Interactionalists reject official crime statistics; they believe they are socially constructed (made by society)
Howard Becker: Deviance is in the eye of the beholder
What is classed as crime or deviant is based on subjective decisions by moral entrepreneurs
These are agents of social control who decide what behaviours are to be labelled as deviant or not
How society responds to a deviant act depends on whether the act or person has been publicly labelled as deviant or not
Lemert talks about this in terms of: Primary deviance – an act that has not been labelled as deviant
Secondary deviance – an act that has been publicly labelled as deviant
Once an act has been labelled as deviant… The deviant actor may see themselves as a deviant person they adopt this as their master status
This can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy as they then behave in a way which lives up to this label
The media can contribute to this by demonising those who have been labelled as deviant
This creates moral panics amongst society…
Creating ‘folk devils of the deviant individuals which marginalises them even further’
This process is known as deviance amplification
Cicourel: The negotiation of justice
Agents of social control (E.g. police) hold ‘typification’ (stereotypes) about who is more likely to commit crime.
This is more likely to be based against the more powerless groups in society – the young, the poor and ethnic minorities.
This can lead to a self-serving bias; police are more likely to patrol areas with higher concentrations of these groups of people.
Therefore they are more likely to arrest people from these groups.
Therefore their arrest rates will only serve to confirm their typifications about who commits crime.
Evaluation:
Pros:
Labelling theory has empirical support from both education and psychiatry where it has been shown that applying a label of