OPPORTUNITY THEORY

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Presentation Details: Slides: 6 Duration: 00:20:18 Filename: C:\Users\PadenSL\Desktop\Labeling.pptx Description:

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Slide 1 Labeling Theory Duration: 00:00:57 Advance mode: Auto

Notes: LABELING THEORY In this presentation, I’m going to provide a short overview of labeling perspectives on crime. Unlike strain, learning, and control theories, this is not typically seen as one of the major theories of crime, but it has a place in criminology and has received a fair amount of attention. As you’ll see in the following slides, the main idea of labeling theory is that receiving punishment and a criminal “label” is thought to increase crime in some circumstances. As a result, this theory is seen as the opposite of deterrence theory, because it argues that punishments like going to prison and being around other criminals for long periods of time could actually entrench people into criminal lifestyles and patterns of behavior, rather than straightening them out as deterrence theory argues.

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Slide 2 Labeling Theory Duration: 00:03:45 Advance mode: Auto

Notes: LABELING THEORY The ideas of labeling theory are drawn from several social psychological perspectives and sociological perspectives on identity formation and self-perception. Many of these ideas build on symbolic interaction perspectives in sociology, which explain that we are all playing roles and acting out performances to create a certain image. But at the same time, we are all audience members to everyone else’s performance and give them feedback and cues about their performances. This quote by William Shakespeare summarizes the symbolic interaction position fairly well. We are all giving performances every day for roles of Father/Mother, boss, employee, spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, buddy, and so on, and we gauge how we are doing in those roles by how the audience (everyone else in our lives) reacts to us. This is very similar to George Herbert Mead’s idea of the looking glass self, which is also foundational for labeling perspectives on crime. According to the looking glass self, our self concept and self image is determined by the reaction of others, as illustrated in this picture. Mead argued that we don’t really have objective self concept. Our self concept is determined by seeing ourselves through other people’s eyes. We use their reactions like a reflection or looking glass to determine how we are coming across and whether we are funny, smart, attractive, respected, trustworthy,

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friendly, and any number of other traits. And we are constantly reevaluating our performances and our self concept and thinking about past and future performances based on the reactions we get from others. Notably, all of these perspectives argue that we behave in line with our self concept. So if you believe you have a good sense of humor, then you will play on that and tell stories and jokes, and try to make people laugh. But if you start getting consistent negative reactions to your jokes and stories, well then your self image and perception may start to slowly shift, and you may find your behavior following suit (and you may begin to tell a few less stories and jokes if you start to doubt your sense of humor). And this is a key idea of labeling theory… what happens to people when their self concept begins to change? People’s behavior follows their self concept, so what happens if people start thinking of themselves as “criminal,” “felon,” or “junky,” and are told that they are these things by many people in their lives. It begins to become their master status, overshadowing their other roles of “son/daughter,” “spouse,” or “coworker.” And the question from labeling theory is how does their behavior, and involvement in future crime change as a result?

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Slide 3 The Labeling Model Duration: 00:04:37 Advance mode: Auto

Notes: LABELING MODEL This is the basic labeling model of crime. Typically, we start the model with a behavior, which in this case is some criminal act. As we discussed in the last slide, a performance and behavior like committing a crime (say a DUI or using heroin) may be followed by audience reactions. In the labeling model, the audience reactions we are usually talking about are the formal sanctions from the criminal justice system. So, the audience reaction to heroin use or a DUI may be jail time, fines and fees from the court, an arrest, a court date, a judge telling you how badly you’ve screwed up, maybe drug/alcohol treatment of some kind, and a probation term, just to give a few examples. But the audience reaction to crime is not limited to formal sanctions. Many of the most powerful audience reactions are informal, such as your parents telling you how disappointed they are, the reaction from your church and community, having to tell your boss that you lost your license and need time off work for a court date, reactions from your friends/spouse/kids, getting fired from your job, a landlord kicking you out, and future employers or schools turning you down because of your conviction. All of these are powerful audience reactions that can occur following crime. In turn the labeling model says that when you stack up this many strong audience reactions,

