SOC 225 Ch.13 Interactionist Theories Of Crime PDF

Strain and conflict theories deal with causes of crime at the level of social structure. Strain theorists relate crime to variables such as cultural goals and the access to opportunities provided by society. For conflict theorists, cleavages between different groups in society and the power relation...

Strain and conflict theories deal with causes of crime at the level of social structure. Strain theorists relate crime to variables such as cultural goals and the access to opportunities provided by society. For conflict theorists, cleavages between different groups in society and the power relations among these groups are critical in explaining criminality. Interactionist theories, for their part, turn our attention to the smaller details of social life. They view crime as a consequence of interpersonal relationships and of what those relationships mean. A central concept in interactionist theories of crime is the deviant career, or the passage of an individual through the stages of one or more related deviant identities. This idea is at the heart of labelling theory, which explains how the social response to initial, tentative acts of deviance can move a person (not always willingly) towards a deviant identity and a deviant career. The other important interactionist theory discussed in this chapter—differential association—sets out how people learn to be criminals through interaction with other criminals and how they acquire a criminal identity. Interactionist theory in criminology focuses on the interchanges people have with one another and on the meanings of these interchanges in the past, pres- ent, and future. Blumer (1986) notes that symbolic interactionism, the broader theory from which the interactionist theories of crime are derived, rests on three premises. First, people act towards the human and nonhuman objects in their lives according to the meanings those objects have for them. Second, these mean- ings emerge from interactions among people. Third, the meanings of objects learned in this manner are applied and occasionally modified as individuals inter- pret how objects and their meanings fit particular social situations, the people in them, and their reasons for being there. Much of this chapter is about criminal interactions, meanings, interpreta- tions, and situations. Before turning to these processes, however, let us set the stage for discussion with a brief illustration of the three premises operating on the scene of a crime. The following interview with Allen, about 20 years old, shows how the meaning of a situation changed through social interaction with other people present in an all-night drugstore: From what I understand from them, they didn’t go in there with the intent to rob or beat anybody up or anything. I think they only really wanted to buy some gum and cigarettes, but by being drunk, they was talking pretty tough, and so the lady behind the counter automatically got scared.... The druggist... got a little pushy or ordered them out of the store, and by them being all fired up, naturally the next thing they did was jump on him. So now what do you have? You’ve got a drugstore. You’ve got a scared lady in the corner somewhere with her hands over her face. You’ve got a beat-up druggist laying on the floor. You’ve got three dudes that came in for chewing gum and cigarettes, but now they got two cash registers. So what do they do? They take the cash. Wasn’t nothing to stop them, and it was there. Why would they leave it? They’re thieves anyway and supposed to be hustlers.... There wasn’t nothing to stop them, so they just took the money. (Katz, 1990) The Deviant Career Interactionism centres chiefly on what happens to criminals once their deviant activities commence. Interactionists have observed, for example, that some groups or individuals have enough power to force the label of deviant on less- powerful groups or individuals. The labelling process, however, is not always accurate. It is not even always fair. Some deviants escape public detection of their behaviour. Some who have not deviated are nonetheless labelled as having done so, despite their protests to the contrary. The application of the deviant label is sometimes subject to considerable negotiation between possibly deviant people and those in a position to label them as deviant. Thus, interactionist theory in criminology helps explain the establishment of moral rules, their application through labelling, and the long-term consequences of these two processes for deviants and for society. In interactionist theory, label- ling and its consequences are viewed as unfolding within the deviant career. A career, be it in deviance or in a legitimate occupation, is the passage of an individual through recognized stages in one or more related identities. Careers are further composed of adjustments to, and interpretations of, the contingencies and turning points encountered at each stage. For example, Sampson and Laub (2003) found that crime declined with age sooner or later for all the offender groups they studied. Within that pattern, however, Short (1990) noted that careers in youth crime are likely to be prolonged after certain turning points have been reached. One of these turning points is an early interest in delinquent activities; another is an interest in drugs. the inability to find legitimate employment, a career contingency, also contributes to continued criminality. type of offence, however, has been found to be unrelated to length of career in youth crime and even to the rate at which it is perpetrated. During the careers of young offenders and other deviants, there is a sense of continuity. This sense is fostered by perceptions of increasing opportunities, by growing sophistication, and perhaps by recognition among one’s associates for skill in, or at least commitment to, the special endeavour. Primary Deviation Lemert (1972) contributed two important concepts to the study of deviant careers: primary deviation and secondary deviation. Primary deviation produces little change in one’s everyday routine or lifestyle. The individual engages in deviance infrequently, has few compunctions about it, and encounters few practical prob- lems when performing it. A person who out of curiosity occasionally takes an opioid drug supplied by someone else exemplifies primary deviation. Primary deviation occurs in the early stages of the deviant career, between the first deviant act and some indefinite point at which deviance becomes a way of life. Subsequently, at a still more advanced stage, secondary deviation (dis- cussed later) sets in. According to Matza (2010), one precondition of deviance is a willingness to engage in it. That is, the individual must have an affinity—innate or acquired—for the intended act (e.g., theft, homicide, drug use). This affinity helps him or her choose among existing options. By way of illustration, imagine someone who believes the rich cheat others to get their money. This person has an affinity for stealing from the rich. That affinity could lead the individual into crimes against the rich when faced with such unpleasant alternatives as poverty, unemployment, or tedious manual labour. Underlying the willingness to engage in deviance lies a weak commitment to conventional norms and identities. Few young people have a strong value com- mitment to deviant norms and identities; instead, they drift between the world of respectability and that of deviance. They are “neither compelled to deeds nor freely choosing them; neither different in any simple or fundamental sense from the law abiding, nor the same; conforming to certain traditions in... life while partially unreceptive to other more conventional traditions” (Matza 1990, 28). Matza was writing about American males who were young offenders. He found these youths firmly attached to certain marginal, masculine, subterranean traditions or ways of life. they found satisfaction in drinking, smoking, renouncing work, being tough, and enjoying the hedonic pleasures of “real” men. Matza’s subjects saw themselves as grown and mature, but their behaviour was hardly a true picture of adult life in general in the United States. Lemert (1972) explains how this peculiar orientation can set one adrift towards deviance: While some fortunate individuals by insightful endowment or by virtue of the stabilizing nature of their situation can foresee more distant social consequences of their actions and behave accordingly, not so for most people. Much human behaviour is situationally oriented and geared to meeting the many and shifting claims which others make upon them. The loose structuring and swiftly changing facade and content of modern social situations frequently make it difficult to decide which means will insure the ends sought. Often choice is a compromise between what is sought and what can be sought.... All this makes me believe that most people drift into deviance by specific actions rather than by informed choices of social roles and statuses. (79–80) For young offenders (adolescent and adult), social control has failed. This failure occurs because it is important for deviant individuals to enjoy good stand- ing with their friends in the group. Good standing is attained by honouring and practising the marginal, or subterranean, traditions that Matza describes. The quest for honour among peers helps explain how entire groups of youth can drift towards deviance (Hirschi 2001). It appears that much, if not all, of this is applicable to Canada. For instance, a comparative study conducted in California and Alberta found that ties to peers were important in the sample of delinquent youth; being in touch with home and school were valued much less (Linden and Fillmore 1981). The young offender subculture (see Chapter 11) is composed of many elements, one of the most important being the moral rhetorics (Schwendinger and Schwendinger 1985) used to justify deviant behaviour. Each rhetoric consists of a set of largely taken-for-granted guiding principles, sometimes logically inconsistent and always selectively applied according to the social situations in which youths find themselves. The rhetoric of egoism is most often used by those who still feel guilty about their deviant acts. typically, these are early offenders, who have learned various ways to neutralize the stigma that comes with their behaviour—for example, by claiming that they steal in response to the greed and immorality of shopkeepers whose prices are unfair. Later, young offenders are more likely to use instrumental rhetoric when justifying their acts. Here they stress the cunning and power they bring to bear against people who are otherwise more powerful and uncontrollable. Fraud, deceit, and violence are used to pursue deviant aims whenever they appear to pay off, whenever these youths can benefit from a weak moment in the lives of such people. The main point here is that young offenders, like people in many other walks of life, justify what they do. Though the law-abiding world sees them otherwise, offenders have their ways of defending their deviant acts as morally right. During the primary deviation stages of a deviant career, young offenders and young adults drift, in part because they lack value commitment to either conventional or deviant values. Value commitment is an attitude towards an identity, one that develops when a person gains exceptional rewards from assuming that identity (Stebbins 1970). Young men and women drifting between criminal and respectable pursuits have found few, if any, enduring benefits in either type of activity. This pattern, however, begins to change as their contacts with agents of social control increase. Agents of Social Control Those members of society who help check deviant behaviour are known as agents of social control. They include the police, judges, lawmakers, prison personnel, probation and parole officers, and ordinary citizens with an active interest in maintaining law and order as they define it. Groups of ordinary citizens and lawmakers sometimes join hands as moral entrepreneurs: “rules are the prod- ucts of someone’s initiative, and we can think of the people who exhibit such enterprise as moral entrepreneurs. two related species—rule creators and rule enforcers—will occupy our attention” (Becker 1963, 147). The prototype of the rule creator, Becker observes, is the crusading reformer, whose dissatisfaction with existing rules is acute and who, therefore, campaigns for legal change (i.e., for adding new laws or procedures and rescinding old ones) and sometimes for attitudinal change intended to lead to “proper” behaviour. Canadian society is replete with crusades, both past and present, such as those which seek to eliminate drug abuse, discourage use of alcohol, reduce the availability of pornography, and stop the exploitation of women in the workplace. Moral entrepreneurs are currently working to curb Internet crime (for a further example involving cannabis legalization, see Box 13.1). to conduct an effective crusade, moral entrepreneurs must construct an argument capable of convincing the community that a deep and genuine internal threat exists. This process of collective definition (Hewitt and Hall 1973; Spector and Kitsuse 2000) centres largely on the “claims-making activities” of entrepre- neurs, which include these: 1. They assert the existence of a particular condition, situation, or state of affairs in which human action is implicated as a cause. 2. They define the asserted condition as offensive, harmful, undesirable, or oth- erwise problematic to the society but as nonetheless amenable to correction by humans. 