Deviance Amplification Research Articles

The Clothes Maketh the Cult

The Clothes Maketh the Cult

The Secret Nexus. A Case Study of Deviant Masons, Mafia and Corruption in Italy

Abstract This paper wishes to explore some characteristics of the relevant interconnections between mafias/mafiosi and masonic lodges/masons in the Italian context. The paper sets out to study these interconnections from a social science perspective rooted in sociological and neo-institutional studies of organised crime and mafias, but also in criminological approaches to social constructionism, in the form of symbols and narratives. We will present a case study to reflect on the roles that (deviant) masons can assume in contexts where both mafias’ and personal, political, or economic interests are at play. The case study shows how masonic alliances can augment networking and enforcing capabilities: we call this process masonic deviance amplification. Additionally, the case study confirms the constitutive power that narratives around the masonic world hold today in the Italian context.

The policing of cuckooing in ‘County Lines’ drug dealing: An ethnographic study of an amplification spiral

Abstract Responding to cases of ‘cuckooing’, where drug dealers take over other people’s homes, has become a significant policing activity in the United Kingdom. Drawing on ethnographic data and the deviancy amplification spiral model, this article theorizes how police responses to cuckooing emerged, developed and became established. Five stages of the spiral are outlined: identifying cuckooing as a problem; demonstrating a response; spreading the problem; making it other people’s problem too; the establishment of a policing priority. The article advances amplification theory by considering it from within the setting of the police and the contemporary drug supply context of County Lines. It concludes by stressing the importance of critically considering the dynamic relationship between the police and their drug market targets.

Mothering after Moomba: Labelling, secondary stigma and maternal efficacy in the post-settlement context

Parenting can impact young people’s justice system involvement but there is a scarcity of research that examines how parenting practices, specifically mothering, are influenced by labelling processes. Accordingly, this article considers how the labelling of young people from forced migration backgrounds as criminals impacted mothering and maternal efficacy during a ‘law and order crisis’ in Melbourne, Australia. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with mothers and young people of South Sudanese heritage, we illustrate how this hostile social climate generated secondary stigma, and amplified anxieties and concerns about inclusivity and belonging. The research advances our theoretical understanding of parental control and parental efficacy in the post-settlement context by bringing the gendered experiences of mothers as providers of supervision and support into focus. It suggests labelling may undermine maternal efficacy and exacerbate intercultural and intergenerational tensions, but that community involvement may support parents and mitigate the risk of deviance amplification.

Criminal Justice Contact Across Generations: Assessing the intergenerational Labeling Hypothesis.

The present study assesses the intergenerational labeling hypothesis and examines whether the relationship between a child's involuntary contact with the police and subsequent offending depends on parental arrest history (and its timing in the life course of the child) and parent sex. Using data from 312 parent-child dyads from the Rochester Youth Development Study and Rochester Intergenerational Study, generalized linear regression models estimate the main and interactive effects of a child's involuntary contact and parental arrest history on subsequent delinquency as well as potential mechanisms for deviance amplification. Main effects are consistent with labeling theory and moderation analyses reveal that the impact of involuntary contact on subsequent delinquency depends on parental arrest history. More specifically, contact with the police on subsequent offending is greater when the focal parent has an arrest history, regardless of when the most recent arrest occurs in the life course of the child. However, some differences in the magnitude of the exacerbating effect of recent parental arrest emerged. Results also speak to potential mechanisms across mother-child and father-child dyads with respect to deviance amplification. This research supports the life-course principles of "linked lives" and "timing in lives" and their application to labeling theory in an intergenerational context. To reduce deviance amplification, special attention should be paid to youth who experience a police contact in the context of a parental arrest history.

Antisocial media and algorithmic deviancy amplification: Analysing the id of Facebook’s technological unconscious

Fight pages are user-generated Facebook pages dedicated to hosting footage of street fights and other forms of bare-knuckle violence. In this article, I argue that these pages exemplify an emergent and under-researched online phenomenon that may be termed antisocial media: participatory webpages that aggregate, publically host, and sympathetically curate footage of criminalized acts. To properly apprehend the implications of antisocial media for the mediation, distribution, and consumption of footage of criminalized acts, we must be attentive to the specificities of their architecture, their affordances and, increasingly, their personalization algorithms, which tailor the content a user receives to reflect their inferred preferences. This article therefore analyses the ‘technological unconscious’ of Facebook to demonstrate how the interactivity and personalization of the site’s information landscapes have the potential to reinforce or amplify fight page users’ often-harmful attitudes towards violence.

