Assess the view that crime and deviance is the result of labelling, the media and public opinion

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Assess the view that crime and deviance is the result of labelling, the media and public opinion

Crime is any action which breaks the laws of society, for example, murder, rape and theft. Laws are created to protect society while agencies of social control like the police enforce it. Deviance is a much broader term defined as behaviour which moves away from conventional norms and values, and not all deviant behaviour is criminal such as burping in public, and not all crimes are seen as deviant such as speeding. In this essay I will be looking into crime and deviance being the result of labelling, the media and public opinion. I will be concentrating on arguments for and against media and public opinion. In arguments for I will be discussing how the interactionist approach is different, Howard Becker’s labelling theory, deviancy amplification spiral and moral panics. In arguments against I will be looking at Robert Merton’s strain theory, subcultural explanations such as Cohen and Miller and finally looking at David Matza and his delinquency and drift theory. Towards the end of the essay it will come apparent that crime and deviance is the result of labelling, the media and public opinion. Although there is lots of evidence against the media and public opinion, Howard Becker’s labelling theory explains the media and public opinion well.

Interactionist theories concentrate on how behaviours come to be defined as deviant. The interactionist view takes a smaller scale view of society and social order and analyses small or medium scale social interactions. The main idea behind the interactionist approach to deviance is that the definition of what is deviant is socially negotiated (a process). Deviance differs from one culture to another and also across time. It also differs according to where you are and who you are with at any given moment. The second idea in the interactionist approach is that a person’s experience may lead to a deviant career i.e. there is a social process that takes certain people down a path that leads to rejection by society. Interactionist theorists argue that in society there are always different groups who are competing to have their particular values or interests elevated to the position whereby they are passed into law. These values may or may not reflect the views of the bulk of the population. The most important thing is that the group, who are promoting their own values, are successful in doing so and thereby have their values made into the law. There are a number of ways that this can be done, including directly influencing the politicians, but the key role is played by the media. So they believe that the structures of society are responsible for people committing crime and that the interaction between people and the government will explain why people commit crime.

Howard Becker is the most influential theorist in the interactionist view of deviance. He focuses on the process by which they label certain acts as deviant. Becker says if no act is intrinsically deviant, then it must be the meanings we attach to behaviour that is important. Labelling theory builds from the symbolic interactionist view that people define and construct their identities from society’s perceptions of them. Social groups project rules and definitions onto otherwise neutral behaviours to create deviance (). Labelling theory begins with the label being attached by courts, police or newspapers be it a rapist, murderer etc. The label sticks and people treat you differently even if it isn’t true. The label then becomes a master status and overrides other labels as friend, neighbour, brother etc. The labelled person then accepts the label even if it isn’t true; their self conception is largely made up of what other people think. This finally leads to a self fulfilling prophecy, if the label becomes deeply accepted the individual may display signs of deviant activity connected with the label, seeing people they believe are deviant anyway, this completes the process. The attachment of labels has important consequences for how others see a person and how he/she comes to view themselves. With negative labels, a person will need to accommodate to his/her spoiled identity or what we call stigma. Prior to discovery of being deviant, a person is not labelled, but indulging in what labelling theorist call rule-breaking behaviour. Such rule-breaking need to have no further consequences for the person involved. Once labelled a deviant it can become difficult to interact with others in society. The label can attach to the whole identity, not simply the particular deviant act. There is less chance of ‘normal’ behaviour. This difficulty in interacting with others occurs for at least two reasons: the impact of reputation and the expectations of others, others relate to the labelled person on the basis of the label and the responses come to reinforce the reputation. Erwin Lemert is the founder of what is called the ‘Societal Reaction’ theory. This is original to the labelling theory which includes many of the same concepts. He distinguished between primary and secondary deviance. Primary deviance is rule-breaking, which is of little importance in itself, while secondary deviance is the consequence of the responses of others, which is significant. The person labelled as deviant will eventually come to see themselves as being bad. As seen above Becker used the term master status to describe this process ().

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Labelling theory alerts us that the whole area of crime depends upon social constructions of reality – law creation, law enforcement and the identities of rule breakers are all thrown into question. The media play a key role in all three of these processes, as most people’s perceptions of crime are actually created by the media. Labelling theory has contributed to two particularly important concepts to our understanding of the relationship between the media and crime: deviancy amplification spiral and moral panics. Deviancy amplification spiral was created by Leslie Wilkins to show how the response to deviance, by agencies such ...

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