Part VII

Unlike other sociological theories, the
labeling/social reaction perspectives reject
using the offender as the starting point in their
analysis
◦ Rather, these theories focus on the behavior of those
who label, react to, and otherwise seek to control
offenders
◦ These social control efforts are what trigger the
processes that trap individuals in a criminal career
 Self-fulfilling prophecy


Early criminologists recognized that placing
people in prison, or “houses of corruption,”
could deepen involvement into crime
Tannenbaum discussed the “dramatization of
evil”
◦ Argued “a decisive step in the
education of the criminal” is being
arrested and having the criminal
status held up for public scrutiny
 Thus, criminals are made when
they are defined as such

Tannenbaum argued being arrested and labeled as
criminal forced the person to:
◦ Associate with others defined
as criminal
 Leads to the exposure of criminal
values
◦ Think of himself as a criminal and thus begin to act as a
criminal

Tannenbaum argued the best policy in dealing with
juvenile delinquents is to not dramatize or draw attention
to the crime
◦ Radical nonintervention

Edwin Lemert (1951) discussed primary and
secondary deviance
◦ Primary deviance: “polygenic, arising out of a
variety of social, cultural, psychological, and
physiological factors”
 Peripheral to the person’s identity so does not
influence how the person views him/herself
 Rationalized and dealt with as functions
of a socially acceptable role

Edwin Lemert (1951) discussed primary and secondary
deviance
◦ Secondary deviance: occurs after the deviance inspired a
social reaction
 When a person begins to employ his deviant behavior or role
based upon it as a means of defense, attack, or adjustment
to the overt and covert problems created by the consequent
societal reactions to him/her
 This affects identity and conception of self
 Narrows the ability to choose conventional ways
of life
 One’s “life and identity are organized around the
facts of deviance”


Seldom one deviant act will provoke a strong
enough societal reaction to create secondary
deviance, unless the individual projects
anticipatory fears onto the situation
Frequently, there is a progressive reciprocal
relationship between the deviation of the
person and the social reaction

The sequence leading to secondary deviance is as
follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Primary deviation
Social penalties
Further primary deviation
Stronger penalties/rejections
Further deviation (perhaps with hostilities and resentment
upon those doing the penalizing)
6. Crisis reached in the tolerance quotient, formal action by
the community stigmatizing the deviant
7. Strengthening of the deviant conduct as a reaction to the
stigmatizing and penalties
8. Ultimate acceptance of the deviant social status and
efforts at adjustment on the basis of the associated role


Current research suggests that crime is
rooted more fully in individual differences
and in family, school, and community life
However, societal reaction is not
inconsequential
◦ Not the main source of persistent criminality, but
societal reaction can reinforce a criminal lifestyle
and make desistence more difficult


In the 1960s, based off the work of Lemert and
Tannenbaum, criminologists focused on social
reaction, not the offender
Focused on three main issues
1. Asked why certain behaviors were labeled as crime and
others were not and how definitions change over time
2. Asked why everyone who broke the law was not detected
and designated as criminal

Howard Becker argued “social groups create deviance by
making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance” and
applying those rules to particular people
3. Asked what the consequences of being labeled were

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Becomes a master status

Drawing on the sociological theory of symbolic
interactionism, labeling theorists argue a
person’s identify is shaped by the messages
other people deliver as to who the person is
◦ Over time, people begin to embrace the label, which
shapes their behavior

Labeling also shapes a person’s social
relationships
◦ Once stigmatized as criminal, the person loses
conventional relationships and is forced to associate
mainly with other criminals
◦ Also is denied opportunities (e.g., employment) in
conventional society

Labeling theory grew in popularity as the 1960s
progressed
◦ An interesting theory
◦ Critiqued the state’s power

However, labeling theory soon fell out of favor
◦ Empirically weak
 Argued societal reaction was the key in the stability of criminal
behavior; however, research has shown that stability occurs
early in the life course before formal interventions
 Does not recognize the impact of criminogenic environments
(e.g., dysfunctional family, failing at school, antisocial
associates)


Many abandoned labeling theory as it did not
have empirical support
Recently, a revisionist position has emerged
arguing that societal reactions can impact
criminal behavior
◦ Several studies show contact with the CJS increases
recidivism
 Imprisonment disrupts family relationships and
decreases job prospects

Three theoretical developments have
emerged that helped revitalize the study of
social reactions
1. Matsueda’s focus on informal reactions
2. Braithwaite’s focus on reintegrative shaming
3. Sherman’s focus on defiance

Labeling theory is usually interpreted as
contending that the application of formal
criminal sanctions is the key societal reaction
leading to subsequent criminal behavior
◦ Less attention paid to informal sanctions
 Reactions of parents, friends, neighbors, etc.