3. They stimulate public scrutiny of the condition as the claims makers see it. The claims are explained by quasi-theories. Unlike scientific theories, quasi- theories are selectively constructed to square with the claims makers’ views, are seldom responsive to empirical evidence, and contain simple explanations for complex, ill-defined problems. The modern “conspiracy theory” is quasi- theory bearing on politics and politicians. Uscinski and Parent (2014) define conspiracy theory as a belief that a secret conspiracy has been decisive in producing a political event or evil outcome that the theorists strongly disapprove of. A conspiracy theorist is someone who either believes an existing conspiracy theory or has created it. Sometimes the same person is both creator and believer. Conspiracy theory is a label placed by moral entrepreneurs on such creators and believers. Some crimes can be the result of conspiracies; in politics, by contrast, conspiracies are usually not criminal, but rather externalized pipe dreams about how a particular event or situation has come to pass (Stebbins 2017, 85). In this regard the typical modern politician tends to parade at least four different versions of knowledge: known facts, bogus facts (intentional lies), erroneous claims to factuality (unwitting lies), and vague claims the truth of which is difficult to establish with certainty. The latter consist of, for example, platitudes, conspiracy theories, and nearly countless hyperbolic statements. Moral entrepreneurs also enforce legislated rules, applying them to people who misbehave. Such rules provide enforcers (police, security personnel) with jobs as well as with justifications for them. Since the enforcers want to keep their jobs, they are eager to demonstrate that enforcement is effective. Yet they also realize there are more infractions than they can possibly prevent or respond to. Therefore, they must establish priorities. Thus, whether a person who commits a deviant act is in fact labelled a deviant depends on many things extraneous to his actual behaviour: whether the enforcement official feels that at this time he must make some show of doing his job in order to justify his position, whether the misbehaver shows proper deference to the enforcer, whether the “fix” has been put in, and where the kind of act he has committed stands on the enforcer’s list of priorities. (Becker 1963) It is no accident, then, that the least influential members of society (e.g., the poor or certain ethnic groups) are often caught in the web of social control and labelled deviant out of proportion to their numbers. In other words, deviance is created in part by people in society. Moral entrepreneurs make certain laws, the infraction of which constitutes deviance. Moral entrepreneurs also apply these laws to particular people, labelling them as some kind of deviant. As Becker (1963) points out, “deviance is not a quality of the act.... The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label.” But rules are applied to some people and not to others; application is some- times biased. Hence, some people remain at large as secret but potentially identifi- able deviants. Others go through life falsely accused of antisocial acts. to discover why only certain people are labelled deviant, labelling theorists also study those who make the laws that deviants violate and how those laws are applied. Those publicly labelled “deviant” generally face some sort of community or societal reaction to their misdeeds (Lemert 1951). Depending on the nature of the deviance, the deviant may experience one or more of the following: imprison- ment, ostracism, fines, torture, surveillance, and ridicule. All labelled deviants soon learn they must cope with stigma. A stigma is a black mark, or disgrace, associated with a deviant identity. It is part of the societal reaction—that is, a collective construction by agents of social control, and by ordinary members of the community, of the supposed nature of the unlawful act and the person perpetrating it. As Goffman (1986) and Link and Phelan (2001) note, the collective image of stigma is constructed from social, physical, or psychological attributes the deviant is believed to possess. Here imputed possession of the attributes is far more important than actual possession. After years of participant observation of outlaw motorcycle gangs, Watson (1984) and Wolf (1991) concluded that their members had a mentality and background noticeably different from what was imputed to them by the general public. They were not especially hostile to most social institutions, including government, education, and the family. Most members had finished high school and had occasionally held jobs. Some had gone to college; some were military veterans. Nearly every member had been married at least once. They were, to be sure, not particularly successful in these areas of life, which helped to account for their tendency to live for the moment. And though they were basically not violent men, they thought it important to be seen as “manly” in the most traditional sense of the term. Secondary Deviation The existence of moral rules and the stigma that arises when society believes those rules have been violated together set the stage for secondary deviation. Deviation becomes secondary when deviants see that their behaviour has substantially modified their ways of living. A strong desire to deviate can foster this redefinition of one’s deviant activities; so can extreme feelings of guilt. But accusations of deviance are typically the most influential factor behind the redefinition. Being labelled by the authorities as a murderer, rapist, prostitute, or cheque forger and being sanctioned for such behaviour forces the deviant to change his or her lifestyle drastically. As Lemert (1972) puts it, “this secondary deviant... is a person whose life and identity are organized around the facts of deviance.” What does a lifestyle of secondary deviation actually consist of? Steb- bins (1997) defines lifestyle as a distinctive set of shared patterns of tangible behaviour that is orga- nized around a set of coherent interests or social conditions or both, that is explained and justified by a set of related values, attitudes, and orientations and that, under certain conditions, becomes the basis for a separate, common social identity for its participants. (350) For example, drug addicts regularly buy or produce their drugs, habitually follow certain practices designed to prevent discovery by the authorities, and routinely consume the illicit substances thereby acquired. Some addicts, prostitutes among them, justify this lifestyle as an escape from intolerable working conditions. The identity of addict is pejorative, however, as the label “junkie” clearly