Social Control and Labelling

The mechanism. Being publicly identified changes three things at once. It changes how others treat the person: employment, tenancy, credit and social relations all close. It changes his associations, because the only people who will have him are others similarly labelled, which is Sutherland's mechanism reintroduced. And it changes his self-conception, because a status that others insist on is difficult to refuse.

The master status. A label such as thief, addict or convict overrides every other thing a person is. He is no longer a father, a mason and a Konkani speaker who once stole; he is a thief who happens to have those other attributes.

The policy consequence. If the reaction causes offending, the reaction should be minimised where possible: diversion instead of prosecution, avoiding institutions for the young, keeping records from following a person for life, and the juvenile justice provisions that forbid disclosure of a child's identity and provide for the destruction of records. All of those are labelling theory in legislation.

Criticism

Of control theory. It cannot explain crimes committed by the well bonded, which for this paper is fatal, because Module III is entirely about them. Its measures rely on self-report data from schoolchildren. And bonds may be the effect of conformity rather than its cause.

Of labelling theory. It says nothing about why the primary deviance occurred, which is the question the discipline started with. It portrays the offender as passive, acted upon rather than choosing. It fits minor and consensual offending far better than serious predatory offending, where the victim's interest is real and the reaction cannot be dispensed with. And the empirical claim, that labelled offenders offend more than comparable unlabelled ones, is genuinely difficult to test, since those who are caught differ in other ways from those who are not.

A worked example

Rohit Gaikwad, aged sixteen, is caught with a stolen bicycle.

Route one: he is prosecuted. He appears before a court, the case is reported in the locality, his school asks him to leave, and his family is treated differently at the ration shop. He now spends his time with two boys who have been through the same thing, because nobody else will keep his company. Within a year he is charged with a second offence.

Route two: he is diverted. Under the juvenile justice scheme the matter is disposed of by a board without a criminal record, his identity is not published, he stays in school, and his associations do not change. He does not offend again.

What labelling theory claims. The difference between the two Rohits is not in the boy but in the reaction. Route one produced secondary deviance; route two did not.

What control theory adds. Route one destroyed his commitment, by removing his schooling, and his attachment, by shaming his family. Route two preserved both. The two theories, asking opposite questions, converge on the same prescription, which is why they are taught together.

And what neither explains. Why Rohit took the bicycle in the first place. Labelling theory does not try; control theory says his bonds were already weak, which is close to circular.

Quick revision

• Control theory, Hirschi: the question is why people conform. Four bonds: attachment, commitment, involvement and belief. The delinquent holds conventional beliefs weakly rather than holding rival ones.
• Its strength is the age-crime curve, since employment, marriage and children supply commitment, involvement and attachment together; its weakness is that it cannot explain offending by the well bonded.
• Labelling theory, Lemert and Becker: deviance is not a quality of the act but a consequence of the application of rules and sanctions.
• Primary deviance, the original act, against secondary deviance, the offending that follows the label; the label becomes a master status; the mechanism runs through others' treatment, changed associations and changed self-conception.
• Policy: diversion, avoiding institutions for the young, protecting the identity of a child and destroying records, which is what the juvenile justice legislation does.
• Criticism: control theory cannot reach Module III's offenders; labelling theory does not explain primary deviance, makes the offender passive, and fits serious predatory crime badly.

Test yourself

1. Name Hirschi's four bonds and explain what each contributes. Attachment, sensitivity to the opinion of parents, teachers and friends, which supplies a reason to conform that is independent of punishment; commitment, the accumulated stake in conventional activity that the person would lose by offending; involvement, the time absorbed by conventional activity, which reduces opportunity; and belief, acceptance of the moral validity of the rules, which the delinquent holds weakly rather than rejecting.

2. Distinguish primary from secondary deviance and state the mechanism connecting them. Primary deviance is the original act, which may have any cause and is often minor and transient. Secondary deviance is the offending that follows once the person has been detected and labelled. The connection runs through three changes the label produces: others withdraw employment, housing and social acceptance; the person's associations narrow to others carrying the same label, which supplies criminal learning; and the label becomes a master status that the person eventually accepts as his identity.

3. Why do the two theories converge on the same policy prescription? Because a heavy formal reaction does both kinds of damage at once. Labelling theory objects that public identification creates a deviant identity and a deviant peer group. Control theory objects that expulsion from school, loss of employment and family shame destroy commitment and attachment, which are the bonds that were restraining the person. Diversion, protection of identity and avoidance of institutions answer both objections.