Criminology
Theories and Theorists
Theorists in the field of criminal justice:
Howard Becker and Robert Agnew
The field of sociology has been extremely influential in shaping our concept of criminal justice in the 20th century. Rather than focusing on biological or moral theories of why people commit crimes, criminology has begun to place more emphasis on how social pressures may shape the decision of an individual to engage in criminal behavior or to eschew it. Two of the most popular theories exemplifying this phenomenon are that of social labeling theory and strain theory.
Howard Becker's social labeling theory first rose to prominence during the 1960s. Becker suggested that criminals were not essentially different from other persons in the sense that they were more 'wicked' or pathological. Rather, society labels certain persons (because of race, sexuality, poverty, or other behaviors) as different. Rather arbitrarily, certain persons are deemed members of potentially 'criminal elements.' Alienated from mainstream society for various reasons, members of these groups come to see themselves as different and therefore internalize the sense that they are rule-breakers. In his book Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, "Becker (1963) uses the term 'outsider' to describe a labeled rule-breaker or deviant that accepts the label attached to them and view themselves as different from 'mainstream' society" (Howard Becker's labeling theory, 2013, FSU). Certain groups may be seen as inherently deviant, such as young African-American males, the poor, or even simply juveniles who do poorly in school. Eventually, the member of the labeled group may begin to engage in deviant actions because they are denied the positive social reinforcements of being in mainstream society. They may come to embrace the deviant label as a source of identity.
Rules are created, not because they are inherently right or wrong, but because...
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