RN

AL PROG RA

Criminology
LLB BSc Accounting with Law/Law with Accounting BSc Management with Law/Law with Management

W.J. Morrison 2001

2660025, 2770303

ME

E XT

This guide was prepared for the University of London by: W.J. Morrison, LLB (Cant, NZ), LLM, PhD (London), Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand, Director of the Laws Programme for the External Programme, University of London. This is one of a series of subject guides published by the University. We regret that due to pressure of work the author is unable to enter into any correspondence relating to, or arising from, the guide. If you have any comments on this subject guide, favourable or unfavourable, please use the form at the back of this guide.

In order to send this subject guide to students and institutions without undue delay, the guide has not been through all editing processes and nal checks. We do not believe this signicantly affects the academic content of the guide. However, the university cannot be held responsible for any omissions or errors.

The External Programme Publications Ofce University of London Stewart House 32 Russell Square London WC1B 5DN United Kingdom Web site: www.londonexternal.ac.uk

Published by: University of London Press University of London 2001 Reprinted 2002, 2006 (E7482) Printed by: Central Printing Service, University of London, England

Contents

Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction to criminological study ............................................1 General introduction to the course ......................................................................1 The syllabus ..........................................................................................................1 Core texts ..............................................................................................................2 Why study crime? ................................................................................................3 The nature of criminological study ......................................................................4 The diversity of criminology ................................................................................5 Placing criminology in context ............................................................................5 Criminology and the advent of modernity ..........................................................7 The dilemma of criminological knowledge and opinion ....................................9 Chapter 2: Sources of data, criminal statistics and their interpretation ....17 Essential reading ................................................................................................17 Supplementary reading ......................................................................................17 Learning objectives ............................................................................................18 Commentary........................................................................................................18 The dream of criminal statistics ........................................................................18 Durkheims analysis of suicide as the paradigm example of positivism and statistics ........................................................................................................19 International projects to complement criminal statistics ..................................20 Interpreting rises or declines in ofcial statistics ..............................................23 Sample questions ................................................................................................27 Chapter 3: Competing Traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology ..........................................................................................33 Essential reading ................................................................................................33 Supplementary reading ......................................................................................33 Learning objectives ............................................................................................33 Commentary........................................................................................................33 Sample questions ................................................................................................46 Chapter 4: Individual and biological perspectives ........................................51 A. Individual Constitutional Factors (Biological theories)................................51 Essential reading ................................................................................................51 Supplementary reading ......................................................................................51 Commentary........................................................................................................51 Sample questions ................................................................................................54 B. Mental Factors and Crime..............................................................................54 Essential reading ................................................................................................54 Commentary........................................................................................................54 Sample questions ................................................................................................55

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Chapter 5: Introduction to sociological perspectives ....................................57 Essential reading ................................................................................................57 Supplementary reading ......................................................................................57 Learning objectives ............................................................................................57 Commentary........................................................................................................57 Further reading ....................................................................................................59 Drift theory..........................................................................................................62 Activity-related reading ......................................................................................63 Sample questions ................................................................................................63 Sample questions ................................................................................................67 Chapter 6: Social ecology: crime and the city ................................................69 Essential reading ................................................................................................69 Supplementary reading ......................................................................................69 Learning objectives ............................................................................................69 Commentary........................................................................................................70 Changing conceptions of the city ......................................................................80 Current American concerns: the urban underclass and broken windows ......82 Sample questions ................................................................................................83 Chapter 7: Labelling otherwise known as symbolic, or social interactionism or social reaction theory ..........................................................85 Essential reading ................................................................................................85 Commentary........................................................................................................85 Role, status and stigma ......................................................................................87 Labelling and the ascription of roles ..................................................................87 Focusing attention onto the power of the authorities to ascribe criminal identities................................................................................................87 Important terms within criminology ..................................................................88 Sample questions ................................................................................................88 Chapter 8: Critical criminology and the development of Realist perspectives ............................................................................................93 Reading................................................................................................................93 Core texts ............................................................................................................93 Commentary........................................................................................................93 New left realism ..................................................................................................96 Sample questions ..............................................................................................98 Chapter 9: Feminist criminology......................................................................99 Essential reading ................................................................................................99 Supplementary reading ......................................................................................99 Learning objectives ............................................................................................99 Commentary........................................................................................................99 Popular explanations for differential involvement in crime............................101 The theory of one male theorist........................................................................102 Sample questions ..............................................................................................105

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Chapter 10: Punishment and the Institutional framework ........................107 Essential reading ..............................................................................................107 Learning objectives ..........................................................................................107 Commentary......................................................................................................107 Consequentialist or Utilitarian philosophy ......................................................111 Why punish at all? Do we need the threat of punishment? ............................112 Punishing as a means to an end? ......................................................................114 Retributive theories ..........................................................................................115 Punishment and desert ......................................................................................116 Are compromise theories possible?..................................................................119 Punishment as a sociocultural paradigm ..........................................................120 Is punishment a necessary condition for social order? ....................................120 Punishment as an element of culture................................................................121 Reference material ............................................................................................123 How are we to understand developments in penal policy? ............................124 Reading..............................................................................................................124 Sample questions ..............................................................................................129 Chapter 11: Policing ........................................................................................131 Reading..............................................................................................................131 Issues ................................................................................................................131 Learning objectives ..........................................................................................131 Commentary......................................................................................................132 Sample questions ..............................................................................................132

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Notes

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Chapter 1: Introduction to criminological study

Chapter 1

Introduction to criminological study

General introduction to the course
This course is an introduction to criminological theory and elements of criminal justice (policing, prisons and punishment). The Criminal Justice system mediates between the individual and the State. In earlier times, less complex social units treated occasions which we now regard as crimes (that is as offences which under the criminal law are specically liable to punishment by the agents of the State) as sins, nuisances, or as wrongs against the victim entitling him (or his relatives if he was murdered) to compensation. The development of the present situation (where such wrongs are the concern of the State and where suspected offenders are processed by police and the criminal courts and if found guilty are liable to a range of sanctions ranging from discharges through measures life, probation and community service to imprisonment) is the history of the rise of the modern state and the various agencies of the State. Criminology is a blanket term for our understanding of crime and of the States handling of crime and related matters. It is necessarily concerned with the relationship of the individual who breaks the laws of a state and the operation of the States power to lay down laws and to punish for breaches of those laws. Students must not be surprised to encounter a diversity of material in reading for criminology; material which may at times verge on the political, the sociological and philosophical, the rhetorical and the technical. Criminology is not simply an applied law subject; on the contrary its history is a battle between those who adopted a primarily legalist approach towards dealing with crime and those who adopted approaches from the social sciences, namely, sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis and so forth. The common focus is the fact of the criminal law, the problem of breaches of it, and the practical questions of what to do with the offender who has breached such a law, and the general problem of how to minimise the overall incidents of offending (the social problem of crime). The governing aim of the course is to introduce the student to some of the theoretical issues involved with the attempts to explain crime and elements of the States response, such as policing, the legitimacy of punishment and imprisonment. Because of this wide coverage you will be encouraged to obtain a working knowledge of the institutions and policies at work in the area but it is not expected that your knowledge will equally be deep across the syllabus.

The syllabus
In approaching the study of criminology you will nd that the syllabus is quite extensive although you will soon realise that there are many inter-connections and a continuity of basic themes. You may wish to specialise upon some issues more than others, but keep in mind that there are often general questions which are designed to see if you have developed a critical appreciation of the subject as a whole and are able to see how insights from one part of the course relate to other parts.

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Core texts
Walklate, Sandra Understanding criminology: Current theoretical Debates, (Open University Press: Buckingham, 1998) [ISBN 0-335-19361-7] has a good introductory coverage that is directed towards contemporary conditions. Burke, Roger An Introduction to Criminological Theory, (Willan Publishing: Devon, 2001), [ISBN 1-903240-46-8] provides a readable and reasonably comprehensive introduction to criminological theorising. The Sage Dictionary of Criminology, complied and edited by Eugene McLaughlin and John Muncie, (Sage: London 2001) [ISBN 0-7619-5908] would be a valuable resource. It contains medium-length entries on most of the key terms you are likely to come across.

Other, sometimes more in-depth, texts are:

Bernard, Thomas and J. Snipes Volds Theoretical Criminology. (Oxford University Press: New York) fourth edition [ISBN 0-19-507321-5]. Easily accessible and certainly understandable this gives an overview of traditional criminology. Downes, David and P. Rock Understanding Deviance: a guide to the sociology of crime and rule breaking. Now in its third edition. (Oxford University Press, 1998) [ISBN 0-19-876533-9].

This is a leading student text for the sociology of deviance in the UK, this text gives a theoretically sophisticated history of the sociology of deviance in the twentieth century.
Garland, David The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. (Oxford University Press, 2001) [ISBN 0-19-829937-0].

This is a masterful survey of the current emphasis of criminal justice and crime prevention policies upon achieving a controlled society. Note that it assumes a lot of knowledge and it is probably best for you to read this towards the end of your study.
Morrison, Wayne Theoretical Criminology: from modernity to post-modernism. (London: Cavendish, 1995) [ISBN 1-85941-220-3].

This text reads criminology in the changing context of modernity. It is detailed in its reading and poses a host of questions for contemporary times. Note this was written primarily with Masters level students in mind, but it will be assumed that you read and digest this text in the course of your study.
Lanier, M.M. and S. Henry Essential Criminology. (Westview Press: Colorado and Oxford, 1998) [ISBN 0-8133-3137-4].

Provides wonderful overviews and helpful tables that contrast the main features of theories at the end of each chapter.
Tierney, John Criminology: theory and context. (Prentice Hall, 1996) [ISBN 0-13-380155-1].

A good account of the development of (mainly) British criminology, putting it in appropriate academic and social contexts. A massive collection of major review articles on most areas of criminology that is certainly valuable for reference is:

Chapter 1: Introduction to criminological study

Maguire, M. R. Morgan and R. Reiner (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, second edition. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) [ISBN 0-19-876485-5]. Taylor, Walton and Young, The New Criminology, (Routledge, 1973) is the classic critique of traditional criminology and statement of critical criminology. J. Lilly et al., Criminological Theory: context and Consequences, (Sage, 1989) [ISBN 0-8039-2639-1 (pbk.)] has interesting contextual points.

For reference
Elliot Currie, Confronting Crime: an American challenge. (Pantheon Books, New York, 1985) [ISBN 0-394-74638-8 (pbk)]. This is a very good response to the conservative challenge in criminology throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. John Hagan, Modern Criminology: crime, criminal behaviour, and its control. (McGraw-Hill International Editions, 1987 [ISBN 0-07-100468-8].

Although dated this is an interesting text which may be widely available in areas outside the UK.
Mike Fitzgerald et al., Crime and Society: Readings in History and theory. (Routledge in association with the Open University Press, London, 1981). [ISBN 0-415-02755-1]. Again, while dated, has a number of very good articles.

Sources of useful materials

HMSO publications; The British Journal of Criminology; Journal of Law and Society; Law and Society Review; International Journal of Sociology of Law; New Society.

Why study crime?

The rst reason is that crime is a pressing social problem. Frances Heidensohn is undoubtably correct in highlighting the anxiety and fascination which crime arouses in the modern western psyche. Crime is a major source of social concern today. Look at any daily newspaper, certainly those published in Western countries, and you will nd a signicant proportion of their column inches devoted to reports of murder and theft and accounts of serious trials. For lms and television, stories of crimes and their detection are the sources of many plots and series. Increases in crime rates will often be treated as headline news, and many people see the law and order issue as one of the most pressing in modern society. (Crime and Society, 1989: 1) As John Hagen puts it: Anxiety and anger are probably the most easily understood, if not the most widely accepted, motivations to study crime. Many people fear crime and react with apprehension to it The fear of crime is undeniably real. It is a perennial concern of voters in English-speaking democracies who rate crime among their nations, most serious problems, and who vote with their money and lives as well, buying arms for their own protection. (1987: 1-2) Crime is both an example and a result of immediate and pressing concerns. The rst motivation which drives criminology is the feeling that crime is a serious social problem and this reects for some a feeling that our modern societies are out of control in certain key respects. The existence of such a social problem is also problematic in an important second respect in that it offends against what we may term certain cultural assumptions of modern Western societies. Later in this chapter

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the term modernity is introduced and it is proposed that the cultural underpinning of the condence of the modern west relies upon certain cultural assumptions such as progress and the power of social engineering. Part of the impact of the current crime problem is that it appears to run counter to the modern Wests dedication to the notion of progress, prosperity and control over nature. The existence of so much crime in Western societies shows the underside of modernitys progress. The presence of so much desperation and social unrest complicates the notion that modernity was to create good or grand societies of peaceful coexistence and economic plenty in which the conditions for harmonious social coexistence would be achieved.

The nature of criminological study

One of the rst things that may strike a student of criminology is the amount of time and energy writers have spent over the years discussing the nature of the subject and attempting to lay down foundational premises and canons. Although criminology can to an extent be condently dened as the scientic study of crime (Hall Williams, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 1982: 1) this denition is open to a whole array of qualiers and deeper explanations as to crime and science. In no other subject of the LLB will the student encounter the self-conscious questioning and continual adjustment of positions and materials which seems to prevail in criminology. These contrasts and doubts concern both basic questions of identifying foundational entities, for example the debate over dening whether the phenomena that criminology should study is crime or deviance, and the way in which the writer should conceive of him/herself, for instance whether to see him/herself as a detached and impartial scientist or an engaged critical social commentator. To study criminology to encounter writings and data from a multitude of disciplines and perspectives, framed with different assumptions in mind, offering different images. Moreover, criminology is a subject with a mixed reputation and strangely ambivalent self-image. While some writers may argue for a strict defence of the rules of law and identify the seemingly inevitable rise in recorded crime as the result of societies gone soft on responding to deviance or giving discipline to their children and lacking in moral bre, others locate the cause of crime in the failure of modern societies to achieve social justice and attempt to use criminology as an entry into wider social criticism and clearly adopt morally charged positions rather than attempt value free social science. (For examples of these disputes read Elliott Curries critique of the conservative positions of James Q. Wilson, or Travis Hirschi, in Confronting Crime!) Even within any one grouping individuals differ, for instance among those who espouse value free science the degree to which writers see themselves as doing detached social science or applied social engineering differs. Some practioners appear to see their role as the provision of accurate information on crime and criminals for the administrative ofcials of the State, while others ask whose side are we on? and appear to side with the deviant while possibly attacking the State for overreaction with some even desiring to dissolve the modern State. The enterprise of the rst group, laden with statistics and etiological studies of actual and potential offenders, assumes the dry mantle of a social science modelled on the precepts of the natural science and appears boring and submissive from the perspective of the second. The second, revelling in the grand theories of Marxism, or the micro revelations of symbolic interactionism, appears at times politically suspect or scientically over-romantic to the rst.

