Labeling and symbolic interaction theory examines how the social process of defining, categorizing, and reacting to criminal behavior shapes the identity and subsequent conduct of those who are labeled as deviant or criminal. As a distinctive perspective within Criminology Theories, the labeling approach shifts the analytical focus from the causes of initial rule-breaking to the consequences of societal reaction — arguing that the application of a deviant label can transform a person’s self-concept, restrict access to conventional opportunities, and produce the very pattern of persistent offending that the label purports merely to describe. Rooted in the symbolic interactionist tradition of George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley, and formalized as a criminological perspective through the work of Frank Tannenbaum, Edwin Lemert, Howard Becker, and Erving Goffman, labeling theory represents one of the most important intellectual developments in twentieth-century criminology. This article traces the theoretical foundations of the labeling perspective from its origins in symbolic interactionism through its classical formulations and contemporary extensions, examines the criticisms that have been directed against it, surveys the empirical evidence bearing on its central propositions, and assesses its current standing within the discipline.
Outline
I. Introduction
II. Symbolic Interactionism: The Theoretical Foundation
- a. Mead, Cooley, and the Social Construction of the Self
- b. From Symbolic Interactionism to the Study of Deviance
III. The Labeling Perspective: Classical Formulations
- a. Tannenbaum and the Dramatization of Evil
- b. Lemert: Primary and Secondary Deviance
- c. Becker’s Outsiders and the Social Construction of Deviance
- d. Goffman and the Management of Stigma
IV. Contemporary Extensions
- a. Schur: Stereotyping, Retrospective Interpretation, and Role Engulfment
- b. Paternoster and Iovanni: Toward a Formal Specification
- c. Cohen: Deviance Amplification and the Media
- d. Kaplan and Damphousse: Self-Derogation and Deviance
- e. The Shift to Informal Labels and Structural Consequences
V. Criticisms of the Labeling Perspective
- a. Theoretical Critiques
- b. Empirical Critiques
VI. Empirical Evidence
- a. Formal Labeling and Secondary Deviance
- b. Informal Labeling
- c. Labels and Life-Course Consequences
VII. Conclusion
VIII. References
Introduction
A fundamental but often overlooked fact about crime is that for any behavior to be considered criminal, some authority must have defined it as such. The same act — possessing alcohol, using marijuana, engaging in certain sexual behaviors — may be criminal in one jurisdiction or era and perfectly legal in another. This observation, seemingly trivial, carries profound implications for criminological theory. If crime is not an inherent property of behavior but a designation imposed by social and legal authorities, then understanding crime requires attention not only to the behavior of those who break rules but also to the processes by which rules are created, applied, and enforced — and to the consequences that follow when a person is identified, categorized, and treated as a criminal.
This insight is the foundation of the labeling perspective. Whereas mainstream criminological theories — strain theory, social learning theory, social control theory — focus on explaining why individuals commit crimes (the etiology of criminal behavior), labeling theory directs attention to the social processes through which certain individuals come to be defined as criminal and to the effects that this definition has on their subsequent behavior, identity, and life chances. The central proposition is that the application of a deviant label — through arrest, conviction, incarceration, or informal social designation — can set in motion a self-fulfilling process in which the labeled individual internalizes the deviant identity, is excluded from conventional social roles, and is propelled into further and more serious criminal behavior. Crime, in this framework, is not simply a cause of social reaction; it is also, in significant part, a consequence of it.
The labeling perspective emerged at a particular moment in the history of criminology — the 1960s and 1970s — when established theoretical frameworks were being challenged by scholars who questioned the assumptions of consensus criminology and drew attention to the role of power, inequality, and institutional authority in the creation and enforcement of criminal law. The perspective was never fully developed into a formal, testable theory; instead, it evolved as a loosely connected set of propositions, concepts, and sensitizing ideas contributed by multiple scholars over several decades. This fragmented character has been both the perspective’s strength — giving it flexibility and breadth — and its weakness — exposing it to criticism for conceptual vagueness and lack of empirical precision.
Symbolic Interactionism: The Theoretical Foundation
Mead, Cooley, and the Social Construction of the Self
The intellectual foundation of labeling theory lies in the sociological tradition of symbolic interactionism, which originated in the work of George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley at the University of Chicago in the early twentieth century. Mead (1934) argued that the self is not an innate, fixed entity but a social product — something that arises through the process of social interaction, particularly through the individual’s capacity to take the perspective of others (what Mead called “taking the role of the generalized other”). A person’s sense of who he or she is — the self-concept — is formed through a continuous process of interpreting how others perceive, evaluate, and respond to his or her behavior.
