1. Week 5 – Interactionist theories
The sociology of crime
Week 5 – Interactionist theories

2. To consider interactionist approaches to the study of crime:
Learning objectives:
To consider interactionist approaches to the study of crime:
Stop and search
Labelling theory
Primary and secondary deviance

4. Starter task
Consider the following three scenarios in which an individual is caught apparently shoplifting:
The shop takes the goods back and warns the individual not to do it again.
The shop immediately calls the police. The individual is arrested, taken to the police station and given a caution.
The shop immediately calls the police. The individual is arrested, charged, tried and convicted.
1. For each scenario, who would be aware of the crime?
2. For each scenario, what might be the impact on the individual?
3. What would be the impact of each scenario if the person was innocent?

5. The social construction of crime
The origins of labelling theory lie in social constructionist perspectives such as interactionism and phenomenology (concerned with the ways in which people’s subjective experience may be understood).
It is not the behaviour that differentiates deviance from non-deviance; it is the responses of conventional and conformist members of society which identify and interpret behaviour as deviant which sociologically transforms people into deviants (Kitsuse, 1962)
Labelling theorists ask how and why some people and actions come to be labelled as criminal or deviant.
Where have you come across labelling theory before (in sociology)?

6. Labelling theory
Labelling theorists take the view that individuals construct the social world through their face-to-face interactions. So crime is seen as the product of interactions between suspects and police, for example, rather than the result of wider external social forces such as blocked opportunity structures.
Howard Becker (1963) is a key figure in labelling theory. He suggests that an act only becomes deviant when others perceive and define it as such, and whether or not the deviant label is applied will depend on societal reaction and interpretation:
“Social groups create deviance by creating the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders.”
Becker calls groups such as the mass media and the police, who have the power and resources to create or enforce rules and impose their definitions of deviance, moral entrepreneurs.

7. Stop and search
One of the causes of the Brixton Riots in the early 1980s was thought to he heavy handed application by the police of the ‘sus’ laws where they could arrest someone only when they had reasonable suspicion that they had committed an offence.
Sanders and Young (2007) argue that ‘the police themselves generally decide what powers they will exercise and when. This is a crime control approach’.
The riots, the enquiry by Lord Scarman and his subsequent report resulted in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) which tightened up the stop and search rules.
It is about achieving a balance between crime control and civil liberties.

8. Platt and becker
Platt (1969) argues that the idea of “juvenile delinquency” came about as a result of a campaign by upper-class Victorian moral entrepreneurs aimed at protecting young people at risk. This established “juveniles” as a separate category of offender with their own courts. It also allowed the state to extend its powers beyond criminal offences by the young into so called “status offences” such as truancy and sexual promiscuity.
Becker notes that social control agencies themselves may campaign for legal changes to increase their own power. He quotes the example of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics who successfully campaigned for the passing of the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937 to outlaw marijuana use.
Supposedly passed on the grounds of the ill effects of marijuana on young people, Becker argues that it was really to extend the Bureau’s sphere of influence. Thus it is not the inherent harmfulness of a particular behaviour that leads to new laws, but rather the efforts of powerful individuals and groups to redefine that behaviour as unacceptable.

9. Who gets labelled?
Not everyone who commits an offence is punished for it. Many factors affect whether a person is arrested, charged and convicted such as:
Their interactions with the agencies of control such as the police.
Their appearance, background and personal biography.
The situation and circumstances of the offence.
 This leads labelling theorists to look at how laws are applied and enforced. Certain groups of people appear to be more likely to be labelled as deviant or criminal.
With regard to young people, what factors do you think might influence the police to arrest them or not?

10. Piliavin and Briar (1964) found that police decisions to arrest a youth were mainly based on physical clues (such as manner and dress), from which they made judgements about the youth’s character. Factors such as gender, social class, ethnicity, time and place (e.g. arrest was more likely late at night in a high crime area) were also relevant. Similarly, a study of ASBOs found that they were disproportionately used against ethnic minorities.

11. Primary and secondary deviance
Labelling theorists are interested in the effects of labelling upon those who are labelled. They claim that, by labelling certain people as criminal or deviant, society actually encourages them to become more so.
Task 2 In pairs think of some examples of deviant or criminal behaviour that that is seen as trivial or is so widespread that it is not a public concern.
How might an individual ‘rationalise’ one of the above acts? Do you think the individual would see themselves as deviant or a criminal?
These acts are what Edwin Lemert (1951) refers to as primary deviance.

12. Self-fulfilling prophecy
However, some deviance is labelled. Being caught and publicly labelled as a criminal can involve being stigmatised, shamed, humiliated, shunned or excluded from normal society. Once an individual is labelled, others may come to see him only in terms of the label. This becomes his master status or controlling identity, overriding all others. In the eyes of the world he is no longer a colleague, father or neighbour, he is now thief, junkie or paedophile – in short an outsider. This can provoke a crisis for the individual’s self- concept. One way to resolve it is to accept the label and see yourself as others now see you. This can lead to self- fulfilling prophecy where the individual acts out or lives up to their label, so becoming what the label says, e.g. ‘they say I’m a yob so I’ll behave like a yob.”

13. Secondary deviance - Deviant career
In his classic study of “hippy” marijuana users in Notting Hill, Jock Young (1971) uses the concepts of secondary deviance and deviant career. Young says that marijuana use was peripheral to the hippies’ lifestyle (primary deviance) but persecution and prosecution by the control culture (the police) led the hippies to increasingly see themselves as outsiders. Retreating into closed groups they developed a deviant subculture where drug use became a central activity inviting further attention from the police and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Both Lemert and Young are suggesting that it is not the act itself but the hostile reaction of society that creates serious deviance. The social control processes that are meant to produce law-abiding behaviour may, therefore, produce the very opposite.
However, although a deviant career is a common outcome of labelling, labelling theorists are quick to point out that it is not inevitable. In what ways can a person resist a label?

14. These findings show that labelling theory has important policy implications adding weight to the suggestion that negative labelling pushes offenders towards a deviant career. Logically, this suggests that to reduce deviance we should make and enforce fewer rules for people to break, e.g. decriminalising soft drugs and avoiding publicly “naming and shaming” offenders as this is likely to create a perception of them as evil outsiders and, by excluding them from mainstream society, push them into further deviance.

15. braithwaite
Whereas most labelling theorists see labelling as having negative effects, John Braithwaite (1989) identifies a more positive role for the labelling process. He distinguishes between two types of shaming (negative labelling):
Disintegrative shaming - where not only the crime but the criminal is labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society.
Reintegrative shaming - by contrast labels the act but not the individual (actor) e.g. “he has done a bad thing” rather than “he is a bad person”

16. Reintegrative shaming
Reintegrative shaming avoids stigmatising then offender but makes them aware of the negative impact of their actions upon others who are encouraged to forgive them and accept them back into society. This makes it easier for both offender and community to separate the offender from the offence and re-admit the wrongdoer back into mainstream society. It also avoids pushing them back into secondary deviance.
Braithwaite claims that crime rates are lower in societies where reintegrative shaming is the dominant way of dealing with offenders.