Chapter 1: Introduction to criminological study

The diversity of criminology

Criminology is diverse, historically growing as a uctuating basket of knowledges and perspectives which the practitioners of a variety of disciplines have deposited. Its status as a discipline itself is thus laboured and somewhat articial. The criminologist may be a clinical psychologist, a sociologist, a political theorist, a lawyer, or a psychoanalyst, to simply name a few who have worn the criminological hat. A lot of writing used in criminology has been written by individuals for whom criminology was a temporal pursuit, when from the connes and training of their mother discipline, they briey engaged the issues of crime, offending and social reaction. Criminology is thus a contested disciplinary space, a theatre of speech and knowledge games where anyone is traditionally welcomed as long as he agrees to the terms of entry; which, since the late nineteenth century appears to be to speak about crime and criminality using the common language and rules of the scientic enterprise. Conversely, much of recent development in criminology has questioned those terms. The conception that the proper criminological approach is to be modelled on the approaches of the natural science, and thus should only copy their procedures and objectives, is said to be mistaken. Criminology, it is argued, is about far more than merely attempting to describe the phenomena of crime and offending in the reductionist language of the natural sciences. It is about achieving a sophisticated and critical awareness of a whole range of social problems and social suffering, including the cruelty which may be done both by an offender and the institutions which purport to punish him or her in the name of society. Additionally, the historical and labelling approaches call into question the processes whereby events or activities get to be dened as crimes and the growth of the criminal justice system as the means of response and institution of social control. The range of questions that could be called criminological is vast.

Placing criminology in context

Criminology is not static. Although there are a certain number of recommended texts to cover the course there is no possibility of studying a set text which captures the essence of criminology. You also need an historical sensibility and an ability to understand multiple perspectives. History is essential, as the Spanish philosopher Gesset once said about human nature man has no nature he has only a history, so it is with criminology. When one reads criminological texts one is engaged in the selfconscious study of a history. A history that catalogues the various ways in which members of modern societies, primarily those of the Western developed world, have sought to understand the nature of these process of modern society with reference to the problematics of social control, state power, individual socialisation, crime and deviance. Additionally, the development of criminology can only be reduced to a master template at the cost of simplication. Complicating any overview of a complex social phenomenon such as the development of a discipline is at least three major contextual concerns. Formal history The rst concern is the formal history of the discipline: in the case of criminology many criminological works provide a history section in which is presented the distinction between the classical approach and the positivist. These works present the two approaches as containing a separate set of assumptions as to human nature and the nature of society with corresponding sets of policy recommendations. The classicists (whose heyday was the eighteenth century and who are represented by

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names such as the Italian Baccaria and Englishman Bentham) are labelled as accepting the notions of the freewill of the individual, of rational choice and, mostly, of the social contract ideal or metaphor for the structuring of the social bond. The positivists, arising in the late nineteenth century and represented by names such as the Italians Lombroso and Ferri, are seen as accepting human behaviour as being fully determined and as largely seeing the social bond as a phase in a socially determined history (history as progress). For the positivists the government of society becomes akin to a technical enterprise, while for the classicists it is a moral-political activity. The classicist sees breaches of the criminal law largely as offences against the social contract and the rights of other members of the pact. To the positivist offending against the laws of the society is part of social processes and may be functional in that it either created an opportunity for a ceremonial reafrmation of the social bond or displayed itself as a symptom of social pathology, but was, from a unitary point of view, the dysfunctional behaviour of an individual; a departure from the norm which could be responded to as a valuable symptom of pathology either in the individual or of social process. In many criminological texts the student is presented with a progressive picture of criminological history as if criminology was gaining a closer and closer approximation to the truth of crime and criminality over time. As Vold, for example, put it in his second edition:
Classical Criminology represents the development and application to thinking about crime, the ideas and intellectual frame of reference that in Europe preceded the application of scientic methods and experimental procedure to human behaviour. The positive school represents the rst formulations and applications to the eld of criminology of the point of view, methodology, and logic of the natural sciences to the study of human behaviour. (second edition 1979: 18)

Thus the victory of positivism is seen as a rational advance over the abstractions and politics of classicism. The image of criminology gradually but solidly progressing as a discipline becoming more sure of its knowledge and with an enhanced ability to make policy recommendations becomes, however, problematic when in the 1960s criminology is rst taken to task by writers such as the American David Matza for an uncritical belief in determinism, and then splinters into a whole series of competing `paradigms and perspectives in which, however, positivism remains as a dominant player. The problem with the progressive picture of criminological history is that it seems to make criminology self-developmental as if there was a steady objective world out there, a set range of things to be investigated, and criminology was slowly rening its tactics and methodologies in understanding it and coming to understand what to do to eliminate crime. In other words that there was an autonomous development of the knowledges of crime and deviance, a growth which was progressive and that the changes in fashion, or degree of concentration were as a result of correction false perspectives and slowly getting the correct picture. This down plays the essentially pragmatic link between knowledge production and sociohistorical location. Social-political context The second concern is the social-political context for the development of criminology as an intellectual discipline. This traditionally was relatively underdeveloped as most criminological texts underplayed the impact of politics and philosophical context for the structuring of social theory (recent texts try to reverse this omission, for example those of Morrison, Lilly, Tierney, Burke). Largely criminology is seen either as the result of individuals, for example Lombroso, or of groups, such as the Chicago school, as if the development of social theory was totally responsive to the

Chapter 1: Introduction to criminological study

requirements of autonomous individuals or like minded groups facing immediate problems insulated from broader socio-political evolution. However, the relevance of the political-social context in which writer work is inescapable and now a subject for revisionist histories. In broad outline it is possible to see that classicism was a doctrine necessarily linked to the development of rule of law states over feudal society, of the rights of the bourgeoisie over aristocratic privileges, and of the creation of a more free social space for the abstract market to function as opposed to the settled hierarchies and status interactions of late feudal society. Positivism, likewise can be seen as responsive to a different set of demands linked to the spread of political inuence into lower social classes in society. The restoring of neoclassical or new right themes in the mid 1970s and 1980s can also be see as responsive to the vast cost of the welfare state and the apparent paradox that crime rates were increasing at the same time as the West appeared to be more prosperous than at any time in history. The institutions and organisational motifs that make up the systems of crime and deviance control in the modern west originated in the grand transformations that occurred from the eighteenth century. Thus these systems are basically the product of modernity, a term which is difcult to dene concisely but which designates what is essentially new and particular about western societies since the Enlightenment. In the eld of criminology the changes are both the context of criminal justice and have shaped the institutional form of criminal justice. We can mention three that have shaped criminal justice. First, the development of the modern nation state with its centralised state apparatus for the formal control of crime, gathering of statistics and the provision of care and welfare for its population. Second, the typologising and differentiation of the deviant and dependants into separate types, each with particular sets of scientic knowledge, expertise, and groups of experts. Third, the development of organisation outcomes that segregate the deviants, criminals, sick and dependents into prisons, juvenile reformatories, asylums, mental hospitals, and other closed purpose built institutions for treatment, punishment, and custody. Cultural context The third concern is the cultural context of the disciplines development. In particular the various projections or images of what social science was about and how the nding link to social policy is an important consideration which are largely unstated in any writers text but which are assumed by the writer and which largely dene the purpose of doing social science.

Criminology and the advent of modernity

One way of conceiving of criminology is to see it as the study of the way in which modern societies have developed with respect to the issues of deviance, crime, crime control and the States ability to dene and react to deviance or threats to social order. Central to such a theme is the notion that there is something special and different about modern societies which demarcates them from the types and methods of social cohesion and social control which have gone before them. We can call this the notion of modernity. What is meant by modernity? Consider this description of modernity:
There is merit in the modernity of a society, apart from any other virtues it may have. Being modern is being advanced and being advanced means being rich, free of the encumbrances of familial authority, religious authority, and deferentiality. It means being rational and being rationalised. If such rationalisations were achieved, all traditions except the traditions of secularity, scientism, and hedonism would be overpowered. (Edward Shils, Tradition, 1981: 288-90.)

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The concept of modernity is troublesome (of the core texts see Morrison, Theoretical Criminology: from Modernity to post-modernism, and Burke, An Introduction to Criminological Theory). Grand theorists who have been concerned with its themes largely locate modernity in terms of a choice between oppressive and false traditions (including religion) and empty, rootless freedom. Within criminological texts Durkheim is sometimes used in this way (see Vold and Bernard, Theoretical Criminology, Chapter 9 Durkheim, Anomie, and Modernisation). Interestingly many social theorists refer to a social crisis of modernism in which criminology is implicated and of which two broad features can be mentioned. First, we can see many current social problems in terms of a crisis of power whereby modern societies nd themselves immersed in a technological ability and knowledge spiral which gives advances in certain powers, but which outstrips mankinds ability to assimilate its consequences and link its meanings (need one mention the present nuclear capability? or the vast increase in the worlds population and the possibility of ecological destruction?). Second, the alienative and nihilistic effects of modern culture on a humanity which has thrust itself free from a context of traditional positioning and community structures which gave existence meaning, which enabled modes of practical reasoning appearing natural to those concerned, and which lent a sense of immediacy to the structures of the world. Our modern western world, on the other hand, although an urban world where mankind lives cheek-by-jowl with a multitude of others, is a place of distance which demands newer and more complicated forms of social control than previously. For the modern self-image and self-consciousness, the question of personal identity is not dened by ones position in the order of things, some embedment in localised tradition and custom which ultimately seems some participation of self and cosmos, but by an insulated individualism mediated by concepts such as authenticity, choice, and the rationality of ends means relations. Thus we moderns live at a distance from those modes of comprehension and organisation taken for granted by pre-moderns. As contrasted to the approaches which stress the primacy of the group or community, the presuppositions of the ideal type of our social contract political theory, for instance, is of the normalcy of isolated individualism, of free and calculating atomistic units. Other relevant characteristics of modernity These include factors such as the development of industrial society, the capitalist mode of economic organisation, urbanism, and the advent of liberal democracy and utopian socialism but there are other features which are both basic and hard to appreciate such as the handling of time and the notion of change. Modern society is both the product of dramatic transformations, of immense change and also in a continual state of change. There appear to be no settled canons or structures that remain stable and xed for a long period. Instead some of the basic canons, the notion of democracy is a good example, are cast in such an abstract frame that the substantive content, for example whether women have the right to vote or whether it is fair to say it was a democratic election when the majority of the populace didnt bother to vote (as in American Presidential elections), can be subject to variation. Alongside the vast increase in population growth an inescapable feature is the urban context of social life the majority of the worlds population live in cities of 20,000 people or more. As a point of comparison prior to the nineteenth century even in societies considered urbanised probably fewer than 10 per cent of the population lived in towns or cities. Londons population in the fourteenth century is estimated at around 30,000, and when at the turn of the nineteenth century to have reached 900,000 it was not only the largest in the world but dominated England.

Chapter 1: Introduction to criminological study

The routines of this urban life are set within structures responsive to the changing demands of economic performance. Many of the competing interpretations on social life can be traced to dening modern societys economic basis as either industrialisation or capitalisation. The attitude that a theorist takes to issues such as class and the natural of social interaction differ, depending of whether a more benign nature functional theory of industrial society as opposed to the Marxist notion of Capitalist society with its relations of exploitation and domination in which it is engaged in.

The dilemma of criminological knowledge and opinion

One of the difculties students of criminology can have is that they always have an opinion based upon the common sense of the times and some criminology certainly appears close to being other peoples opinions. Part of the pleasure of doing criminology is, however, to articulate your own ideas and subject them to test. Read the attitudes of others and see the sense of different perspectives. We have mentioned that one hope for criminology was to gain secure knowledge that overcame the diversity of opinions. Culturally criminology is part of the knowledge project of modernity; part that is, of the idea that it was possible to construct secure modern societies by replacing arbitrary opinion and politics by pure knowledge. As we have already noted in giving a starting point to criminology, most criminological texts refer to the names of individuals or schools of thinkers, such as Beccaria for classicism and Durkheim for sociological positivism and Lombroso for biological positivism, but the hopes for social betterment which these authors share in their writing is best stated in the openly utopian writings of Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In nineteenth-century France, Comte attempted to develop a positive sociology which would provide a truly scientic basis for the reorganisation of society. He shared the optimism of such philosophers as the Englishman Francis Bacons optimism about the benets of a positive approach to science for humanity but was not blind to the extent to which this approach clashed with the traditional hegemony of the ruling class. The very rst words he had published make this clear:
Rulers would gladly have it taken for granted that they alone can see alright in politics, and consequently are entitled to a monopoly of opinions in such matters. They doubtless have their own reasons for speaking in this way, while subjects have theirs for refusing assent to a principle which, under every point of view, is wholly absurd. (Quoted in R. Fletcher (ed.) The Crisis of Industrial Civilisation: the early essays of Auguste Comte, 1974.)

Secure social knowledge was to provide a new basis for developing social structures and building social relations. The opinions of the rulers would have to give way in a new form of knowledge-power combination, a position where the organisation of society would be the responsibility of scientists and the rationality of the knowledge they produced. Comte proposed a Law of Three Stages through which all human thinking had to pass; rst the theological or ctive, then the metaphysical or abstract, and nally the scientic or positive. These stages were dependent upon mans knowledge of the universe and himself and in the positive there is a clear cut distinction between science and morals and the operation of all features in the universe could be gauged by the operation of the positive methodology whereby science could in time come to control moral dilemmas.

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It is clear from reading Comte that Europe was to be the crux of progress, of civilisation, the modes of life of Europe were the progressive destiny of the world. The power of the west has indeed spread throughout the world. Moreover it is explicit in the condence of this form of writing that the modes of life which have developed in the west are intrinsically superior to those of other cultures. Of course the spread of the west has unleashed forces which have corroded or destroyed many of the features and coherence of the other cultures it has come in contact with. However, the metaphysics of progressive evolution, which has tended to glorify the dominance of the west as the necessary result of a system of determinate social evolution where evolution is judged in terms primarily of technological growth and the ability to control and change the material environment, has lead to the denial of the resources of other cultures in favour of the western solution. This eurocentricism dominates criminological history search as you willlittle criminology from the developing or third world can be seen to challenge the theories and presuppositions of that of the West. If you come across examples of such writings use it to your advantage to challenge the presuppositions of mainstream criminology. One strand of thought which opposes the eurocentric domination is the anthropological perspective which allows us to appreciate the diversity of modes of human existence on the globe. Much early anthropology was also ethnocentric chronicling the weakness and destruction of primitive races in comparison to the west and if early anthropological study had one theme in the construction project of modernity it can be seen as attempting to locate the normal mode of human existence. The result, conversely, was to demonstrate diversity and difference rather than uniformity. At the same time, however, the anthropological dimension to modern thought also illustrates the essential interconnections of the modern world and the central unity of the human race. It denies the purported irrationality of many primitive practices and demonstrates the richness of non-state institutions, for example, and there are now no grounds for supposing that those who live in primitive societies are genetically inferior to those of the advanced civilisations. However, anthropology also demonstrates the complex processes of socialisation and signication that go to make up the successful normal members of any society. Moreover, the question of social order and conformity, of the normal and deviant, is not placed on some purely natural footing by anthropology. Apart from a basic few measures, such as some protection of life in the in-group (certainly not necessarily the protection of strangers) or of the domain of groups, the ordering of societies differ. Thus while all societies have forms of normal and deviant behaviour and mechanisms for controlling social interaction we are not led to determine the natural sanctity of particular forms of organisation. Instead forms of relativism appear the result, given modes of social organisation produce particular results, and the potential openness of social life is demonstrated. Once we appreciate these perceptions the role of criminology becomes complicated. It cannot be simply the accumulation of knowledge to control troublesome people in society, although some criminological knowledge may aid this. Nor can it be solely the provision of knowledge about social processes to enable the members of the society to better understand social processes, although this is a laudable aim. It can also be a form of enquiry about the consequences of what is, and the possibility of what is not, but could be for human existence.