Ross Matsueda argues that a key proximate
cause of delinquent behavior is the “reflected
appraisals of others”
◦ The person’s perception that others view them
as delinquent or deviant



When kids are labeled as delinquent or
troublemakers, they perceive themselves as
others see them and act upon that perception
Labeling creates a delinquent self that
prompts deviant behavior
Matsueda has found support for his
proposition of informal sanctions

Other revitalizations have argued that the
effects of societal reactions are contingent on a
range of factors
◦ All reactions do not increase criminal behavior (e.g.,
rehabilitation)

John Braithwaite argues when a criminal act
occurs attempts are made to “shame” the
person
◦ Whether shaming makes things worse depends on the
quality of the societal reaction



Seeks to specify the types of shaming which
cause and prevent crime
Stigmatizing shaming leads to subsequent
criminal behavior
The key to crime control is cultural
commitments to shaming in ways that are
reintegrative

The consequence of stigmatization is the
attraction to criminal subcultures
◦ Formal criminal punishment has a degradation
ceremony and has maximum prospects for
stigmatization

The consequence of reintegrative shaming is
that criminal subcultures appear less
attractive

Reintegrative shaming is more likely when:
◦ Individuals are enmeshed in multiple relationships of
interdependency
◦ They live in a communitarian society
◦ Notice some of these factors can be seen in other theories
 Interdependency—control theories
 Stigmatization and reintegrative shaming—labeling theories
 Subculture—subcultural theories and social learning theories
 Opportunity—opportunity theories

Reintegrative shaming works to prevent crime
by:
1. Specific deterrence—people fear the shame of
intimates more than formal sanctions
2. General deterrence—deters others who wish to avoid
shame
3. These effects are greater for those who remain
strongly attached in relationships of
interdependency and will accrue greater costs from
shame
4. Stigmatizing shame can be counterproductive by
breaking attachments to those who shame future
criminality
5. Shaming leads to the cognition that certain types of
crime are unthinkable

Reintegrative shaming works to prevent crime by:
6. Shaming followed by forgiveness and repentance builds
more commitment to the law than shaming alone
7. Shaming builds consciences through citizens being
instruments and targets of social control
8. Once consciences have been formed, pangs of conscience
become the most effective punishment for crime
9. Shaming is both the social process which builds
conscience and the most important backstop to be used
when conscience fails to deliver conformity
10. Gossip within wider circles of acquaintances
and shaming of offenders not even known to
those who gossip are important for building
consciences

Reintegrative shaming works to prevent crime by:
11. Public shaming puts pressure on parents, teachers, and
others to ensure that they engage in private shaming
which is sufficiently systematic.

Public shaming has a more important role with adult offenses
because adults are further removed from the influence of the
school and family
12. Public shaming generalizes familiar principles to
unfamiliar or new contexts
13. Cultures with a heavy emphasis on reintegrative shaming
establish a smoother transition between socialization
practices in the family and socialization in wider society

This cultivates internal controls

Reintegrative shaming works to prevent crime by:
14. Gossip and other modalities of shaming can be especially
effective when the targets of shame are not directly
confronted with shame, but are directly confronted with
gestures of forgiveness or reintegration
15. The effectiveness of shaming is often enhanced by shame
being directed not only at the individual offender but also
at the offender’s family, workplace, etc.

These collectivities are put on notice to exercise informal
social control over their members

Key concepts of reintegrative shaming
◦ Interdependency
 Condition of individuals
 Extent to which individuals participate in networks
wherein they are dependent on them
 Approximately equivalent to social bonding,
attachment, and commitment elements in control
theory
 Measured by age, gender, marital status, employment,
and educational and occupational aspirations

Key concepts of reintegrative shaming
◦ Communitarianism
 Condition of societies
 In communitarian societies, individuals are densely enmeshed in
interdependencies that have the special qualities of mutual help
and trust
 Interdependencies have symbolic significance in the culture of
group loyalties which take precedence over individual interests
 Invoke personal obligation to others in a community of concern
 Resists interpretations of dependency as weak or threatening
individual autonomy
 Measured by urbanization and residential mobility

Key concepts of reintegrative shaming
◦ Shaming
 All social processes of expressing disapproval which
have the intention or effect of invoking remorse in the
person being shamed and/or condemnation by others
who become aware of the shaming
 Sets out to moralize with the offender to communicate
reasons for the evil of the person’s actions
 Most shaming done by individuals within
interdependent communities of concern

