Wiley et al. The term labeling theory explains how labeling tends to applied members of society, whether it is formally or informally, and the type of effect these labeling can have on juveniles and deterrence. Robert Agnew is one the most recognizable theorist in the criminal justice profession. General Strain Theory is influential very influential with explaining juvenile delinquency.
This theory is used as the basic. The key element in the subculture theory of delinquency is to achieve an understanding of those who are seen as an outcast or delinquent. One of the main ideas of his was that violence and aggression, or delinquency in general. In this case the juvenile justice system design a program that will fit into the kids lifestyle as should have been done by his or her natural parents. What is the difference between delinquency and a status offense and give one example of each.
Delinquency is a criminal behavior, which is. When a juvenile commits a crime, it is not considered a crime, however it is considered juvenile delinquency. A massive problem throughout the US is juvenile delinquent acts. Juveniles acting out in a delinquent manner can be caused by many things.
However, there is not just one reason why a juvenile may commit these acts. Instead there are many reasons that could lead up to delinquency. In this essay, I will be discussing a few theories as well as ways juveniles may receive treatment. More importantly, when studying labeling effects, it is crucial to observe the temporal sequence of the labeling event and subsequent deviant behavior, while controlling for differences in deviant behavior before the labeling event occurred.
The majority of previous studies investigating labeling effects [ 17 — 19 , 29 , 49 , 50 ] have failed to clearly distinguish these periods. Kaplan and Johnson [ 51 ] and Johnson et al. Murray et al. However, Bernburg and Krohn [ 17 ], for example, measured official intervention at ages Another example is West and Farrington [ 18 , 25 ] who compared people with and without a conviction between ages 14—18 on their self-reported offending between these same ages while controlling for self- reported offending before the age of They show some evidence of worsening behavior after a conviction; their self-reported offending only started to deteriorate after age sixteen and not between fourteen and sixteen.
By not separating these periods in time, it is unknown whether the self-reported offending behavior measured has not already increased because of a conviction during this period. This study improves on previous research into labeling by clearly separating these periods in time. At the time they were first contacted in —, these males were all living in a working-class inner-city area of South London.
The sample was chosen by taking all of the boys who were then aged 8—9 and on the registers of six state primary schools within a one-mile radius of a research office that had been established. Hence, the most common year of birth for these males was In nearly all cases 94 percent , their family bread- winner in — usually the father had a working class occupation skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled manual worker.
Most of the boys were white and of British origin. Donald J. West originally directed the study and David P. Farrington, who has worked on it since , has directed it since The males have been studied at frequent intervals between the ages of eight and fifty.
Information about convictions and self-reported delinquency was collected over the course of these years. Additionally, police records of the parents of these males have been collected.
For more information and major findings see West [ 53 ], West and Farrington [ 25 , 54 ], Farrington and West [ 55 ], Farrington [ 56 , 57 ], Farrington et al. Self-reported offending was measured at ages 18 and 32 and referred to the periods between ages 15—18 and 27— Males who did not have an interview at both ages were excluded from the current analyses.
Eighty-nine per cent of men were interviewed at both ages, which resulted in a sample of males. See [ 58 ] for more information on data collection of the self-reported data.
The self-report offenses were presented on cards, and the males were initially asked to sort the cards according to whether or not they had committed each act during a specified reference period. Where the men had reading difficulties, the cards were read out to them.
More detailed questions were then asked about the offences reported, such as how many times the person had done it, the age he had first done it, and the age he had last done it. The exact wording of the items at the different ages are shown in [ 61 ]. Ten types of offences were enquired about: burglary, theft of motor vehicles, theft from motor vehicles, shoplifting, theft from machines, theft from work, fraud, assault, drug use and vandalism. For the current analyses, a sum of the total number of self-reported offences was used.
Drug use and fraud were not included in the sum variable, since drug use had a different scale and distribution up to 1, while the others had a scale up to and previous analyses showed that the ratio between self-reported and official convictions for drug use and fraud is high: the chances of being caught for these offences are low [ 58 ]. If drug offences had been included, they would disproportionately dominate the sum variable for self-reported offending.