indicates. The links between primary deviance, societal reaction, and secondary deviance are illustrated in Figure 13.1. Among the factors leading to secondary deviation is society’s tendency to treat someone’s criminality as a master status (Becker 1963). This status overrides all other statuses in perceived importance. Whatever laudable achievements the deviant might claim, such as a good job or a successful marriage, this person is judged in the community primarily by the fact of deviance (see Box 13.2). Liberman, Kirk, and Kideuk (2014) found that first arrests increased the likelihood of both subsequent offending and subsequent arrest. Offending and being arrested were discovered to be separate processes, however, suggesting that deviant labels trigger what the authors call “secondary sanctioning.” Lack of success in attaining respectability among nondeviants, or a perceived low probability of achieving it, may lead to interaction with other deviants. Here we consider a unique aspect of the interaction between the labelled deviant and the organized deviant group. There are several characteristics of this type of group life that stimulate or maintain such behaviour. These characteristics are effective partly because the wider community has rejected the deviant. As Becker (1963) observed, individuals who gain entrance to a deviant group often learn from that group how to cope with the problems associated with their deviance. This makes being a deviant easier. Furthermore, the deviant acquires rationalizations for his or her values, attitudes, and behaviours, which come to full bloom in the organized group. While these rationalizations vary greatly, note that the very existence of rationalizations seems to point to the fact that some deviants feel a need to deal with certain conventional attitudes and values they have also internalized. Prus and Sharper (1991) quote one of their respondents, who was explaining how he developed the callous attitude prized by professional card hustlers: When I first got involved in hustling, my attitudes were less calloused [sic]. I might be at a stag of some sort and say some fellow is losing a little money. Through the course of the evening, talking back and forth, you find out that maybe he just got married, or that he has some kids and here he’s writing cheques and I would slow down. If you pull something like this with a crew [of hustlers], the other guys will want to know what the hell you are doing! They’re waiting for you to take him, and you’re saying, “Well gee, the guy doesn’t have much money.” You would get the worst tongue lashing! The position they take is that “You can’t have feelings on the road.” And it’s true, if you start saying to yourself, “Well, maybe I better not beat this guy or that guy,” you would soon be out of business or at least you would really cut down on your profits. Just because group forces operate to maintain and even promote deviance, we should not assume—as Goffman (1986) apparently does—that full-fledged deviants are always members of groups. There are those who reject the label of deviant during certain phases of their career, though they may be forced into that status. Some of these individuals spend part of their career trying to re-enter conventional life, often without success. Yet the fact that they refuse to identify themselves as deviant leads them to avoid others labelled as such (e.g., shoplifters and embezzlers). There are, moreover, some forms of deviant behaviour that for whatever reason are enacted alone (e.g., rape, some cheque forging). Neverthe- less, it is probably true that deviance has collective support in most instances. the amount of interaction between individuals suspected of deviant behaviour and agents of social control, and the forms these interactions take, are extremely important for the future course of a deviant career. In fact, such interactions constitute a major set of deviant career contingencies. A career contingency is an unintended event, process, or situation that occurs by chance; that is, it lies beyond the control of the individual pursuing the career. Career contingencies emanate from changes in the deviant’s environment or personal circumstances, or both. Movement through the career is affected by the contingencies the deviant meets along the way. Cohen (1965) has presented this process most clearly: Alter (the agents of social control) responds to the action of ego (the deviant). Ego, in turn, responds to alter’s reaction. Alter then responds to his perception of ego’s reaction to him; and so forth. As a result, ego’s opportunity structure is in some way modified, permitting either more or fewer legitimate or illegitimate opportunities. As opportunities for a deviant career expand, the steady growing apart of the deviant and the control agents spawns open conflict. Some proportion of these encounters lead in the opposite direction, however, resulting in some kind of accommodation and a decrease in opportunities for a deviant career (West 1980). This process of agent–deviant interaction is illustrated in the following cir- cumstances associated with a shooting in downtown toronto: CtV News had managed to obtain in late September 2013 an amateur video showing a toronto police officer repeatedly striking a suspect. The suspect was at the time on the ground in a backyard of a residence near Yonge St. and St. Clair Ave. He was apparently wanted for his alleged role in a shooting in the city’s center. “A witness told CtV toronto that the suspect appeared to have been resisting arrest.” The witness said that “the police warned the suspect several times not to resist. The suspect contin- ued to resist, the police then suppressed the suspect and in the process the suspect was injured.” The president of the toronto Police Association said he had “no issue” with what the video contained. He pointed out that a gunman had attempted to murder somebody in downtown toronto, and that the police had to take action. From what he saw in the video, he believed that the officers had acted professionally. (CtV News, 2013) Another prominent contingency in secondary deviation is continuance commitment. Continuance commitment is “the awareness of the impossibility of choosing a different social identity... because of the imminence of penalties involved in making the switch” (Stebbins 1976). Like value commitment (men- tioned earlier in this chapter), continuance commitment helps explain a person’s involvement in a deviant identity. Unlike value commitment, which explains this involvement by stressing the rewards of the identity, continuance commitment explains it by describing the penalties accrued from renouncing the deviant iden- tity and trying to adopt a conventional identity. As Ulmer (1994) notes, such penalties may be structural (i.e., they flow from