Abstract
Social constructionism focuses on how people assign meaning to the world. It views what we know-our categorization of reality-as created or constructed through social interaction(Berger and Luckmann 1967). Constructionist studies of social problems examine how and why particular phenomena become a focus of concern and defined as social problems(Spector and Kitsuse 1977; Loseke 1999). Over the last thirty years, constructionism has become a leading theoretical framework for research on social problems, including studies of the social construction of crime problems. Most criminology treats crime and criminal justice as objective phenomena, as having an independent, observable existence. Traditional criminology seeks to measure rates of crime, imprisonment, and other phenomena presumed to be objectively observable. In constrast, constructionist criminology denies that crime or criminal justice have an independent, objective existence. Constructionism highlights the importance of the subjective, of what people define as constituting a crime, or what they consider the appropriate societal response to criminality. Constructionists argue that crime and criminal justice are shaped in many ways by the definitions of various actors, including reformers, policy makers, the mass media, criminal justice officials, and the general public.
