Labeling Theory and the Scarlet Letter of Today

Reflections Digital Criminology

Being Mean Online and Cyber Crime

Broll and Huey (2015) point out that cyberbullying represents a gray area when it comes to criminal justice, legislation, policing, and prevention. Police prefer to address this matter through education, trying to teach young people and communities how to avoid cyberbullying—but they also do not see every case of cyberbullying as a police matter. Part of the issue here is that there is no substantial legislation that would define cyberbullying as a criminal offense. “Being mean” to someone online, in other words, is hard to define and hard to outlaw—but other questions do arise: such as—is someone engaging in stalking that is a legitimate threat to another person’s safety or privacy? Is someone engaging in abusive conduct online that is meant to harm the other person in a real way by, for example, getting the other person to commit suicide? These are real questions that need to be asked and should be addressed by law enforcement and legislators, because it is certainly the case that cyber bullying has led to suicides, violence, and invasions of privacy in the past. So how can police better address this matter?

On the other hand, society has become so sensitive that cancel culture has become a significant movement, and anytime anyone says anything to offend a group online that group might respond with a call for censorship, prosecution, or any other form of retribution: people are quick to lose jobs, careers, reputation, and status after being targeted by the cancel culture movement. So who is really bullying whom here? Does it not seem that in an attempt to eradicate bullies, the cancel culture movement has become a bully? How does one address this problem in the context of cyber bullying and cyber crime? Who should get to define what is permissible and what is off limits? This is a question I would like to look more into as it dovetails with earlier questions raised from the readings about the digital citizenship, e-crime, and victimization. Khoo (2021) argues that gender-based violence occurs on platforms like social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and others, and that these companies and their platforms need to be policed and that action needs to be taken to prevent or root out misogynistic words and actions by users of these platforms. She recommends platform liability models that would provide better protections for women—but to what extent should this kind of recommendation be resisted? How does one draw the line between being rude or being offensive, and being criminal or liable in the court of law? It seems that this attempt to criminalize meanness online is an encroachment on what others might call free speech rights. If people begin to feel they are being denied their rights, there might be pushback and an even worse outcome than before—and I think about what Prohibition did for the criminal world in the US in the 1920s. It really brought organized crime into existence—an unforeseen consequence of too much policing.

References

Broll, R., & Huey, L. (2015). “Just being mean to somebody isn’t a police matter”: Police

perspectives on policing cyberbullying. Journal of School Violence, 14(2), 155-176.

Khoo, C. (2021). Deplatforming misogyny. Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund

(LEAF).

Digital Evidence

Dodge (2018) examines the nature of digital evidence and the extent to which it can be used in the prosecution of sexual violence cases. The main idea is that digital evidence can help in these cases because it provides more context that investigators can draw upon to get over the “he-said-she-said” hurdle, but at the same time it doesn’t necessarily lead to any open and shut cases. Digital evidence can still be interpreted as part of the “he-said-she-said” narrative.

This raises a much larger question about how to think of digital evidence in the prosecution of crime. Does it come across as sufficient evidence that can be used in the court of law? The point that Dodge (2018) makes is rooted in feminist perspective, and it is that even if the digital evidence could provide witness testimony to sexual violence the nature of the criminal justice system is such that biases against women still prevail and thus the evidence is not often viewed as admissible.

Dodge (2018) cites a particular case and views it as one that gives hope for digital evidence—a case involving a man who plied a woman with alcohol at a night club, danced with her, and then raped her when she was so intoxicated she could not put up any resistance or remember anything about the night. Yet, one has to wonder about the concept of victimization, as the author also points out how the media viewed this as a successful case of justice served and hoped that other women would feel empowered to come forward based on this outcome. Come forward? How is this at all responsible on the part of the woman who permitted herself to become so drunk that she couldn’t remember anything. Is the driver who permits himself to become so drunk that he can’t remember anything viewed as a victim when he runs his car off the road or into oncoming traffic? But the woman who allows herself to become drunk at a club is a victim who should feel empowered by a court ruling? It seems that some form of gender politics is at work here, and I am not condoning the actions of a man who takes advantage of a drunk woman to have sex without her consent—but I have to ask how such a woman who puts herself at such risk is any different from a drunk driver who puts himself at others at risk. Why is her behavior excusable but another person’s is not? So behind this article about the digital witness, I feel, is really an argument about gender identity politics and a considerable assumption about standards and why there does not seem to be any standard of accountability in some situations for some people. The risk of me saying that, I think, is that I would be accused of sexism, which to my mind kind of reinforces the point I am wondering about. This is a topic I would like to understand better so that I can put this entire issue into better context.

References

Dodge, A. (2018). The digital witness: The role of digital evidence in criminal justice

responses to sexual violence. Feminist Theory, 19(3), 303-321.

Digital Degradation

This is an important article by Lageson and Maruna (2018) because it really gets to the heart of what I am wondering about when it comes to society, sociological concerns, and how we view one another, and how the law should apply. The article is about overcoming the stigma of digital degradation, and how that stigma can prevent some people from experiencing reintegration into society. Because people tend to label others now more than ever as a way of keeping others from having any share in power or in society, the risk of a Scarlet-Letter type of community is strong: people who commit a sin or crime are treated as pariahs online and that stigma that they receive online haunts them since so much of modern life is conducted online. One cannot escape one’s online reality.

Does anyone have the right to be forgotten, as Tirosh (2017) asks? People who have criminal records often see their pasts sins and crimes pasted online for others to view, and the Internet thus becomes a forum where public shaming can commence all over again: it is a digital Scarlet Letter, as Lageson and Maruna (2018) imply. Labeling theory is used to inform their article and perspective, and the idea of labeling is that it gives those in power a tool by which they can marginalize those they do not want in power. Labels are applied to prevent some undesirables from having any footing or status or integration in society. That is the point of labels in labeling theory. In the article on digital degradation, labels are used to keep people with offenses in their record from ever having another shot at life. There are Mug Shot websites, as the researchers point out, that contribute to ongoing public shaming; digital archives, such as Google, that allow for something like a court appearance to be indexed online; crowd-sourcing and data collection are conducted to preserve this material (Lageson & Maruna, 2018). So it seems that no one is allowed to be forgotten, and everyone must live in terror of ever committing an offense—because once one does the wrong thing one time, one might as well write oneself out of existence because society will never accept you back into the flock.