ABSTRACT
By promoting the idea that offenders have a limited capacity to express themselves to authority, we are encouraged to see their subjective accounts of their actions as less valid than those of authority-holders. This is a perspective strongly countered by labelling theorists such as Howard Becker, who argued that it is the task of the social researcher to give voice to the ‘underdog’ in the face of more than adequate representation of the account of ‘superordinate groups’. The essentially predestined actor model ‘correctionalist’ stance implicit in the work of Turk is illustrated by his view that deviant subcultures should be forcibly broken up by the authorities in order to coerce deviants back into an integrated consensus (Turk, 1969). This should happen apparently, regardless of whether or not the individuals concerned see such integration to be in their interests or not.