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Sample questions
Any question listed here would ask for material from all over the course at least to illustrate the concerns raised: 1. Consider whether criminology is or should be a science.

2. Criminology cannot be a science because its subject-matter, crime is dened by shifting moral and political concerns. Discuss.

Activity 1
Grasping fundamentals 1. The concepts of crime/deviancy and the task of dening CRIME and DEVIANCY in modernity. Criminology (crime-o-logos), broadly dened is the logos of crime. That is to say it is rational dialogue concerning crime. In most texts criminology is simply assumed to be the scientic study of crime (Hall Williams, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 1982: 1); but why should the only kinds of discourse considered proper criminology be those called scientic? What are the appropriate roles of scientic perspectives and lay or common-sense claims? What are the limits of each? Further, is the concept of crime a scientic or common sense category? In the common sense or natural perspective the content of criminological study is clear: we study crime and criminals. The law denes what is illegal, people charged with, convicted and sentenced for criminal offences are criminals and there is something naturally anti-social about the kinds of acts/omissions that are dened as criminal. An important aspect of the certainty about that approach to the study of crime lies in the creation and afrmation of a world which appears natural, in which the institutions seem rational and the processes reasonable, outcomes secure and predictable. Thus we save ourselves from ambiguity, ambivalence and vagueness. But what is/are the process(es) involved when we use the word crime in respect to some event/activity/omission/aspect of human behaviour? Does the answer differ depending upon the historical and social context in which it is/was asked?

Activity 2
Consider the issues raised in Chapter. 1 Narrating the mood of the times: confusion, self-doubt, and ambivalence, of Morrison, Theoretical Criminology. Is the very reason for criminology so tied up with human fears, emotions and attitudes to social life (including notions of progress and trust) that it is impossible to accept that the understanding of crime and the policies to be used with respect to it should be in the hands of scientic experts? Ask yourself what your presuppositions in beginning the study of criminology are/were? Do you believe that crime is a social problem? If so that that give rise to the questions what causes crime? and is the reason for asking that question to develop measures to cure society of crime? Are you assuming that there is some natural thing or sets of characteristics, which constitute(s) the essential element to all crimes? Are you also assuming that there are such a thing as criminals, who are different from normal people?

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Consider what the link is between assuming that crime is a natural entity and our attitude to those adjudged criminals? There has been an historical connection between criminological theorising and a correctional perspective which saw criminology as a practical discipline, a discipline that was dened in cause-and-cure terms. Thus the terms crime and the criminal were taken as standing for real, observable entities and it quickly followed that the policy implication was to remove or at least incapacitate the problem. Of course the connection between theory and practice is essential to the enterprise but consider the following statements from leading writers: Criminology, in its narrow sense, is concerned with the study of the phenomenon of crime and of the factors or circumstanceswhich may have an inuence on or be associated with criminal behaviour and the state of crime in general. But this does not and should not exhaust the whole subject matter of criminology. There remains the vitally important problem of combating crimeTo rob it of this practical function, is to divorce criminology from reality and render it sterile. (Leon Radzinowicz, In Search for Criminology, 1962: 168) The scholarly objective of criminology is the development of a body of knowledge regarding this process of law, crime, and reaction to crimeThe practical objective of criminology, supplementing the scientic or theoretical objective, is to reduce the amount of pain and suffering in the world. (Sutherland and Cressey, Criminology, 1978: 3, 24) Research in criminology is conducted for the purpose of understanding criminal behaviour. If we can understand the behaviour, we will have a better chance of predicting when it will occur and then be able to take policy steps to control, eliminate, or prevent the behaviour. (Reid, Crime and Criminology, 1985: 66) Let us state quite categorically that the major task of radical criminology is to seek a solution to the problem of crime and that of a socialist policy is to substantially reduce the crime rate. (Young, The failure of criminology: the need for a radical realism, 1986) Are these statements similar? Perhaps not. The issue is not to avoid being concerned. But to understand or reect on the distinctions and the connections between knowledge and practice, between information and wisdom. And while crime is a problem one needs to understand what the nature of that problem is and escape from simple correctionalism. David Matza (Becoming Deviant, 1969), dened correctional perspectives as accepting that the aim of study was to achieve the practical result of elimination of crime and the criminal, further that a commitment to the methodological principles of positivistic social science was appropriate. Understanding the difference between the study of crime and deviancy In an attempt to control its own subject matter, sociological criminologists tended to substitute the concept of deviancy for that of crime. As the following extract from Paul Rock illustrates. A sociological conception of deviancy must dwell on its peculiarly social qualities. As a signicant social entity, the deviant is the occupant of a special role which is recognised and ordered in a process of interaction. If a person is not assigned to this role and not treated as deviant, he cannot be regarded sociologically as a deviant. No matter how much he may be assumed by some to be a disturbed, disruptive or atypical individual, his social meaning is not that of deviancy but something else. Those who would explain his behaviour do not account for social deviancy or a

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Chapter 1: Introduction to criminological study

deviant role, but disturbance, disruptiveness or atypicality as they conceive it. Deviancy is a social construct (social constructs are the interpretations which men collaboratively give to the objects and events around them. They are rather more than interpretations, however, because they are also the social phenomena which men create through their activities and as a result of these interpretations) fashioned by the members of the society in which it exists. They endow it with importance and distinctiveness and they assign it to a special place in the organisation of their collective lives. As Quinney remarks: a thing exists only when it is given a name; any phenomenon is real to us only when we can imagine it. Without imagination there would be nothing to experience. So it is with crime. In our relationships with others we construct a social reality of crime. This reality is both conceptual and phenomenal, a world of meanings and events constructed in reference to crime. Deviant roles are given names (whether Student, Militant, Hooligan, Criminal, Homosexual or simply Deviant) which single them out for purposes of elucidation, action and, often, the justication of action. In one study, for instance, Turner and Surace argued that the presence and behaviour of young Mexican zootsuiters in California evoked hostility. The hostility was marked by ambivalence because, whilst zootsuiter conjured up images of delinquency and violence, Mexican evoked images of the romantic and exciting. Collective action against the deviants became possible only when they were referred to as zootsuiters and their Mexican facet was ignored. Condemnatory symbols which are unambiguous can thus mobilise a punitive response. The deviant role is given a recognised place in the social structure and those who assume it are led to expect that becoming deviant will be a fateful process. One of the basic problems in sociology is to explain the origins, maintenance and effects of these acts of social placement. Deviancy is a part of the social reality which organises peoples lives, and this social reality must be the primary material of analysis. (Paul Rock, Deviant Behaviour, pp. 1920). Question Can you identify different deviant roles in our society? a. What are their features? b. Why are these roles dened as deviant? c. Whose interests are served in their denition? d. What does the sociological concept of role mean? What function does Rock attribute to deviant roles in society? Deviance need not be dened in terms of social rule-breaking; of the imposition of a social construct around an actor; or of the breaking of the criminal law. Deviance has been dened by many scholars as an inner defect within a person which, under certain conditions, leads to acts of deviance and/or crime. Steven Box, who is clearly unsympathetic to this view, describes some of the individual differences identied. For some thinkers, particularly those versed in the mystic arts, demonology and in some cases theology, deviants were perceived as persons possessed by evil forces, or bewitched by black magic, or seduced by sorcery, or demented by demons, or earmarked by God. For example, Erikson suggests that: according to the Puritan reading of the Bible there were only two important classes of people on earth - those who had been elected to everlasting life and those who had been consigned forever to hell... persons who had reasons to fear the worst would

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drift sullenly into the lower echelons of society, highly susceptible to deviant forms of behaviour. Preordained, or held rmly in the grip of some less magisterial but none the less supra-human power, individuals were viewed as helpless; they lived out their fated lives, the mark of Cain allowed them no other alternative. Other writers, convinced of a more positive and empiric route to knowledge, considered that deviant behaviour could be explained by linking it to a physiological defect. For most of these thinkers the actual defect remained a mystery, although in some quarters it was thought to be that quality which divided primitive man from civilised people. Bafed by the defects exact nature, researchers concentrated on discovering indicators of it. Since the most obvious candidate for such an indicator was the human anatomy, this became the object t for scrutiny. In no time, deviants were characterised as having deviations in their head shapes, peculiarities in their eyes, receding foreheads, weak chins, compressed faces, ared nostrils, long ape-like arms and agile and muscular bodies. We have progressed [sic] considerably since these Lombrosian mistaken preoccupations. Now experts reassure us that the root cause of crime and delinquency lies within the human body. Thus our attention is drawn to the deviants minimal brain damage, nutritional deciency, abnormal chromosomes and the hereditary transmission of low intelligence. Adherents to another viewpoint were more inclined to favour the idea that deviants suffered from a psychological defect, although again there were differences of opinion on the nature of this aw. To behavioural psychologists, deviants were individuals whose personalities were not amenable to the normal processes of social learning; to numerous thinkers with a psychoanalytic leaning, the deviant was perceived as a person whose weak super-ego had abdicated control to a riotous id; to the vocal middle-class intelligentsia, caught on the rising fashion of psychiatry, all deviants were insane. (Steven Box, Deviance, Reality and Society, second edition, 1981, pp.2 and 3) Ask yourself the following: What is the place of personal responsibility in the explanations of crime that Box outlines? This sociological turn soon led to a diffusion of boundaries. Consider the following extract from Terence Morris. The difculty in dening deviance stems from that of establishing what is normal, and however obvious that may sound it remains that in a modern urban industrial society there are a great many denitions of what is normal. This is at the very root of our problem, for unless order is based upon what people consider to be normal and acceptable, the order is precarious and dependent not upon its voluntary acceptance by a majority of individuals but by its imposition against their will and often against their sense of what is reasonable. Now order is important to man for two reasons, his comfort and his convenience. From a psychological point of view it is comforting to know that it is not necessary to face every social situation as if it were a completely new one. Just as the housewife in her kitchen relies on her recipes (some in her head and others in her cookery books) so we have a series of social recipes for dealing with the raw material of social relationships. Just as potatoes are not normally fried in their jackets so one would not normally relate to a High Court judge, met at a cocktail party, as if he were the waiter bringing round the drinks. Certain expectations follow upon identication. There are also certain presumptions based upon conventional acceptance. Thus a newspaper placed upon an otherwise vacant seat in a railway carriage indicates that

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Chapter 1: Introduction to criminological study

the occupant is temporarily absent: a sign that is as relevant to the man looking for a seat as it is to the one who has rst secured it. In a more important sense the existence of order is a comforting reassurance that the individual is relatively safe from physical assault, and from the depredation of his property. At a mundane level people queue for buses and at shop counters, and only in extreme situations do they ght to get on public transport. As far as property is concerned, although a great deal of personal property is stolen, titles to property cannot be taken away so arbitrarily. At the same time order is conducive to great convenience. We take pieces of paper, called cheques, write on them and receive other pieces of paper, called banknotes, which in turn we can exchange for goods and services. Much of the order in society is in fact derived from the needs of the economic system, for it is a great convenience to presume that one is safe from physical attack or the theft of ones goods; it would be distinctly inconvenient to have to go about armed against potential attackers and to be obliged to lock, bolt or chain down everything one owned. People tend to dene the normal in terms of what they expect, what they are used to, and what they believe to be morally acceptable. Given certain clues, certain behaviour is expected...A wedding ring on a womans hand is a clue to her presumed sexual non-availability. Like a suitcase with initials on it, the presumption is that rights are vested in another, and amorous advances to such a woman are perceived as abnormal in the sense of being deviant just as it would be for someone to go off with the suitcase. When two cars have collided it is expected that the drivers will get out, exchange names and addresses, and inform their respective insurers. It is not expected that the two drivers will begin to beat each other, and even verbal abuse must be severely limited. If they have any lasting dispute about compensation it is expected that this will be settled by negotiation, or as the last resort, by litigation. That married women are not to be regarded as objects of sexual predation, that identiable personal property is not to be seen as generally available to all comers, and that disputes about damage are not to be settled by force majeure are precepts which derive from certain values about marriage, private property, or how disputes ought to be settled, and it is at this point that the attempt to dene normality takes on an added complexity. The second part of the problem relates to coming to terms with the relativity of denitions of deviance. For it is not enough simply to say that one mans virtue is another mans vice and that they may both be right. Rather, it is the task of the sociologist to examine the genesis and maintenance of what may in effect be competing ethical systems and to discover whether the conicts between them are as real or important as the protagonists claim. If few men have a monopoly of wisdom and virtue it is even less likely that such a monopoly will be possessed by a class or an interest group. What the sociologist of deviance must examine is what lies behind the series of short one-act morality plays in which the dramatis personae are cast in terms of monodimensional stereotypes. He must identify who is dening whom, who is impressing whom, and into what would. When he asks why? he may nd himself talking in terms of the relationship between ideology, power and social structure. In doing so, he is not of necessity an iconoclast, any more than the literary scholar is given over to shredding great writing until it is meaningless tatters, or the anthropologist is concerned with humiliating his tribe before the world as a pack of superstitious savages. Like Tiresias he may sit by Thebes below the wall and walk among the lowest of the dead yet not be precluded from comment or criticism. (Terence Morris, Deviance and Control) 15

Criminology

Notes

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Chapter 2: Sources of data, criminal statistics and their interpretation

Chapter 2

Sources of data, criminal statistics and their interpretation

Essential reading
Core texts
Walklate, S. Understanding Criminology. (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1998) pp115. Heidensohn, Crime and Society. Chapter 1. The Social Construction of Crime. Downes and Rock, Understanding Deviance. (Oxford, 1998), Chapter 2, Sources of Knowledge about Deviance. Morrison, W. Theoretical Criminology. (Cavendish, 1995), Chapter 8, Criminological Positivism III: Statistics, Quantifying the moral health of Society and Calculating Natures Laws. Jones, S. Criminology. (Butterworths, 1998), Chapter 3 The Statistics on Crime and their meaning. Tierney, John Criminology: theory and context. (Prentice Hall, 1996), Chapter 2, Measuring crime and criminality.

