Social Constructionism

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SAY THAT CRIME IS SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED? WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF SUCH AN APPROACH FOR CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY?
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What Does It Mean To Say That Crime Is Socially Constructed? What Are The Consequences Of Such An Approach For Criminal Justice Policy?
Sociologists define deviance as any violation of social expectations. They firmly believe that it is an integral part of all societies and is very healthy. It is a recognized violation of cultural norms. Social norms may differ from culture to culture, and that absence of conformity to these rules is what is referred to as deviance (Downes and Paul, 2011). On the other hand, crime can be substantial in stirring up social change more especially when the social norms are unsuited to the living conditions. When a social system fails to adapt to change, crime rates are more likely to rise. Deviance is assumed to be a warning which indicates that an aspect of the society is not working well or rather a harmless expression of dissatisfaction. This means that excessive deviance is mainly caused by too many suffering conditions (Downes and Paul, 2011). All organizations are confronted with criminality, which is considered standard provided that it does not exceed a certain level.
This question touches on a fundamental aspect of understanding crime and deviance: the nature of crime. Social constructionism is one of the dominant perspectives in sociology through which people understand crime (Burr, 2015). From this school of thought, crime is socially constructed (Burr, 2015). This implies that crime cannot be understood objectively, but rather through subjective definitions that vary from one community to the other or from one generation to the other within the same community (Downes and Paul, 2011). Therefore, behaviours of acts become criminalized only through social processes such as social interactions in which people develop new meanings of concepts and behaviours. Therefore, the legal status of behaviour has nothing to do with the behaviour itself but instead emanates from the social responses to the specific behaviour or the people involved in the behaviour (Burr, 2015). Changes in the legal status of behaviour are usually instigated by various social movements such as civil society. Most of these changes involve conflict between several groups with different vested interests.
As a major school of thought in sociology, social constructivism stipulates that the meaning of behaviour, events, or acts is not an objective quality of these phenomena but is assigned to them by individuals through social interaction. This implies that crimes must only be understood within their specific contexts instead of having a single definition that cuts across different social groups (Downes and Paul, 2011). For example, an act or behaviour may be considered illegal or criminal in one community but may be viewed as an honourable act in another community. Similarly, an act or behaviour may be morally and legally acceptable in society at one time but be perceived as a crime at another time within the same community (Burr, 2015...