interactionalism

• Becker


  labelling theory- master status and deviant career

  a deviant is simply someone to whom the label has been successfully applied, and deviant behaviour is simply behaviour that people so label.
• cicourel - negotiation of justice

  • examined 2 areas in california to see reactions to juvenile delinquency
  • found that police has pre-made perceptions or stereotypes of what a typically delinquent looks like
  • this led to class bias, with police officers patrolling wc areas more intensely
• statistics


  interactions believe this method of research is just counts of decisions made by control agents at the different stages in the justice system

  it reflects actions of police rather than criminals
• dark figure of crime


  Crime that is not reported to the police and that remains unknown to officials or crimes that police leave unrecorded
• stages of social construction of crime

  
• lemert


  primary and secondary deviance
• primary deviance


  deviant acts that have not been publicly labelled

  small rule breaking

  e.g fare dodging
• secondary deviance


  deviance that is the result of societal reaction

  Being caught and publicly labelled as a criminal can involve being stigmatised, shamed, humiliated, shunned or excluded from normal society.

  likely to seek a deviant career
• master status


  a status that has special importance for social identity, often shaping a person's entire life.

  once a person is publicly labelled as a criminal this becomes their controlling identity
• deviance amplification


  the process by which official labeling increases the likelihood of deviant behavior

  a process in which the attempt to control deviance leads to an increase in the level of deviance

  
• Braithwaite


  disintegrative and reintegrative shaming
• disintegrative shaming


  where not only the crime, but also the criminal, is labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society.
• reintegrative shaming


  -the concept that people can be reformed if they understand the harm they have caused and are brought back into the social mainstream

  
  

  -labels the act but not the actor - as if to say, 'they have done a bad thing', rather than 'they are a bad person.'

  
  

  -avoids stigmatising the offender as evil while at the same time making them aware of the negative impact of their actions upon others
• interactionists


  argue crime is a social construct

  interested in how and why certain acts come to be defined criminal

  laws are made of labels

  no act is inherently criminal or deviant
• moral entrepreneurs


  individuals or groups who come to define an act as a moral outrage and who lead a campaign to have it defined as deviant and to have it made illegal and therefore subject to legal enforcement
• Cohen


  studied mods and rockers

  minor incident between the 2 gangs created moral panic

  press acted moral entrepreneurs promoting for tougher sanctions on mods & rockers
• Olivia jade - negotiated of justice example

  • In 2019, Lori Laughlin and her husband (famous fashion designer) were among 33 wealthy parents who were charged with trying to rig the American college admissions system. 
  • They admitted to paying half a million dollars to guarantee their daughters’ – Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose Giannulli – admission at the University of Southern California