Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to episode five of Crime and Deviants
Speaker 1: for the Sociology Show podcast. In this episode, we'll look
Speaker 1: at interactionist ideas, So we would consider how is crime
Speaker 1: socially constructed, what is the labeling process, what's the difference
Speaker 1: between primary and secondary deviants, who makes the rules? And
Speaker 1: how can interactionist ideas influence social policy. So interactionist ideas
Speaker 1: of crime and deviance were developed through the work of
Speaker 1: Howard Becker in the nineteen sixties, and interactionists take an
Speaker 1: opposing view to the structuralists. Remember, structuralist sociologists such as functionists,
Speaker 1: Marxist and feminists take a macro or large scale approach
Speaker 1: and they look at how institutions such as the family, media,
Speaker 1: and education influence our behavior. As a result, crime has
Speaker 1: its origins in these structures according to structuralists. However, for interactionists,
Speaker 1: the structures are not significant, but people and their interactions
Speaker 1: with others are. Interactionists therefore take a micro or small
Speaker 1: scale view of society and choose to folks on individuals
Speaker 1: because people exchange meanings and motives which can change society
Speaker 1: as a whole. Interactionists believe crime should not be taken
Speaker 1: at face value, as it is what they call socially
Speaker 1: constructed and therefore is relative to time and culture. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: they suggest that we shouldn't just accept the criminals of
Speaker 1: those in prison, but rather that crime and criminals are
Speaker 1: created by society and defined by moral entrepreneurs like the police,
Speaker 1: the courts, and the media. Interactionists are also interested in
Speaker 1: the role these institutions of control construct and what is
Speaker 1: crime and deviance and who is deemed criminal or deviant?
Speaker 1: So let's start with Howard Becker. And Howard Becker was
Speaker 1: writing in the nineteen sixties and he said there is
Speaker 1: a process to becoming labeled as a deviant or as
Speaker 1: a criminal. Becker is the founding father of labeling theory.
Speaker 1: Becker once said, deviancy is not a quality of the
Speaker 1: act a person commits, but rather a consequence of the
Speaker 1: application by others of rules and sanctions to an offender.
Speaker 1: The deviant is the one whom that label has been
Speaker 1: successfully applied. Deviant behavior, therefore, is behavior that other people label.
Speaker 1: So Becker is suggesting that most people commit deviant and
Speaker 1: criminal acts what he calls primary deviants, but only some
Speaker 1: people are caught and stigmatize. For them what he calls
Speaker 1: secondary deviance. If most people commit deviant acts of some kind,
Speaker 1: it is pointless trying to search for the differences between
Speaker 1: deviance and non deviance. Instead, we should try to understand
Speaker 1: why some people have been labeled as deviant and others
Speaker 1: have not. Becker noted that as social beings, our identity
Speaker 1: is largely to do with how others see us. If
Speaker 1: people see us negatively, this could affect the way in
Speaker 1: which we behave. The labeling process, according to Becker, then
Speaker 1: happens in five stages. Firstly, a moral entrepreneur tries to
Speaker 1: attach a label to an act of secondary deviance. Moral
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs are people with your authority to label others, so
Speaker 1: they are teachers, police officers, judges, and so on. They
Speaker 1: start the labeling process by publicly identifying an activity as
Speaker 1: criminal or deviant. In stage two, the labeled person may
Speaker 1: accept the label even if it isn't true. A person's
Speaker 1: self conception is largely made up of what other people
Speaker 1: think of them. At stage three, the label may become
Speaker 1: what Becker called a master status. We all have different statuses,
Speaker 1: such as a friend or a neighbor, or a sibling
Speaker 1: or a student Becker suggests that the label could become
Speaker 1: a master status and take over all the others, becoming
Speaker 1: the most dominant of our labels. At stage four, we
Speaker 1: may start to see a self fulfilling prophecy. If the
Speaker 1: label becomes deeply accepted, the individual may display signs of
Speaker 1: deviant activity connected with that label. Seeing as people believe
Speaker 1: they are a deviant anyway, this completes the process, as
Speaker 1: this confirmed the label in the eyes of others. At
Speaker 1: stage five, interactions, however, also believe that an individual has
Speaker 1: the power to reject the label and negotiate his or
Speaker 1: her identity. At this point, Becker suggests that a person
Speaker 1: could just deny the label or not let it affect
Speaker 1: their self image. They could also manage to negotiate by
Speaker 1: convincing other agents of social control that the label isn't true.