Cooley (1902) captured this process in his concept of the “looking-glass self”: the idea that individuals see themselves reflected in the reactions of others, much as they might see their physical appearance reflected in a mirror. The self, in Cooley’s formulation, has three components: the imagination of how one appears to others, the imagination of others’ judgment of that appearance, and a resulting feeling — pride or shame — that shapes subsequent behavior. If others consistently treat an individual as competent, trustworthy, and respectable, that individual will tend to develop a self-concept consistent with these attributions and will behave accordingly. If others consistently treat an individual as deviant, untrustworthy, or criminal, the same process of reflected appraisal will produce a self-concept — and a behavioral pattern — consistent with the deviant designation.
Herbert Blumer (1969), who coined the term “symbolic interactionism,” identified three premises that define the perspective: human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings those things have for them; meanings arise through the process of social interaction; and meanings are modified through an interpretive process that individuals employ in dealing with the things they encounter. Applied to crime, these premises suggest that criminal behavior is not simply a mechanical response to structural conditions or learned associations but a meaningful act that acquires its significance through the interpretive processes of both the actor and the social audience that observes, evaluates, and responds to it.
From Symbolic Interactionism to the Study of Deviance
The transition from general symbolic interactionist theory to the specific study of deviance and crime required the application of Mead’s and Cooley’s insights to the particular social processes through which certain individuals come to be designated as deviant and to the consequences of that designation for their subsequent behavior and identity. This transition occurred over several decades and involved contributions from multiple scholars, each of whom developed different aspects of what would eventually become the labeling perspective.
The Labeling Perspective: Classical Formulations
Tannenbaum and the Dramatization of Evil
Frank Tannenbaum (1938) was the first scholar to apply the insights of symbolic interactionism directly to the study of criminal behavior. In Crime and the Community, Tannenbaum introduced the concept of the “dramatization of evil” — the process by which a child who commits a deviant act is segregated from the group, identified as different, and subjected to specialized treatment that reinforces rather than diminishes the deviant pattern. “The process of making the criminal,” Tannenbaum wrote, “is a process of tagging, defining, identifying, segregating, describing, emphasizing, making conscious and self-conscious; it becomes a way of stimulating, suggesting, emphasizing, and evoking the very traits that are complained of” (p. 19).
Tannenbaum argued that the community’s response to juvenile delinquency — isolating the offender, publicizing the offense, imposing a stigmatizing label — was counterproductive, because it drove the labeled individual into association with other similarly labeled individuals and thereby created the very criminal subculture that the response was designed to prevent. The child who is “tagged” as delinquent is excluded from conventional peer groups and institutions and gravitates toward companions who share the same designation, forming gangs and delinquent subcultures that reinforce criminal behavior and provide the social support and identity that conventional society has withdrawn.
Tannenbaum’s contribution was foundational for the labeling perspective in two respects. First, it identified the paradox at the heart of labeling theory: that the social response to crime can produce more crime rather than less. Second, it provided the first policy argument derived from the labeling perspective — the recommendation that juvenile offenders should be diverted from formal processing and deinstitutionalized rather than subjected to the stigmatizing interventions that amplify rather than reduce their criminal involvement.
Lemert: Primary and Secondary Deviance
Edwin Lemert (1951, 1967) made the most important conceptual contribution to the labeling perspective with his distinction between primary and secondary deviance. Primary deviance consists of initial acts of rule-breaking that have little or no impact on the actor’s self-concept or social identity. A teenager who shoplifts once, a college student who experiments with drugs, an employee who pads an expense report — these are acts of primary deviance that can be rationalized, forgotten, or absorbed into a conventional self-concept without fundamentally altering the actor’s identity or social position.
Secondary deviance, by contrast, occurs when the social reaction to primary deviance — arrest, conviction, public identification as a criminal, stigmatization by family, peers, and community — transforms the actor’s self-concept and reorganizes his or her behavior around the deviant identity. The casual drug user becomes, in his own eyes and in the eyes of others, “a drug addict”; the shoplifter becomes “a thief”; the recreational drinker becomes “an alcoholic”; the juvenile who takes a car for a joyride becomes “a car thief.” Once this identity transformation has occurred, the individual’s behavior is no longer occasional or situational but becomes a central organizing principle of his or her social life. Secondary deviance, in Lemert’s formulation, is “deviance as identity transformation” — the process by which societal reaction converts an isolated act into a master status that defines the individual’s social identity and shapes all subsequent interactions.
