Labelling and Crime

• Interactionism

  Individuals are shaped by our interactions, with labels being created by moral entrepreneurs, people with status. This label is adopted with as the master label to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Deviance is socially constructed, with social groups deciding what is deviant.
• Becker's Breaching Experiments


  Told his uni students to act in ways that reject traditional behaviour towards their parents. The parents responded with bereavement - as if their child had died. Becker argued that this showed the concept of deviance is based on people's responses to behaviour, with nothing being inherently deviant.
• Lemert


  Studied Canadian inuits who had a tendency to stutter. He found that their societies emphasised public speaking, and the children would stutter and be pressured by their parents. This made the stutter worse. He said the initial act was 'primary deviance' and it was made worse by societal pressure being 'secondary deviance
• Evaluating Lemert


  Small sample size, stuttering isn't the same level of crime as murder, impossible to measure.