Almost everyone breaks a rule at some point, and almost no one builds a life out of it. Edwin Lemert called that ordinary rule-breaking primary deviance. What turns it into secondary deviance — deviance performed from inside a deviant identity — is not the act. It is what other people do next. Pick a person below and run the same act down two futures at once.
One person, many statuses
Every status this person holds, in normal proportion. Nothing has been promoted over anything else yet.
The two careers, side by side
Tap a point to jump to that step — or tap the other line to switch futures.
Primary and secondary in one line. Primary deviance is something you did. Secondary deviance is something you became. What stands between them is not the act — it is other people.
The actstep 1 of 6 · the label sticks
Step 1 — choose a person (the act will not change)
Step 2 — choose what the audience does
Who worked this out
What labeling theory does not explain. The model starts after the act, so it has little to say about why the primary deviance happened in the first place. Critics add that it can slide toward treating real harm as merely a matter of definition, and that some labels deter rather than amplify. The defensible claim is narrower, and well supported: reactions are part of the causal story, and official responses meant to reduce deviance sometimes manufacture it.