Secondary deviance is promoted through an internal process of normalization — the individual gradually comes to view the deviant behavior as an acceptable, even natural, part of his or her identity — and a simultaneous erosion of the social controls that would otherwise restrain the behavior. As the individual is progressively excluded from conventional social groups and institutions, the stigma associated with the deviant label intensifies. Goffman (1963) would later describe these stigmas as “invidious labels, marks, or publicly disseminated information” that function much like Tannenbaum’s “tags,” marking the individual as fundamentally different from and inferior to conventional members of society. The labeled individual, confronted with diminishing access to conventional roles and relationships, may find that the deviant subculture — with its alternative status system, social support, and shared identity — offers the only available source of belonging and self-worth.
Lemert’s contribution was essential to the labeling perspective because it specified the mechanism through which labeling produces its effects: not through a simple, direct link between label and behavior but through an intermediate process of identity transformation in which the labeled individual comes to see himself or herself as the kind of person the label implies. This mechanism — the internalization of the deviant identity — is the conceptual core of labeling theory and the proposition that has generated the most empirical research and theoretical debate.
Becker’s Outsiders and the Social Construction of Deviance
Howard Becker’s (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance provided the most systematic and influential statement of the labeling perspective. Becker’s central argument was deceptively simple: “Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender.’ The deviant is one to whom that label has been successfully applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label” (p. 9).
Becker identified several factors that determine whether a particular act of rule-breaking will result in the application of a deviant label. First, labeling varies over time: behaviors that are criminal in one era may be legal in another (as illustrated by Prohibition). Second, labeling varies by the social characteristics of the actor: the same behavior may be labeled criminal when committed by a poor, minority individual and overlooked when committed by a wealthy, white individual. Third, labeling varies by the social characteristics of the victim: offenses against powerful victims are more likely to be labeled and punished than offenses against marginalized victims. Fourth, the “outsider” designation may apply not only to the rule-breaker but also to the rule-makers, who may be perceived as illegitimate by those whose behavior they seek to regulate.
Becker also introduced the concept of the “moral entrepreneur” — the individual or group that takes the initiative in defining certain behaviors as deviant and mobilizing the social and legal apparatus to enforce that definition. Moral entrepreneurs — drug enforcement officials, anti-pornography crusaders, temperance advocates — play a critical role in the labeling process because they determine which behaviors will be targeted for social control and which populations will bear the burden of criminalization. The concept of the moral entrepreneur connects labeling theory to broader questions of power, inequality, and the politics of criminal law — questions that would be taken up more fully by critical and conflict criminology.
Becker identified four types of individuals defined by the intersection of rule-breaking behavior and the application of labels: the conformist (does not break rules, is not labeled), the pure deviant (breaks rules, is labeled), the secret deviant (breaks rules, is not labeled), and the falsely accused (does not break rules, is labeled). The existence of the secret deviant and the falsely accused demonstrated that deviance is not a property of behavior alone but a product of the interaction between behavior and social reaction — a point with profound implications for criminological theory and criminal justice policy.
Because the concept of labeling is intertwined with the concept of secondary deviance, Becker also discussed the deviant career — the sequential process through which an individual moves from initial rule-breaking through label application to the adoption of a deviant identity and pattern of behavior. The deviant career begins with the commission of a deviant act. If a label is applied and the individual internalizes it, secondary deviance may follow. As the labeled individual is increasingly excluded from conventional roles and associations, he or she may be drawn into a deviant subculture that provides social support, identity, and opportunities for further criminal behavior. Becker argued that research should focus not only on individuals who progress through the full deviant career but also on those who commit initial deviant acts without becoming career criminals — since understanding the factors that prevent the transition from primary to secondary deviance is as theoretically important as understanding the factors that produce it.
The concept of the moral entrepreneur connected labeling theory to broader questions of power and the politics of criminal law. Moral entrepreneurs are individuals or groups who take the initiative in defining certain behaviors as deviant and in mobilizing the social, legal, and institutional resources needed to enforce that definition. Drug enforcement officials, anti-pornography crusaders, temperance advocates, and child-protection activists are all examples of moral entrepreneurs who have successfully campaigned to criminalize behaviors that were previously tolerated or unregulated. The moral entrepreneur concept highlights the role of power and interest in the creation of criminal law and calls attention to the fact that the rules whose violation constitutes crime are not neutral reflections of social consensus but products of political processes in which some groups have more influence than others.