Supplementary reading
Coleman, C. and Moynihan, J. Understanding Crime Data, (Buckingham, Open University Press, 1996). Maguire, M. Crime statistics, patterns and trends: changing perception and their implications, in M.Maguire et al. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, second edition, 1997. More dated is: Wiles, Paul, Criminal Statistics and Sociological Explanations of Crime Lea and Young, What is to be done about Law and Order?, 1984, Chapters 1 and 2. For a classic left - realist use of statistics. Bottomley, Decisions in the Penal Process, 1973, Chapter 1 is a discussion on the nature and construction of criminal statistics. Chapters 2 and 3 analyse how the discretion invested with the police and courts socially structure the creation of the ofcial statistics. Hough, M. and P. Mayhew, Taking Account of Crime: Key ndings from the 1984 British Crime Survey, 1985, HORS No. 85 is an illustration of how to interpret such a survey on the extent of crime in Britain. Box, S. Power, Crime and Mystication, 1983, Chapter 1. Crime, power, and ideological mystication argues that the social ideology of the crime problem is clearly structured by the results of the process of gaining the statistics. On victim surveys. Sparks et al, Surveying Victims, esp, pp.1634 and 2226 238. On self-report questionnaires. Hindelang M, et al. Measuring Delinquency, (Sage. 1981). See Chapters 4, 5 and 11 and Appendices A, B, and C.

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Walker, M. Self-reported crime studies and the British Crime Survey Howard Journal, 22: 168176. 1983. Campbell ,A. Self-report of ghting by Females 1986, 26 British Journal of Criminology, 28.

Learning objectives
By the end of this chapter and selected reading you should be able to: identify the sources of data for criminology discuss the idea of the social construction of data discuss the ofcial criminal statistics, the problems with them and alternative indicies adopt a critical reading of claims that changing rates of crime in ofcial statistics are a true picture of the state of crime.

Commentary
The issues involved in this chapter are basic to the whole enterprise of criminology. Specically, positive criminology assumes the nature of crime as a fact, and works on the notion that theories of criminal activity as they are revealed in such facts and presented as criminal statistics can be constructed that become a reection of underlying natural states of affairs. Thus the resulting theory, whether written in terms of social, biological or psychological states of affairs will involve dening new facts or causal processes which are based on the original facts analysed, for example, the over-representation of black citizens in the ofcial statistics of the United States. From the over-representation in the statistics positivism moves to explain this as a fact of criminality, as a reality to be explained in terms of differential socialisation, body size, IQ, or involvement in subcultures of violence and delinquency to give some examples. We give some indication of the discussion in Chapter 9, however, the basic issue here is to consider whether the ofcial statistics actually reect an underlying reality of crime and criminality?

The dream of criminal statistics

Early proponents of social statistics expected them to be a powerful tool of analysis and policy. Social technocrats saw statistics as fact-gathering to aid policy. As Paul Wiles points out writers such as William Petty and John Graunt hoped as early as the seventeen century that such statistics would be crucial in the making of policy decisions and in judging the moral health of the nation. Consequently:
By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, Pettys hope that his Numbers, Weights, or Measures would make intellectual arguments about the nature of government superuous, had become a cardinal part of the ideas of the political economists.

Benthams scheme for Bills of Delinquency were to be a political barometer, furnishing data for the legislator to work upon. Thus criminal statistics were part of the empiricists:
genuine attempt(s) to go beyond the circle of our interpretations, to get beyond subjectivity. The attempt is to reconstruct knowledge in such a way that there is no need to make nal appeal to readings or judgments which cannot be checked further(to obtain) a unit of information which is not the deliverance of a judgment,

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Chapter 2: Sources of data, criminal statistics and their interpretation

which has by denition no element in it of reading or interpretation, which is a brute datum. (Charles Taylor, Interpretation and the sciences of man, Philosophical Papers, Vol II.)

Writing from within a Marxist perspective, Colin Sumner has pointed to the general weakness of crass empiricism in the traditional development of criminological theory:
What seems to happen is that when a phenomenon is observed spontaneously, the observer associates its aetiology with the circumstances in which it appears. For example, in orthodox criminology, research of an empiricist kind has observed the coexistence of poverty, criminal behaviour, broken family ties and delinquent juvenile gangs within working class neighbourhoods. From this sighting criminological researchers have gone on to correlate crime with poverty, broken homes, working class values, etc. Rather than seeing all these circumstances (including crime) as normal exigencies of life for a class for a specic position within a particular social structure (and thus comprehending the connections between social structure and class conditions) the theory-less researchers took the appearances and attempted to make them explain each other. (Reading ideologies: an investigation into a Marxist Theory of Ideology and Law, 1979: 180)

Contemporary philosophers of science such as Charles Taylor have doubts that both rationalism and empiricism fail to achieve such security for knowledge and see social theory as an endless series of interpretative structures. The underlying assumption of the project of securing pure statistics is that such statistics and tables would provide an accurate reection of real trends. That it would be a mirror of nature, to borrow the term of a current philosopher, and additionally the problem of crime could be reduced in some way to a simple question of social engineering made easier by the feedback such statistics provided on the affectiveness of policy. However:
In spite of comparatively full collection of ofcially published statistics, the brave hopes of the nineteenth century have not been fulled. Crime in England has proved to be more than a technical problem of social policy. Although some still cling to the belief that this failure stems from technical defects in the statistics themselves, the ofcial gures seem doomed to remain very imperfect as instruments of social engineering.(Wiles, 1974: 201)

The position we have reached is the realisation that ofcial rates of deviance require a separate explanation from the explanation of the deviance itself. At the least, ofcial crime rates arise from the interaction of criminal actions and ofcial reactions, both of which become dependent variables which combine in different formations to give the end result.

Durkheims analysis of suicide as the paradigm example of positivism and statistics

Durkheim developed an analysis of suicide that has become a motif for constructing positivist theories upon statistical data. Durkheim argued that suicide, which was considered a personal act of the will of an actor, was actually highly dependent upon a range of social factors. By measuring the rates of suicide for various groups and correlating these with indices of social factors, Durkheim argued he could prove the social laws of suicide. He did not regard the will of an individual as free but heavily constrained by a set of laws that ow through him and these real laws are discoverable. The subject is constrained by real, living, active forces, which, because of the way they determine the individual, prove their independence of him.

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Suicide: A Study in Sociology, (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1970). There are types of suicide determined by their own congurations of social facts (e.g. the egoistic). Durkheim built up his distinctions on the basis of treating the ofcial rates as given. The criticisms of Durkheim mirror those that positivist approaches to criminal statistics suffered generally. First, the positivist self-criticism: the data Durkheim analysed was ofcial statistics from the 1840s to the 1870s and this information is subject to error. Errors of collection and reportage thus prejudice the analysis through data fault. Similarly, much of subsequent criminological investigation can be seen as an attempt to explain the ofcial crime statisticsif these are suspect then the whole analysis is also. The positivists message is to correct such errors and to provide real, actual data as `true facts upon which to join correlations of observable occurrences. Such alternative measures as self-report or victim studies are relied upon to correct the picture the ofcial statistics give. Second, the interactionist approach. The statistics are never capable of conversion into real facts or actual empirical data at all since the original or basic data involve a process of interpretation and symbolic construction of meaning which is unable to be analysed by positivist methodology other than spuriously. The interactionist approach to suicide can be seen in Atkinsons concentration upon the process of categorising deaths as suicide. He rejects the objectivity of a real rate of suicide that would provide absolutely secure material for analysis. Instead coroners interact with the situations surrounding death and their courts interpret events producing suicide rates as a result of the interaction of their common sense theories of suicide with the material presented to them. Coroners bring sets of narrative expectations, or patterns of cultural history, which if the material ts, mean that a suicide will most likely be registered. If not further investigation or no suicide is found. Atkinson, J.M.,Societal Reaction to Suicide, in S.Cohen (ed.) Images of Deviance, (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1971); and Discovering Suicide, (MacMillian, London, 1978). In criminological literature Aron V. Cicourel does a similar task with juvenile crime: The Social Organisation of Juvenile Justice, (Heinemann, London, 1976). As Harold Garnkel Studies in Ethnomethodology, (Prentice-Hall, 1967) argued, one ought to treat social facts as interactional accomplishments. When common sense may lead us to see certain things, givens or facts of life the interactional perspective presents us with processes and we need to understand the processes through which the perceivedly stable features of socially organised environments are continually created and sustained. The categories of crime and criminal are not references to objective facts, or mirror images of objective reality but are constructions of meanings which come out of the interaction of certain situations. Importantly, the question becomes how do such meanings become generated? How is the categorisation manufactured?

International projects to complement criminal statistics

You should constantly bear in mind the international dimensions to criminological issues. The question of the adequacy of the ofcial criminal statistics to correctly picture crime is certainly not conned to the relatively wealthy countries of Western Europe and North America and victim surveys are increasingly conducted in a variety

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Chapter 2: Sources of data, criminal statistics and their interpretation

of countries, nances permitting. That a candidate could show knowledge of such surveys, their methodologies and of what the results show for their own countries would be of interest to an examiner. Most of these surveys demonstrate the internationalisation of the criminological methodologies developed in Great Britain and the US. For example a key objective of the New Zealand National Survey of Crime Victims 1996 was to explore the nature, extent and distribution of the type of offending to which households and individuals are subject in their private capacity (as distinct from offences occurring in the course of their business or employment). The survey draws heavily upon the techniques of the British Crime Survey. Respondents were asked to report on, and provide detailed information about, particular forms of criminal victimisation experienced by members of their household, or by themselves personally, since 1 January 1995. The household offences the survey focused on were residential burglary and vehicle offences, while the individual offences comprised sexual offending, all forms of assault, threats, robbery, arson and wilful damage, and other forms of theft. A key task of such surveys is to ascertain the incidence of offending. The NZ survey estimated a total of offences committed in 1995 (more than two million) far in excess of those ofcially reported. Violent offending and sexual offending, including threats, made up almost two-thirds of total offences disclosed in the survey. Damage offences, which would usually be described as vandalism, were the next most common category. In terms of other property offending, homes and vehicles were targeted with about equal degree of frequency, making up a little under 10 per cent of total offending. One of the interesting calculations that it is possible to make is one of generalised risk, thus the data suggest that, on average: one house in 14 will be burgled each year one woman in 16 will be sexually violated each year; and one person in ve will be the victim of some type of assault (excluding threats) each year.

Of course the particular individualised risk of a person may vary with locality and lifestyle. For grievous assaults, other assaults and threats, the survey distinguished between violence by those known well to the victim (including family violence) and violence inicted by casual acquaintances or strangers. Grievous assaults were roughly evenly divided between the two groups. Other assaults and threats, on the other hand, were almost three times more likely to be committed by those known well to the victim than by strangers or casual acquaintances. This is a highly signicant but not unexpected nding; it demonstrates that, despite media preoccupation with violence by strangers, people are in fact just as likely to be seriously injured by those they know well and are much more at risk of violence from them. What does one make of the high incidence of offences against the person? Does this mean that this society is a particularly violent one? It should be noted that over a third of such offences involve threats of violence or threats of damage to property, which clearly vary enormously in seriousness and signicance. Another third involve sexual offences that have a large sampling error. These are both omitted from the British Crime Survey. If these are excluded from the count, then assaults, wounding and robbery make up 24.7 per cent of total offences, only slightly above the gure of 20.8% reported in the 1996 British Crime Survey. How did that survey make the comparison between survey offences and police statistics?

21

Criminology

One of the purposes of victim surveys is to identify what is commonly called the dark gure of crimeoffences which are unreported or which are reported but go unrecorded. This was achieved by a comparison of the offences disclosed by survey respondents with the police offence statistics over the same period. It is clear that there was a large gap between survey estimated offences and adjusted police offence statistics. Indeed, police statistics were only 12.9 per cent of the offences revealed in the survey. There were two reasons for the gap between police statistics and the number of offences disclosed in the survey. First, only a little over 40 per cent of the cases in which we were able to collect information on reporting came to the notice of the police, although this varied from a reporting rate of nearly 90 per cent in relation to the theft or unlawful taking of a motor vehicle to a rate of only 33 per cent for nondomestic assaults and 27 per cent for damage. Secondly, only about one - third of the offences which were reported ended up being recorded, although again the rate varied substantially from one offence to another. How does one relate to the picture offered by such surveys? As usual the NZ survey discovered that while the ofcial statistics on some offencesfor example vehicle theft seem to mirror the reality of offending experienced by victims quite closely, they appear to grossly understate the incidence of other offending. In particular, there appeared to be a vast amount of hidden sexual offending, assaults and threats; most of these are unreported, or even when they are reported, they often seem to fail to get into the ofcial statistics, either because they are not recorded at all or because they are recorded as something different from what our respondents accounts suggested to be appropriate. The sexual offending data, of course, are subject to substantial sampling error and might be questionable on that ground. The data on assaults and threats, however, are much more robust and cannot be dismissed as a product of the survey methodology. Does this mean that New Zealand is confronting a law and order crisis? Again qualications must be made. Each country will vary in the dening of offences and the methodology for recording events under categories. Thus although the proportion of total offenses comprising assaults, for example, in the NZ survey is greater than in the British Crime Survey, the NZ practice of recording some discrete incidents as multiple offences undoubtedly resulted in the counting of some assaults which in Britain would have been encompassed within some other more serious offence. Again, average incidence rates such as those so far discussed imply that crime is evenly distributed. It is not; victimisation is, in fact, very unevenly distributed. As might be expected, some socio-demographic groups are, on average, more at risk of being victimised than others. For instance, in our survey, there was a general pattern of decreasing incidence and prevalence of victimisation with age, and Maori had signicantly higher rates of both incidence and prevalence of assaults and threats than New Zealand European/European. More importantly, however, even within one socioeconomic group, some individuals are particularly prone to be victimised. Our survey found that this was particularly the case with violent offending: only 5 per cent of the total sample (or 6 per cent of those who were the subject of a violent offence) were victimised ve or more times, but they accounted for a massive 68 per cent of the violent offending. Most people, then, have only a small risk of violence, but for a small minority of multiple victims it would seem to be so common as to be virtually a normal part of everyday life. Furthermore, victim surveys represent all incidents that are capable of being interpreted as involving a criminal offence. In reality, the denitions are very wide, so at that an enormous range of conduct is captured. Assaults and threats, for example,

22

Chapter 2: Sources of data, criminal statistics and their interpretation

encompass a wide range of conduct, much of which is relatively trivial or could be regarded as a normal (albeit undesirable) feature of everyday social interaction which most people cope with without difculty and stress, and which they would probably not regard as the appropriate business of the police or the criminal justice system. Even robbery (which had a surprisingly low reporting rate) may range from something as comparably minor as one school pupil taking some lunch off another with some implicit threat of force involved to something as serious as armed bank robbery. In other words, technical denitions of offences are very broad; practical limitations upon their scope are imposed not only by the working rules of the police but also by the common - sense denitions which members of the public apply to the conduct of others. It is thus by no means certain that respondents would dene as criminal at least some of the behaviour that they subsequently told the later surveyor. Sometimes they often believe that the matter is best handled without ofcial intervention. The researchers interpreted this to imply that there seems to be considerable support amongst victims for alternative processes and strategies for responding to crime; the criminal justice system is seen, at least by some, as a last resort and the offending which comes to its notice is only a small proportion of the behaviour which could potentially do so. Note that the authors of this particular report stated that a general implication was that trends in ofcial statistics themselves should often be regarded as suspect, since they are highly susceptible to changes in reporting and recording practices. As an example they argued that only a little over a quarter of arson and wilful damage cases are reported to the police, and only 42 per cent of those are subsequently recorded. Of all of the arson and damage cases mentioned by our respondents, therefore, less than 12 per cent ended up in the ofcial statistics in 1995. Given that, a relatively small change in either reporting practice or recording practice, or both, will have a major effect upon the ofcial statistics. On the above gures, if the proportion of offences reported increased from one - quarter to one-third and the proportion of those recorded remained constant, the ofcial statistics would increase by more than 20 per cent without any change at all in the actual volume of crime.