Exploring the sanction–crime relationship through a lens of procedural justice

PurposeResearch overwhelmingly explores “kinds of people” as moderators of the sanction–crime relationship (Piquero et al., 2011). This work, on the other hand, focuses on the sanction experience and draws upon the procedural justice doctrine and key ideas in Sherman's (1993, 2014) defiance theory to test whether individual evaluations of procedural justice condition the effect of legal sanctions on subsequent criminal behavior. MethodsUsing a sample of serious adolescent offenders, generalized linear regression models with interaction terms are employed to test whether the effect of legal sanctions on involvement, variety, and frequency of offending is conditioned by procedural justice. Significant interaction effects of legal sanction and procedural justice are illustrated with graphical methods. ResultsResults suggest that evaluations of procedural justice condition the sanction–crime relationship. Sanctions lead to a higher likelihood of offending among individuals with low evaluations of procedural justice. However, among those with higher evaluations of procedural justice, there is no significant relationship between sanctions and subsequent offending. ConclusionIncreasing perceptions of procedural justice reduces unintended consequences of sanctioning experiences. In an era of heightened focus on interactions between citizens and criminal justice professionals, enhancing procedural justice is not only ethical but also protects against deviance amplification processes.

Explaining fraud deviancy attenuation in the United Kingdom

Fraud is one of the most costly crimes to society. There have been a number of studies documenting the low priority and resources allocated to fraud, but there has been little attempt to conceptualise the processes which lead to this. This paper develops a concept that is the antithesis to deviancy amplification, deviancy attenuation, to examine why the level of resources and interest in fraud are not commensurate with the size of the problem. The paper also develops two further reverse concepts to further explain attenuation: de-labelling and immoral phlegmatism. Empirical evidence is offered in the form of case studies, statistical and survey data to support the arguments presented. The paper also illustrates these arguments through the comparison of the response to benefits fraud in the United Kingdom, which can be considered the one exception amongst frauds where labelling, moral panics and deviancy amplification occurs; explained by some Marxist commentators as a consequence of it being a lower class crime actively pursued by the powerful.

The unintended consequences of targeting: young people's lived experiences of social and emotional learning interventions

In the past twenty years there has been a proliferation of targeted school‐based social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions. However, the lived experience of young peoples’ participation is often elided, while the potential for interventions to confer unintended and even adverse effects remains under‐theorised and empirically under‐explored. This paper reports findings from a qualitative case study of students’ participation in a targeted SEL intervention, the Student Assistance Programme. Data was generated with four secondary schools in Wales, with 41 students (age 12–14) taking part in the study. Findings indicate that students’ identification for participation in the intervention and their reaction to the group composition may lead to harmful effects. Four iatrogenic processes were identified: (1) identification may be experienced as negative labelling resulting in rejection of the school (2) the label of SEL failure may serve as a powerful form of intervention capital, being employed to enhance students’ status amongst peers. Possession of this capital is contingent on continued resistance of the intervention (3) targeting of discrete friendship groups may lead to the construction of intervention ‘outsiders’ as students seek safety through the reification of pre‐exiting relationships (4) students may seek to renegotiate positioning within targeted friendships groups by ‘bragging’ about and reinforcing anti‐school activities, leading to deviancy amplification.

Do school disciplinary policies have positive social impacts? Examining the attenuating effects of school policies on the relationship between personal and peer delinquency

PurposeEmpirical research has yet to demonstrate that strict school disciplinary policies deter student misconduct. However, underlying the null and negative effects observed in prior research may be competing social impacts. What is missing from prior research is an acknowledgement that the deviance amplification effects of criminogenic risk factors may be partially offset by the general deterrence effects of strict school sanctions. MethodsUsing data from the school administrator questionnaire, the in-school interview, and the in-home interview from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study employs logistic hierarchical models to investigate whether strict school sanctions condition the relationship between personal and peer smoking, drinking, and fighting. ResultsResults indicate that the effects of peer smoking, drinking, and fighting on corresponding respondent delinquency are attenuated in schools with strict sanction policies for these behaviors. ConclusionsResults suggest that school policies can aid in preventing crime in unanticipated ways, for example, by reducing the crime-inducing effects of having delinquent peers. Prior research may therefore be unintentionally discounting the general deterrence effects of school disciplinary policies by neglecting the moderating mechanisms through which these policies operate.

THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF BEING STOPPED OR ARRESTED: AN EXPLORATION OF THE LABELING MECHANISMS THROUGH WHICH POLICE CONTACT LEADS TO SUBSEQUENT DELINQUENCY

Much debate has taken place regarding the merits of aggressive policing strategies such as “stop, question, and frisk.” Labeling theory suggests that police contact may actually increase delinquency because youth who are stopped or arrested are excluded from conventional opportunities, adopt a deviant identity, and spend time with delinquent peers. But, few studies have examined the mechanisms through which police contact potentially enhances offending. The current study uses four waves of longitudinal data collected from middle‐school students (N = 2,127) in seven cities to examine the deviance amplification process. Outcomes are compared for youth with no police contact, those who were stopped by police, and those who were arrested. We use propensity score matching to control for preexisting differences among the three groups. Our findings indicate that compared with those with no contact, youth who are stopped or arrested report higher levels of future delinquency and that social bonds, deviant identity formation, and delinquent peers partially mediate the relationship between police contact and later offending. These findings suggest that programs targeted at reducing the negative consequences of police contact (i.e., poor academic achievement, deviant identity formation, and delinquent peer associations) might reduce the occurrence of secondary deviance.

Mad about the Boy

Mad about the Boy

Paint on their lips

This article describes structured responses to young Indigenous people whose paint-sniffing in Brisbane attracts public attention. It gives an emic account of the sniffers’ responses to these processes and argues that paint-sniffing expresses their alienated and marginalized social status and is part of an encoded revolt against White cultural authority and its imposed norms. Foucault’s view of freedom as the capacity to act and question the taken-forgrantedness of one’s milieu (Dreyfus, 2004), and his notion of the body as the locus of power and control, are used to examine unequal power relations described here. Cohen’s (2002) moral panic and Young’s (1971a, 1971b) deviance amplification frameworks are used to examine the reactions of the police and of ordinary good citizens. We conclude that while dominant responses to paint-sniffing in Queensland rid inner Brisbane of paint-sniffing, they increase the young people’s alienation and marginalization from society, thus reproducing the social conditions that lead to sniffing.

Psychopathologies and the Attribution of Charisma: A Critical Introduction to the Psychology of Charisma and the Explanation of Violence in New Religious Movements

ABSTRACT: Charismatic authority is widely held to be a defining mark of new religious movements (NRMs). It is also thought to play a crucial role in the onset of violence in some NRMs. We have begun to understand both the psychological and the social structural dynamices of this mode of leadership and how, under specific social conditions, it contributes to a dangerous cycle of deviance amplification. This paper presents a synthetic and critical analysis of several different theories of the charismatic bond. The central concern is why people attribute charisma to some leaders, and hence grant them special authority over their lives. The theories examined help to explain why charismatic relationships form, but they do not allow us to differentiate sufficiently between benign and potentially dangerous types of charismatic bonds, let alone how one may become the other. Scholars of NRMs need to take a closer look at the observable social psychological processes that prompt the attribution of charisma to a leader. A better grasp of these processes, it is argued, would help us understand how the mismanagement of charismatic authority has led some religious groups to see violence as an appropriate response to their concerns.

Crime and the Dialectics of Inclusion/Exclusion: Some Comments on Yar and Penna

Let me start by welcoming such a thoughtful and meticulous criticism of The Exclusive Society, which touches not only on the book itself, but raises some important questions with regards to current criminological thinking.1 My first port of call will concern the central notion of a transition from an inclusive to an exclusive society and the associated binary notion of an included and an excluded population. With regards to such distinctions, I am portrayed as being excessively dualistic—accused of over-heightening the contrast whilst carrying an overly homogenized portrait of both the past and the present, and playing down continuities. I became interested in the phenomenon of exclusion many years ago, whilst writing The Drugtakers (1971). At that time, Levi-Strauss' redolent distinction between anthro pophagie and anthropoemic societies—ones which consumed deviants and ones that expelled them—attracted great interest in the burgeoning fields of sociology of deviance and anti-psychiatry (see, e.g. Cooper 1967). It fitted well with concerns about deviancy amplification (vicious circles of exclusion), moral panics, the stereotype of youth and the criminal, etc. There were many merits about such a discourse; the focus on the criminal justice system and other institutions of social control as exclusionary agents was of great relevance. (Is it not extraordinary how current official policy documents on Social Exclusion completely ignore this aspect?) But there were drawbacks: the dual ism between anthropophagie and anthropoemic societies was too sharp and there was no doubt that inclusive societies and inclusionary processes were seen as advantageous, whereas modernity was cast as anthropoemic and retrograde. Returning to this theme over 30 years later, I was much less sanguine about the either/or nature of inclusion/ exclusion and any attempt to valorize either type of society as progressive or retrograde. I was also much more sceptical as to the success of such processes of exclusion. And the literature provided fruitful cautions: David Cooper had stressed that both inclusionary and exclusionary institutions exist in any given society, whilst Stan Cohen, in Visions of Social Control (1985), noted that different sections of the population can be subject to predominant forces of inclusion or exclusion. Above all, I was guided by Zygmunt Bauman's discussion of Levi-Strauss' dichotomy in Life in Fragments (1995), where he argues that phagic (inclusivist) and emic (exclusivist) 'strategies' characterize all societies:

