Reactions to Delinquency

1
Reactions to Delinquency

• Its all about Power
• Power varies by race, class, gender, age,
  religion
• Historically dominant groups in the US
• White
• Upper Classes
• Men
• Older
• Protestant

2
Reactions to Delinquency

• Its all about Power
• Power varies by race, class, gender, age,
  religion
• Historically dominant groups in the US
• White
• Upper Classes
• Men (protecting women)
• Older
• Protestant
• Morality exists on a spectrum, nothing is
  inherently bad. Morality varies by
• Culture
• Subgroups
• Geography
• Time

3
Reactions to Delinquency

• Its all about Power
• Historically dominant groups in the US
• White
• Upper Classes
• Men
• Older
• Protestant
• Morality exists on a spectrum, nothing is
  inherently bad. Morality varies by
• Culture
• Subgroups
• Geography
• Time
• People work to make their world reflect their
  beliefs (e.g., Moral Entrepreneurs)

4
Reactions to Delinquency

• Powerful are more Capable of Making Morality
• Perspectives of less powerful are ignored and
  undermined
• Powerful codify beliefs into law
• Cars that go boom
• Prayer at school
• Child labor
• Drug laws
• Milk in school
• Property taxes to fund schools
• Drinking
• Dress codes
• Training wages
• Gangs vs. groups

5
Reactions to Delinquency

• Powerful are more Capable of Making Morality
• Powerful can manipulate legal processes
• Symbolic Crusades
• War on Drugs
• Gang elimination
• War on Welfare
• Satanic Cults
• Targeted Enforcement
• Loitering
• Statutory Rape
• Breast Exposure
• DWB
• Curfew Laws
• Beating the Rap
• Lighter Sentences

6
Reactions to Delinquency

• In US Individualist Capitalism, the more
  marginalized the group, the greater the
  enforcement of laws against it. Threats to
  business and industry are taken most seriously
• Property laws are strictly enforced
• Corporate crime is lightly sanctioned versus
  individual crime
• Business and Industry deaths are acceptable
• Drug laws are entrenched in liability issues and
  often supported to make more productive workers
• Smoking laws
• Controlling gangs and homeless for tourism
• Ownership of a name

7
Reactions to Delinquency

• Powerful escape ideology of crime
• Marginalized fit ideology of crime
• Young Black Males
• Typical image of criminal
• Invokes fear
• Treated more harshly to protect social order
• Mitigating circumstances
• Female (shes suffered enough not a competing
  group)
• White (not your typical criminal)
• Upper class (pillar of the community)
• Any others?

8
Reactions to Delinquency

• Who and what is considered delinquent will change
  as
• ratios of different groups change
• power moves to new groups
• the beliefs of the powerful change

9
Reactions to Delinquency

• Labeling theory
• Labeling theory exposes the effects of
  sanctioning on persons
• Who is labeled?
• Persons who commit delinquent acts and are caught
• Persons who fit certain profiles, marginalized
• Belief that labeled persons are bad leads to
  efforts to control and/or avoid those persons

10
Reactions to Delinquency

• Labeling theory
• Belief that labeled persons are bad leads to
  efforts to control and/or avoid those persons
• Who reacts? Professional vs. Amateur Labelers
• Police
• Parents
• Friends
• Neighborhood
• Teachers
• Etc.

11
Reactions to Delinquency

• Labeling theory
• Who reacts?
• Police
• Parents
• Friends
• Neighborhood
• Teachers
• Etc.
• How do they react?
• Closing structural opportunities
• Altering interaction in personal networks
• Changing the ways they treat the individual

12
Reactions to Delinquency

• Labeling theory
• How do they react?
• Closing structural opportunities
• Altering interaction in personal networks
• Changing the ways they treat the individual
• Effects
• Alter self-concepts toward self as delinquent
• Open more possibilities of interacting with
  delinquents
• Make secondary deviance more attractive and
  likely
• Marginalized are Labeled
• The delinquent who is never caught, and is not
  marginalized, is likely to escape these processes.