the social structure of the community) or personal (i.e., they flow from the per- son’s attitudes and sense of self). Stebbins’s (1976) study of male, nonprofessional property offenders in Newfoundland revealed a number of commitment-related penalties of both types. Being ex-offenders with prison records, the men in the study had difficulty finding jobs within their range of personally acceptable alter- natives. The work they found was onerous, low in pay, and low in prestige. Many of the men had amassed sizable debts before going to prison, which upon release tended to discourage return to a conventional livelihood. Also penalizing were questions from casual acquaintances about the nature of criminal life and the insulting remarks these people occasionally made about those who had done jail time. Even where their records were unknown, these nonprofessional offenders often heard people express unflattering opinions about men like them. For these reasons and others, the man with a criminal record was often inclined to seek the company of those who understood him best—namely, other criminals—and to seek the way of life that afforded him at least some money and excitement—namely, crime. The police knew all this, and they would question local ex-offenders to determine whether they were possibly guilty of certain crimes. The ex-offenders, who were trying to “go straight,” saw this as an additional penalty. What the ex-offender experiences as a string of penalties is, from another perspective, a set of expressions of the societal reaction. These expressions, when ex-offenders define them as penalizing, affect their deviant careers. Such expres- sions force many of them into the company of other deviants. Here they find greater understanding for their situation. Here, too, is at least the possibility of a better living than they believe exists in the conventional world. What is the significance of all this to the process of drift? teenagers and young adults who fail to drift out of crime into a more or less conventional way of life drift into a more or less solid commitment to crime. Once a prison record has been acquired, after several years of secondary deviation, continuance com- mitment develops. Most deviants in this stage of their moral careers appear to be trapped in a self-degrading form of continuance commitment. The image they have of themselves is unflattering. They would gladly abandon the world of crime if only they could find a palatable way to do so (see also Schwendinger and Schwendinger 1985). But some criminals, including professional offenders, are quite attached to their deviant activities. Because they find leaving crime for a conventional way of life no easier than it is for the nonprofessional offender, they are also committed to deviance. Theirs, however, is a self-enhancing commitment. For these profes- sional criminals, continuance commitment is of little consequence; they enjoy what they do and are disinclined to abandon it. reactions to Commitment Generally speaking, self-enhancing commitment presents no problem for devi- ants, setting aside that they are more or less compelled to retain their noncon- formist role. There is little motivation for them to leave that role for reasons of self-conception. Self-degrading commitment, however, presents a dramatically different situation. An individual committed to an identity in this manner has numerous alternatives. People motivated by self-degrading commitment have the objective alternative of redefining the values and penalties associated with their committed identity, such that they become attached to them. Basically, this alters their perception of the balance of penalties. This psychological leap from self-degrading to self-enhancing commitment in the same deviant identity is exemplified by some of the repeat offenders in Shover’s (1983) study. They wrestled with the frustrating gap between their legitimate aspirations and what they could actually achieve in life. Since conventional work offered little, they turned to living from day to day, with crime being one of their more enjoyable activities. Without really switching to a form of self-enhancing commitment, it is pos- sible for some deviants to adjust psychologically to self-degrading commitment. This depends, of course, on how strong a motivating force the current state of self-degrading commitment actually is for them. Certain types of mildly rejected deviants seem to manage this form of adaptation. Lemert (1972) refers to them as “adjusted pathological deviants.” The subsequent development of character disorders is another possibility under these circumstances (Griffiths and Verdun- Jones, 1994). Successful adjustment apparently depends in part on the availability of a role for them to play in the community. Lemert also considers “self-defeating and self-perpetuating deviance.” He cites alcoholism, drug addiction, and systematic cheque forgery as examples of this sort of vicious circle of cause and effect, characterized by an almost complete absence of durable pleasure for those involved. Finally, if the desire to escape self- degrading commitment is exceptionally strong, and if none of the alternatives mentioned so far appeals to the committed individual, suicide becomes a prominent alternative. Undoubtedly, there are many other alternatives to self-degrading com- mitment besides those discussed here. Much, it seems, depends on the nature of the identity to which the deviant is committed. There are different ways in which commitment can manifest itself. Extensive research is still needed in order to isolate the kinds and circumstances of commitment and the diverse reactions to it. For many deviants, however, commitment is not a lasting contingency in their careers once they are aware of being trapped in their identity. In fact, this is one reason for stating the case for commitment in subjective terms. That the deviant feels a certain way does not always correspond to the objective state of affairs. Criminological theory and research support this observation. For instance, Matza (1990) holds that delinquents generally end their deviant careers at maturation, with few continuing on to adult crime (see Shannon, 1988). West (1980) and Wolfgang, Thornberry, and Figlio (1987) found that many adult criminals mature out of their antisocial ways: they take up a serious romantic relationship, find a legitimate job they like better than crime, or simply decide “to settle down” (see Chapter 14). Even deviants who are attached to their way of life often experience disillusionment and shifts of interest (Sommers 2001), which is what “maturation” means in everyday terms in the world of crime (Jankowski 1991). There is always the possibility of therapy for alcoholics, gamblers, and drug addicts. And, of course, some deviance requires