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Chapter 7

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Running head: THE IRONY OF STATE INTERVENTION

The Irony of State Intervention

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THE IRONY OF STATE INTERVENTION 2

The Irony of State Intervention - Labeling Theory

The chapter takes a look at crime through the labelling theory and in the introduction it

talks about crime and the reaction of the state and the expectation of everyone in its regards.

When an offense is committed, most of the time the state will do its best to get to the perpetrators

and arrest them. They will then be taken to court, processed and then thrown in jail; this is

informed by the common belief that the intervention of the state either through incarceration,

rehabilitation etc. is most helpful.

Scholars for the labeling theory however, argue that this is not the case and that the

intervention of the state through the labelling of the offenders as criminals, felons and ex-felons

can instead have a different reaction and can make it worse by making the behaviors deepen

instead of solving them. Instead of helping the criminals out of the vices, they instead encourage

them to dig deeper into the behaviors; they then end up anchored to crime and become career

criminals. This is the reason why most of the blacks will at one time spend their lives in a jail,

the statistic is lower with the whites but is also majorly contributed to by labelling. This had led

to having one out of every three black Americans under the control of the criminal justice

system.

Social Construction of Crime

Criminologists used to look at crime as the behaviors that went against the laws and

never from a social perspective by looking at the offenders themselves and their environments

and understanding how these could affect the behaviors of people and lead to crime. Labeling

theorists tried to solve this misconception and oversight by looking at behavior differently. They

first did away with the thought that behavior is inherently criminal and deviant. A behavior is

considered wrong not in the harm that it inflicts on the person but on the label that it has been

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Running head: THE IRONY OF STATE INTERVENTION The Irony of State Intervention Institutional Affiliation Name Date THE IRONY OF STATE INTERVENTION 2 The Irony of State Intervention - Labeling Theory The chapter takes a look at crime through the labelling theory and in the introduction it talks about crime and the reaction of the state and the expectation of everyone in its regards. When an offense is committed, most of the time the state will do its best to get to the perpetrators and arrest them. They will then be taken to court, processed and then thrown in jail; this is informed by the common belief that the intervention of the state either through incarceration, rehabilitation etc. is most helpful. Scholars for the labeling theory however, argue that this is not the case and that the intervention of the state through the labelling of the offenders as criminals, felons and ex-felons can instead have a different reaction and can make it worse by making the behaviors deepen instead of solving them. Instead of helping the criminals out of the vices, they instead encourage them to dig deeper into the behaviors; they then end up anchored to crime and become career criminals. This ...
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