ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some readers about, and introduces others to, the “The Saints and the Roughnecks.” It discusses the extant research showing that applying criminal sanctions to youths results in increased delinquent involvement. The chapter explores the policy implications of the mounting evidence that criminal sanctions are criminogenic. Research increasingly is revealing that the dismissal of labeling as a cause of criminal conduct is a mistake. The perspective lost adherents in part because scholars pursued other frameworks and in part because of its obvious limitation that many youths enter crime prior to official labeling. The focus on societal reaction also led to the provocative thesis that labeling was the chief cause of stable or career crime, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy. The notion that crime is socially constructed and that criminal labels are differentially applied would continue as a major line of inquiry in the field.