Becker later clarified that he never intended to develop a formal theory of deviance but rather to “enlarge the area taken into account in the study of deviant phenomena by including in it activities of others than the allegedly deviant actor” (1963, p. 199). He emphasized that the most important aspect of the labeling process was not the label itself but the dynamic process of action, reaction, and counterreaction — the ongoing negotiation between rule-breakers and rule-enforcers that constitutes the social reality of deviance. In a later interview, Becker (quoted in Debro, 1970) argued that the inclusion of societal reactions to deviance stemmed from his sociological training: just as the study of a hospital requires attention to doctors, nurses, aides, and patients rather than patients alone, the study of crime requires attention to lawmakers, enforcers, and the public rather than offenders alone. The focus on only the offender in criminological theory produces an incomplete picture of the criminal event; the views, decisions, and actions of the social audience are equally constitutive of the phenomenon.
Goffman and the Management of Stigma
Erving Goffman’s (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity contributed the concept of stigma to the labeling perspective. Goffman defined stigma as an attribute that is deeply discrediting and that reduces the bearer from a whole person to a tainted, discounted one. He distinguished between three types of stigma: physical deformities, character blemishes (including criminal records, addiction, and mental illness), and tribal stigma (associated with race, nationality, and religion).
Goffman’s most important contribution was his analysis of the strategies that stigmatized individuals employ to manage their spoiled identities — concealment, information control, passing, and the formation of in-group solidarity with other stigmatized individuals. He observed that stigmatized persons “tend to have similar learning experiences regarding their plight, and similar changes in conception of self — a similar ‘moral career’ ” (p. 32). This concept of the moral career — a predictable sequence of identity transformations that follows from the acquisition of a stigmatizing label — connected Goffman’s work to Lemert’s concept of secondary deviance and Tannenbaum’s dramatization of evil, providing a rich vocabulary for describing the social-psychological processes through which labeling produces its effects.
Table 1. Classical Contributions to the Labeling Perspective
| Scholar | Key Work | Central Concept | Core Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mead (1934) | Mind, Self, and Society | Role-taking; generalized other | Self arises through social interaction; behavior shaped by perceived attitudes of others |
| Cooley (1902) | Human Nature and the Social Order | Looking-glass self | Self-concept formed through reflected appraisals of others |
| Tannenbaum (1938) | Crime and the Community | Dramatization of evil | Social response to delinquency creates criminals through tagging and segregation |
| Lemert (1951, 1967) | Social Pathology; Human Deviance | Primary and secondary deviance | Societal reaction transforms isolated rule-breaking into deviant identity |
| Becker (1963) | Outsiders | Deviance as social construction; moral entrepreneurs | Deviance is not a quality of acts but a consequence of the application of rules and labels |
| Goffman (1963) | Stigma | Stigma management; moral career | Stigmatized individuals develop shared strategies for managing spoiled identities |
| Kitsuse (1962) | “Societal Reaction to Deviant Behavior” | Deviant-defining process | The critical feature is not behavior but interpretations of behavior by others |
Contemporary Extensions
Schur: Stereotyping, Retrospective Interpretation, and Role Engulfment
Edwin Schur (1971) extended the labeling perspective by identifying several additional processes through which labeling operates. Stereotyping plays a dual role: it allows individuals in complex social interactions to classify and predict others’ behavior, but it also generates reactions based on inaccurate assessments that can be as consequential as reactions based on accurate ones. Retrospective interpretation involves the reinterpretation of a person’s past behavior in light of a newly applied label — the process by which a newly diagnosed mental patient’s earlier behavior is reinterpreted as “always having been symptomatic” or a newly convicted criminal’s past is reread for signs of latent criminality. Role engulfment is the process by which an individual fully internalizes a deviant label, abandoning conventional identities and organizing his or her behavior entirely around the deviant role. Role engulfment represents the endpoint of the labeling process — the point at which the label has become the individual’s master status.
Paternoster and Iovanni: Toward a Formal Specification
Paternoster and Iovanni (1989) sought to revitalize the labeling perspective by formulating its propositions more explicitly and identifying the conceptual areas that require empirical evaluation. They identified four domains: the role of political and economic power in creating delinquency statuses; the influence of extralegal attributes (race, class, gender) in determining who is labeled; the contribution of social and physical attributes in shaping face-to-face encounters between rule-breakers and social control agents; and the possibility that being labeled by social control agencies may alter personal identity, exclude the labeled individual from conventional routines, and increase involvement in delinquency.
Cohen: Deviance Amplification and the Media
Stanley Cohen (1972) contributed to the labeling perspective through his analysis of how societal reactions — particularly as mediated by the mass media — can amplify rather than suppress deviant behavior. In Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Cohen examined the media-amplified confrontations between mods and rockers at English seaside resorts, demonstrating how media coverage, public anxiety, and intensified policing combined to create a self-reinforcing cycle of deviance and reaction. Cohen argued that society reacts to episodes of deviance on the basis of information about that particular class of phenomenon, individual tolerance levels, and direct experience — and that the mass media play a central role in shaping all three of these factors. Amplification of deviance can thus occur from either the labeled individual’s perspective (the label increases deviant behavior) or the labeler’s perspective (the reaction generates more surveillance, detection, and labeling, which in turn produces more deviance).
