Studying society’s reaction to crime and deviance has been ongoing for over a century under many different guises, including labelling theory, the interactionist perspective and the social constructionist perspective. These ‘societal reaction theories’ have a common denominator in that they see the sociological explanations of deviance as being products of social control rather than a biological or psychological reasons. These other theorists accept certain definitions of deviance and then set out to find out the causes of them. Labelling theorists however, focus on seeing deviance from the deviant’s perspective. They maintain that the way a person is stigmatised by society as being a deviant is equally if not more important than the actual deviant act or crime that that person has been said to have committed. Becker, in ‘The Outsiders’ claimed deviance is created by different social groups when they make rules, which, if broken constitute deviance. These rules are applied to certain individuals who are then labelled as ‘outsiders’.
Labelling theory is made up of two key propositions. The first is that deviance is not just violating a norm, it is any act that has been defined as deviant. The deviance is not involved in the act itself, but instead in the response of others to the act. As Howard Becker put it,
"Deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an offender. The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label."
(Becker 1963)
The other main proposition of labelling is that the labelling of a certain act as deviant actually amplifies or even produces deviance. The response of the individual deviant to society’s reaction to his act leads to secondary deviance (Lemert 1951) as mentioned above, possibly leading to a ‘deviant career’. The individual may feel he is locked into a certain deviant role as he has accepted upon himself the self-image of a deviant.
Labelling theory differs from other approaches into the study of deviance as it does not attempt to find out why certain groups commit more crime than others. Instead it tries to find out why some groups committing a crime are defined as deviant, whereas other groups or individuals are not. Labelling theorists have noted that most people will commit a crime at come point in their lives but not all of them will be defined as deviant. Labelling theory looks into how the process of labelling works and why it occurs to a greater extent in some cases than others.
The example of a police officer could be used. The prevalent ‘canteen culture’ found in the Scarman report, was said to have ingrained racism within it. This racism included stereotypes of blacks and Asians amongst others. When a policeman is patrolling an area, the people who fit the closest into his stereotypes of deviants (blacks were seen as armed/drug dealers and Asians were seen as devious/liars/illegal immigrants) will be the most likely to be arrested. After this the individual may be successfully stigmatized by his arrest as a deviant, and following this, the deviant image may become his ‘master status’.
This term refers to the label that is seen by others to be of highest significance within the individual. From the outset the person may be seen as a father or as a footballer, but following the deviant act, they will be seen as a thief or rapist rather than a footballer or father. It is for this reason that the justice system attempts to keep certain cases out of the public domain before they are resolved so as to avoid mistaken labelling of innocent people. This idea is fair enough when the individual is indeed innocent. In the cases of people who do in fact take on the self-image of their master status, for example a man who commits a crime and is sentenced to a prison term. This man will, prior to his incarceration, have family and friends who he will interact with. However, on his release he may find that those people who were previously his friends will no longer socialise with him as he has been labelled a criminal, or at least he is seen as an ex-con which is equally as stigmatizing and exclusive. As a result of this the man may begin to see himself as a criminal and so take on the characteristics of one – i.e. turn to criminal activities as he has no other choice.
When an individual performs an act of deviance,
“The most important consequence is a drastic change in the individual’s public identity. Committing the improper act (and being publicly caught at it) place him in a new status. He has been revealed as a different kind of person from the kind he was supposed to be. He is labelled a ‘fairy,’ ‘dope fiend,’ ‘nut’ or ‘lunatic,’ and is treated accordingly.”
(Becker 1963)
This could be the catalyst for a person beginning a deviant career. As people put so much emphasis on how others see them, this could start a vicious circle which the individual cannot escape from. Also the ‘deviant career’ could be seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy which could result in the individual returning to prison if he is an ex-con or back to the mental home if he is mentally ill, at the very least. The individual cannot get a job as he is seen as deviant, so he may as well do the only thing he can, that being whatever deviant act he originally performed. From this, there is a process in which he becomes a ‘career deviant’. Becker proposes that this happens in the above stages, the outset being the original labelling.
However, Becker also states that when looking in depth at a ‘deviant’ individual, one should not take his deviance for granted, as they may not have actually performed the original deviant act that they have been labelled as. (This is Becker admitting to the possible fallibility of labelling theory, more criticism is to be found below). In other words, for a man to be labelled by others as deviant does not necessarily mean he has been deviant in the past.
Another major player in the formation of labelling theory, Kai T. Erikson, states
“deviance is not a property inherent in certain forms of behaviour, it is a property conferred upon these forms by the audiences which directly or indirectly witness them”
(Erikson, 1962)
His particular viewpoint was that deviance is required within society because it aids society’s stability. This is contrary to most other thinkers who thought deviance was adding to society’s breakdown. His reasoning for this was that in his view, a deviant served as a marker for society’s perception of right and wrong, translating into (as Becker put it) the ‘insiders’ of a group (the good) and the ‘outsiders’ (the bad).
This view however, forces us into the position that we have to carry on labelling people as deviants even though it is not fair just because we have to make an example of them to the rest of society (Erikson 1966).
Negative labelling as in labelling an ex-con can be used as an explanation for the varying treatment of people within the Criminal Justice System. Two seemingly similar teenagers, for example, could be sentenced differently due only to their status in life at the time. If one is seen by the public or by acquaintances as a criminal he may be treated more harshly by the police than someone who is seen to be fairly free of negative stigma. These labels may have been built up in schools where a ‘moral career’ is begun. Theorist Aaron Cicourel in his study of ‘The Social Organisation of Juvenile Justice’ found that
‘probation officers ‘construct’ the delinquent’
they cease to be young people and turn into their criminal records. Whatever is held within that file is what they are as people. The file may emphasise the good aspects, or conversely the bad aspects of the individual and that will have a considerable effect on how he is treated.