Official offending of both parents and offspring was measured using official criminal records. Convictions were searched in the Criminal Record Office in London [ 62 ]. The date when the offence was committed was used to time the delinquency. If no commission date was known, the conviction date was used. Offences were defined as acts leading to convictions, and only one offence per day was counted. This rule was adopted so that each separate behavioral act could yield only one offence; if all offences had been counted, the number of offences would have been greater than the number of criminal behavioral acts, resulting in an overestimation of criminal behavioral acts [ 58 ].
Convictions were counted for relatively serious offending ranging from theft, burglary, fraud to robbery, sexual offences and murder. Minor offences such as drunkenness and traffic offences were excluded.
Self-reported offending was measured between ages 15—18 and 27— For both hypothesis 1 and 2, labeling effects were examined and thus the level of self-reported offending was measured between ages 27 and The independent variables for hypotheses 1 and 2 were whether people had been convicted during time 2 19—26 years and their level of self-reported offending for time 1 15—18 years.
We included several three sets of control variables in the analyses: impulsive behavior by the son, socioeconomic status of the family and parenting variables. For a more detailed description and earlier use of these variables see [ 63 ] and [ 64 ]. The three variables were correlated. Therefore, these risk factors were summarized by taking their mean value if one variable was missing, the mean of the remaining variables was automatically calculated.
The CSDD has several dichotomous risk factor variables that measure low socio-economic status of the parent when the boy was aged eight to ten: low occupational prestige, low family income, poor housing, large family, low education of father, and low education of mother.
Low occupational prestige indicated that the family breadwinner usually the father had an unskilled manual job. Low family income and poor housing were rated by the study social workers who interviewed the families; poor housing indicated dilapidated premises [ 58 ]. Similar to the impulsivity variables, the six SES variables correlated with each other and were summarized by taking the mean value. Similar to the combined impulsivity variable, if one variable was missing, the mean of the remaining variables was automatically calculated.
Finally, we included a variable indicating poor child rearing, which was a combination of harsh-erratic discipline and parental conflict, rated by psychiatric social workers based on interviews with parents at age 8. First, we examined whether there was a significant relationship between a conviction between ages 19 and 26 time 2 and the level of self-reported offending between ages 27 and 32 time 3 , while controlling for the level of self-reported offending between ages 15 and 18 time 1.
We chose to control for the self-reported offending during time 1, since the self-reported offending during time 2 might have been impacted already by a conviction during that period. Negative binomial regression was used because the dependent variable self-reported offending between ages 27 and 32 was highly skewed. With such a skewed distribution it was inappropriate to run a linear regression analysis. Negative binomial regression analysis suitably deals with skewed distributions.
Furthermore, the predictor variable self-reported offending between ages 15 and 18 was similarly skewed and therefore log-transformed in the analysis. Second, to investigate whether the impact of a conviction was stronger for people whose parents have been convicted, the interaction between the variables of having a conviction between ages 19—26 and having a convicted parent was investigated. The predictor variables were centered around the mean before analyzing them in the regression analysis.
Centering variables around the mean is recommended when investigating interaction effects in multiple regression analysis [ 65 ].
Third, we investigated whether the seriousness of offspring offending impacted the relationship between labeling and having a convicted parent. To examine this, the sum of self-reported burglary and violence measured at age 18 was used self-reported offending measured at age 32 was the outcome variable.
This seriousness variable was added to the regression analysis to test the interaction between a parental conviction and offspring conviction on offspring self-reported offending. A dichotomous variable was used that was coded 1 when parents had been convicted for burglary, robbery, assault, wounding, insulting or threatening behavior, sexual offences, murder, manslaughter, drug or weapon offences.
Two hundred and seventy individuals did not have a conviction before their 19th birthday. Thirty-one of these were convicted between their 19th and 27th birthday and these were compared with the people who had not been convicted in either of these periods. The results in Table 1 model 1 demonstrate that having a conviction between the 19th and 27th birthday time 2 and the level of self-reported offending between the 15th and 19th birthday time 1 were both significant predictors of the level of self-reported offending between the 27th and 32 nd birthday time 3.