Beyond Risk Theory: Suicidal Behavior in its Social and Epidemiological Context

The effect of exposure to risk factors for suicidal behavior varies from place to place and from period to period. This may be due to contextual influences, which arise if individuals' suicide risk depends not only on their personal exposure to risk or protective factors, but also on how these are distributed in their social, cultural, economic, or even physical environments. There has been relatively little explicit attention in suicide research for such contextual influences even though they are an important component of the cross-level bias, which can arise when aggregate level associations are assumed to also apply in individuals and vice versa. Contextual effects are conceptually related to the issues of social selection vs. causation, population density, and network effects. Because of a lack of prospective multilevel research, it is unclear exactly which mechanisms underlie the phenomenon that the distribution of risk factors in an individual's context may affect their suicide risk above and beyond their personal exposure. A number of mechanisms, like deviancy amplification, formalization of restraints, and buffering effects of social support are proposed. Contextual effects may result in a concentration of suicide risk in persons when the risk factors they are exposed to become rare--whether spontaneously or through focused prevention. This has important but mostly overlooked implications for population-based prevention strategies.

Juvenile Violence as a Social Problem. Trends, Media Attention and Societal Response

This article challenges the view that juvenile violence is rapidly increasing in Western Europe. The studies portraying such an increase are far too reliant on official crime statistics. In countries where alternative data are available, these often present a different picture. It is thus possible that the way violence is viewed in society and the subsequent response to juvenile offending have changed, leading to a deviancy amplification spiral. This hypothesis is examined using results from two Swedish studies, the one on changes in the media treatment of violence, the other on changes in schools' reaction to violence. The concluding discussion highlights the role of the media as actor and arena respectively in the creation of this altered reaction.

SHAME AND PROPHECY: APPROACHES PAST AND PRESENT

AbstractShame is widely discussed both in the literature of psychology (in contradistinction to guilt) and social anthropology (in binary opposition with honour, where it is associated particularly with women and public loss of status). Recently, the honour–shame model has been used as heuristic pattern for analysing biblical texts. The focus has been primarily on the patriarchal narratives and Deuteronomistic history; yet the preponderance of shame vocabulary occurs in the prophetic corpus. Here the model proves to be ill fitting. One reason is that it tends to apply to static societies, whereas insofar as social contexts are implied in the Prophets these tend to be depicted as marked by turmoil and chaos attending the exile. In the absence of discussions using models constructed for the purposes of examining situations of social upheaval (such as revolutions or millenarian eruptions) three new approaches are proposed and discussed with regard to Ezekiel 16. The purpose is to probe their suitability for elucidating this baffling text as well as to redress the paucity of prophetic shame studies. The first examines antilanguages; the second grotesque language and the third, deviance amplification.

Reflected Appraisals, Parental Labeling, and Delinquency: Specifying a Symbolic Interactionist Theory

This article draws on behavioral principles of George Herbert Mead and other symbolic interactionists to specify a theory of the self to explain delinquent behavior. The theoretical framework builds on Mead's analysis of the social act, symbolic interactionists' specification of the self as a reflection of appraisals made by significant others, and labeling theorists' notions of dramatization of evil, deviance amplification, and secondary deviance. This integrated framework is tested with a causal model of the causes and consequences of reflected appraisals and delinquent behavior. The analysis provides general support for the theory. Reflected appraisals of self are substantially affected by parental appraisals and prior delinquency; future delinquency is sustantially affected by reflected appraisals of self as a rule violator; and reflected appraisals mediate much of the effects on delinquency of parental appraisals, prior delinquency, and structural variables.

Formal Processing and Future Delinquency: Deviance Amplification as Selection Artifact

Does referring a case to juvenile court or diverting it affect a person's future delinquent/criminal behavior? Labeling theory suggests that it does, arguing that formal processing by the juvenile justice system is part of a deviance amplification process that ultimately results in increased criminal/delinquent activity. But critics point out that a higher rate of future offending among those referred to court, often interpreted as evidence supporting the deviance amplification argument, could be nothing more than a selection artifact. Specifically, those referred to juvenile court may have more attributes that are related to future offending than do those who are diverted from the system. Under this scenario, differences between these groups in later offending could simply reflect preexisting differences in criminal propensity. This article discusses approaches for testing the deviance amplification argument against the alternative hypothesis of a selection artifact.