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this can start to influence your self concept. It’s not likely something that happens all at once. You probably won’t immediately begin to think “I guess I’m just a no good junky” after your first arrest or after the judge scolds you in the courtroom. But labeling theory says that all of these audience reactions can pile up to slowly chip away at your previous self image. When you get these serious punishments AND your friends and family pull away, and you lose your job and license, and you have difficulty getting another job, and your support network dissolves a bit because people don’t want to associate with a known felon, and the people that do want to hang out with you have similar problems like drug and alcohol use… well all of this combined may make you begin to feel more comfortable with others who use drugs and who are “like you” and it starts to change the way you think about yourself. And labeling theory says that criminal labels can change your behavior without having much impact on your self concept. So even if your self image is resilient and you think “I’m still a good person. I just screwed up a couple times, but I’m not a bad person or a ‘junky,” picking up a felony conviction and the label of “ex-con” can still substantially shape your behavior by limiting your opportunities for success and opening doorways to crime (to build on the ideas from opportunity theory). Once you have a felony conviction, you have to abide by a different set of rules. For example, with a felony conviction, you lose the right to vote in some states, you lose subsidized housing, you can’t get federal

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student loans or grants, you can no longer be employed in some professions, you lose many gun ownership rights, and if you’ve applied for a job recently, you know that for almost any job you will have to “check the box” indicating you have been convicted of a felony. Furthermore, once you have done time, your social circle often changes. Other ex-cons are more likely to include you in their social circles, which opens new doors to crime, while law-abiding individuals are less likely to associate with you. So even if you still think of yourself as a good person and have a resilient self concept, your opportunities are often substantially impacted with a criminal label. As you can see, these arguments provide a stark contrast to the deterrence model of crime. Rather than preventing crime, this model says that punishment could cause unintended consequences make people even more likely to continue criminal behavior.

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Slide 4 Increased Labeling Duration: 00:03:05 Advance mode: Auto

Notes: INCREASED LABELING Labeling theory was quite popular in criminology in the 1960s and 1970s, but it has received less attention in recent decades with the rise of the “war on drugs” and the era of mass incarceration. Beginning in the 1980s, the focus in the U.S. criminal justice system was set squarely on deterrence and trying to get tough on crime through formal punishment and the deterrence model. As a result, labeling theorist argue that in many ways, labeling has expanded in recent decades. Incarceration rates, which had been historically pretty constant and fairly moderate in the U.S. for nearly a century, skyrocketed in the 1980s through 2010 largely in response to the war on drugs. Within a 30 year span, the incarceration rate in the U.S. increased by approximately 400 percent (while the U.S. population increased by only 30 percent), giving the U.S. one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Although deterrence theory suggests this is exactly what needed to happen to curb crime, labeling theorists argue that this has widened the enforcement net and brought hundreds of thousands of new people into the criminal justice system and saddled them with criminal records and labels that make it hard for them to make much out of their lives after they get out of prison, as most of them do. Labeling theorists also note that during the last

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30 years, we’ve seen several tough on crime laws that they argue also expand the impact of labeling, such as 3 strikes and you’re out laws, mandatory minimum sentencing practices, and felon disenfranchisement laws. In particular, labeling theorists have been critical of the mandatory minimum sentences and felon disenfranchisement laws (which take away voting rights and access to jobs and education for those with felony records), arguing that they make it difficult for people to recover from a conviction and set their life back on track, making them part of a permanent underclass or second class citizen, and never really being able to “do their time” and rejoin society. Last, labeling advocates note that criminal labels tend to carry a lot more weight now than they did 40 or 50 years ago because society has changed. It’s much easier to get online and find out about someone’s conviction and past offenses. Employers can easily run background checks to see if you have a conviction. And the job market in the U.S. has shifted from a manufacturing base to a service sector economy that requires more education and credentials. So in the 1950s, if you got out of prison, you could find a job as a welder, in a factory, or on a construction site without too much difficulty. But those jobs aren’t around much anymore, and it is much harder for someone getting out of prison to land a job in the corporate world with long gaps in their work history and few of the technical skills needed for service sector jobs.

