Assess the usefulness of the labelling theory as an approach to the study of crime and deviance

        Secondly, one of labelling theory’s main arguments is that different people respond differently to deviance or law breaking. This is contradictory to most theories which suggest that once a person has committed a criminal or deviant act, then the response will be uniform. Labelling theory suggests the complete opposite and that actually, there is no default reaction to any situation. To show this part of the theory in action, labelling theorists point towards John Kitsuse’s study of 75 heterosexual student’s responses to presumed sexual advances from the same sex, and found that there was no set reaction which people adhered to. The responses ranged from complete tolerance to blind hatred. This shows how labelling theory presents information that is truly valid in some societies. However, sociologists like Akers criticised the theory as it presents deviant as normal people who are no different to anyone else until someone slaps a label on them. Akers argues that there must be a reason why the label is applied to them. This criticism undermines the labelling theory as Akers raises a good point which would be difficult to ignore for any assessment of the theory.

        Thirdly, an important component of the labelling theory is their interpretation of the consequences of law enforcement. They suggest that being labelled as deviant and having various laws enforce against you is the result of a number of different factors. However, the theorists suggest that once labelled as a deviant, various consequences occur for the individual. Lemert, an influencial labelling theorists distinguished between primary deviance, the actual rule breaking, and secondary deviance, which is the consequence of the responses of others. He backed up his research by describing the experiences of the costal inuits in Canada, who were often troubled with stammering and stuttering, and Lemert suggested that this could actually be caused by how the society valued public speaking so highly. It was found that the children with the slightest speech defect were so consicious of their parents wish to have a well spoken child they became overanxious about their own abilities as according to Lemert, this led to chronic stuttering. In this example, chronic stuttering, the secondary deviance, is a response to the parents reaction to the initial minor speech defects, the primary deviance.

        Lastly, labelling theory has been cited as hugely important for the study of crime and deviance due to how other theories have incorporated its idea into their own theory. For example, Taylor, Walton and Young used it when they updated their Marxist criminology. Also, many postmodernist approached owe a lot to the labelling theory, as they incorporated much of the labelling theory into their approach. This shows that the theory must be useful if it is used in many other theories which are also used often in the study of crime and deviance.

        In conclusion, the labelling theory is a useful theory, but must be used with some degree of suspicion. Although the theories have been backed up by evidence, all societies are different, and the labelling theory was mostly tested on primitive societies, such as the inuits and the pacific islanders. The criticisms all make sense, to show that labelling theory is still far from a very well rounded theory, but it is recognised as beneficial to the study of crime and deviance.