youthful vigour, a quality lost with increasing years (Inciardi 1974). It is possible that self-enhancing commitment lasts longer than the self-degrading variety. Underlying this suggestion is the assumption that self-degrading commitment, while preferable to certain alternatives in the conventional world, is still undesirable in itself. A mortifying self-conception is a special penalty. It furnishes a significant part of the pressure to deal with an unpleasant state of affairs. Commitment to an identity or expectation leading to a negative self-image is a lesser-evil choice when initially compared with certain alternatives, and a greater-evil choice when subsequently compared with certain others. The strength of the individual’s desire to abandon an unpleasant status is an important consideration in determining whether the transition will be made. Socialization into Crime Most of the theories of criminality discussed elsewhere in this book help explain why people start a life of crime. By contrast, interactionism has been interested chiefly in what happens to criminals once their deviant activities commence. Still, two areas of interactionist theory, though not causal, can be properly seen as contributions to the study of socialization into crime. They are the processes of differential association and acquisition of a criminal identity. Differential Association Sutherland set out his theory of differential association in 1939 in Principles of Criminology. The statement there differs little from the most recent edition written by Sutherland and Cressey (1978). The theory consists of nine propositions describing the complicated pattern of interaction that Sutherland called differential association: 1. People learn how to engage in crime. 2. This learning comes about through interaction with others who have already learned criminal ways. 3. The learning occurs in small, face-to-face groups. 4. What is learned is criminal technique (e.g., how to open a safe), motives, attitudes, and rationalizations. 5. Among criminals, one important learned attitude is disregard for the com- munity’s legal code. 6. One acquires this attitude by differentially associating with those who hold it and failing to associate with those who do not. 7. Differential associations with criminals and noncriminals vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity. 8. Learning criminal behaviour through differential association rests on the same principles as learning any other kind of behaviour. 9. Criminal behaviour is a response to the same cultural needs and values as noncriminal behaviour. For instance, one individual steals to acquire money for a new suit of clothes, while another works as a carpenter to reach the same goal. Consequently, tying societal needs and values to crime fails to explain it. (Sutherland and Cressy, 1978, 80–82) Based on what is known about the antecedents of crime, Sutherland’s theory offers a valuable albeit partial explanation of theft, burglary, prostitution, and cannabis use. Also, differential association is often a major antecedent in the use of addictive drugs and dependence on alcohol. It may even play an explanatory role in some mental disorders. However, many other factors, which dilute the importance of differential association, must be considered when explaining such behaviour. For example, two processes discussed earlier in this chapter—drift, and primary deviance— indicate that deviant motives and meanings are often gradually learned and tentatively applied and modified over time in interactions with both deviants and nondeviants (see Figure 13.2). The motives and meanings are not mere causal antecedents of criminal acts and memberships in criminal groups (Davis 1980). Birkbeck and LaFree (1993) reviewed another set of factors. Symbolic interactionism, they note, further aids our understanding of crime by directing attention to the motives and meanings operating in the situations in which crimes are committed. In this connection, Katz (1990) found that the expressive reasons behind many criminal acts (e.g., thrill, enjoyment) are as important as the instrumental reasons (e.g., money, status). Additionally, precisely how a crime is committed and even which crimes are committed depend, in part, on decisions made on the spot by the criminal. These decisions may relate to the possibility of being apprehended, serving a longer or shorter sentence, or enduring a hostile reaction from the community to the deviance being considered. Although the theory of differential association has been widely tested, convincing support for it has always been blocked by the difficulty of operationalizing some of Sutherland’s key concepts (e.g., frequency, intensity, and duration of criminal and noncriminal associations). Nonetheless, in Matsueda’s (2001) words, differential association theory represents one of the most important theoretical traditions in criminology. Historically, the theory brought a sociological perspective to the forefront of criminology and, with his path-breaking work on white-collar crime, established Edwin Suther- land as perhaps the most important criminologist of his generation.... Over 50 years later, differential association theory continues to stim- ulate revisions, extensions, and original research into the causes of crime. The major contribution of differential association is that it has highlighted the importance during the criminal career of ties to deviant peers. Daniel Wolf, an anthropologist who rode with the rebels (an Edmonton biker gang), observed that the willingness of peers to stand up for one another can be crucial for main- taining power when faced with violent opposition from competitors: For an outlaw biker, the greatest fear is not of the police; rather, it is of a slight variation of his own mirror image: the patch holder of another club. Under slightly different circumstances those men would call each other “brother.” But when turf is at stake, inter-club rivalry and warfare completely override any considerations of the common bonds of being a biker—and brother kills brother. None of the outlaws that I rode with enjoyed the prospect of having to break the bones of another biker. Nor did they look forward to having to live with the hate–fear syndrome that dominates a conflict in which there are no rules. I came to realize that the willingness of an outlaw to lay down his life in these conflicts goes beyond a belligerent masculinity that brooks no challenge. When a patch holder defends his colours, he defends his personal identity, his community, his lifestyle. When a war is on, loyalty to the club and one another arises out of the midst of danger, out of apprehension of possible injury, mutilation, or worse. (1991, 11) There is a great deal of research evidence showing that having young offend- ers as