Crime Waves or Control Waves? A Recipe for Atheistic Statisticians

Abstract

The crucial proposition of the labelling perspective was that rather than crime being unquestionably generative of control, (maybe) ironically, control produced crime. Whilst tremendously influential however, the proposition has never been vigorously explored as part of a general theoretical structure. This gap may partly be explained by the overwhelming emphasis within labelling upon substantive specification, but mostly by the submerged epistemological hiatus which lay between Lemert’s conventional (i.e., causal) phraseology — ‘leads to’, ‘hypothesis’ — and the radical (i.e., interpretative) allegiances of those who followed Lemert into the brave new world of labelling.