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CCJ1010 – CRIMINOLOGY
Dr. E. C. Buchholz
Chapter 8
Labeling, Conflict, and Radical Theories
Labeling Theory
Labeling theorists began to explore how and why certain acts were defined as
criminal or deviant and others were not, and how and why certain people were
defined as criminal or deviant.
 Separates the good form the bad, the conventional fro the deviant.
Howard S. Becker
Deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a
consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an “offender.” The
deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is
behavior that people so label.
If your teacher thinks you are smart, they treat you like a smart person.
You get extra help, extra attention, respect.
You react with more effort, more drive, and the feedback loop leads to the
fulfillment of your label.
Frank Tannenbaum (1893-1969)
 The creation of a criminal is a process
Breaking windows
Climbing onto roofs
Playing truant
 The system starts out with a child in trouble and ends up with a juvenile
delinquent
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Dramatization of Evil: The process of making the criminal is a process of
tagging, defining, identifying, segregating, describing, emphasizing, making
conscious and self-conscious;
it becomes a way of stimulating, suggesting, emphasizing, and evoking the
very traits that are complained of.
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Edwin Lemert
Primary deviations are the initial deviant acts that bring on the first social
response. These acts do not affect the individual’s self-concept.
It is the secondary deviations, the acts that follow the societal response to the
primary deviation, that are of major concern.
Primary and Secondary Deviations
1. A youth commits a simple deviant act (primary deviation)
2. There is an informal social reaction
3. The youth continues to break rules
4. There is an increased social reaction
5. The youth commits a more serious deviant act
6. There is a formal reaction
7. The youth is now labeled “delinquent” by the court and “bad” by the
neighborhood
8. The youth begins to think of himself as delinquent
9. The youth commits another, yet more serious, deviant act (secondary
deviation)
10. The youth is returned to juvenile court and has more offenses added to his
record, is cast out further from conventional society, and takes on a
completely deviant lifestyle
Kai Erickson (1931--)
Deviance is not a property inherent in certain forms of behavior; it is a property
conferred upon these forms by audiences, which directly or indirectly witness them.
The critical variable in the study of deviance, then, is the social audience rather
than the individual actor, since it is the audience, which eventually determines
whether or not any episode or behavior in any class of episodes is labeled deviant.
Edwin Schur (1930--)
Human behavior is deviant to the extent that it comes to be viewed as involving
a personally discreditable departure from a group’s normative expectation, and
elicits interpersonal and collective reactions that serve to “isolate,” “treat,” “correct,”
or “punish” individuals engaged in such behavior.
Consensus Model
The model assumes that members of society by and large agree on what is right
and wrong and that law is the codification of these agreed-upon social values. The
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law is the mechanism to settle disputes that arise when individuals stray too far
from what the community considers acceptable.
Emile Durkheim (1958-1917)
“We can...say that an act is criminal when it offends strong and defined states of
the collective conscience.”
When members of a society unite against a deviant, they reaffirm their
commitment to shared values.
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Consensus Model
 Members of society by and large agree on what is right and wrong.
 Law is the “codification” of these agreed-upon social values.
 Law is a mechanism to settle dispustes that arise when individuals stray
from acceptable behavior.
Conflict Model
The model assumes that laws do not exist for the collective good; they represent
the interests of specific groups that have the power to get them enacted.
The key concept in conflict theory is power. The laws thus have their origin in
the interest of the few; these few shape the values, and the values, in turn, shape the
laws.
Conflict Theory and Criminology
 George Vold was the first theorist to relate conflict theory to criminology.
 Society is in a constant state of conflict, “one of the principle and essential
social processes upon which the continuing ongoing of society depends.”
 Interest groups compete to get laws passed in their favor and to gain control
of the police power.
Radical Theory
Karl Marx
Georg Rusche and Otto Kirschheimer
Taylor, Walton, and Young
Richard Quinney
William Chambliss and Robert Seidman
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Engels and Marx
 Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
Competition
Responsible for problems of awful social conditions, suffering,
increase in crime and arrests
Karl Marx
 All aspects of social life, including laws, are determined by economic
organization
o Reflected economic despair that followed the Industrial Revolution
 Communist Manifesto
 “Oppressor and oppressed
Marx
Most important relationship in industrial society is between the capitalist
bourgeoisie, who own the means of production, and the proletariat, or workers, who
labor for them.
People who are kept in a state of poverty will rebel by committing crimes.
William Adriaan Bonger
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Criminality and Economic Conditions
Believed the social enviroment of primitive people was interwoven with the
means of production
People helped each other
They used what they produced
When food was plentiful, everyone ate
When food was scarce, everyone was hungry.
Whatever people had they shared
Bonger
In a capitalist society, people are much less altruistic.
They concentrate on production for profit rather than for the needs of the
community
Capitalism encourages criminal behavior by creating a climate that is less
conducive to social responsibility
Penologists
Georg Rusche
Otto Kirchheimer
Punishment and the Social Structure
 Punishments had always been related to the modes of production and the
availability of labor, rather than to the nature of the crimes themselves
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Severe and cruel treatment of offenders had more to do with the value of
human life and the needs of the economy than with preventing crime
Radical Criminology
“Critical” “New” “Marxist”
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1973 – The New Criminology
The underclass, the labor forces of the industrial society, are controlled through
criminal law and its enforcement, while the owners of labor are bound only by a
civil law which regulates their competition between each other.
Richard Quinney (1934--)
o “the criminal justice movement is...a state-initiated and state-supported
effort to rationalize mechanisms of social control. The larger purpose is to
secure a capitalist order that is in grave crisis likely in its final stage of
development.”
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The capitalist ruling class uses the criminal law to impose its will on the rest of
the people in order to protect its property and to define as criminal any behavior
that threatens the status quo.
Assumes criminologists are supporting status quo
Critics believe they oversimplify causation by its exclusive focus on capitalism
Does not explain collapse of Marxist economic order in Soviet Union, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, German Democratic Republic, Bulgaria, Albania,
Romania, etc.
Emerging Explanations
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Radical Feminist Theory
Significant limitation to critical and Marxist theories is the exclusive focus on
crime committed by males
Posits prostitution is perpetrated by sexual predators and these men must be
viewed as batterers rather than customers
View female crime in terms of class, gender, and race oppression
Left Realism
Contend that radical criminologists are simply radical idealists and have
developed only weak crime-control strategies, while left realists recognize crime
as an inevitable outcome of social and political deprivation
Four elements must be considered
1. The victim
2. The offender
3. The state
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4. The general public
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Abolitionist and Anarchist Criminology
Dispute existing systems of supremacy
Rejects state controls, focuses on punitive response of segregative punishment
Crime and punishment have a reciprocal effect on each other, with one causing
the other
Advocates redistribution of power by returning it to communities and
individuals
Destroy communities by the state
Peace-Making Criminology
Promotes the idea of peace, justice, and equality in society.
The current obsession with punishment and the war on crime suggests an
orientation to criminology that only encourages violence.
Restorative justice.
o A more victim centered CJ system
o Also restores offenders to community
END OF CHAPTER 8