Key concepts of reintegrative shaming
◦ Reintegrative shaming
 Shaming which is followed by efforts to reintegrate the offender
back into the community of law-abiding or respectable citizens
through words/gestures of forgiveness or ceremonies to
decertify the offender as deviant
 Shaming and reintegration occur sequentially with reintegration
occurring before deviance becomes a master status
 Label the act as evil while striving to preserve the identity of the
offender as essentially good
 Shaming of criminal behavior is complemented by ongoing
social rewarding of alternative behavior patterns
 Has a finite duration and is terminated by forgiveness
 Efforts to maintain bonds of love and respect are
shown throughout the shaming period

Key concepts of reintegrative shaming
◦ Stigmatization
 Disintegrative shaming
 No effort made to reconcile the offender with the
community
 The offender is an outcast
 Deviance becomes the offender’s master status

Key concepts of reintegrative shaming
◦ Criminal subcultures
 Sets of rationalizations and conduct norms which
cluster together to support criminal behavior
 Provides systematic social support for crime
 Provides criminal opportunities, values, and attitudes



In communitarian societies with highly
interdependent individuals, shaming can be
either stigmatizing or reintegrative
In places where the shaming is reintegrative,
low crimes rates will be the result
In places where shaming is stigmatizing,
criminal subcultures will be attractive and the
individual is cut off from mainstream society
◦ This supplies criminal role models, training, and
attitudes
 These areas will have higher crime rates


High levels of stigmatization is one factor that
encourages criminal culture formation by
creating populations of outcasts with no stake
in conformity
Another factor leading to the development of
deviant subcultures is the systematic blockage
of legitimate opportunities for factions of the
population
◦ Subcultures develop in these outcast areas that supply
illegitimate opportunity structures

A communitarian culture nurtures deviants
within a network of attachments to
conventional society and inhibits the
widespread outcasting of those who violate
the law

Within the U.S., restorative justice programs most
closely mirror Braithwaite’s admonition to meld
shaming with reintegration
◦ The goal is to restore the victim, the offender, and the
community
 Victims receive restitution and a public apology
 Offenders are granted a measure of forgiveness by victims
and are reaccepted by their families and the community

Evaluations have yielded some promising results


Lawrence Sherman observes that, depending
on the circumstances, interventions can have
diverse effects
Legal punishments either reduce, increase, or
have no effect on future crimes depending on
the types of offenders, offenses, social
settings, and levels of analysis


Attempts to move beyond the labeling and deterrence
perspectives to develop a comprehensive theory of the
criminal sanction
◦
Accounts for when sanctions create defiance, deterrence,
or are irrelevant
Sherman discusses three theories that offer promise in
solving the stalemate between deterrence and labeling
theories
1. Braithwaite’s theory of reintegrative shaming
2. Tyler’s study of compliance
3. Scheff and Retzinger’s sociology of the “master emotions”
of pride and shame that dominate human responses to
experienced and vicarious sanctions



Braithwaite (1989)
◦ Reintegrative shaming controls crime
◦ Stigmatizing shaming increases crime
Tyler (1990)
◦ Sanctions citizens perceive as fair increase compliance with
the law
◦ Sanctions citizens perceive as unfair reduce compliance
Scheff and Retzinger (1991)
◦ Individuals vary in their emotional response to
sanctions/shaming depending on the social bond to the
sanctioning agent and to society in general



Proposes that in the face of criminal penalties, “defiance”
and thus greater crime are likely to result when offenders
are poorly bonded to society and define the sanctions
against them as stigmatizing and unfair
Recidivism is less likely when offenders have close ties to
conventional society and see the sanctions against them as
deserved and fairly applied
Offenders may react to the same sanction differently
depending on their social bonds and sensitivity to justice
◦ Suggests the quality of the behavior of the police, court,
and correctional officials plays a role in precipitating or
depressing the likelihood of defiance

There are four key concepts in the emotional
response to sanctioning experiences:
1. Legitimacy

Degree of legitimacy the sanctioned offender grants
to the sanctioning agent’s behavior, driven more by
the agent’s respectfulness and procedural fairness
than the substance of the morality the agent
enforces
2. Social bonds

The bond the offender has to the sanctioning agent,
the community in whose name the sanctioning agent
was acting, and other close attachments

There are four key concepts in the emotional
response to sanctioning experiences:
3. Shame
 The offender either acknowledges or bypasses the
shame, respectively repairing or weakening social bonds
to the agent or community
4. Pride
 The source of pride the offender feels in the aftermath
of the sanction; social solidarity with the relevant
community or isolation from that community as an
unconquerable soul

Defiance theory argues:
◦ Sanctions provoke future defiance of the law
(persistence, more frequent or more serious
violations) to the extent that offenders experience
the sanctioning conduct as illegitimate, have weak
bonds to the sanctioning agent and the community,
and deny their shame and become proud of their
isolation from the sanctioning community



