youth was arrested he was less likely to be charged – partly because his background did not fit the police’s idea of a typical delinquent, and partly because his parents were more likely to be able to successfully negotiate on his behalf.••Justice is therefore seen by Cicourel as negotiable rather than fixed.