Maneuvering the labelling status: Life stories of juvenile delinquents in adulthood transitions

Abstract

Traditional labelling theorists contend that acquisition of a delinquent status can be problematic for some group of individuals who aged out of the criminal justice system as they progressed through adulthood. Using a qualitative research design, this paper addresses the question of how labeling explains persistence of crime over an individual's life course by tracking and exploring the lived experiences of 23 juvenile delinquents who have persisted and desisted from crime and were once committed to the Senior Boys Correctional Centre (SBCC) in Accra. The participants shared their life stories on how their acquisition of a delinquent status (labelling) impacted on their transformation. The narratives generated from their pattern of responses depart from the theoretical underlying assumptions of traditional labelling scholars, Lemert (1957), Becker (1963) and Goffman (1963). The findings suggest that labelling per se does not necessarily explain persistence of crime over all individual's life course as the narratives frequently project voices of juvenile delinquents who manage their delinquent status in the face negative societal reactions. The study therefore emphasized the need for criminal justice experts, correctional service providers and other private institutions to incorporate social support systems and cognitive behavourial treatment into their broader policy frameworks and agenda towards the reformation of criminals.