Labelling Theory
Primary and Secondary Deviance
Primary Deviance - engaging in an initial act of deviance
Secondary Deviance - An act that has been publicly labelled as deviant. As mentioned before, the offender adopts a master status which can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy as they behave in such a way that lives up to the label they have been given.
The media play a key role in identifying deviant behaviour and labelling those who are associated with such behaviour.
In doing so, the media can create moral panics within society; which in turn leads to the creation of folk devils. Folk Devils occur when the deviant individual further isolates themselves and commits more deviant acts. This process is referred to as 'deviance amplification spiral'.
Howard Becker in 1963 described labelling theory as “Deviancy is not a quality of the act a person commits, but rather a consequences of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’. Deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label.”
Edwin Lemert was an early advocate of Labelling Theory. Lemur argued that the specific social response to an act may lead to the offender changing their self-perception and being associated with deviant behaviour.
One of the most radical idea of labelling theory emerged from Edwin Schur and his 'Radical Non-intervention'. Scour recommended that young people who broke the law did not receive any punishment at all as he stated young people who committed crimes were merely experimenting and regarded this as an important part of adolescent development.
In Britain, labelling theory helped shape the criminal justice system especially regarding young people. Labelling theory was most visible in the juvenile system within the United Kingdom (UK), where social workers pressed for young offenders to be removed from the formal criminal justice process to avoid youths being caught up in the criminal system.
The association with the British criminal justice system left many young people labelled as delinquent and limited the opportunities available to them. This led to the Kilbrandon Report (1964) which proposed radical change to the British juvenille system.
In the past youths were brought before the court to determine their punishment. The Kilbrandon Report a aimed to "prevent future criminal actions by the treatment of all the factors, whether personal or environmental, likely to conduce to such actions by a person who, either because he has already offended or on some other evidence, has shown himself prone to delinquency." (Kilbrandon Report 1964, p.28)
The Kilbrandon Report, influenced by labelling theory led to the creation of the Children's Hearing System in Scotland which aimed to refrain from labelling youth as deviant. The Children's Hearing is a panel group who determine the best interest of the child based on the evidence gathered by a Reporter of the case.
In the past, African American citizens within the United States (US) had the highest crime rate compared to all other groups which led to an increase stereotype view of African Americans being deviant.
However, this view, is not a recent finding as many scholars, such as Marc Mauer (1999), stated that White Americans have long viewed African Americans as criminals associating them with deviant behaviour. In addition, Randall Kennedy (1997) claims the association of African Americans and crime can be traced back to the enslavement period of Africans in America.
As a result of these findings, labelling theory in America could be linked with Racial Profiling. This specific technique has been used in the past by American police which involves them targeting specific groups such as African Americans based on the stereotype of African Americans being predominately criminal.
This specific technique used by police can result in moral panics. Moral panics is an situation where there is anxiety around a certain aspect of society often concerning moral values. In this specific case, around African Americans and the criminal threat created by police. In this instance, it led to the white population fearing the African American community. This placed pressure of criminal justice agencies to focus more on African American communities .
This focus of African American communities can be associated with Aaron Cicourel's, negotiation of justice. Cicourel states this occurs when agents of social control, for example the Police, hold certain typification of those who commit crime, in this instance African Americans. This policy can lead to self-serving bias police officers who are more likely to patrol these specific areas where a higher concentration of these groups reside.
This results in a higher arrest rate in these areas as officers are more focused on patrolling these areas which will only confirm the typification. #
However, this can create problems, as not everyone in the targeted area or ethnic group is deviant.
This campaign began after George Zimmerman was acquitted of manslaughter of Trayvon Martin.
After more incidents like this occurred the U.S. Department of Justice now keeps a database which records the number of fatal officer involved incidents due to skepticism around police accountability. #
The Guardian revealed that young African American men are 9 times more likely that other Americans to be killed by police officers.
This brought about the creation of the Black Lives Matter Campaign.
Labelling Theory can be used to understand the challenges facing policy makers and practitioners within various US Departments. Due to racial profiling, labelling theory occurs much too often throughout the US; despite racial profiling technically being illegal since 1996. This therefore brings about challenges to criminal justice agents throughout the US to change to societal attitude towards labelling.
Labelling theory therefore helps us understand the challenges facing policy makers, and the need to maintain a balance of justice.
The consequence of labelling lead to the change in policy within the US Justice Department creating a new Department of Justice DOJ record system.
"All law enforcement agencies - 19,450 in total - will be required to submit quarterly reports of all officer-involved deaths directly to the DOJ, including information about the location, and time of the incident, manner of death, the victim's behaviour during the incident, reason for initial contact, and the victims race, age, gender, and so on. Failure to comply means they could lose 10 percent of their agency's funding. Medical examiners and coroners will also be required to submit reports to the DOJ whenever they receive a body of someone who was killed by police" (Vice New, August 2016)