Defiance is the net increase in the prevalence,
incidence, or seriousness of future offending
against a sanctioning community caused by a
proud, shameless reaction to the
administration of a criminal sanction
Specific defiance is the reaction of one person
to that person’s own punishment
General defiance is the reaction of a group or
collectivity to the punishment of one or more
of its members



Direct defiance is a crime committed against
a sanctioning agent
Indirect defiance is the displaced just deserts
committed against a target vicariously
representing the sanctioning agent(s)
provoking the anger
Defiance explains variation in criminal events,
not criminality

Defiance occurs under four conditions:
1. The offender defines a criminal sanction as unfair
2. The offender is poorly bonded to or alienated
from the sanctioning agent or the community the
agent represents
3. The offender defines the sanction as stigmatizing
and rejecting a person, not a lawbreaking act
4. The offender denies or refuses to acknowledge
the shame the sanction has actually caused him to
suffer

Sanctions are defined as unfair when:
1. The sanctioning agent behaves with disrespect
toward the offender, or toward the group to which
the offender belongs, regardless of how fair the
sanction is on substantive grounds
2. The sanction is substantively arbitrary,
discriminatory, excessive, undeserved, or
otherwise objectively unjust

Defining sanctions as unfair:
◦ Respect
 Respect by punishers for the punished
 Matter of treating people with human dignity
 Offenders’ interpretations they are getting a fair
hearing and the sanctioning decision maker considers
and respects that viewpoint
 Groups receiving the most disrespect from the police
also have the highest participation rates in crime
 The lower class and minorities are much more exposed to
police disrespect and brutality vicariously and in person prior
to their peak years of first arrest and initial involvement in
crime

Defining sanctions as unfair:
◦ Substantive unfairness
 Those who approach authority with defiant attitudes are often punished
for their speech rather than for any substantive offense
 When a sanction is used in this fashion, it is substantively unjust and another
potent source of defining police as illegitimate
 Disrespect toward police increases the odds of being arrested
 Increases the chance that the police are seen as unfair
 Nonenforcement of minor offenses with arbitrary or discriminatory
cases of enforcement also leads to feelings of unfairness
 Implies police laziness in looking for the truly guilty
 Personal experience with unfairness may be the greatest spark of
defiance

Anger and displaced just deserts
◦ Anger often displaced onto other people besides the
police
◦ Often borne out of disrespect shown to the offender
from the police, courts, or correctional officials
◦ Deals with the conduct of everyday discourse with
alienated persons who react with indignation to any
hint of social disapproval
 Recognize large numbers of highly touchy, angry
people ready to punish any available target for the sins
of their past insulters

Defiance theory argues:
◦ Sanctions produce future deterrence of lawbreaking (desistance, less frequent or less serious
violations) to the extent that offenders experience
the sanctioning conduct as legitimate, that
offenders have strong bonds to the sanctioning
agent and community, and the offenders accept
their shame and remain proud of their solidarity
with the community

Defiance theory argues:
◦ Sanctions become irrelevant to future law-breaking
(no effect) to the extent that the factors
encouraging defiance and encouraging deterrence
are fairly evenly counterbalanced

Testing defiance theory
◦ Need to conduct:
 Randomized experiments
 Ethnographic studies
 Longitudinal studies
 Conduct interviews
immediately after arrest
and on subsequent
occasions

Traditionally, labeling theories have stressed
radical nonintervention
◦ Due to the powerful labeling effect, legal interventions
were uniformly harmful

However, Braithwaite and Sherman endorse
restorative justice rather than radical
nonintervention
◦ Dislodge the state from its traditional role as an
adversary and instead have the state be an arbiter
who works with the victim and the offender to reduce
the harm associated with the criminal act

Restorative justice in practice
◦ Key component is the conference
 Attended by the victim, offender, both their families,
other community members, and a mediator
 Reach a consensus on a plan that will allow the
offender to restore the harm that has been caused
 Reject incarceration, rather having the offender work in
the community to restore their harms and receive
support

Research has shown restorative justice has:
◦ Increased victim satisfaction
◦ Decreased recidivism

Labeling theory traditionally focused on the
effects of labeling a person as deviant rather
than focusing on the offender him/herself
◦ Traditional labeling theories did not have much
empirical support

More recent theories (Matsueda, Braithwaite,
and Sherman) have focused on the conditions
under which the criminal sanction has
criminogenic or deterrent effects
◦ Out of this research, the policy of restorative justice
has been proposed with evidence showing it can be
effective and increase victim satisfaction