Interpreting rises or declines in ofcial statistics

After several decades of rising crime and a growing rhetoric of either nothing works or the need to get tough on criminals crime rates in the US and Europe appear to have several years of real decline. What processes are at work? New York City has come to stand as an indicator of broader trends. In the late 1990s New York City recorded less than 1,000 murders in a year for the rst time in more than two decades, as part of a seemingly persisting and sharp drop in crime. Reported crime fell more than 43 per cent in the city in the later 1990s, and it has been noted that New York City alone, with 3 per cent of the American population, accounts for a large part of the national plunge in crime. And, while New Yorkers may not fear murder on a day-to-day basis, something they do constantly fear car theft shows an equally astonishing drop, from 147,000 in 1990 to 60,000 in 1996, and a further 20 per cent drop in the rst quarter of 1997. There is considerable variation in accounts for this decline. Among candidates are: the decline of crack cocaine use the economic upturn; and a change in the policing strategy involving more aggressive policing strategies and the rise of zero tolerance.

23

Criminology

The argument for economic upturn seems only to explain a small change, the growth in the American economy was gradual but sustained over a number of years, for most of which crime increased. Moreover, there was not much of an economic upturn in New York City for the unskilled and less educated who contribute most to crime. Indeed, the citys unemployment rates have remained persistently high, much higher than the national average. But both the decline of usage in crack cocaine and changes in policing may have had a large effect. The new policing strategy implemented in New York was based on a theory called the Broken Windows Theory. First expressed by political scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist George Kelling in an article for The Atlantic Monthly in 1982, the theory holds that if someone breaks a window in a building and it is not quickly repaired, others will be emboldened to break more windows. Eventually, the broken windows create a sense of disorder that attracts criminals, who thrive in conditions of public apathy and neglect. The theory was based on an experiment conducted 26 years ago by Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo. He took two identical cars, placing one on a street in a middle-class Palo Alto neighbourhood and the other in a tougher neighbourhood in the Bronx. The car in the Bronx which had no licence plate on it and was parked with its bonnet up, was stripped within a day. The car in Palo Alto sat untouched for a week, until Zimbardo smashed one of its windows with a sledgehammer. Within a few hours it was stripped. According to James Q. Wilson, a professor of public policy at UCLA and leading proponent of Right Realism, There are two sources of disorder: offenders and physical disorder. [Both] lead people to believe the neighbourhood is run down. The central problem for police is to take the small signs of disorder seriously and deal with them. That could be dealing with small-time offenders, or dealing with physical disorder, or some combination of both. Former Commissioner Bratton rst tested this strategy while he was commanding the New York Transit Police. Because subway police did not focus on low-level crimes, Bratton wrote in an article for the Journal of Law and Policy, subway disorder and subway crime exploded in the late 1980s. Chronic fare evaders, violators of transit regulations, aggressive panhandlers, homeless substance abusers and illegal vendors hawking goods on station platforms all contributed to an atmosphere of disorder, even chaos, in the subways. I was convinced that disorder was a key ingredient in the steeply rising robbery rate, as criminals of opportunity, including many youthful offenders looked upon the subway as a place where they could get away with anything. Bratton responded by calling on all transit cops to enforce quality of life laws and by targeting fare-beaters-people who jump subway turnstiles without paying. It turned out that the people who broke the law by jumping turnstiles were often the same people who broke the law by robbing subway riders. The result: a dramatic drop in crime on the subway. The results look dramatic: the infamous grafti is gone and you can ride subways at virtually any hour without fear. From this experience the task appeared to widen out the process: the claim was that you could stop the major offences by nabbing minor offenders. Another word for this was to show zero tolerance on minor offences so that the larger offences would not then take place. In January 1994, newly elected New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani put Bratton in charge of the NYPD. A former prosecutor, Giuliani had made crime and quality of life the major themes of his campaign against former Mayor David Dinkins. Giuliani hired Bratton because of his interpretation of the Broken Windows Theory. And Bratton turned Broken Windows loose on the streets of New York.
24

Chapter 2: Sources of data, criminal statistics and their interpretation

Five thousand more cops were put on the streets, and for the rst time in decades, ofcers were told to enforce nuisance laws: under this zero tolerance campaign, quality of life patrols snared the drunks, drug users and taggers. Police identied hot spots of gun violence by using crime maps. In those areas, special teams came in to enforce nuisance laws, frisking everyone for the slightest infractions in an effort to nd the guys with the guns. There were twice-weekly strategy sessions, known as Comstat, which focused the strategy of the departments top command on street crime patterns. Each precinct was questioned about its crime-ghting strategy every ve weeks, and precinct captains were grilled if their crime rates went up. Was this revolutionary? Many commentators think so. In general it appears unprecedented in the history of New York and unprecedented in the history of most police departments in this country that top police executives pay attention to streetlevel crime. Previously, as some commentators (especially newspaper reporters) put it using popular medical and military speak, most chiefs were caught up with managing the hospital rather than worrying about diseases. Crime is left to the soldiers, and the generals pay no attention. In other cities where police departments have applied versions of the Broken Windows Theory usually choosing to target physical disorder, rather than petty criminals it has not proven to be a great success. The resulting programmes have gone by a host of familiar names: Weed and Seed, Clean Sweep Operation CLEAN. Typically, they share the strategy of one-time sweeps through high-crime areas during which the obvious drug and prostitution arrests are made. The area having thus been weeded, is then seeded by a range of city agencies, which x streetlights, tear down vacant buildings haul away abandoned cars and make other improvements to the physical environment. The general claim is that it is a holistic approach, but others claim it only focuses on the symptoms of social disorder without addressing basic conditions. Its also an approach that takes the Broken Windows Theory quite literally: by xing the windows you deter crime. When the sanitation workers and the code enforcers and the maintenance men leave the windows tend to get broken again. Targeted areas tend to deteriorate quickly. Dallas police, for example, abandoned their Operation CLEAN strategy in 1991 because crime rates in six of seven target areas rose inexorably after an initial, hopeful drop. Baltimore housing police have seen the same thing happen in the citys eight public housing high-rises since they instituted a similar strategy. Their statistics did go down but then the housing authority put its spruced-up buildings in the hands of a private security rm, and the drug dealers quickly moved back in. However, the defenders of broken windows and zero tolerance say that the basic problems are not problems local policy can solve, but local efforts can tackle local conditions of everyday life and in doing this also deter more serious criminals. Some crime experts are sceptical that police work alone is responsible for what the headlines have called a suddenly safer New York; complaints against the police have also increased dramatically. Since other cities have started to show similar, though less spectacular, drops in reported crime, a general consensus is forming around the notion that urban America is going through some kind of crime correction, much like the stock market. Driven by the aberrant violence of the crack cocaine industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s, crime just got too high, by this theory. What goes up, must come down. Other experts are critical of New Yorks tactics, particularly because citizen complaints of police abuse have skyrocketed. Civil libertarians say the courts became backlogged because the NYPD is locking up unlicensed vendors and others accused
25

Criminology

of extremely minor offences. In this light, some commentators claim that they are just making problems for later. As Jerome Miller, executive director of the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives, a non-prot organisation that opposes the nations rising rates of incarceration, put it: This Broken Window theory can quickly deteriorate into the Broken Head theory. And dont kid yourself that thats not whats going on. Making all these arrests is going to give a large number of criminal records to large numbers of poor people. So you make people less employable. And that is going to come back to haunt them later. Other commentators are also not impressed with the NYPDs interpretation of the Broken Window Theory either. There are complaints of rigged gures, and that it has been a self-promoting, publicity driven exercise. To each of these arguments, New York police have a ready retort. In 1993, one of every 438 subway fare-beaters arrested was carrying a loaded gun. By 1998, only one of every 1,034 was armed evidence, it is claimed, that the bad guys are leaving their guns at home. Indeed, the New York strategy may have been too successful. In the end Bratton resigned amid rumours that Giuliani forced him out because he was getting all the credit for engineering the drop in crime. He and Maple, a top deputy, have since accepted posts in the private sector. Is the city they left behind really safer? The statistics say it is. And the cops certainly seem happier. Many residents also seem to be satised. They recount with amazement how the squeegee men disappeared last year from the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. They say the hookers no longer work Lexington Avenue. They say shattered glass the glittery droppings of auto thieves no longer echoes through Gramercy Park at dawn. Crime had gotten so out of control that it was happening at our doorstep. Theres a sense of safety now. Certainly the local government claims the credit for these welcome results. Mayor Giuliani successfully traded upon the reduction in crime when he sought reselection. But does government really deserve the credit? And, if so, what change in government caused the transformation? There has been a shift nationwide to more community policing; but the strategies vary and the Broken Windows idea is only one of the policing strategies. Crime rates have also fallen in other cities (for example San Francisco) where alternative strategies are used. In general the move to community policing with some versions of Broken Windows seems an attractive theory. Even if it does not reduce serious crime, it contributes to a better environment. But there have been other changes in policing and crime control that make it difcult to pinpoint one cause for the lower crime rates. According to The New York Times, in one neighbourhood that has seen such a decline, Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies are working to drive out drug dealers with aggressive policing tactics. In another New York neighbourhood, a pilot programme has consolidated the various divisions of the police housing, narcotics and others under the control of a locally based commander, making it easier to co-ordinate investigations and capture drug pedlars. It has been argued that an equally sharp drop in teenage murders in Boston is due to more aggressive control of teenagers on probation as probation ofcers work more closely with the police. A story in The American Lawyer attributes much of the reduction in New York Citys murder rate to an aggressive young prosecutor using the Federal Racketeering Control Law to put away gang leaders for longer prison terms, and indeed, in the areas where the gang leaders have been prosecuted and incarcerated, there has been a sharp drop in homicides.
26

Chapter 2: Sources of data, criminal statistics and their interpretation

But there have also been other changes, owing nothing to government but to changes in business practice. Criminologists call this routine action theory, such as the decline in the use of cash and the rise of plastic money and citizens taking more precautions with their property (car alarms, household security).

Sample questions
1. What purposes are served by measuring crime? Do the ofcial criminal statistics, together with Crime Surveys, achieve these desired goals? 2. What problems are there in using ofcial crime statistics as a basis for criminological explanations? Can these problems be alleviated? 3. To what extent is it prudent to base criminal justice policy on the ofcial statistics? Do alternative measures remedy any problems with using the ofcial statistics? 4. (a) The British Crime Surveys provide a more accurate measurement of the amount of crime in society than the ofcial criminal statistics. Critically assess this statement OR (b) To what extent has the fear of crime become more of a social problem than the reality of crime? 5. Does the dramatic rise in crime levels recorded in the ofcial criminal statistics since the 1950s accurately mirror a crisis in law and order? 6. To what extent can self-report and victim studies measure crime more adequately than ofcial statistics? 7. Ofcial crime statistics give so distorted a view of the real trends and patterns in criminal behaviour that they can be of no use in criminological explanation. Critically assess this claim.

Activity
Assessing Student work and the nature of studying as an external student Criminology is taught in a variety of university settings. Sometimes a unit is included in a Law Degree, sometimes it comes in throughout a sociology degree under different guises, for example, under the heading of sociology of deviance or sociology of crime and punishment; etc. This guide is for external students of the University of London doing Criminology as a single unit. Studying as an external student means that your access to a well-stocked library cannot be assumed, nor can tutorial interaction. While it is expected that you will purchase or have access to the main texts referred to it is doubtful if you will access the majority of the supplementary reading. However, it is advisable to try and reproduce aspects of the internal experience. In particular the experience of writing term essays and assessed work. Therefore, throughout this guide, I will present some examples of actual student work, such as the following: NB: This is a real essay. Written as part of the assessment process, in other words it constituted at least 25 per cent of the marks for that Undergraduate Criminology course. I judge it to be clearly of rst - class standard. It is presented NOT as some form of model answer but as a guide to what can be achieved. It is a good idea to prepare your own essays of selected topics; being familiar with the issues and having recall of the material thereby created will prove invaluable in answering questions in examination conditions.

27

Criminology

Question What can the study of statistics and surveys teach us about crime? Answer
1

It should be emphasised, however, that concerns about the tendency of the BCS to distort the experiences of crime, especially those of women and ethnic minorities and the very poor have been raised by several writers who have instituted a number of local surveys (Jones et al, 1986 and Genn 1988). These surveys have been funded by local authorities and examine areas not touched by the BCS. Their ambit has been to examine and emphasise the extent to which victimisation is unequally distributed among the population. These surveys (plus self-report studies) provide a qualitative microscopic view of the unequally distributed victimisation in our society. This is in contrast to the quantitative view presented by the ofcial statistics and the BCS.

In order to provide an answer to the above statement the writers approach will be as follows. The writer will provide a mostly qualitative investigation on the ofcial statistics and the British Crime Survey (BCS).1 The writer will highlight both the advantages and disadvantages of both methods of enquiry and the criminal deviancy picture that emerges. In conclusion the writer will observe that crime is a social construct reecting a dominant societal ideological belief. The key ofcial publication in respect of crime gures is Criminal Statistics, the annual compilation of data derived from police and court records throughout England and Wales, which is collated and tabulated by the Home Ofce Research and Statistics Directorate. Despite the caution with which they are now treated by criminologist and Home Ofce statisticians alike, and despite the increasingly high prole given in Criminal Statistics to comparative data from BCS, these statistics remain the primary barometer of crime, used by politicians and highlighted in the media. They are also inuential in the resource and strategic planning of the home 2 ofce and police forces. The latest ofcial gures (comparable to the BCS) indicate that the total number of notiable offences3 recorded by the police in England and Wales in the period April 1997 to March 1998 was 4,545,300. The majority of crimes, 91 per cent, were property offences (burglary, theft, fraud, forgery and criminal damage) whilst violent crimes (violence against the person, sexual offences and robbery) accounted for 8 per cent of all offences recorded during this period.4 Although this is the ofcial gure referred to in most public debates about the extent of crime, it has to be emphasised that, even as a record of criminal offences ofcially known to the authorities, it is anything but complete.5 It might be argued that, for practical purposes, it is perfectly adequate to judge the size and shape of the crime problem by means of the notiable offences recorded by the police, on the grounds that these embrace the most serious crimes, for which the vast majority of prison sentences are passed. However, they also include large numbers of incidents which it is difcult to claim are any more serious than many summary offences and the offences dealt with administratively. Changing views about the seriousness or otherwise of particular kinds of offence have led on occasion to changes in Home Ofce decisions about what to include in or exclude from the ofcial crime totals.6 There are important questions, therefore, concerning how individual crimes are counted. Following the recommendations of the Perks Committee in 1967, clearer counting rules were established which tidied up some of the discrepancies between forces, but at the same time appear arbitrary and undoubtedly understate the relative frequency of some offences. The general rule now is that, if several offences are committed in one incident only the most serious is counted: that is unless violence is involved, in which case the rule is one offence for each victim.7 Therefore all statements about the total volume of crime have to be hedged about with qualications, even when they purport only to describe crimes ofcially known to state agencies, if different notication or counting rules were adopted the total could be raised or lowered signicantly at a stroke.8 Criminal Statistics currently lists the notiable crimes, in other words, offences, recorded by the police under a total of 64 headings. These are grouped under eight broader headings, namely offences of violence against the person, sexual offences, robbery, burglary, theft and handling stolen goods, fraud and forgery, criminal

(Maguire, 1997, p.148).

