The Labeling Theory

Conflict and radical theories ascribe several categories of crime and criminal laws to the self-interest of powerful segments of society. In common with labeling theory, the amount of objective evidence available to document these social process theories is limited and inconsistent. In the ideal and harmonious family, parents refrain from affixing labels to their children, either good or bad. It is understood that, taken to an extreme, such verbal reinforcers can easily become "self fulfilling prophecies." Supporters of labeling theory believe that a person with a deviant self-image will then suffer from reduced conventional opportunities. Over time, legal processing is felt to "steer" the individual farther and farther down the road to increased lawlessness. Future criminal offenses become statistically more likely, according to some. The risk of possible discrimination in the application of labels and legal sanctions is felt to be balanced/affirmed if the potential for continued criminality by the individual can be prophylactically curtailed. The label may reduce the overall number of victims.

Critics contend that a strong, negative social reaction to wrongdoing can lead the criminal to become even more deviant.
This calls into question the idea that a negative self-concept might ever be anything other than an inducement to what the individual sees as insurmountable guilt and shame. While labeling theory (or societal reaction theory) was popular in the 1970s, it was difficult to prove valid and so fell out of favor. When deviance is defined as a product of the interaction between the individual and society, then it can no longer be explained using the neoclassical theories: rational choice, deterrence, and routine activities theory. Each of these point in a different direction with regard to causation and the origin of criminal behavior.

As Professor da Silva pointed out in a class discussion, schools of thought such as arose in the University of Chicago's sociology department in the 1920s and 1930s go a long way towards revealing the basis for labeling theory.
University faculty members were busy defining the scope of sociology as a discipline. In attempting to understand criminal behavior and our legal system, they advocated for field observations and analysis of individuals within their natural environments. These principles gradually developed into the branch of symbolic interactionism. Simply put, basic realities (what the uneducated man might call 'common sense' or 'cause and effect') were recast based on formal ethnographic, psychological, and anthropologic
methods.

Frank Tannenbaum is often credited as being the father of labeling theory. The formal process of enforcing conventional expectations was said to have backfired; however, society in general and the criminal justice system in particular need not be castigated for stigmatizing offenders. The same elite segments of society which label deviants as outsiders will of course be affirmed by some majority of the so-called research conducted by any academic upper crust. With linguistic symbols presumed to be of utmost importance, during the 1960s labeling theory was shaped into a unified body of data; however, pride in its ability to name the participants did not equal large-scale resolution of criminal justice conflicts any more than did any other single criminology theory.