Speaker 1: Becker's most famous example is this study of outlawing cannabis
Speaker 1: use in the USA in the nineteen thirties. Cannabis had
Speaker 1: been widely used in southern states of the USA until
Speaker 1: it became outlawed due to a successful campaign waged by
Speaker 1: the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who, after changing the prohibition laws,
Speaker 1: saw cannabis as a growing menace in society. Through a
Speaker 1: press campaign and lobbying of senior politicians, the Bureau was
Speaker 1: successful in outlawing cannabis growing and its use. However, Becker
Speaker 1: points out that the campaign was only successful because it
Speaker 1: plugged into values commonly held in the USA, which included
Speaker 1: firstly the belief that people ought to be in control
Speaker 1: of their actions and decisions, and secondly that pleasure for
Speaker 1: its own sake was wrong, and finally that drugs were
Speaker 1: seen as addictive and as such enslaved people. The term
Speaker 1: Becker used to describe the campaign was a moral crusade,
Speaker 1: and this terminology is used to describe ethical movements to
Speaker 1: pass laws. The second sociologist for the interactions perspective we
Speaker 1: look at is Cicarel, and he talks about the negotiation
Speaker 1: of justice. Cicarell's work on the police shows how influential
Speaker 1: moral entrepreneurs can influence laws. Ciicarel found that the police
Speaker 1: acted as moral entrepreneurs, with working class and middle class
Speaker 1: use influencing the way in which labels occurred for the
Speaker 1: two groups. The process of defining a young person as
Speaker 1: a delinquent is not simple, clear cut and unproblematic. Its complex,
Speaker 1: involving a series of interactions based on sets of meanings
Speaker 1: held by the participants. These meanings can be modified during
Speaker 1: the interaction, so each stage in the process is negotiable.
Speaker 1: The first stage is the decision by the police to
Speaker 1: stop and interrogate an individual. The decision is based on
Speaker 1: meanings held by the police as to what is suspicious, strange, unusual,
Speaker 1: or wrong. Such meanings are related to particular geographical areas
Speaker 1: in a city. Low income areas are seen as bad
Speaker 1: areas with high crime rates, and so behaviour in such
Speaker 1: areas is more likely to be viewed as suspicious. Interrogation
Speaker 1: need not lead to arrest. The process is negotiable, but
Speaker 1: depends largely on the picture held by the police of
Speaker 1: the typical delinquent. If the appearance, language, and demeanor of
Speaker 1: the young person fits this picture, she or he is
Speaker 1: more likely to be arrested. It's not surprising, therefore, that
Speaker 1: Sicarell found a close relationship between social class and delinquency.