3 Recorded crime includes those offence categories which the police are required to notify the Home Ofce of for statistical purposes.

Notiable Offences, England and Wales, April 1997 to March 1998 found at http://www.homeofce.gov.org/rds/publf.htm
5

Supra No. 2 at p.148.

Most notably, prior to 1977, offences of criminal damage of 20 or less which were not indictable were not counted, but since that date they have been dened as notiable and included. This decision immediately raised the total volume of crime by about 7 per cent (Maguire, 1997, p.150).

(Maguire, 1997, p.151). There is also a broad guideline stating that only one offence will be counted in a continuous series of offences, where there is some special relationship, knowledge or position that exists between the offender and the person or property offended against which enables the offender to repeat the offence. As an illustration, if the rules were changed, for example, to allow all cheque frauds to be counted separately, the overall ofcial picture of crime might look signicantly different.

28

Chapter 2: Sources of data, criminal statistics and their interpretation

8 From 1 April 1998, the coverage of notiable offences has been expanded to include all indictable offences, all triableeither-way offences and closely associated summary offences. The guidance rules issued by the Home Ofce to the police on how to count crime were also revised on that date. Further information relating to coverage and counting can be found at http://www.homeofce.gov.org. A great deal of discretion remains in police hands about whether and how to record possible offences which do come to their notice (Ashworth, 1994) provides an illuminating account of the polices gate keeping exercise. Reports from the public, which are the source of over 80 per cent of all recorded crimes (Bottomley and Coleman, 1981) may be disbelieved or considered too trivial or deemed not to constitute a criminal offence, with the result that they are either not recorded at all, or are ofcially no crimed later. Calculations from crime survey data indicate that about 40 per cent of crimes reported to the police do not end up in the ofcial statistics, for good or bad reasons (Mayhew and Maung, 1993). 9 10

damage, and other notiable offences.9 Most of these groups contain a considerable variety of offences, in terms of both context and seriousness, but most are dominated numerically by just one or two.10 In other words a relatively small number of offence categories play a major part in determining both the overall crime total and the size of each offence group in relation to the others. If one analyses the contributions of the main offence groups to the total number of offences recorded by the police in 1997 the picture of the crime problem which emerges is one dominated by property offences and above all by theft associated with vehicles. It can therefore be argued that the popular media focus too strongly upon violence and distort its importance within the overall crime picture.11 A long-standing criticism of the presentation of ofcial statistics has been that they do not give a clear picture of the social or situational context of crimes.12 For example, robbery includes actions as diverse as an organised bank raid, the theft at knifepoint of the contents of a shopkeepers till, and a drunken attempt to snatch a handbag or necklace in the 13 street. Consequently, the kind of statistic most likely to feature in newspaper headlines are those referring to apparent trends in recorded crime. In many cases, such gures refer only to a rise or fall relative to the previous year, or even previous quarter, paying no attention to the relationship between the latter and earlier year, or even previous quarter, paying no attention to the relationship between the latter and earlier years. Thus even leaving aside the doubts about whether changes in recorded crime levels reect real changes in criminal behaviour they can be highly misleading in terms of longer term trends. Serious attempts to identify trends in recorded crime adjust for legislative changes the most important in the post-war years being the Theft Act 1968 which radically redened a number of key offences including burglary.14 In effect, therefore, ofcial statistics tell us which crimes the public choose to report and how those crimes are dealt with by the police. The data produced by the police will tell us as much about the method of policing and the level of public concern about crime as it does about the amount of crime.15 Accordingly, the BCS was instituted to attempt to elicit the true volume of crime, that is, attempt to gain an understanding of the dark gure of crime16. The BCS is undertaken by members of the Home Ofce Research and Statistics Directorate and was rst conducted in 1982 with further sweeps in 1984, 1988, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998. The Directorate has just completed the 2000 survey. The BCS has a different emphasis to that provided by the ofcial statistics. It is a victimisation survey as opposed to a register of ofcial recorded offences. For that reason, the main rationale for the survey is that, by asking samples of the public to describe crimes committed against them within a given recent period, the vagaries of crime reporting behaviour and police recording behaviour are neatly avoided, and the responses can be grossed up into a fuller and hence, by implication, more valid picture of crime and its trends in Britain.17 Accordingly, to comment sensibly on the status of knowledge about crime derived from the BCS, it is necessary to understand how its data are collected and compiled. The core ndings of every survey are based on interviews with more than 10,000 people aged 16 and over. Since 1992, the Postcode Address File (PAF) has been used as a sampling frame, it being argued that this produces a better representation of the population.18 The offence categories produced by the BCS are by no means all coterminous with police categories.19 In fact, when making direct comparisons of ofcial and BCS crime rates, only 62 per cent of the BCSgenerated offences can justiably be used.20 Alternatively, there are many categories of offence covered in the police-derived statistics which are not measured by the BCS.21

Found at http://www.homeofce.gov.org

Thus sexual offences range from rape to bigamy to indecency between males, but more than half consist of indecent assault on a female. This information can be found at: http://www.homeofce.gov.org/rds/publf.htm
11

(Davies et all., 1995, pp. 4345).

12

(Maguire et all, 1998, p.155).

13 I bid. (Taylor, 1997). The comprehensive article by Ricky Taylor entitled Forty Years of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics, 1958 to 1997 details 43 pieces of legislation from the Street Offences Act 1959 to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 which affect criminal statistics. This article can be found at http://www.homeofce.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/ 40years.pdf 14 15 Davies et al, (1995 at p.74). See also Dingwall and Hardings Diversion In The Criminal Process (1998). They provide an interesting chapter on the police and their role in the diversion process prevalent in the criminal justice system. 16 This change of emphasis was aided by the ideas proffered by the left realists and by the pioneering work of the crime surveys.

17

(Maguire, 1997, p.165).

29

Criminology

(Mayhew et al, 1993, pp. 14951). The Electoral Register has been used previously but it was found that it may signicantly under-represent vulnerable groups such as young people, the unemployed, ethnic minorities and those living in rented accommodation. Participants of the BCS are rst asked whether you or anyone else now in your household have been the victim of any of a series of crimes, each described to them in ordinary language, since 1 January of the previous year. They are then asked whether you personally have suffered any of a number of other offences. If any positive answers are received, interviewers complete a detailed Victim Form for each incident, though if the respondent reports a number of similar events, these may be treated as one series incident. The results of this exercise are analysed to produce estimated national totals of both household offences and personal offences, based on calculations using, respectively, the total number of household and the total adult population of England and Wales. This information was gained from the BCS, 1998 at pages 6975.
19

18

As an illustration, according to the BCS 1998 (p.18), offences not in a comparable subset include thefts in a dwelling, thefts of personal property, and common assaults.
20 21

In other words, national victimisation surveys are much less successful in obtaining information about some types of incident than others. They do not produce an overall gure purporting to represent the total volume of crime but concentrate instead upon selected categories of offence which are usually discussed individually or in sub-groups. The BCS provides an alternative, rather than a directly comparable overall picture of crime to that offered by police statistics: it is fuller than the latter in some respects, but narrower in others.22 In 1997, the total of notiable offences recorded by the police in categories covered by the BCS was 2,450,000, whereas the BCS produced evidence to suggest that over 10 million offences of these kinds had been committed in the same year. There is a strong temptation, therefore, to interpret such gures as showing that there is four times as much crime as the ofcial records suggest: a trap into which many people have duly fallen. The problem lies, however, in the wide variations between offences in terms of their reporting and recording rates. These variations mean that the choice of offence groups to include in any comparison can signicantly affect the overall ratio between the survey gures and the police gures.23 What can the study of the BCS teach us about crime? The central message sent out by its initial authors was that The bad news is that there is a lot more crime than we thought, the good news is that most of it is petty.24 This same message is applicable in todays climate. The emphasis upon the petty nature of most law-breaking was designed to deect a possible moral panic in reaction to the huge amount of new crime revealed by the survey, but it also reected the funding that unreported crimes generally involved much lower levels of nancial loss, damage and injury than those reported to the police. Secondly, the main difference where directly comparable offences are concerned is that vandalism is more prominent among BCS offences than in the ofcial statistics: it appears from the most recent survey that only about one in eight cases known to victims ends up in police gures.25 Thirdly, the series of sweeps of the BCS, together suggest that overall increases in crime have been less steep than police gures suggest. In sum, the general picture painted by the BCS is one of a fairly steady pattern of increase since the early 1980s, while police gures suggest a sharper rise followed by a fall. While political factors in the broadest sense may well have played a part, it is likely that the reasons for the uctuations were vastly more complex, involving interactions between changes in policing, in insurance practice, in media attitudes and, indeed, in the public mood.26 Finally, it is important to remember that the BCS, perhaps even more so than the police gures, promotes a picture of crime in which certain modes of offending are prominent and others are systematically excluded or under-counted. The BCS picture is dominated above all by offences against private individuals and households which are committed by strangers at random.27 In conclusion, it can be derived from the study of statistics and surveys that crime is a social construction. It is dependent on the subjective contingencies of social and historical circumstances.28 Consequently, a biased picture emerges portraying a certain social order, social ideology. The writer would agree with Box (1983)29 that the criminal categories pertaining to deviant behaviour are creative constructs designed to criminalise only some victimising behaviours, usually those more frequently committed by the relatively powerless and to exclude others, usually those frequently committed by the powerful against subordinates. This ideology can be evidenced at rst hand in the political arena where politicians argue both about the signicance of the statistics and about the causes of crime. Crime has become more of an election issue since the 1970s. With a general election forecast within the next year or two we will no doubt witness, yet again, political debates over its existence and supposed causation.30 Nevertheless, the ofcial view of the extent of deviancy

Ibid at p. 17.

These include crimes against commercial or corporate victims (notably shop-lifting, burglary and vandalism), fraud, motoring offences and so-called victimless crimes such as the possession of or dealing in drugs. The main BCS schedule also excludes offences against victims under 16. And sexual offences, though asked about, are reported to BCS interviewers so infrequently that no reliable estimates can be produced. This information was taken from the BCS, 1998 at pp. 1725.
22

(Davies et al, 1995, p.77). BSS, 1998, at pp. 2226.

25 26

23 24

(Hough and Mayhew, 1983, p.33). BCS, 1998, at p.19.

(Maguire, 1997, p.168).

27 (Muncie & McLaughlin, 1996, p.21). This image was strengthened in the rst BCS report by the calculation of the average risks of falling victim to various types of offence: a statistically average person aged 16 or over can expect: a robbery once every ve centuries (not attempts); an assault resulting in injury (even if slight) once every century; a family car to be stolen or taken by joy riders once every 60 years; a burglary in the home once every 40 years (Hough and Mayhew, 1983, p.15) 28

(Muncie & Mclaughlin, 1996, p.7).

29

At page 11.

30 As we were in 1994 with Tony Blairs slogan that governments should be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. The Guardian, (21 March, 1994). 31

In spite of the fact that The Guardian (8 December, 1999) published an interesting article on how ofcial statistical reform (as a result of a white paper on national statistics) will still be subject to charges of political manipulation.

30

Chapter 2: Sources of data, criminal statistics and their interpretation

32

Box (1983).

is generally accepted by the public.31 Consequently, if we the general public were provided by the politicians with the results of the alternative view of the prevalence of deviancy in society, and afforded an insight as to how the criminal denition has been formulated, we would be much more aware of the crime, power and ideological mystication32 continually accepted by society through the use of criminal statistics and victimisation surveys.

Students bibliography
Ashworth, Andrew (1994), The Criminal Process An Evaluative Study, (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp.125155. Bottomley, K. & Coleman, C. (1981), Understanding Crime Rates, (Farnborough: Gower) Box, Stephen (1983), Power, Crime and Mystication, (London: Routledge), pp.115. Coleman, Clive, Moynihan, Jenny (1996), Understanding Crime Data, (Buckingham: Open University Press), pp.190, 132143. Croall, H. (1998), Crime and Society in Britain, (London: Longman), pp.1539. Davies, Croall & Tyrer (1995), Criminal Justice: An Introduction to the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales (London: Longman), pp.3478. Denny, Charlotte (1999), Finance Roundup: Statistics reform discounted, in The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group), p.29. Dingwall, Gavin, Harding and Christopher (1998), Diversion in the Criminal Process (London: Sweet & Maxwell), pp.215, 3848, 98115. Ellingworth, D.; Farrell, G.; and Pearse, K. A Victim is A Victim is A Victim, in British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 35, No. 3, Summer 1995, pp.360365 Hough, M.& Mayhew, P. (1983), The British Crime Survey: First Report, (London: HMSO). Maguire, M. (1997), Crime Statistics, Patterns, and Trends: Changing Perceptions and their Implications, in M. Maguire, R. Morgan, R. Reiner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp.135179 Mayhew, P.; Aye Maung, N. & (1993) The 1992 British Crime Survey, Home Ofce Mirrless-Black, C. Research Study No. 132, (London: HMSO). Mirrless-Black, C.; Budd, T., Partridge, S. & Mayhew, P. (1998), The British Crime Survey, England & Wales (London: HMSO). Found at http://www.homeofce.gov.uk/rds/publf.htm Muncie, J. & McLaughlin, E (1996), The Problem of Crime, (London: Sage), pp.142. Muncie, J.; McLaughlin, E. & Langan, Mary (eds) (1998), Criminological Perspectives, (London: Sage Publications). Nelken, D. (ed) (1994), The Futures of Criminology, (London: Sage). Padeld, Nicola (1995), Texts and Materials on the Criminal Justice Process, (London: Butterworths) pp.131 Schlesinger, P. & Tumber, H. (1994), Reporting Crime: The Media Politics of Criminal Justice, (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Walklate, Sandra (1998), Understanding Criminology, (Buckingham: Open University Press), pp.115.

