Howard Becker's Theory Of Labeling

Sociologist Howard Becker developed his theory of labeling (also known as social reaction theory) in the 1963 book Outsider: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Becker (1963) emphasizes that social reaction theory is primarily concerned with how individuals' personal identities are highly influenced by the way that society or authorities tend to categorize them as offenders. With such categorization or labeling, an offender confirms their status as criminals or delinquents by increasing the frequency or seriousness of their illegal activity (Tibbetts, 2014). With contemporary views of this theory, Siegel and Welsh (2014) assert that people communicate through symbols such as words, gestures and physical products. On the other hand, Hall and