Explaining Crime » Interactionism: Labelling and Moral Panics

Interactionism: crime is a label

Interactionists study small-scale interaction between people and the meanings they give to behaviour. Most theories of crime ask why people commit crime. Interactionists ask a different question: who gets labelled as a criminal, and what happens to them next?

Remember, a label is a meaning attached to a person by others, and a label can come to shape how the person is treated (see Labelling Theory and Inequality). This lesson applies that idea to crime and deviance.

Becker: deviance is a label

Howard Becker argued that no act is deviant in itself. An act becomes deviant only when other people label it as deviant. In his view, a deviant is simply a person to whom the label has been successfully applied.

This links to the relativity of crime: the same act may be ignored in one situation and punished in another. What matters is who notices it, who has the power to label it, and how they react.

Example: two teenagers spray graffiti on a bus shelter. One is known as a "troublemaker" and is reported to the police. The other is seen as a "good student" and the adults say it was only a joke. The act was the same, but only one teenager is labelled.

Becker also described the deviant career. Once a person is publicly labelled, a chain of events can follow:

• others treat them as a deviant and trust them less;
• they may be shut out of normal groups, jobs and activities;
• they may drift towards others who have also been labelled;
• they accept the label and carry on the behaviour.

Key terms:

• Deviant career: the path a person follows after being labelled, as they are treated as a deviant, take on the label and become more involved in deviant behaviour.

Lemert: primary and secondary deviance

Edwin Lemert showed that not all rule-breaking has the same effect. He separated two kinds.

So the label does not just describe the deviance, it can create more of it. This is the self-fulfilling prophecy applied to crime.

Key terms:

• Primary deviance: rule-breaking that has not been labelled and does not change how a person sees themselves.
• Secondary deviance: deviance that follows from being labelled, when a person accepts the label and acts in line with it.

Cohen: moral panics and folk devils

Stanley Cohen applied labelling ideas to whole groups in his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics. He studied the reaction to clashes between youth groups called Mods and Rockers at English seaside resorts in the 1960s.

Cohen found that the media gave the events huge attention and presented them in an alarming way. He called the result a moral panic.

Key terms:

• Moral panic: a wave of public concern, stirred up by the media, that a group of people threatens the values and safety of society.
• Folk devils: the group that is pictured as the enemy, and blamed for the problem.
• Deviancy amplification: the process by which the reaction to deviance, especially media coverage and tougher policing, increases the amount of deviance.

Deviancy amplification often works like a spiral:

• the media report a minor incident in an exaggerated way, with shocking headlines;
• the public becomes alarmed and demands action;
• the police respond with more patrols and arrests, so more incidents are recorded;
• the media report these arrests as proof that the problem is growing;
• the group feels labelled and pushed out, so some members act out the image they have been given.

In this way the panic can make the problem it describes larger. Moral panics often fade when the media move on to a new story and a new folk devil.

Exam-style question

(a) Define the term folk devils. [2 marks]

(d) Explain three ways in which being labelled as deviant may lead a person into further deviance. [6 marks]