Websites
www.homeofce.gov.uk www.homeofce.gov.uk.crimepre/crsdoc2.htm www.homeofce.gov.uk/bcs2000/bcs2000.htm www.homeofce.gov.uk./rds/pdfs/40years.pdf www.homeofce.gov.uk/rds/publf.htm

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Notes

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Chapter 3: Competing Traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology

Chapter 3

Competing Traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology

Essential reading
Core texts
Morrison, Wayne Theoretical Criminology, 1995, Chapters 4, 5 and 6. Burke Roger, Criminological Theory, 2001, Chapters 2 and 4. Lanier and Henery, Essential Criminology, 1998, Chapter 4 Classical, Neoclassical, and Rational Choice Theories. Vold and Bernard, Theoretical Criminology. Chapters 1, 2 and 3. Jones, Criminology, 1998, Chapter 5 The Classical and Positive Traditions. Walklate, Sandra Understanding criminology, Chapter 2 Perspectives in criminological theory.

Supplementary reading
Roshier, Bob Controlling Crime: the classical perspective in criminology, Open University Press, 1989. Jenkins, David History of Criminology: a philosophical perspective. Lilly, L. et al., Criminological Theory: context and consequences, Chapter 2. Taylor, Walton and Young, The New Criminology, 1973. Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, (rst published as Dei Delitti e delle Pene, in 1764) (trans. H. Paolucci) 1963. Ferri, E. Criminal Sociology, (trans. L. Kelly and J. Lisle), 1967. Foucault, M. Discipline and Punishment: the birth of the prison, Penguin, London, 1977. Garland, D. Punishment and Welfare, 1985. Jenkins, P. Varieties of Enlightenment Criminology, British Journal of Criminology, April 1984. Mannheim, H. (ed.) Pioneers of Criminology, 1960.

Learning objectives
By the end of this chapter and the associated reading you should be able to: Identify the main features of the classical and positive traditions in criminology. Give an account of their formation and the major gures involved. Assess their continued inuence

Commentary
The contrast between positivist, classical and later non-positivist approaches to the study of crime underlies much of the discussion of crime and the policy implications of such study. The nature of these distinctions is clearly linked to the historical development of the discipline and this chapter outlines the early history of these approaches.

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Criminology

The Enlightenment context Current divisions within criminology are a legacy of different conceptual approaches taken at the time of the Enlightenment that analysed the basic building blocks of society and gave frameworks for how the science of man was to proceed. Hall Williams (Criminology and Criminal Justice, 1982) called classical criminology: a school of criminal justice philosophy. It is fair to say that philosophy, in particular the rationalist methodology of constructing intellectual systems, constitutes the procedures of classicism while forms of reasoning, largely empiricist in nature, provide an image of natural science which inuences positivism. Vold and Bernard devote a chapter to both classical and positive criminology and these repay study. However, it must be borne in mind that Vold oversimplies and skates over the debates and distinctions between writers in demarcating the classical approach from the religious (along with the divine right to rule) which he sees preceding classicism. For Vold the century between Beccaria and Lombroso marks a shift in mans thinking about himself that is of such a magnitude that it may well be considered an intellectual revolution. However, the basic conceptual distinctions that differentiate classicism and positivism were already present in many of the writers Vold ascribes to the classical school. The chapters in Morrison should be read closely, even if difcult at rst reading. Burke, may be approached rst. For an introductory account of the full range of perspectives read Walklate. The eighteenth century in Europe worked many changes in science, religion and the mechanical arts and effectively overturned the settled notions of the natural order of social and natural life that the medieval period had given primacy to. However, modern secular social theory did not emerge in one dominant form. Certainly we can agree with Foucaults notion of the birth of the sciences of man that the enlightenment is characterised by placing man and the structures of the world as the new frames of reference. But the ways in which it does this exhibits qualities of both pessimism as well as extreme optimism, is romantic as well as realist on its views of the human condition. It can be either empiricist or rationalist, indulgent of a priori reasoning and the grappling with essences or determined to be based only of observation of phenomenon and inductions therein. It can be methodologically individualist (i.e. assume man as an analytical individual and a complete object of study) or holist (i.e. deny that man can be studied as individual phenomena but is necessarily social); it can lay stress on man as voluntarist or determinate objects, to mention only some of the possible contrasts it is possible to draw. It is often said that classicism is not concerned with the causes of crime and you may wish to see whether you agree with this. Alternatively, some argue that classicism clearly acknowledges a link between crime and social conditions but that writers such as Beccaria were actually conservatives (see Morrison, Theoretical Criminology, and Jenkins, Varieties of Enlightenment Criminology) and mostly concerned with how criminals should be dealt with in a way that promoted social stability. Moreover classicism gives the State the role of dening and to mediate the social conceptions of crime and the reaction and control of it. For classicism the state is central, the inuence of positivism, conversely, is to lower the attention given to State power.

34

Chapter 3: Competing Traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology

Positivism is a subset of the growing empiricist science of man. In its critique of the social contract theory that Beccaria assumed as the basis of social order it reorientated the focus of study away from questions depicting a hypothetical origin of society and the ideal social order. It substituted an empirically orientated inquiry combining a sociological interest in social-cultural development and an anthropological interest in the structure of human nature. The positivist approach holds that ultimately science can disclose an objective reality. As Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi state in a recent work Positive Criminology:
certainly one feature of positive criminology has always been its belief in an objective external reality capable of measurement. Public disclosure of the understood reality, the procedures used for its measurement, and frequent independent replication are essential tenets of this perspective.

You should be careful not to use the term positivism in criminology as simply denoting individualist approaches. It has also a wide sociological use, as is apparent in looking at criminal statistics. However. the individualist version of positive criminology is characterised by the search to discover, within the composition of the individual, the causes of criminal and delinquent behaviour. The scientic method is used to differentiate offenders from non-offenders on a variety of characteristics. The method of positive criminology assumes that there are identiable factors that make people act as they do (determinism) and that the variability to be explained is associated with the variability in the casual agents (differentiation). Central Figures of the two approaches examined Becarria It has been common to describe the work of Cesare Becarria as a reaction to a time when the criminal law and its enforcement were barbarous and arbitrary and to see him as a humane reformer. This interpretation stresses a social context of secret accusations, brutal executions, torture, arbitrary and inconsistent punishments, and class-linked disparities in punishments. To depict Beccaria as a humanitarian is to simplify but neither is it sufcient, at least without unpacking the conception, as Vold unfortunately did not, to characterise the classical school as simply administrative and legal criminology which ignored all other factors which interfered with ease of administration. This image of classical criminology as rationalising the operation of the criminal justice system captures a wider range of effects than the simple humanitarian model but we have to be aware of the cultural and political implications and effects which the acceptance of classical criminology leads on to. Implicit in classical criminology, for example, is the issue of the limits of criminal justice. How could a criteria of justice be constructed which could provide legitimation for new social institutions and withstand the sceptical/critical attitude which philosophers such as Kant had declared all modern institutions had to withstand. Moreover, classical criminology should be understood within the development of philosophical radicalism and the full consequences of the developing notion of the rule of law, the changing political struggles where a growing middle class sought political power to accompany their economic power and break down the political monopoly enjoyed in England, for instance, by the landowning class, and for the hopes of progressive social engineering epitomised here by the Englishman Jeremy Bentham. Beccaria considered crime as an injury to society; a notion which tted well with the development of a rule of law ideology. It was the injury to society, rather than to the immediate individual(s) who experienced it, that was to direct and determine the

35

Criminology

degree of punishment. Behind this thinking was the utilitarian assumption that all social action should be guided by the goal of achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number. From this viewpoint, the punishment of an individual for a crime was justied, and justiable only, for its contribution to the prevention of future infringements on the happiness and well-being of others. In todays world these ideas may seem common enough but they needed to be constructed to reform the world of Beccaria and lead on to our own. For example, Beccaria reasoned that certain and quick, rather than severe, punishments would best accomplish the above goals: in order for punishment not to bean act of violence of one or many against a private citizen, it must bepublic, prompt,the least possible in the given circumstances, proportionate to the crimes, [and] dictated by the laws. ([1764] 1963: 99) Torture, execution, and other irrational activity must be abolished. In their place, there were to be quick and certain trials and, in the case of convictions, carefully calculated punishments. Beccaria went beyond this to propose that accused persons be treated humanely before trial, with every right and facility extended to enable them to bring evidence in their own behalf. Note, at Beccarias time, accused and convicted persons were detained in the same institutions, and subjected to the same punishments and conditions. In place of this, Beccaria argued for swift and sure punishments, to be imposed on only those found guilty, with the punishments determined strictly in accordance with the damage to society caused by the crime. It is often said that classical criminology has no idea of the causes of crime but Beccaria certainly held that economic conditions and bad laws could cause crime. Additionally, he was clear that property crimes were committed primarily by the poor, and mainly out of necessity. Moreover, he was aware of what has come to be called opportunity transfer; that is, that putting a severe punishment on a particular crime could deter someone from committing it, but at the same time make another crime attractive by comparison. Beccaria was also aware of the cultural power of severe punishments to add to the desperation of the populace and encourage them to indulge in violence. As he put it, laws could promote crime by diminishing the human spirit. A careful matching of the crime and its punishment, in keeping with the general interests of society, could make punishment a rational instrument of government. Jeremy Bentham extended this with his notion of a calculus for realising these interests. Jeremy Bentham Bentham began with Beccarias concern for achieving the greatest happiness of the greatest number, a criteria Bentham attributed to the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Bentham gave precision to this idea, in part, through a pseudo-mathematical concept he called felicity calculus. This calculus was intended as a means of estimating the goodness or badness of acts, the only measure of right or wrong. Thus Bentham declared the entire notion of indefeasible rights and contractual limitation on the power of government to be either meaningless or else confused references to the principle of utility. The basis of government was not contract but human need, and the satisfaction of human need is the sole justication. Bentham meant to make the law an efcient and economical means of preventing crime. Like Beccaria, Bentham insisted that prevention was the only justiable purpose of punishment, and furthermore that punishment was too expensive when it produced more evil than good, or when the same good could be obtained at the price of less suffering. His recommendation was that penalties be xed so as to impose an amount of pain in excess of the pleasure that might be derived from the

36

Chapter 3: Competing Traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology

criminal act. It was this calculation of pain compared to pleasure that Bentham believed would deter crime. These ideas were formulated most clearly in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, rst published in 1789:
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. (Chapter 1 Sect. 1)

With Bentham, calculation overwhelms the humane approachhis humanism is always a quantiable conception. While Beccaria kept to some Kantian notions as to the dignity of man, Bentham would have none of these limitations upon the scientic reorganisation of utility. For example, Bentham argued that capital punishment should be restricted to offences which in the highest degree shock the public feeling. He went on to argue that if the hanging of a mans efgy could produce the same preventive effect as the hanging of the man himself, it would be a folly and a cruelty not to do so (Radzinowicz, 1948: 381382). He also suggested how capital punishments might nonetheless be used to maximum effect: A scaffold painted black, the livery of griefthe ofcers of justice dressed in crepethe executioner covered with a mask, which would serve at once to augment the terror of his appearance, and to shield him from ill-founded indignationemblems of his crime placed above the head of the criminal, to the end that the witnesses of his sufferings may know for what crimes he undergoes them; these might form a part of the principal decorations of these legal tragediesWhilst all the actors in this terrible drama might move in solemn processionserious and religious music preparing the hearts of the spectators for the important lesson they were about to receiveThe judges need not consider it beneath their dignity to preside over this public scene. (Bentham, quoted in Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750, Vol. 1, 1948: 383384). The article by Douglas Hay, Property, authority and the criminal law, in Fitzgerald et al., Crime and Society: readings in History and Theory, will give you some idea of the actual conditions which surrounded the operation of the criminal law in England at this time. The opening chapter of Foucaults Discipline and Punish, gives a graphic illustration of the spectacle of public punishment. Bentham also attempted to radicalise imprisonment, an institution then used mainly merely to hold persons awaiting trial or debtors. He spent much of his life trying to convince authorities that an institution of his design, called a panopticon, would solve the problems of correction. For Foucault the panopticon is highly representative of a new style of penal reason, one concerned with disciplining individuals rather than punishing. There were three features to the panopticon. First the architectural dimension; the panopticon was to be a circular building with a glass roof and containing cells on every storey of the circumference. It was to be so arranged that every cell could be visible from a central point. The omniscient prison inspector would be kept from the sight of the prisoners by a system of blinds unlesshe thinks t to show himself. Second, management by contract; the manager would employ the inmates in contract labour and he was to receive a share of the money earned by the inmates, but he was to be nancially liable if inmates who were later released reoffended, or if an excessive number of inmates died during imprisonment. Third, the panopticon was to open to the inspection of the world which would control the manager. Two prisons of the panopticon design were actually built in the United States, however, the rst was rebuilt seven years after construction, and the second was redesigned before it was
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nished. Foucault has used Benthams ideas for the Panopticon as a prime example of developing penal rationality which he believes developed into disciplinary power in contrast to judicial power. For Foucault the prison became linked to the knowledges of positivism and together they gave rise to a whole new method of social control. This was not the control of command and obedience, which he believes is the method of the law, but the regulation through knowledge and conceptions of normaley, where individuals come to internalise perceptions of appropriate behaviour and be subjected to surveillance and accounting. It is an intriguing exercise to see whether you can agree with Foucault, whatever your opinion in reading Bentham or Foucault on imprisonment, should give rise to a multiplicity of doubts as to what imprisonment is meant to achieve. Several of Benthams ideas were in time picked up. He argued strongly for the establishment of the ofce of public prosecutor, and he furthered the notion that crimes are committed against society rather than against individuals. Beyond this, he argued that many victimless crimes were imaginary rather than real offences, and he argued for the development of ofcial crime statistics or billsindicating the moral health of the country. The Positive revolution: the imagery of science replacing the moral discourse of crime Modern science is empiricist in nature which means it relies upon observation, description, and measurement to build up theories and create its image of the world. Positivism broke with the classical image of free, willing and self-determining individuals and suggested that man is a determined entity in the world by his constitution and his environment and that his behaviour is the result of an array of biological, psychological or social factors. Crime does not therefore consist of actions rationally chosen by the offender, the notion of free will was seen by the positivists as inhibiting the study of the causes of crime and as diverting attention away from the real causes. Positivism shifted study away from crime to the criminal and sought the answers in differentiating the offender from the normal member of society. One danger in positivism lies in its stressing a consensual culture where all deviation is simply attributed to lack of socialisation or deciency of the individual. Early statistical analysis The linkage between a technical interest in crime control and the positive approach in criminology was rst evident in the work of the so-called cartographic criminologists of nineteenth century Europe, such as the Belgian Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (1842), the Frenchman Guerry (1833) and the Englishmen Rawson (1839), Alison (1840), and Fletcher (1849). Their work attempted to match spatial patterns of crime and offender rates as visible from the developing criminal statistics with other indices of the moral health of the nation (including such mixed features as literacy, population density, wealth, occupations, nationalities) and the physical environment (such as climate). Guerry, for example found a correlation of offending rates in France between 182530 with convicted criminals age, sex and the season of the year. Rawson concentrated upon employment and the changing features of urban industrialisation. Quetelet argued the effect of obvious instances of economic inequalities in small areas. The work of Adolphe Jacques Quetelet Quetelet (17961874) was trained in mathematics and early success in this eld made him a professor with a large reputation. He applied mathematical techniques to a range of issues, including astronomy, meteorology, and sociology. He illustrates the fact that so much criminological data and knowledge is the result of applied study

