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Thomas Langan

Dr Laura Backstrom

SYP 3110

24 February 2019

Response Paper #3

1. When discussing the concept of the labeling theory it is crucial to understand the seven stages

to becoming labeled deviant. While listening to the podcast on the NPR website, the cases of

both Tara Simmons and Shon Hopwood involve some stage of the process in which one is

labeled deviant. Stage one of this process involves public identification. The individual can be

identified by one or a combination of groups, either through formal official means or informal/

unofficial means. Some of the examples of how the public identifies someone as deviant is

through the media. This includes newspaper, television, local news. Another is appearance, the

way they dress or look puts you in a position where your deviance is obvious. Tattoos, offensive

symbols like swastikas are examples of a perceived deviant appearance. Actions/ behaviors can

reveal a deviant label in an individual by labeling yourself as a deviant person. An example of

this would be an occupy wall street protestor or a rioter in response to a national tragedy. Shon

Hopwood would be an example of public identification of a deviant person through official

agents of social control. These agents of social control would include police, courts, prison

system. This example of public identification applies to Shon’s case because it was not until the

FBI arrested him at the Double Tree hotel that he was sent to prison for 12 years, labeling him as

a felon. In the aspect of labels and names, Shon would be name called formally, as the FBI

arrested him.
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In stage two, people think differently about the deviant. Retrospective Reinterpretation is an

aspect of the second stage. It involves society reinterpreting someone’s past based on their new

deviant label and status. Retrospective Reinterpretation describes the innately human process that

we use when given new information. The case of Tara Simmons highlights the concept of

Retrospective Interpretation. Tara Simmons is a hardworking mother of her son Devon, who she

had at 15. Tara endured a troubled past. She was abducted by a man and forced into prostitution,

was the daughter of a father and mother who were drug addicts and grew up in an environment

of violence. She had some troubles with the law and was labeled a “perpetrator of crime”. She

was involved in physical fights and shoplifting at an early age and was eventually charged with

the conspiracy to commit assault when a gang she new of beat up a man who allegedly raped her.

She suffered through cycles of addiction, lies, and crime. Tara finally decided to fully commit to

starting over and living a fulfilling, productive life. This came after a 2-year sentence for selling

drugs with her then boyfriend. She heard about Shon’s story of becoming a lawyer after going

through a troubled past. His story gave her much needed inspiration as she started volunteering

and started a non-profit civil survival organization. The next step in pursuing her dream of

practicing law was to appear in front of the board of character and fitness for the Washington

State Bar. The committee was immediately skeptical of her as she was an ex-felon. The

committee decided not to clear her as they were unconvinced she had changed, viewing her old

records of crime as indicators of her present character.

In stage three, the person develops a “spoiled identity”. Spoiled identity indicates a damaged

reputation. This spoiled identity becomes a master status. For example, someone might be

labeled as “the cheater”, “the plagiarizer”. The master status describes some characteristic of a

person that overrides all other features of the persons identity. The primary roles that most
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people have such as being a mother, a worker, a student, an activist, all come second in the eyes

of society. The master status describes the situation that Tara was in. Although she had trouble

with the law, she showed patterns of hard work between those bouts of addiction and crime. For

example, within six years she got her nursing degree and a job in the E.R. During that same time,

she got married and moved into her first house by 22. Tara has clearly shown patterns of hard

work, focus, and dedication in between her self-destructive patterns. Her spoiled identity, or

damaged reputation of being a felon, becomes her master status, affecting her ability to practice

law as she was not cleared by the board of character and fitness, as mentioned before. The board

of character and fitness was clearly focused on her Auxiliary Characteristics, or the traits that

people associate with our master status. These traits are often stereotypical and may not be true

of the person. An example of this would be the traits that are often associated with a drug addict,

such as Tara at one point. These traits often include laziness, dishonesty, lower class, etc. Using

common sense, we can figure out that these are generalizations and although they might have

been true at one point in a person’s life, they should not reflect the individual’s status.

