Labelling theory
What people say about and to someone has the possibility to affect them for a lifetime. Over and over again the Bible speaks on the issue of watching your words and how the tongue is a fire that needs taming. For instance, in James 3:7, “And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, a and set on fire by hell” (English Standard Version [ESV]). Therefore, when the topic shifts to delinquents and whether or not labeling the youth will affect their delinquency, I believe that it does to a large extent. In an interesting study, teachers were told that some students were geniuses while others trouble. In reality both tested the same, but a year later the students who had been classified as academically “superior” were preforming much higher than the “trouble” students even though they had both been at the same IQ level previously (Alter, 2010). The outcome of this study should be no surprise, honestly. When you expect more from someone, they usually rise to meet that expectation.
Many see the labeling issue as a problem because before a delinquent gets labeled as a delinquent, they have no social category that they are confined to, but as soon as they receive the title of delinquent, the youth is now stuck in that category (Bartollas, Schmalleger, & Turner, 2019). In many ways, the child must now act in this manner because that is the group they have been placed into.
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