lture of society as a whole to make them commit acts that are seen as deviant.
             Labelling theorists believe that a crime only becomes a crime when people say it is a crime. All the different social groups in our society actually make things become a crime because we make the rules that when broken become a crime. From the labelling perspective crime is not what someone does, 'but is a result of other people applying the rules to an offender'. We apply labels to help us to understand and work out behaviour and also a quick way of knowing what is going on around us.
             Labels are given to people, depending on how a situation is interpreted by who is observing the situation, e.g. in my family I have a brother who lives in a council house and who doesn't want to work. I also have a sister who has always worked hard, is financially better off, and owns her own home. Both may drink a bottle of wine in the middle of the week, brother is labelled an alcoholic and it's down to drinking wine that has resulted in him having no interest in getting a job, whereas in my twins case, it is acceptable she has had a hard day and is entitled to a few glasses of red in the evening. Both have shown the same behaviour but are labelled differently. In the same way they each may view it in one way and we see it in another way. 'Deviance is not a quality that lies in behaviour itself but in the interaction between the person who commits an act and those who respond to it'. So deviance comes about because of interactions between who could be a deviant and those in social control. So in social terms, thing we do can only be labelled when it has been seen or reported to have been seen, this is 'public exposure', this is when the process of stigmatisation happens (when the person gets a 'master status', which becomes more important than any other status they have) e.g. brother, father, friend may not be known as these but known or labelled a 'Drunk'. Thi...