Labeling and Criminals

The question of labeling is the question of who defines what crime is and what a criminal is. Labeling essentially has to do with a person becoming what he is perceived as being. If the child steals a toy and is told that he has made a mistake and that he should not do it again, he will be more likely to avoid further criminal activity than if he were to be grabbed by the back of the neck, thrown into jail or juvenile hall, and called ("labeled") a criminal.

Hart, Corrier and Binder express the socio-psychological

view when they write that "There is no such thing as right and wrong. There are only expressions of complete or incomplete feelings, and they are neither right nor wrong. We understand that society labels certain moral, ethical, and social acts as right or wrong. The humanitarian, police officer, good boy, devoted husband, air polluter, thief, chaste wife, blood donor, strict father---all are expressing themselves from a point on the continuum" of labeling (Hart, 1979, p. 354).

The labeling theory has it that the criminal is created

by society, rather than that he is necessarily predisposed either biologically or psychologically to what is termed

In that context, then, crime is a matter of social

. . .
choice but to be a criminal. Whether this is true or not, of course, the individual who hears himself so labeled again and again will soon have little hope that he will ever be capable of anything but such criminality. Mitford writes "Practitioners of . . . psychology . . . turned their attention early on to a study of the causes of criminality. (A Princeton psychologist) opined that 'criminals, misdemeanants, delinquents, and other antisocial groups are in nearly all cases persons of low mentality'" (Mitford, p. 48). Of course, if it believes such labeling, society will give such an individual no remedial treatment in an effort to rehabilitate him. He will be locked up as hopelessly criminal and before long he will come to believe that he is indeed of low intelligence and doomed to a life of crime and imprisonment. Broom and Selznick write that there is an intimate relationship between social organization and deviance in the labeling theory. These authors write that in the context of learning theory, official records "indicate much higher rates of delinquency among lower-class than among middle-class youth." Such statistics might be impressive, except for the evidence to the contrary that "the lower-class child is more
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1525
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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