Targeting, labelling and stigma: challenging the criminalisation of children and young people

By creating ‘outsiders’ … labelling invariably gives rise to repeat interventions of increasing intensity that … ultimately establish, consolidate, and/or confirm offender ‘identities’. Such ‘identities’ attract further intervention and/or negative reaction and so the process continues. (Goldson, 2010) As the above quote attests, labelling theorists recognise the harmful impact of formal system contact on the individual and contend that problems occur when members of society become intolerant towards the individual's offending, forming a ‘negative social reaction’, invoking damaging consequences for the ‘offender’ (ibid).