Edwin Lemert
It was sociologist Edwin Lemert (1951) who introduced the concept of "secondary deviance." The primary deviance is the experience connected to the overt behavior, say drug addiction and its practical demands and consequences. Secondary deviation is the role created to deal with society's condemnation of the behavior.
With other sociologists of his time, he saw how all deviant acts are social acts, a result of the cooperation of society. In studying drug addiction, Lemert observed a very powerful and subtle force at work. Besides the physical addiction to the drug and all the economic and social disruptions it caused, there was an intensely intellectual process at work concerning one's own identity and the justification for the behavior: "I do these things because I am this way."
There might be certain subjective and personal motives that might first lead a person to drink or shoplift. But the activity itself tells us little about the person's self-image or its relationship to the activity. Lemert writes: "His acts are repeated and organized subjectively and transformed into active roles and become the social criteria for assigning status.....When a person begins to employ his deviant behavior or a role based on it as a means of defense, attack, or adjustment to the overt and covert problems created by the consequent societal reaction to him, his deviation is secondary"
Read more about this topic: Labeling Theory, Theoretical Basis