ABSTRACT
Social constructionism explores the ways that individuals, through social interaction, assign meaning to the world around them. Specifically, social constructionism focuses on understanding how certain social phenomena come to be accepted as reality. Berger and Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality is the foundational American work on sociological constructionism. The social constructionist perspective informs much of the research on deviance and social problems. By rejecting objective definitions of a crime, the social constructionist is able to focus on the process through which certain troubling conditions or behaviours come to be defined as crimes. A further key element of the social constructionist approach to crime involves examining how individuals are processed through the criminal justice system. Criminal-justice workers may be subject to various external pressures: activists, experts, the media, politicians and victims all may call for changes in how crime is handled.