Stage four involves exclusion from Non-Deviants. After people begin to think of the person

differently, normative individuals begin to exclude them. These individuals try to avoid a stigma

that is imposed on a person despite the absence of the qualifying trait or behavior, or what

Goffman refers to as Courtesy Stigma. The best term to describe this phenomenon is “guilty by

association”. For example, when Shon was arrested for the bank robberies, those from his town

blamed his parents for his behavior. They couldn’t understand how an innocent child from a

similar background as them could be responsible for such a deviant act. Folks within his

community in Nebraska targeted his parents, saying that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Since his parents were so close to him, we see they were targeted with the Courtesy Stigma.
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Stage five involves inclusion among deviants. In this stage, the person begins to be excluded

from non-deviant groups and they begin to gravitate toward, and be included, in deviant groups.

There are two key components in this stage. The first is that the individual joins a group of

people who have already been excluded. The second part of this stage is that the excluded group

creates their own group. The person begins to engage in the activities of the deviant subculture.

They begin to buy into the meanings that group attributes to that deviant behavior/status. An

example of this stage would be Tara becoming a meth user and drug dealer with her boyfriend.

She began to buy into the idea that she was unworthy because of her criminal history. She also

exhibited a pattern of anger in which she got caught up in gang activity after her alleged rape.

The patterns of crime, addiction, and prostitution propelled her into these deviant subgroups.

The sixth stage involves more people treating you as deviant. After you develop a spoiled

identity and have a deviant master status, people reinforce your deviant status through the ways

they interact with you. An example of this stage would be an ex-convict who can’t get a job

because they have committed a felony. Tara had a difficult time getting work after she was

convicted of conspiracy to commit assault.

Finally, in the seventh stage, you begin to regard yourself as deviant. You begin to see yourself

the way society see’s you. These behaviors highlight Charles Horton Cooley’s Looking Glass

Self in which we imagine how others see us, we make an evaluation of it, and then we develop

an emotion based on this evaluation. An example of this stage based on the NPR documentary is

when Tara got out of jail the second time. She realized that she needed to improve her self-image

and began to be proactive about changing her life. She sought therapy on her own, started a civil

service organization, and actively pursued a law career. She knew that society put a label on her

and used that concept of self to improve her current condition.

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2. Based on the information presented in the NPR podcast, patterns can be used to predict a

person’s future behavior but only to a certain extent. If we examine different structures within

society, we can make accurate predictions that those who are disadvantaged will be more likely

to be disadvantaged as they become older. However, everyone’s path in life is based off

randomness as much or if not more than circumstance. Professor of sociology at Princeton

Mathew Salganik, thought it would be interesting to take the techniques from computer experts

in Silicon Valley and apply them to real world issues instead of the commercial world. Mathew

discovered that he could stage a massive competition to predict things within a child’s life such

as their gpa, and which child would succeed. He enlisted the help of another sociologist who

started the Fragile Families study. This study focused on 5000 children and their mothers and

fathers in 20 different locations across the U.S. An example of one of the questions asked was

“Have you picked out a name for the baby yet?” The information gathered by this sociologist

contributed her data to professor Salganik. Professor Salganik asked scientists to open programs

to search for patterns that predicted what happened in the actual lives of actual 15-year old’s.

Within this study, scientists tried opening programs that would analyze new and already existing

patterns. Matt and his team purposely held back data to stage a reveal. They wanted to match the

real data of the sociologist to the predictions of the computer. The outcome of the study

showcases how unpredictable the lives of people are. The data shown was described as squatted

bars crowded around the bottom of the screen. The graph was a vast white space. Duncan Watts,

who works for Microsoft in computational social science, found the same exact pattern, a lot of

white space. He found that unpredictability and randomness were significant aspects within

analyzing a person’s future. The idea of randomness is a concept that humans are uncomfortable

with. As a society, we feel that there needs to be an explanation for our future’s and how we end
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up in life. The idea of things happening for a reason gives us the confidence to go out each day

and try to improve our standings.

https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=597779735