crime interactionalism

• Labelling: No act is inherently criminal or deviant, it only becomes so when others label it as such.
• labelling theory: derived from symbolic interactionsim, suggests that most people commit crimes, but only few are caught and stigmatised for it. Confirmed by self report studies that suggest that very few people would claim to never break the law or act in deviant ways. survey found 63% people admitted to speeding & 45% admitted to having had sex in a public place. Therefore if most people commit crime, research shouldnt be on the differences between devaints & non deviants, instead on the reaction and definition of deviance rather than the initial act.
• A prime example of this is a study by Malinowski of a pacific island. He found that incest wasnt uncommon on the island, and wasnt frownd upon provided it stay descrete. However if the incestous love affair became too obvious and public, the islanders would react with abuse, the offenders ostracised and often driven to suicide.

  Becker argues that just because someone has broken a rule, it doesnt mean others will define it as deviant. If someone is successfully labelled, consequences will follow. (Once youth was publically labelled as deviant, he was driven to suicide)
• black people are more likely to be stopped and searched because of some police officers beliefs that this social group is more likely to offend than others. Therefore black people are the subjects of 'routine suspicion'
• Lemert: Primary deviance is acts that has not been publically labelled. offenders can easily rationalise their actions away. EG as a 'moment of madness'. Secondary deviance is the result of labelling, in which the person labelled will eventually see themselves as bad (becker calls a 'master status') One way to resolve this is for individuals to accept the deviant label, seeing themselves as the world sees them (thus a SFP). Secondary likely to provoke further hostile reactions from society & reinforce their 'outsider' status. can lead to more deviance & a deviant career.

  cohen mods & rockers
• Labelling theory takes a phenenomological approach to deviance and sees deviance as a product of social processes (interaction & negotiation) rather than a personal choice. Cicourcels research into defining deliquents. 1st stage desicion by police to stop & interrogate ppl if they looked suspicious, strange, or unsual. 2nd stage is whether they could talk their way out of trouble, but if they fitted the image of the 'typical deliquent' (from single parent, low income, EM) this was harder. Typifications tended to guide the desicion making. MC better at negotiating their child out of trouble
• Cicourcel: Justice isnt fixed, but negotiable. Due to these factors, official statistics cannot be used as a resource as facts about crime, instead they should be treated as a topic to investigate. The stats produced by the criminal justice system only tells us about the activities of the police & prosecuters, not abt amount of crime commited & who commits it.

  • Other sociologists criticise this, as it fails to explain where these meanings come from in the first place.