Frank Tannenbaum was an American historian, journalist, and sociologist whose interdisciplinary work bridged criminal justice, labor history, and Latin American studies. Though he did not work as a criminologist in the strict academic sense, his theoretical contribution to the sociology of deviance – especially through his concept of the dramatization of evil – laid important groundwork for labeling theory and symbolic interactionism.
Tannenbaum’s most enduring contribution to criminology stems from his 1938 book Crime and the Community, in which he introduced the concept of the dramatization of evil. He argued that society’s reaction to minor rule-breaking could stigmatize individuals, escalating their deviance through identity formation and exclusion. This idea significantly influenced later developments in the labeling approach, particularly the work of Edwin Lemert and Howard S. Becker. Tannenbaum shifted the focus of criminological thought from the causes of deviance to the social processes through which deviance is constructed, marking an early form of interactionist criminology.
