Effects of Official Intervention on Later Offending in the Rochester Youth Development Study

Throughout its extensive history, labeling theory has experienced its share of popularity, as well as disenchantment among criminologists and deviance scholars. While enjoying its intellectual peak in the 1960s, the perspective’s early developments can be traced back to the 1930s. By the 1980s the approach had received sustained and severe criticisms aimed both at its lack of theoretical specificity and empirical support (Hirschi, 1980; Tittle, 1980). In recent years, however, there has been a revived interest in the perspective.