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Slide 5 Extensions and Examples Duration: 00:03:47 Advance mode: Auto

Notes: EXTENSIONS AND EXAMPLES The previous slides provide a basic overview of the labeling model of crime, but there have been some extensions of the theory worth noting. For example, Edwin Lemert helped clarify labeling processes in his discussion of primary and secondary deviance, which you will read about. He explained that many people engage in what he called “Primary Deviance,” or situational and occasional deviance. In other words, they smoke pot at parties on occasion or commit crimes on an experimental and sporadic basis. It’s seen as something they do from time to time, but not something that defines them. But Lemert explained that this behavior can become “Secondary Deviance” if and behavior in response to societal reaction. In secondary deviance, it is no longer situational or occasional. It is part of your identity, your reputation, and your master status. Your behavior is somewhat defined for you and is intertwined with your identity and self concept. So instead of using pot or pills from time to time on occasion, where everyone still sees you based on your other roles, in secondary deviance they begin to think of you as a “pothead” or a “junky” or a “pill popper” first. Lemert also explains that often the original causes of initial/primary deviance are often very different from the effective causes and the

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reasons you continue deviant behavior. For example, you may start using drugs as an experimental thing to get high and party. But you continue to use it long past this experimental phase because it has become a habit, it defines you and your life, it is part of who you are and your identity, and others in your life see you and your life based on this behavior. It becomes part of you and it is harder to quit and leave this behind when it is part of your persona, whether we’re talking about drug use, or regular patterns of theft and selling stolen goods, or drug dealing that has become part of how you are known. In addition, you are reading an article by Schmidt and Jones that describes something called suspended identity. One of the authors of this article is a “convict criminologist,” which is a small group of scholars in criminology that have served time in prison for crimes earlier in their lives, but after release went on to get their Ph.D.s and now research and teach criminology. This article is drawn from some of his qualitative research and does a very nice job illustrating the labeling process from formal punishment and how inmates’ identities begin to change during imprisonment. They explain that when people first go into prison, they decide they are going to suspend their “real identity” and put on a fake prison persona in order to survive life in prison. But as you’ll read, the longer they live this dual life and put on the prison persona, the more that this new status begins to become part of their permanent identity. It is often very difficult for people to perceive how someone could simply

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change their identity because they were “labeled” a criminal, but this article provides some detailed insight into how that process might work.

Slide 6 Suggestions from Labeling Theory Duration: 00:04:07 Advance mode: Auto

Notes: SUGGESTIONS FROM LABELING THEORY Although it offers some very interesting ideas and critiques of formal punishments in the criminal justice system, labeling perspectives have lost much of their momentum in criminology and are often seen as a more minor theoretical perspective rather than a major addition to our understanding of crime. In part, this is because they offer little explanation for why someone would start committing crime, and really only focus on why people might continue or increase their criminal offending after receiving a criminal label. Also, tests of labeling theory have not received overwhelming support. There is some evidence that labeling and punishment could increase crime (in some circumstances), but the effects are often modest and are not widely consistent. However, labeling perspectives do offer some policy suggestions that have captured attention in some areas of the criminal justice system. One of the basic ideas from labeling theory is to simply use formal punishments less and scale back the high levels of incarceration we’ve seen in the last few decades. This idea has been capturing some attention from

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lawmakers, particularly as many states faced huge budget problems in the early 2000s. Incarceration is quite expensive, and after looking at the price tag, some states have begun to slow down prison growth and consider the impact that incarceration (especially for drug offenses) has had on people and communities. In addition, labeling theory suggests increased use of diversion programs. The idea of diversion programs is to keep people out of prison by using more intermediate punishments and treatments to help them avoid the more severe sanctions and formal punishments. These might include, use of drug courts, rehab, community service, probation, counseling programs, house arrest, halfway houses, and various forms of community incarceration. In particular, these types of ideas have been more popular in the juvenile justice system, where people are often more concerned about the impact that a formal conviction or imprisonment could have on someone’s future. Last, restorative justice practices and Reintegrative Shaming (described by Braithwaite in your reading) have a foundation built on labeling theory ideas. The idea of this perspective is not to eliminate punishment, but try and make punishments work better and work without permanently labeling offenders and “felons.” Some of these include programs to expunge records after completing treatment programs for minor offenses, paying victims directly for damages you’ve caused them with

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restitution payments, and mediation programs in which the victim, criminal justice system, and offenders all agree on a course of action to punish the offender but also give them the chance to make amends for their harms and essentially make up for what they’ve done. The goal here is to punish and shame the offender, but to help them avoid a permanent label and give them a chance to pay for what they’ve done and then reintegrate into society as contributing member. These ideas have been used on smaller scales (like restitution payments), but often require substantial resources and time on the part of all parties involved. Also, considering that the foundation of the U.S. criminal justice system still rests firmly on the deterrence model, it is unlikely that these types of “alternative sanctions” will replace formal criminal punishments anytime soon. Instead, they will most likely continue to be used in select circumstances as a supplemental tool for the criminal justice system.