friends is one of the strongest correlates of deviant behaviour. research- ers have also found that among at-risk youth, gang membership contributes to delinquency above and beyond the influence of associating with deviant peers. Sutherland’s work helps us understand why this is true. Differential association theory also points to the need to learn the skills for committing certain crimes. These range from very simple techniques such as hitting a man over the head and stealing his watch, to taking an unlocked bicycle, to sophisticated computer crimes. According to Sutherland, people learn necessary techniques and motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes of deviant behaviour from others with whom they associate. Letkemann (1973), for example, described how a former penitentiary resi- dent learned the now-obsolete art of safecracking: Prior to doing his first “can” [safe] [he] bugged an older safecracker in prison “until he finally divulged how to do it.” This instruction, he added was “not like a teacher–student, it was just a matter of discussion during work.” When he left the prison he went back to his regular partner and described to him what he had learned about safes. His partner said this was ridiculous but [he] persuaded him to come along: “I followed the instructions to the letter. It opened—we were both overcome with it all—the ease of it all!” This first job had been a punch job [breaking into a safe without explosives]—technically the simplest. Following this [he] and his partner “opened many doors by trial and error”.... This went on for four years; they had not yet used explosives, nor had they ever been caught punching safes. They became increasingly eager to try explosives since they found so many safes that couldn’t be opened any other way. During this time, [he] was associating with other safecrackers... He eventually asked another safecracker whether he could borrow some grease [nitroglycerine]. “I wouldn’t admit that I knew nothing about it.” He obtained the grease and chose a small safe, but was unsuccessful. The next day, he discussed his problem with some more experienced safecrackers. He found he had used too long a fuse and was advised to use electric knockers [detonators]. This he did with success. (Letkemann 1973, 136) Criminal identities A criminal identity is a social category into which deviants are placed by others in the community and into which, eventually, they may place themselves. That is, the process of identification of an individual as deviant has two sides. Based on a variety of criteria (e.g., appearance, actions, associates, location), members of the community come to view someone as a particular kind of criminal. The woman wearing garish, suggestive clothing who frequents a street corner in the red-light district is identified as a prostitute. The man with long, unkempt hair, dirty jeans, and a black leather jacket who rides a Harley-Davidson motorcycle is identified, as we saw earlier, as a member of a gang bent on rape, violence, and drunkenness. Moreover—and this is the second side—community identification of people tends to be highly persuasive, even for deviants. That is, with officials, neigh- bours, relatives, and others asserting that these people are outlaws, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to deny the charge. At the very least, the alleged prostitute must accommodate her everyday life to such opinion, whether or not she is selling sex. The biker has the same problem. Acquiring a community reputation, or identity, for unsavoury behaviour often furthers individual criminality. This is especially likely when the reputed criminal is forced into association with others of similar status and away from those who are “respectable.” Once deviant ties are forged and nondeviant ties are sufficiently weakened, the socializing potential of differential association begins to take effect. Limitations Like all theories of crime and deviance, interactionist theory has its limitations. It is not itself a complete explanation for crime. It falls well short of explaining all crime under all the conditions in which it is committed. Throughout this chapter, we have discussed the strengths of the theory (summarized in table 13.1). We now examine its limitations in terms of three critiques: neo-Marxist, empiricist, and ethno-methodological (taken from Glassner 1982). Each critique is also the nucleus of still another approach to the study of crime. the neo-Marxist Critique The principal neo-Marxist objection to interactionist theory is that it fails to relate crime and other forms of deviance to the larger society. It fails to account for historical and contemporary political and economic interests. After all, devi- ant acts and careers do occur in such contexts. It is further charged that in explaining deviance, labelling theorists over- look the division between the powerful and the powerless. Powerful members of society also violate laws and other norms even while establishing some of their own as moral entrepreneurs. Consider an internal investigation of the toronto Police Service in 2004 that recommended 218 criminal charges be laid against a dozen officers for offences such as paying informants with drugs seized in other cases, stealing drugs and weapons from suspects and selling them, and extorting money from bar owners (CBC News toronto 2007). Charges were laid against six officers. In 2012, five were convicted of obstruction of justice and three were also convicted of perjury (Small 2012). All were sentenced to 45 days of house arrest. The concept of moral entrepreneur and the categories of secret and falsely accused deviants suggest, however, that interactionists have some understanding of power differences in society. Perhaps the fairest criticism is that they have failed to go as far as they might in linking power to concepts such as labelling, deviant career, and agent of social control. Still, the observation that labelling theory overlooks the larger social context of deviance is a fair one. The perspective is predominantly social-psychological. the Empiricist Critique The empiricists have found several research weaknesses in labelling theory. Glassner (1982) discusses three of these. First, interactionists are said by empiricists to examine only, or chiefly, labelled deviants—those who have been officially identified as having deviated (charged and convicted, examined, and hospitalized). It is true that labelling theorists have often followed this narrow conception of the labelling process. Some deviants—for example, religious fanatics or occultists— are deviant and are labelled by the community as such, even though they rarely if ever gain official recognition. This exposes interactionists to the criticism that community labelling makes no practical difference to the