Cohen’s analysis connected the labeling perspective to the study of media and public opinion, demonstrating that the labeling process is not limited to face-to-face encounters between individuals and criminal justice agents but extends to the broader cultural processes through which entire categories of behavior and persons are constructed as threatening, dangerous, or deviant. This insight has become increasingly relevant in an era of 24-hour news cycles, social media, and the viral circulation of images and narratives about crime and criminal justice.
Kaplan and Damphousse: Self-Derogation and Deviance
Kaplan and Damphousse (1997) examined the interconnection between negative social sanctions, self-derogation (the negative affect that individuals experience in association with their own personal qualities, achievements, and behavior), and subsequent deviance. Their analysis of longitudinal survey data from students in Texas high schools revealed an interaction between negative self-attitudes and negative social sanctions that directly affected subsequent deviant behavior. Specifically, they found that negative social sanctions had a positive effect on later deviance and that self-derogation moderated this effect: individuals with more negative self-attitudes were more strongly affected by negative sanctions, consistent with the labeling perspective’s prediction that labels operate through their effect on self-concept and identity.
The Shift to Informal Labels and Structural Consequences
A significant development in the labeling literature since the 1990s has been the expansion of analytical attention from formal labels (arrest, conviction, incarceration) to informal labels (parental designations, teacher expectations, peer attributions) and from the social-psychological effects of labeling (identity transformation, self-concept change) to the structural consequences of labeling (restricted access to education, employment, housing, and social networks). Matsueda (1992), using data from the National Youth Survey, demonstrated that parental appraisals of their children as “rule-breakers” significantly affected children’s delinquent self-concepts and subsequent behavior — providing evidence that informal labeling processes operate alongside, and may be even more consequential than, formal criminal justice processing.
The structural consequences of labeling have become an increasingly important focus of research. A criminal conviction — particularly a felony conviction involving incarceration — restricts access to employment, housing, educational opportunities, voting rights, and professional licensing, creating a cascade of exclusionary consequences that make conventional reintegration extraordinarily difficult. Bernburg and Krohn (2003), analyzing data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, found that juvenile justice intervention decreased the odds of high school graduation, which in turn reduced employment prospects and increased the probability of adult criminal involvement. These findings support the labeling perspective’s prediction that formal intervention amplifies rather than reduces criminal behavior, but through a structural mechanism (blocked opportunities) rather than the purely social-psychological mechanism (identity transformation) that classical labeling theory emphasized.
Table 2. The Labeling Process: From Primary Deviance to Structural Exclusion
| Stage | Process | Key Concept | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Initial rule-breaking | Individual commits a deviant act | Primary deviance (Lemert) | Minimal impact on self-concept or social identity |
| 2. Detection and reaction | Act is detected; social audience responds | Societal reaction; dramatization of evil | Individual is identified, tagged, segregated |
| 3. Label application | Formal or informal deviant label is applied | Labeling; stigmatization (Becker; Goffman) | Individual acquires a deviant “master status” |
| 4. Identity transformation | Individual internalizes the deviant label | Secondary deviance; role engulfment | Self-concept reorganizes around the deviant identity |
| 5. Structural exclusion | Label restricts access to conventional opportunities | Blocked opportunities; cumulative disadvantage | Education, employment, housing, social networks compromised |
| 6. Deviant career | Individual persists in criminal behavior | Deviant career; amplification of deviance | Ongoing criminal involvement reinforced by identity and exclusion |
Criticisms of the Labeling Perspective
Theoretical Critiques
The labeling perspective has been subjected to extensive criticism, both theoretical and empirical. Gibbs (1966) raised the most fundamental theoretical objection: that by defining deviance as a consequence of societal reaction rather than as a property of behavior, labeling theory makes it impossible to study deviance independently of the social processes that define it. If deviance exists only when a label is applied, then Becker’s “secret deviant” — who breaks rules but is not labeled — is a logical contradiction: a deviant who is not deviant. Gibbs also argued that labeling theorists had failed to specify what kind of reaction identifies or promulgates deviant behavior, leaving the central mechanism of the theory vaguely defined.
