Frank Tannenbaum
Labelling Theories
“The community cannot deal with people whom it
cannot define.... The young delinquent becomes bad
because he is defined as bad and because he is not
believed if he is good.”
- Frank Tannenbaum
Background
• Born in Austria in1893
• Immigrated to the U.S. in 1905
• Diverse, colourful background: labour leader, social and political
activist, economist,
criminologist, specialist in race relations, prison reform, professor
of Latin American
History
• Arrested in 1914 for leading a demonstration that got out of hand and
spent one
year in jail
• After release from jail he went to Columbia University graduating in
1921
• Served as a correspondent/journalist in Mexico, then joined the U.S.
army and was
stationed in the south
• After army completed his Ph.D (Brookings Institute) in economics on
Mexican land
reform
• Lived in Mexico for several years after that but returned to U.S. in
1932 and taught
criminology at Cornell University
• Joined faculty at Columbia University, later becoming a professor of
Latin American
history
• Wrote Crime and Community in 1938, where he wrote about “the
dramatization of evil”
that later became known as Labeling Theory ( 1962) ( a.k.a. Societal
Reaction Theory),
when interest in his theory was rekindled by others in the field of
sociology and
criminology
Labeling Theory
• Focuses on the (linguistic) tendency of majorities to negatively
label minorities or
those who are seen as deviant from norms
• Deviance (and deviants) are seen as labels to describe behaviour and
individuals by
particular authority figures in society (e.g. police)
• Concerns itself with how self-identity and behaviour of individuals
might be
determined by the words used to describe or classify them
• e.g. Labeling a child as delinquent instead of behavour as
delinquent has negative
connotations and serious implications
• Label of “delinquent” might cause the child to become delinquent
(self-fulfilling
prophecy”
• Tannenbaum rejected the belief that delinquents and non-delinquents
are 2 separate
entities (dualistic fallacy), and that delinquents are well adjusted
members of society
• Delinquency activity usually begins as random play or adventure
• Society’s response to the behaviour can result in a labeling the
behaviour which may
have serious effects on determining the future behaviour of the
child
• Child may respond by living up to the label
• Labeling a child as delinquent may cause them to feel isolated from
society and
therefore drive them to associate with other similarly labeled
individuals
Edwin Lemert- Primary and Secondary Deviance
• Primary Deviation: Deviance that everyone engages in occasionally; it
is rationalized,
or otherwise dealt with as part of a socially acceptable role (
e.g. social drinking and
“getting drunk” occasionally because at a party)
• Secondary Deviation: When a person begins to employ his deviant
behavior or a role
based upon it as a means of defense, attack, or adjustment to the
overt and covert
problems created by societal reaction to him ( e.g. You see your
friends starting to
hide their liquor during your visits to their house, you come to
see yourself as a
“drunk” and then continually get drunk because you are a drunk!)
Sequence of interaction that leads to secondary deviance:
• primary deviation
• Social penalties
• Further primary deviation
• Stronger penalties & rejections
• Further deviations
• Crisis reached in the tolerance quotient
• Deviant behavior becomes more pronounced in a reaction to
stigmatization by society
• The juvenile accepts their deviant social status
• Labeling (FrankTannenbaum), Self-Fulfilling Prophecy ( Edwin
Lemert), and
Stereotyping (Edwin Schur) all have similar effects on behaviour
and an individual’s
perception of themselves and their self identity.