In addition to this, a person could be looked at as the sum of his family upbringing. The process of ‘typification’ comes into play in that a certain act performed by the individual will be seen as typical for a person of his stock. Someone who comes from a broken home and goes on to commit a burglary will be seen by the authorities as having committed a typical offence for someone like him. It is these indicators that the ‘moral entrepreneurs’ such as the police, use to form labels which subsequently become the essence of the individual as seen by others.
Some people have a higher likelihood of being labelled in the first place than others. For example Schur in ‘Labelling Deviant Behaviour’ (1971) takes the cases of professionals who commit crime. He uses the case of a doctor who is a drug addict and a bank clerk who steals the money he handles for the bank. In both of these occasions, the subject has some legitimate reason to be found with the incriminating material, this gives them protection against being found out as the criminals they are. This is the opposite of a drug addict buying drugs from a dealer on the street or a robber holding up the bank. Schur holds that this resistance to labelling that these individuals have is related back to their opportunities in earlier life which lead them to where they are at present. This is the reverse of someone who is wrongly labelled as a deviant when they are not. These people are deviants but they are not labelled as such because of their social status. Although he stands by this theory that these social structures affect people’s deviation from norms, he applies this only to an individual’s first deviation. He states that it is society’s reaction to the deviance that will decide his future in terms of his labels and his opportunities.
Labelling theory cannot be analysed without taking its criticisms and limitations into account. Many of the original founders of the theory realised its limitations and analysed them, then stated them in their respective research studies. Much of the criticism is based around a few major points of weakness, starting with the point that it elevates the deviant party to an ‘innocent’ victim. What are these people guilty of though? Only tipping the balance of social order as Erikson mentions – we need them to encourage the rest of us to keep ourselves in order.
In addition, contrary to how labelling theory explains crime, people choose to commit crimes; it cannot be placed solely on the reactions of society. Labelling theory is described by many critics as deterministic – it makes out that the people involved are merely passive objects and all of their behaviour patterns are caused by external factors.
Becker (1967) notes also the criticism that labelling seems to be a process contrary to morality in that it upsets balances within currently held social mores. Becker actually goes as far as to say that the labelling theorist must side with the deviant as it is up to them to put right all of the wrongs done to an unfairly labelled individual.
Another intrinsic question on labelling is – is it in fact an actual theory? Many of its critics see it as totally untrue and untestable theory. Becker adds this to his list of attacks to address, and retorts by saying that it is a ‘theoretical approach’ not an actual theory. If looked at in this way, labelling has contributed a lot to studying deviance. It looks at the time following the deviant act which many theories fail to recognize. He suggests (Becker 1963) that theorists should invent ways of empirical research for his approach.
His critics, including Schur (1971), state that labelling cannot measure deviance properly as it does not take the whole social system into account when addressing deviants. According to Schur it puts too much emphasis on the ‘sociology of the underdog’ and turning over their unfair treatment. According to him it ‘romanticises’ deviation and misses the main crux of deviance (Schur 1971).
Tittle, cited in Gove (1975), states the overly simplistic and unscientific nature of the effects of labelling,
“In short, it is easy to assume that subsequent deviance constitutes an effect of labelling as well as being evidence that labelling has occurred. But if labelling cannot be ascertained independent of its presumed effect, then the proposition in question is incontrovertible and thereby unscientific.”
Also, in relation to suggestions of empirical tests in labelling he states
“Even if it could be agreed that sanctioning or negative classification were equivalent to labelling, systematic data to enable tests of propositions concerning it are lacking.”
(Tittle, cited in Gove 1975)
Becker also states the major problem that there are simply not enough studies and not enough data within labelling theory. He says (Becker 1963) that there are not enough studies on deviance and not enough studies on enough kinds of deviance. He adds that there are also not enough studies where the researcher gets close enough to the subject to fully understand all affecting influences on deviance (Becker 1963).
Another criticism of labelling is that although it does focus on the after effects of deviance, it fails to fully explain ‘primary deviance.’ Why do people deviate from norms in the first place?
To conclude, labelling theory, although very popular today, has always had its critics, and some might say people like Becker want it both ways, both as a scientific theory and simply as a theoretical approach. It is always met with much criticism but if looked at as merely another way of looking at general sociological behaviour of deviants it has given much to the field of study. Now labelling goes even further outside sociology into fields such as mental health and government policy. That these organisations take labelling into account as a serious factor in diagnosing mental patients and categorising criminals in prisons, is some proof that labelling is indeed an effective means of assessing deviance.
“Deviance, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder.”
Word Count: 2,910
Bibliography:
Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York, NY: The Free Press
Becker, H. S. (1964). The Other Side: Perspectives on Deviance. New York, NY: The Free Press
Becker, H. S. (1967). Whose Side Are We On?, Social Problems. 14:239-247
Erikson, K.T. (1962) Notes on the Sociology of Deviance, Social Problems 9:311
Gove, W.R. (1980) Labelling of Deviance, California, Sage Publications
Lemert, E. (1951) Social Pathology
Matza, D. (1964) Delinquency and Drift. New York: Wiley
Schur, E. M. (1971). Labelling Deviant Behaviour: Its Sociological Implications. New York: McGraw-Hill
Vold G.B., Bernard, T.J. and Snipes, J.B. (2002) Theoretical Criminology (5th Ed) Oxford: Oxford University Press
