@article{ref1,
title="The Declining Significance of Delinquent Labels in Disadvantaged Urban Communities1",
journal="Sociological forum",
year="2008",
author="Hirschfield, Paul J.",
volume="23",
number="3",
pages="575-601",
abstract="Labeling theory posits that formal sanctions contribute negative defining information to a youth’s reputation and that novice delinquents internalize these negative appraisals. Reflected appraisals and social rejection, in turn, reinforce delinquency. In the context of severely disadvantaged inner-city communities—where arrests have become a normal and expected ritual of male adolescence, and official labelers and labels have less legitimacy—the alleged preconditions for a “labeling” effect of an arrest are generally not met. Retrospective, personal interviews with 20 minority youth (aged 18–20) from high-poverty urban neighborhoods, who experienced at least one juvenile arrest, suggest that juvenile arrests typically carry little stigma and do little discernible harm to self-concept or social relationships. Micro-level labeling theory is an inadequate framework to understand the social impact of mass criminal justice intervention in inner-city communities. Whereas the individual social psychological impact of the official labeling process has weakened, the mass criminalization of inner-city African-American youth has exacted collective costs in terms of social exclusion and diminished social expectations.<p />",
language="",
issn="0884-8971",
doi="10.1111/j.1573-7861.2008.00077.x",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1573-7861.2008.00077.x"
}