Deviancy Amplification Spiral: Legal Highs

Wilkins’ (1964) concept of a deviancy amplification spiral (or ‘Positive Feedback Loop’ as he called it) has been a staple of the crime and deviance Specification for many years and there’s a range of ways to present the feedback process, both statically and a bit more dynamically.

Examples of a “successful” feedback loop are, however, a bit thinner on the ground: while “mods and rockers” in the early 1960s and “dangerous dogs” in the early 1990’s are good historical examples, a more-contemporaneous example is the banning of “legal highs” in 2016 – the consequences of which are just starting to work their way through the criminal justice system, thereby providing an interesting application of the amplification spiral…