Speaker 1: Most young people convicted of offenses had fathers who were
Speaker 1: manual workers. On a seven class occupational scale, Sicarell found
Speaker 1: that one third came from a class seven Sicarell suggested
Speaker 1: when middle class juveniles were arrested, there was less likelihood
Speaker 1: of them being charged with an offense. Their background did
Speaker 1: not fit the standard picture of the delinquent. Their parents
Speaker 1: were much better at being able to negotiate successfully on
Speaker 1: their behalf. Middle class parents can present themselves as respectable
Speaker 1: and reasonable people from a nice neighborhood who look forward
Speaker 1: to a rosy future for their child. They promise cooperation
Speaker 1: with the juvenile officers, assuring them that their son or
Speaker 1: daughter is suitably remorseful and won't commit crime again. As
Speaker 1: a result, middle class juveniles are often defined as ill
Speaker 1: rather than criminal, as accidentally straying from the path of
Speaker 1: righteousness rather than being committed to wrongdoing, as cooperative rather
Speaker 1: than irresponsible, as having a real chance of reforming rather
Speaker 1: than being a born loser. He or she is typically
Speaker 1: counseled and warned and released. Thus, in Siicarel's words, what
Speaker 1: ends up as being called justice is negotiable. The third
Speaker 1: sociologist that we look at for intractionism is stan Cohen,
Speaker 1: and stan Cohen talks about deviancy, amplification, moral panics, and
Speaker 1: folk devils. Stan Cohen's study is a classic. He looked
Speaker 1: at the two subcultural groups of mods and rockers. The
Speaker 1: mods and rockers were very popular during the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: and occasional he had small disturbances on seafronts such as
Speaker 1: Brighton Beach or Margate. However, what Cohen noticed is that
Speaker 1: the media massively exaggerated what was actually occurring. He refers
Speaker 1: to deviancy, amplification, and moral panics, where the media sensationalized
Speaker 1: reports of problems between the two groups of mods and rockers.
Speaker 1: Cohen's ideas about the social construction of what he calls
Speaker 1: folk devils were revolutionary at the time. Therefore, according to Cohen,
Speaker 1: what is seen as deviant or criminal depends on how
Speaker 1: the media react, how they portray the news, and how
Speaker 1: they might sensationalize a certain act and put a blame
Speaker 1: on a particular group and therefore scapegoating them or what
Speaker 1: Cohen called folk devils. The final sociologist that we look
Speaker 1: at is Phillips in Bowling and Phillips and Bowling refers
Speaker 1: to racial profiling and self fulfilling prophecies. Phillips and Bowling
Speaker 1: have suggested that the police over police ethnic minoritized groups,
Speaker 1: particularly black men. This may be based on racial profiling,
Speaker 1: which is a process used to determine who is most
Speaker 1: likely to commit crime based on the types of people
Speaker 1: who have been found to be criminal in the past.
Speaker 1: Phillips and Bowling suggests that if only one type of
Speaker 1: person is stopped and searched, then only one type of
Speaker 1: person will be found to have committed those crimes, hence
Speaker 1: leading to a self fulfilling prophecy. This means that the
Speaker 1: police find black men to have been more criminal because
Speaker 1: the stop and search rates is somewhere between six and
Speaker 1: nine times more likely than white men. This disproportionate figure
Speaker 1: not only leads to more black men being charged, but
Speaker 1: also may lead to a culture of distrust and defiance
Speaker 1: within black culture, leading to further arrests. This shows that
Speaker 1: the interaction between the police and citizens is not equal,
Speaker 1: with some groups attracting more negative labels than others. There are,
Speaker 1: of course, many criticisms of the interactionist approach, not just
Speaker 1: because they only look at small scale research, but they
Speaker 1: do tend to ignore the structures of society and how
Speaker 1: these have an impact on us. For example, Marxists would
Speaker 1: argue that the structure of capitalism has a huge impact
Speaker 1: on crime, and criminality. Likewise, feminist point to patriarchy and
Speaker 1: question why is male crime so much higher than female crime.
Speaker 1: You could also use new right theory. Murray, for example,
Speaker 1: says that you have to consider the problems of underclass
Speaker 1: and welfare dependency when trying to understand why crime occurs. Likewise,
Speaker 1: you could look at left realists who say that marginalization
Speaker 1: has a huge impact on crime and criminality, and right realists.
Speaker 1: Wholl also talk about the fact that the environment itself
Speaker 1: can lead to increasing crime levels and it's not always
Speaker 1: just about the individual. Thank you very much for listening
Speaker 1: to this episode. If you've yet to listen to episodes
Speaker 1: one to four, then please do go back and listen now.
Speaker 1: Thank you.