Akers (1967) raised a different concern: that labeling theory does not explain the initial act of rule-breaking (primary deviance) that triggers the labeling process. Some rule-breaking must precede the application of a deviant label — social definitions do not occur in a vacuum but arise in response to actual behavior. If the labeling perspective is concerned only with the consequences of societal reaction and not with the causes of the behavior that provokes the reaction, then it is at most a partial theory — one that addresses the persistence and amplification of deviance but not its origins. Labeling theorists have responded that they do not deny the importance of understanding the causes of primary deviance but that their analytical interest lies in the societal reaction rather than in the etiology of initial rule-breaking — a response that critics have found unsatisfying, since it effectively concedes that labeling theory addresses only half of the explanatory problem.
Wellford (1975) pressed the definitional argument further, contending that the labeling perspective’s first assumption — that no act is intrinsically criminal — is empirically questionable. Although there is considerable variation across societies in how criminal behaviors are defined and treated, certain behaviors — murder, robbery, theft, sexual assault — are treated as serious offenses across virtually all known societies and cultures. This cross-cultural convergence suggests that at least some forms of criminal behavior possess intrinsic characteristics that provoke social reaction regardless of the specific cultural or legal context — a finding that is difficult to reconcile with the strong constructionist position that deviance is entirely a product of societal labeling.
Lemert (1974) himself acknowledged that the labeling perspective lacked sufficient specification of the amount of consensus or dissent that exists in societal reactions, which makes it extremely difficult to study the societal reaction to deviance systematically. Different people react differently to different types of crime. Rules of reaction and labeling appear to be automatically agreed upon in the literature when it comes to serious personal violence, but in terms of lesser crimes — particularly victimless crimes such as drug use, gambling, or prostitution — people will behave very differently in their reactions based on personal experience, moral beliefs, and social context. The labeling perspective had not adequately conceptualized these variations.
A second line of criticism concerned cross-societal variation. According to Gibbs (1966), it was unclear whether Becker was pursuing a theory of deviant behavior or a theory about reactions to deviance. If the reaction is the key to deviant behavior, the implication is that deviance would be constant across different societies, because all societies would react the same way. But this is manifestly not the case: marijuana use is illegal in many American states but legal in the Netherlands; homosexuality is accepted in some societies and criminalized in others; prostitution is regulated and legal in some countries and harshly punished in others. The existence of this cross-societal variation in the definition and treatment of deviance complicates the labeling perspective’s claims about the relationship between societal reaction and deviant behavior.
The relationship between labeling and deterrence has been another significant source of theoretical criticism. Tittle (1975) argued that labeling theory fails to account for instances in which the experience of being labeled actually deters subsequent offending rather than amplifying it. Thorsell and Klemke (1972) contended that it is impossible to study the labeling approach without giving thought to the deterrence model, because both theories address the way in which sanctions affect offenders — one predicting amplification, the other predicting suppression. Thomas and Bishop (1984) demonstrated empirically that both labeling and deterrence effects can operate simultaneously, and that the net effect of formal sanctions on subsequent behavior depends on a complex interaction of individual, situational, and contextual factors. Whether a person who is labeled “criminal” is propelled into more crime or deterred from future criminal behavior remains one of the most intriguing and unresolved questions in the labeling literature (Paternoster & Iovanni, 1989).
Finally, the labeling perspective has been criticized for its failure to specify which sanctions lead to continued deviance and what severity of sanction is required to produce career deviance. Mankoff (1971) argued that labeling theorists had failed to conceptually or empirically distinguish between the effects of different types and levels of social reaction — a criticism that points to the perspective’s persistent vagueness about the mechanisms through which labeling operates and the conditions under which it produces its predicted effects.
Empirical Critiques
Early empirical assessments of the labeling perspective also identified significant weaknesses. Tittle (1975) noted that there were very few data sources capable of capturing labeling and its effects on criminality. The data most commonly available — recidivism data — are problematic because they capture only individuals who are rearrested, reconvicted, or reincarcerated, missing offenders who continue to commit crimes but are not caught. The key limitation is that only individuals who again come to the attention of the criminal justice system appear as recidivists; anyone who reoffends without being detected would appear as nonrecidivating, producing a systematic undercount of the true effects of labeling. Tittle concluded that the available evidence at the time provided only weak support for the labeling perspective, though he acknowledged that the methodological limitations of existing studies made definitive conclusions premature.
Hagan (1973) identified a fundamental methodological problem that continues to plague labeling research: the perspective requires the simultaneous study of both the labelers (the social audience that applies labels) and the labeled (the individuals who receive them), but existing research typically studied one or the other in isolation, never both in concert. Understanding the labeling process as a dynamic, interactive phenomenon — in which the characteristics of the labeler, the characteristics of the labeled, and the context of the encounter all influence the outcome — requires research designs that can capture this complexity. The development of such designs has been a persistent challenge for labeling researchers.