individual. Second, the empiricists argue that labelling as a cause of deviance is inadequately conceptualized. This is a misunderstanding. As this chapter shows, interactionists view labels as interpretations, not causes. The label of deviant is a career contingency, an event, a process, or a situation interpreted by deviants as having a significant impact on their moral careers. Third, the empiricists claim that labelling theory lacks testable propositions. Consequently, data in this area can be explained in many different ways. They hold that quantitative statistical testing is the only definitive way to confirm propositions. Interactionists defend their approach by pointing out that qualitative methods— especially participant observation—are more appropriate for studies of interaction, labelling, career, and self-conception. These phenomena rest on definitions of the situation, images of self and others, negotiations of reality, and similar processes that are difficult to measure and are therefore largely unquantifiable. Even so, qualitative research often proceeds from the intense examination of individual groups and cases. Such studies are complicated and time-consuming, so there are relatively few of them. They tend to be exploratory rather than confirmatory; they generate hypotheses that can be tested in confirmatory research. the Ethno-methodological Critique The ethno-methodologists and conversational analysts are the modern-day inheritors of the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz. (In fact, Glassner refers to them as “phenomenologists” in his review.) Phenomenology is the study of how we perceive and understand the objects and events of reality. reality, the phenom- enologists hold, is not independent of human perception, of human conscious- ness. The chief concern of the ethno-methodologists with labelling theory is its tendency to neglect this question: How do people make sense of their social world? According to Keel (2000), the perspective of ethno-methodology suggests that deviance and the deviant are not independent of the ways people socially construct the meaning of the situations in which they find themselves in daily life. The work of ethno-methodologists has led to an understanding of how devi- ant labels and categories are created and applied through three key processes: interpretation, typification, and negotiation. Thus, the qualities and attributes of particular individuals become lost or distorted as they are located by other people (e.g., bystanders, agents of social control) in the context of a certain category of deviance. Their behaviour and identity come to represent that category of devi- ance, and that category in turn becomes an explanation for the behaviour or identity in question. However, the people of interest to the ethno-methodologist are not always deviant. rather, ethno-methodologists study how agents of social control and ordi- nary citizens make sense of deviants and deviant acts. Interactionists are accused of ignoring the ways in which the conventional world identifies and classifies morally offensive individuals and their behaviour. The important data for ethno- methodologists are the clues people use to identify kinds of deviants and deviant acts. People use this knowledge to reach such conclusions as “guilty” or “innocent.” to some extent, interactionists are guilty as charged. Although there are occasional hints of ethno-methodological thinking in the interactionist literature on deviance, there has been until recently a tendency to rely heavily on official definitions, or labels, of what and who is deviant. But even official definitions and their applications are informed by common sense. They, too, warrant ethno- methodological analysis. Implications The most profound implication of interactionist theory is that it offers a unique perspective on deviance, one that enhances understanding of this phenomenon. For instance, observations on moral enterprise underscore the arbitrariness of criminal law and call attention to patterns of local and national power (though rarely to the extent that neo-Marxists would like). Practically speaking, little can be done in a democratic society to counteract most moral enterprise. But interactionist research, at least, exposes its existence. On a more practical level, interactionist theory stresses the damaging effects of the deviant label. these effects are of at least two types. First, the label (to the extent that the wider community is aware of it) makes re-entry into the community problematic. Nondeviants are inclined to avoid known deviants. Why? Because their own reputations could be damaged if they associated with deviants, and, possibly, because they are revolted by the deviant’s lifestyle and moral behaviour. Deviants are more than rule violators. they are also outcasts. Second, labels colour the judgments many people make of those who are labelled. Labels are names for stereotyped images. Both the images and the labels help nondeviants, including practitioners, define situations involving deviants. These two effects of the deviant label have led Empey, Stafford, and Hay (1999), among others, to argue that the juvenile courts should be used for only the most serious cases. Juvenile diversion and decriminalization programs, including Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act, are practical responses to this implication of interactionist theory. Interactionist theory calls attention to the deviant career as a process that helps explain deviance beyond its initial causes. One practical implication of this career is that over time, people often become committed to certain lifestyles. But to the extent that they make substantial “side bets” (Becker 1963) in one or more conventional identities, they are unlikely to deviate. Their possible deviance, if discovered and labelled, could ruin their reputation in the conventional world (e.g., the politician exposed in the press for patronizing a prostitute). One antidote to initial or continued deviance, then, is to give people every possible opportunity to build strong side bets in “respectable” pursuits. By this reasoning, juveniles and adult ex-offenders should be encouraged to drift towards conventional interests. The interactionist concept of career is also useful here, albeit the career in mind is one of serious leisure (Stebbins 2007). This is the leisure of amateurs, hobbyists, and skilled and knowledgeable volunteers, where participants find a career in activities such as music, woodworking, or outdoor pastimes, leading to personal development realized through the acquisition of new skills, knowledge, and experiences related to a leisure activity. two outcomes of this process are posi- tive change in sense of self-worth and the production of a respectable social identity.