These results support the idea of labeling. Model 2 in Table 1 demonstrates the result of the negative binomial regression analysis where the interaction between having a convicted parent and a conviction on subsequent self-reported offending was added.
There was a strong interaction effect of a convicted parent and an offspring conviction on self-reported offending. Furthermore, the impact of a conviction at time 2 became an insignificant predictor when the interaction with a convicted parent was taken into account. This interaction effect is also visible in Fig 1 and Table 2 , which gives the average number of self-reported offences at the two ages for each of the four groups.
Traditionally, when portraying an interaction effect, one would only report the outcome self-reported offending between ages 27—32 for the four groups. However, since the outcome is heavily influenced by the previous level of self-reported offending, it is more appropriate to show the difference between the current and previous level of offending.
The number of self-reported offences decreased between time 1 and time 3 for the first three groups, but the group who had a convicted parent and has been convicted at time 2 shows a sharp increase in self-reported offending between time 1 and time 3. Apparently, there was no labeling effect for the group whose parents have not been convicted, while there was a strong effect for children whose parents have been convicted. The results support hypothesis 2 and similarly show that hypothesis 1 is only supported for the group whose parents have been convicted and not for people whose parents have not been convicted.
We next added the control variables to the regression analysis. Table 3 displays the regression models, where each of the control variables was added separately. Table 4 displays the model including all variables. In each of the models, the interaction between a convicted parent and an offspring conviction remained significant.
We see the same pattern when all the predictors are combined in one big model. This paper investigated the interaction between labeling and intergenerational transmission. In other words, we investigated the impact of a conviction on subsequent offending behavior and the interaction of a conviction and a convicted parent on subsequent offending. It appears that labeling theory only applies to people who are already disadvantaged by a convicted parent.
There is a cumulative effect of having a convicted parent and being convicted yourself. The current study demonstrates strong support for this idea of differential labeling effects, supports the previous findings of Hagan and Palloni [ 46 ] and demonstrates that these differential labeling effects are present when one measures offspring offending up to age How can we explain this interaction between labeling and a convicted parent?
Undoubtedly, intergenerational transmission stems from complex, reciprocal, and transactional forces spanning these different theoretical perspectives, leading to cumulative disadvantage for those children with criminal parents. If children also experience labeling because of a conviction, this basically adds additional burden to already disadvantaged individuals.
These children seem to be more susceptible to labeling effects. Self-reports of criminal offending face challenges such as concealing, exaggerating or simply forgetting offending behavior [ 66 ], which are particularly problematic with long-term retrospective self-reports [ 67 , 68 ].
Furthermore, attributes of the respondent and of the crime might influence the willingness to admit, forget, and exaggerate offences. For example, people are less inclined to report sexual and fraud offences and more likely to exaggerate violent offences. This phenomenon could explain discrepancies between and official records and self-reports. Also, individuals who feel they have much to lose might be more inclined to present a pro-social image compared with offspring of convicted parents, who might feel stigmatized and labeled and will not hold back on self-reporting criminal behavior [ 66 ].
This scenario, however, would predict a smaller discrepancy between self-reported offending and official records for offspring of convicted parents, which was not found in the CSDD see also [ 16 ]. It is important to realize that we might never know the true extent of offending behavior, even though numerous studies have shown that validity is high for prospective self-reports of white males as investigated in this sample.
However, the respondents did not know that the researchers checked their criminal histories, therefore it seems unlikely that this knowledge could have influenced them. More importantly, previous analyses with the CSDD showed that, in general, the first self-report of an offence preceded the first conviction for it [ 61 ].
This implies that it is unlikely that the relationship found between a conviction and a subsequent increase in self-reported offending could be attributed to the tendency for convictions to make people more willing to admit offences in self-reports.
