1.2 Responding and Enforcing Rules

1.2 Labelling theory

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  • Responding and Enforcing Rules
    • many theories take for granted that once a person has committed a deviant/ criminal act, the responses will be uniform
    • people respond differently to rule breaking or deviance
    • British Crime Survey stats show that young black males are more likely than any other group to be stopped for questioning   and searching
      • this can be seen as a result of officers belief that this particular social group is more likely to offend than any other
        • for this reason, they are subjects of routine suspicion
    • evaluation
      • criticised for failing to explain the causes of primary deviance as many people commit crimes knowing their actions are against the law before they've been labelled
      • fails to distinguish between crimes with different degrees of seriousness and criminals who do different amounts of harm
      • the theory tends to assume that labelling is either arbitrary or based upon biases of people who do the labelling
      • strong evidence suggests that some groups are more likely to be labelled than others
        • suggests that a full understanding of crime and deviance requires both offending and social reaction through labelling

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