Labelling theory and the social construction of crime, including the social construction of crime statistics, the deviant career, master status, deviancy amplification and primary and secondary deviance.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to explain labelling theory (an interactionist approach): how crime and deviance are socially constructed, why crime statistics are unreliable, and the effects of being labelled. The examiner expects you to evaluate it against structural theories that stress power and the causes of crime.

The social construction of deviance

Becker ("Outsiders") argues that moral entrepreneurs create and campaign for rules (his example is the Marijuana Tax Act, pushed by the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics), and that whether a label is applied depends on who commits the act, where, and how the situation is interpreted by agents of social control (police, courts). Cicourel's study of policing showed officers used "typifications" of the typical delinquent, so working-class youths were more likely to fit the stereotype, be arrested and be labelled, showing justice is negotiable (middle-class parents could negotiate their children out of the system).

Crime statistics as a social construction

Because the police, courts and other agencies choose whom to stop, charge, caution and convict, official crime statistics measure the activities of the control agencies as much as the behaviour of offenders. Interactionists therefore treat statistics not as a "true" rate of crime but as a record of decisions, and they prefer victim surveys, self-report studies and qualitative methods. Cicourel argued statistics should themselves be a topic of study, not a resource to be taken at face value.

Primary and secondary deviance

Lemert distinguishes:

• Primary deviance: rule-breaking that has not been publicly labelled, is often trivial and uncaught, and has little effect on the person's self-concept (almost everyone commits some).
• Secondary deviance: the deviance that results from being labelled and from the societal reaction to the original act.

Master status, deviant career and amplification

• A criminal label can become a master status that overrides all other identities (Becker): the person is seen first and foremost as a "criminal" or "addict".
• This can launch a deviant career, as the labelled person is excluded from conventional roles (jobs, friendships) and may join a deviant subculture that confirms the identity, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy (Young's study of marijuana users in Notting Hill showed persecution pushing them into a deviant subculture).
• Cohen's study of mods and rockers shows deviancy amplification: media exaggeration creates folk devils and a moral panic, leading to more policing and, ironically, more of the deviance it set out to control. Braithwaite adds a more positive note, distinguishing disintegrative shaming (which labels and excludes the offender) from reintegrative shaming (which condemns the act but not the person, and reintegrates them, reducing reoffending).

Evaluation

Labelling theory shows crime is socially constructed and exposes the bias of statistics and the harm of labelling, and Braithwaite's work has practical value for restorative justice. But it is criticised for being deterministic (assuming labels are always accepted, whereas people can reject them), romanticising deviants as victims of the powerful, ignoring the causes of primary deviance (why people offend before being labelled), and neglecting power and structure (the Marxist point about who has the power to make and enforce the labels, and the wider capitalist context).