Mankoff (1971) observed that much of the research supporting the labeling perspective had examined individuals with mental health conditions, physical disabilities, and other ascriptive stigmas rather than individuals who had engaged in achieved rule-breaking — that is, voluntary criminal behavior. He argued that the labeling perspective may be more applicable to ascriptive stigmas (which the individual does not choose) than to achieved deviance (which involves voluntary action on the part of the rule-breaker), and that the generalization of findings from mental illness research to criminal behavior research may be unwarranted.
Empirical Evidence
Formal Labeling and Secondary Deviance
Despite the theoretical and empirical criticisms directed against it, the labeling perspective has generated a substantial body of empirical research that, taken as a whole, provides moderate support for its central propositions. Farrington (1977), using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, found that public labeling (defined as court conviction) led to increased self-reported deviance and that repeated labeling produced greater deviance amplification — findings directly consistent with the labeling perspective. Kaplan and Johnson (1991), analyzing survey data from students in 36 junior high schools in Houston, found both a direct effect of negative sanctions on later deviance and a mediating effect of deviant peer associations — indicating that labels propel individuals into delinquent peer groups that reinforce and amplify criminal behavior, consistent with Tannenbaum’s (1938) original formulation.
Ward and Tittle (1993) examined the competing predictions of deterrence and labeling theories, finding that sanctions had a significant effect on labeling, that labeling was linked to negative self-appraisal, and that negative self-appraisal exerted a direct influence on secondary deviance. They concluded that their results supported labeling theory somewhat better than deterrence theory but that labeling was not a necessary condition for secondary deviance, because initial deviance and sanctions also had strong direct effects.
Link, Cullen, Struening, Shrout, and Dohrenwend (1989) examined the effect of labels on individuals with mental disorders and their social support networks. Studying 164 patients and 429 community residents, they found that individuals with mental health diagnoses are devalued and discriminated against because of their stigmatized status, and that the stigma affected patients even independent of psychopathology and biological variables. Link and colleagues argued that in the course of socialization, individuals develop negative conceptions of what it means to be labeled as mentally ill and thus form beliefs about how others will view and treat someone with that status. Treatment and time spent in mental clinics help to solidify labels, helping individuals to more readily internalize the deviant identity. Their findings demonstrate that labeling processes operate in the domain of mental illness in ways that are broadly consistent with the labeling perspective’s predictions about criminal behavior.
Heimer and Matsueda (1994) used National Youth Survey data to explore the effects of symbolic interactionist concepts — role-taking and role commitment — on delinquency. Their structural equation model yielded several important findings: structural and neighborhood variables had indirect effects on delinquency through role-taking variables; delinquency was also a function of differential association variables, including delinquent peers and attitudes toward the legal code; strong ties to conventional institutions reduced delinquency; and labeling played a modest but statistically significant role in predicting secondary deviance. Their research illustrates the potential for integrating labeling concepts with social control and social learning theories within a symbolic interactionist framework.
Bernburg and Krohn (2003) provided particularly compelling evidence for the structural consequences of labeling, demonstrating that juvenile justice intervention decreased the odds of high school graduation and that reduced educational attainment had a direct impact on employment, which served as an intermediary to adult crime. Their research shifted the empirical focus from the social-psychological mechanism of identity transformation to the structural mechanism of blocked opportunities — a development that has become increasingly influential in contemporary labeling research.
Informal Labeling
Research on informal labeling has provided additional support for the perspective’s core propositions. Matsueda (1992) found that parental appraisals of children as “rule-breakers” significantly predicted delinquent self-concepts and subsequent behavior, even after controlling for prior delinquency. Triplett and Jarjoura (1994), using National Youth Survey data, found that negative parental labels weakened children’s attachment to school and increased involvement with delinquent peer groups, which in turn led to the adoption of delinquent beliefs. Liu (2000) found a direct effect of parental labeling on juvenile propensity to engage in deviance, though peer group activities also exerted independent effects regardless of parental labels.
Adams, Johnson, and Evans (1998) examined racial differences in the effects of labeling, finding that members of racial and ethnic minority groups were more affected by informal labels (from peer networks and community) while whites were more affected by formal labels (from the criminal justice system). This finding is consistent with Becker’s (1963) argument that the credibility of the labeler matters: minority individuals may not view formal labelers (police, courts) as legitimate, particularly when formal labels are perceived as reflecting racial bias rather than genuine wrongdoing.
