When talking about the Social Process Theory, we must know that the whole point of this theory is to figure out how people become criminals through interactions with their own environment. It comes as a learned behavior, they are not born with it so they might see at home, school, or just any place in general that they interact. Many life events could affect us to change our views and make us commit crime, everyone has the capability to do something bad, but it is our choices, what defines us and sets us apart.
Even though sometimes some people believe that their lives are already so messed up, that no one cares about them so they do crimes as of way of getting attention and it might also be to release some of the anger they have inside. They want to do something bad because they don’t feel that the outcome could be any worse than what they are already living.
The social process theory has different characteristics that we must know to fully understand how the theory works. The first one is the labeling or social reaction theory has to do with self-identity, its basically when people tell you that you are something, in this case a criminal, and instead of defending yourself, you accept the role and became a criminal just because someone called you that. It’s very sad that this theory actually exists, because it means that it does happen in the real world.
One of the major components of the labeling theory is that crime is defined by those in power, unfortunately they define it in a way that conveniently works to their benefit instead of it being what its socially beneficial to most of the people. This is called a moral entrepreneur, like someone who doesn’t like seeing animals being hurt on the newspapers so they pass a law stating that animal pictures are not allowed anymore just because he doesn’t feel comfortable seeing that when he’s reading the newspaper.