An important limitation of this study is the low number of people involved in the analyses to investigate labeling. The group of offspring with a conviction and a convicted parent consists of only nine people. Hitherto the CSDD is the only study used to examine the topic of labeling in combination with a convicted parent.
This highlights the need to replicate these analyses with large longitudinal data sets over multiple generations. This sample of men was born in London around and their offending behavior was measured until age 32 roughly They were mostly British and white and growing up in a specific society and time period.
Family structures, communities and police and justice organizations have changed. Moreover, sentencing policies are different in current times and in other countries. One thing that we could not study using the CSDD is the effect of race or ethnicity. For example, Black or Hispanic offenders are more likely to be arrested, convicted, and imprisoned [ 69 — 78 ].
Similarly, people from a low socio-economic background seem to be arrested disproportionately often [ 77 , 78 ]. It would be advantageous to replicate this study using data from different periods and different countries to examine whether similar effects are visible. However, to be able to study labeling as well as intergenerational transmission of criminal behavior, a longitudinal study with information on offending for both generations is necessary, including self-reported offending for the offspring generation.
Such studies are rare and the CSDD is one of the few studies that have collected such data. Related to this, it would be interesting to investigate this interaction between labeling and intergenerational transmission in samples using different age ranges. In this study, we used self-reported offending from ages 15—18 and 27—32, while looking at official convictions from ages 19— It would be interesting to see whether labeling effects might be stronger when people are convicted during their adolescent years, as we discussed in the introduction.
Similarly, unfortunately it was not possible investigate women. The CSDD does not have self-reports for sisters of the original men. It would be desirable to replicate the current study using data on women to investigate labeling and intergenerational transmission for daughters.
Women are less likely to be arrested than men, and women are at an advantage in several stages of delinquency case processing in the court [ 77 , 79 — 81 ]. It would be interesting to examine whether women also report a similar increase in self-reported offending after being convicted. Women who commit crime are less common, and because of this, women who do commit crime might be stigmatized more, based on the potential label as being disturbed rather than criminal, which could lead to an even stronger increase in self-reported behavior [ 82 ].
Notwithstanding these limitations, this study is the first one in 25 years that investigated labeling and intergenerational transmission, showing this strong pattern of cumulative disadvantage of labeling and intergenerational transmission. What do these results mean to broader society? Although the aim of criminal justice agencies should be to decrease or prevent crime, by their actions the official agencies appear to increase offending behavior. These findings are particularly relevant when we consider official bias in intergenerational transmission, where offspring of convicted parents are at a higher risk of being targeted by the criminal justice system [ 16 ].
Given that prison population numbers are at unprecedented levels and given that the number of convictions is still increasing in many nations, the effects of parental conviction on families and children are crucial societal concerns. This paper demonstrated that labeling might be a pivotal experience in the intergenerational transmission of criminal behavior. Instead of advancing this cycle of intergenerational crime by convicting these children disproportionally often, it is preferable to try to prevent the development of this behavior.
Instead, interventions targeted at children of convicted parents would be a viable starting point. A first suggestion would be to provide family-based intervention programs, such as parent education and parent management training.
Many scholars have shown the developmental merits of prevention programs [ 87 — 90 ]. Moreover, several reviews have shown that the monetary benefits of developmental prevention programs outweigh their monetary costs [ 89 , 91 — 97 ]. Monetary benefits can be wide-ranging from crime reduction to education e. If special consideration has to be given to children of convicted parents, it is preferable that this is positive and focused on preventing the offending behavior.
An earlier version of this article was presented at the Stockholm Criminology Symposium. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. PLoS One. Share Flipboard Email. By Ashley Crossman. Updated February 03, Featured Video. View Article Sources. Cite this Article Format. Crossman, Ashley.
An Overview of Labeling Theory. Sociological Explanations of Deviant Behavior. Understanding the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Deviance and Strain Theory in Sociology. Sutherland's Differential Association Theory Explained. A Sociological Understanding of Moral Panic. Definition of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Sociology. Definition of Systemic Racism in Sociology. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for ThoughtCo.
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