Labels and Life-Course Consequences
The most important contemporary development in labeling research has been the integration of labeling concepts with life-course criminology. Research by Sampson and Laub (1997) demonstrated that incarceration has significant negative effects on subsequent employment stability and marital attachment — two of the key “turning points” that life-course theory identifies as facilitators of desistance from crime. By disrupting the social bonds and conventional opportunities on which desistance depends, incarceration may paradoxically increase the probability of continued offending — precisely the outcome that labeling theory predicts.
This life-course perspective on labeling effects has generated a new wave of research examining the “collateral consequences” of criminal conviction — the legal and social barriers to employment, housing, education, voting, and civic participation that accompany a criminal record. These consequences are extensive and pervasive: job applications routinely inquire about criminal history, and applicants who disclose convictions are substantially less likely to be hired; in many states, individuals with felony convictions are barred from occupations in education, health care, security, and other fields; public housing authorities may deny admission to individuals with criminal records; federal student loan eligibility may be restricted; and felony disenfranchisement laws in some states permanently strip convicted individuals of the right to vote. These collateral consequences function as structural labels — formal, legally sanctioned barriers that restrict access to the conventional roles and opportunities through which individuals construct law-abiding identities. Their cumulative effect is to create a permanent class of social outsiders whose criminal records follow them indefinitely, foreclosing the turning points and social bonds on which desistance depends.
The structural labeling perspective thus extends classical labeling theory’s emphasis on identity transformation to encompass a broader mechanism of cumulative disadvantage: formal labels not only alter self-concept but also restrict access to the material and social resources needed to sustain a conventional lifestyle. Becker (1963) anticipated this mechanism when he discussed the importance of the deviant subculture — observing that once a person is submerged in a deviant subculture, associations and contacts with the nondeviant world diminish or are closed completely. Contemporary research has confirmed and elaborated this insight, demonstrating that the structural consequences of labeling may be as important as, or even more important than, the social-psychological consequences in explaining the persistence of criminal behavior after formal intervention.
Table 3. Summary of Key Empirical Findings on Labeling
| Study | Sample / Data | Key Finding | Support for Labeling? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foster, Dinitz, & Reckless (1972) | 196 boys, longitudinal | Limited perceived stigma; cumulative effects for repeat contacts | Weak/partial |
| Farrington (1977) | Cambridge Study | Court conviction increased self-reported deviance; repeated labeling amplified effects | Strong |
| Kaplan & Johnson (1991) | 36 junior high schools, Houston | Direct effect of negative sanctions on deviance; mediated by deviant peers | Strong |
| Matsueda (1992) | National Youth Survey | Parental “rule-breaker” appraisals predicted delinquent self-concept and behavior | Strong |
| Ward & Tittle (1993) | 390 university students | Sanctions → labeling → negative self-appraisal → secondary deviance | Moderate |
| Triplett & Jarjoura (1994) | National Youth Survey | Negative parental labels weakened school bonds; increased delinquent peer association | Moderate |
| Adams et al. (1998) | National Youth Survey | Racial differences: minorities more affected by informal labels, whites by formal | Moderate |
| Bernburg & Krohn (2003) | Rochester Youth Development Study | Juvenile justice intervention reduced graduation odds; blocked employment → adult crime | Strong |
Conclusion
The labeling perspective occupies a unique and essential position within criminological theory. By directing attention to the social processes through which certain individuals come to be defined as criminal and to the consequences of that definition for their subsequent behavior, identity, and life chances, the labeling approach addresses dimensions of the crime problem that etiological theories — however sophisticated — cannot reach. Its central insight — that the social response to crime can produce more crime rather than less — remains as relevant today as when Tannenbaum first articulated it in 1938, and the empirical evidence accumulated over the past six decades provides moderate to strong support for the proposition that formal and informal labels contribute to the persistence and amplification of criminal behavior.
The labeling perspective functions most effectively as a bridge between consensus theories of criminality (which focus on the causes of individual offending) and critical theories (which focus on the role of power, inequality, and institutional authority in the construction of crime). No other criminological theory occupies this bridging function, and the perspective’s ability to illuminate the social construction of crime, the politics of criminal law enforcement, and the iatrogenic effects of criminal justice processing makes it indispensable for a complete understanding of the crime problem.
The fragmented character of the labeling perspective — its development across multiple decades by multiple scholars, its resistance to formalization as a testable theory, and its conceptual imprecision on key questions — remains a limitation. But the perspective’s enduring contribution lies not in its formal precision but in its foundational insight: that crime is not merely a behavior to be explained but a social status to be conferred, and that the conferral of that status has consequences that no theory of crime can afford to ignore.
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