38

Chapter 3: Competing Traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology

rather than a concentrated long-standing effort. For Quetelet scientic evidence resulted from, and was a reection of, large numbers of observations rather than individual occurrences. Quetelet, highlighted a fundamental problem with crime statistics, namely the gap between known and judged offences and what statistics may in common sense be thought to measure, committed offences. He was clear that: our observations can only refer to a certain number of known and tried offences, out of the unknown sum total of crimes committed (Quetelet, 1842: 82).
Quetelet argued that in well-organised societies this ratio would be close to unity for serious crimes, and further from unity for less serious crimes. Thus we could be relatively certain of the moral statistics of crime within these constraints. These statistics showed that men commit more crimes and thus we could infer that they have a greater propensity for crime than women, and that the young have a greater propensity than the old. Using ndings constructed out of many observations and in a variety of times and places: we can enumerate in advance how many individuals will soil their hands in the blood of their fellows, how many will be frauds, how many prisoners; almost as one can enumerate in advance the births and deaths that will take place. Society contains within itself the seeds of all the crimes that are to be committed, and at the same time the facilities necessary for their development. It is society that, in some way, prepares these crimes, and the criminal is only the instrument that executes them. (ibid.: 97)

Such patterns were material to work upon to effect improvements. Statistics provided evidence of a moral condition of society that required remedy: there is a budget which we pay with a frightful regularity it is that of prisons, chains, and the scaffold: it is that which, above all, we ought to endeavour to abate. (ibid.: 96) The oral-ethnographic efforts Rather than seeking to determine hard scientic laws or knowledge for control, the oral-ethnographic tradition attempts to communicate the human experience and offer an understanding based vision of the human consequences of social conditions, poverty and crime. Using direct observations, life histories, unpublished documents and a range of rst-hand data sources we are offered commentaries on the effects of socio-economic change on the structure of social relations. Fredrich Engels In The Condition of the working class in England (1845) Engels used his own impressions of Manchester to comply a radical and sensitive account of working class life. You should note that Manchester had been called by a character in Disraelis Coningsby the most wonderful city in Modern times and was the major city of England that had come to symbolise the achievement of capitalist industrialisation in all its grandeur and grimness. Engels used a combination of rst hand observation, economic data, contemporary accounts, pamphlets and newspapers. The themes of relative deprivation and of crime as a rational reaction to the visible inequalities produced by the industrial revolution run through his account:
The worker lived in poverty and want and saw that other people were better off than he was. The worker was not sufciently intelligent to appreciate why he, of all people, should be the one to suffer for after all he contributed more to society than the idle rich, and sheer necessity drove him to steal in spite of his traditional respect for private property. (1845: 242)

Crime was understandable and a taste of justice for the powerful:

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Criminology

Acts of violence committed by the working classes against the bourgeoisie and their henchmen are merely frank and undisguised retaliation for the thefts and treacheries perpetrated by the middle classes against the workers. (1854: 242)

Engels saw the growth of criminality not only among the deprived working class but also in the surplus population of casual workers, what Marx called the lowest sediment, and others the residuum. Engels saw the position is starkly determinist terms:
Apart from over-indulgence in intoxicating liquors, the sexual immorality of many English workers is one of their greatest failings. This too follows from the circumstances in which this class of society is placed. The workers have been left to themselves without the moral training necessary for the proper control of their sexual desires. While burdening the workers with numerous hardships the middle classes have left them only the pleasures of drink and sexual intercourse. The result is that the workers, in order to get something out of life, are passionately devoted to these two pleasures and indulge in them to excess and in the grossest fashion. If people are relegated to the position of animals, they are left with the alternatives of revolting and sinking into bestiality. If the demoralisation of the worker passes beyond a certain point then it is just as natural that he will turn into a criminalas inevitably as water turns into steam at boiling point. (1845: 1445)

This sounds not unlike recent American writings on the underclass (see Morrison, Theoretical Criminology, Chapter 17 Contemporary Social Stratication and the development of the underclass; Walklate, Understanding Criminology, Chapter 6. Crime, politics and welfare). The emphasis upon faulty training early in life is very familiar if you consider recent writings from the control perspective. However, Engels is clearly putting this behaviour into a social context, albeit with a reductionism to environmental determinism, which is missing from much recent conservative writings (see the criticisms of the conservative position made by Elliott Currie in Confronting Crime). Furthermore, Engels located the worthy working class as prospective radicals whose criminality was an inarticulate and unconscious social rebellion. In all his work Engels did not merely describe conditions but chose to interpret his material. In his work the authors values are obvious, indeed self-consciously exposed. His work is deliberately a treatise against capitalism and the absence of any concern with the general welfare of society or of social justice on the part of the capitalists. The weakness with his writing is the possibility that the immediacy and purity of the experience of the subjects being communicated will be distorted and twisted by the interpretation. The surplus group (lumpen-proletariat, residuum, and which is currently the focus of underclass writings) became of considerable interest to social commentators of different persuasions, for example Charles Booth and Henry Mayhew. Henry Mayhew Downes and Rock refer to Henry Mayhew (18121887) as one of the shadow criminologists whose work:
contains much that is repetitive, conjectural, and fanciful. It also contains a great deal of valuable material and sensible observation. Properly read, it may be recognised as an anticipation of the theorising that now passes for the sociology of deviance. (1982: 51)

His street biography appears as an early form of social ecology approach to the study of crime based on observation and description of the social conditions of the developing urban centres. His four volume London Labour and the London Poor offered vivid accounts of the expanding masses which lled the growing cities of

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Chapter 3: Competing Traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology

Victorian capitalism. Mayhew was ambivalent, on the one hand he dened criminals as those who will not work (the Tile of Vol. 4) while his descriptions captured much of the reality of social deprivation which characterised his times.
There are thousands of neglected children loitering about the low neighbourhoods of the metropolis, and prowling about the streets, begging and stealing for their daily bread. They are to be found in Westminster, Whitechapel, Shoreditch, St. Giles, New Cut, Lambeth, the Borough and other localities. Hundreds of them may be seen leaving their parents homes and low lodging-houses every morning sallying forth in search of food and plunder. (Mayhew, 1862: 273)

Beyond the descriptions of the degradation that characterised this period Mayhew saw the weaknesses of the human self. The problem was seen in terms of defective socialisation, to a non-conformity to civilised habits (Criminal Prisons of London, p.386) and the policy prescription was clear.
It is far easier to train the young in virtuous and industrious habits, than to reform the grown-up felon who has become callous in crime, and it is besides far more protable to the State. To neglect them or inadequately to attend to their welfare gives encouragement to the growth of this dangerous class. (ibid.: 275)

The demand for reform ows both from fear and self-interest. It is a reaction to the image of what this failure of socialisation could accomplish but it also reects an assumption that a healthy individual is an individual capable of exercising self-control and rational calculation. The new ideal, implicitly at least, is an individual capable of disciplining his impulses and planning his life. But as the following analysis shows, although this was the ideal, Mayhew leads on to the fact that some are by nature untted for the assumption of self-control and selfmotivation. Mayhew is clear on the need to differentiate between individual members of the working masses:
I am anxious that the public should no longer confound the honest, independent working men, with the vagrant beggars and pilferers of the country; and that they should see that the one class is as respectable and worthy, as the other is degraded and vicious.

Mayhew thought that only 5 per cent of these vagrants and pilferers were deserving and in general they constituted a moral pestilencea stream of vice and diseasea vast heap of social refuse. They constituted for Mayhew a dangerous class and while he criticised the authorities for not taking steps to enable them to practice trades in his The Criminal Prisons of London he dened our criminal tribes as that portion of society who have not yet conformed to civilised habits. What demarcated these tribes was that their rationality did not control the passions of their bodies and t them for the tasks of hard labour.
Still the question becomes why do these folk not settle down to industrial pursuits like the rest of the community?It is a strange ethnological fact that, though many have passed from the steady and regular habits of civilised life, few of those who have once adopted the savage and nomadic form of existence abandon it, notwithstanding its privations, its dangers, and its hardships. This appears to be due mainly to that love of liberty, and that impatience under control, that is more or less common to all minds. Some are more self-willed than others, and, therefore, more irritable under restraint; and these generally rebel at the least opposition to their desires. It is curiously illustrative of the truth of this point, that the greater number of criminals are found between the ages of 15 and 25; that is to say, at that time of life when the will is newly developed, and has not yet come to be guided and controlled by the dictates of reason. The period, indeed, when human beings begin to assert

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themselves is the most trying time for every form of government whether it be parental, political or social; and those indomitable natures who cannot or will not brook ruling, then become heedless of all authority, and respect no law but their own. (1862: 384)

Dividing the poor up into two classes, the wanderers and the settlers. Mayhew saw savagery inhering in the former:
there is a greater development of the animal than of the intellectual or moral nature of man, and that they are all more or less distinguished for their high cheek-bones and protruding jaws for their use of a slang language for their lax ideas of property for their general improvidence their repugnance to continuous labour their disregard of female honour their love of cruelty their pugnacity and their utter want of religion. (The Other Nation: 69)

What has become known as the positive school developed these ideas further. The Italian/Positivist School Criminological texts usually refer to a group of scholars from Italy who applied the positive philosophy of the nineteenth century to the study of crime as the positivist school of criminology. Cesare Lombroso, Raffaele Garofalo, and Enrico Ferri argued that the methods of natural science were the appropriate tools to make the study of criminals truly scientic. They emphasised the necessity for a controlled investigation of criminals and non-criminals and, although their own methodologies were extremely crude and scientically suspect, by determining that proper criminology had to be scientic they laid the foundation for the future development of criminological theory. Cesare Lombroso Lombroso (18351909), who graduated from the same university as Beccaria exactly 100 years later (1858 as compared to 1758) frequently is called the father of modern criminology while these same texts reject entirely his ideas about the causes of crime. Lombroso once referred to himself as a slave to facts. His work can be seen to reduce human nature to the biology of the immediate post-Darwin era, specically applying the concept of atavism and the principles of evolution to depict criminals as biological throwbacks to a primitive, or atavistic, stage of evolution. For Lombroso, criminals could be distinguished from non-criminals by the presence of physical anomalies that represented a reversion to a primitive or subhuman type of person. Between 18591863 he served as an army physician in a variety of posts and examined approximately 3,000 soldiers in a search for the causes of several diseases in mental and physical deciencies. Subsequently, he worked as a prison doctor and conducted hundreds of post-mortems. While conducting a post-mortem examination of a particularly famous inmate by the name of Vilella, he discovered a depression in the interior back part of his skull that he called the median occipital fossa. Lombroso claims to have recognised this feature as a characteristic found in inferior animals and thought he had made the breakthrough:
This was not merely an idea, but a revelation. At the sight of that skull, I seemed to see all of a sudden, lighted up as a vast plain under a aming sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal an atavistic being who reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior animals. Thus were explained anatomically the enormous jaws, high cheek-bones, prominent superciliary arches, solitary lines in the palms, extreme size of the orbits, handle-shaped or sessile ears found in criminals, savages, and apes, insensibility to pain, extremely acute sight,

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Chapter 3: Competing Traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology

tattooing, excessive idleness, love of orgies, and the irresistible craving for evil for its own sake, the desire not only to extinguish life in the victim, but to mutilate the corpse, tear its esh, and drink its blood.

Consequently, Lombroso conducted thousands of post-mortem examinations and anthropometric studies of prison inmates and non-criminals, leading him to the conclusion that the criminal was, in natural reality, a human subspecies, with very distinct physical and mental characteristics (see editions of LUomo delinquent, rst published in 1876). Lombroso constructed a fourfold classication: 1) born criminals, those with true atavistic features, 2) insane criminals, including idiots, imbeciles, and paranoiacs as well as epileptics and alcoholics, 3) occasional criminals or criminaloids, whose crimes were explained largely by opportunity; and 4) criminal of passion who commit crime because of honour, love or anger. They were propelled by a (temporary) irresistible force. Later additional categories gave some allowance for the inuence of social factors and he speculated somewhat as to the interaction of genetic and environmental inuences (to some extent a precursor to modern sociobiological schemes). Although he went some way to developing a multiple factor approach he never seems to have moved from his contention that the true or born criminal was responsible for a large amount of criminal behaviour. Lombrosos work was subjected to intensive scrutiny by Charles Goring who published The English Convict in 1913, only four years after Lombrosos death. Goring had employed an expert statistician to administer the computations concerning the physical differences between criminals and non-criminals but after eight years of research and comparing some 3,000 English convicts with various control groups, Goring concluded that there was no difference between criminals and non-criminals except for statue and body weight. Although Goring concluded this was evidence that criminals were biologically inferior he failed to nd a criminal type and heavily criticised Lombrosos work. Subsequently, the ascription of Lombroso as a founder of modern criminology is based on the fact that his assertions reoriented modern thinking about crime from a focus on the offence to a focus on the offender and redirected emphasis from the crime to the criminal. Raffaele Garofalo Born a member of the Italian nobility, Raffaele Garofalo (18521934) went on to become a magistrate, a professor of criminal law, and a prominent member of government. Garofalo faced up to the epistemological problem that to have a properly scientic approach to the study of crime it was necessary to have a meaningful denition of crime in positivistic terms; one that repositioned crime as a natural phenomena in the natural world. He distinguished between natural crimes, to which Garofalo attached great importance, and police crimes, a residual category of lesser importance. Natural crimes are those which violate two basic altruistic sentiments, pity (revulsion against the voluntary iniction of suffering on others) and probity (respect for the property rights of others). Police offences are behaviours that do not offend these altruistic sentiments but are nonetheless called criminal by law. Natural crimes were important both for being more serious and because the category itself provided a unifying principle, connecting the criminal law and natural social processes. In Criminology (1885: English translation 1914) Garofalo criticised Lombrosos theories as inadequate as an explanation for the natural crimes of true criminals, although he concluded that criminals have regressive characteristics indicating a lower degree of advancement. True criminals lacked the basic altruistic sentiments and were thus ill-suited for society. They were, in short an evolutionary mismatch and the solution to this evolutionary problem is elimination.

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In this way, the social power will effect an articial selection similar to that which nature effects by the death of individuals inassimilable to the particular conditions of the environment in which they are born or to which they have been removed. Herein the State will be simply following the example of nature.

While the classical theorists saw the symbolic value of punishments as offering a means of deterring crime in the general population, Garofalos emphasis on Darwinian reasoning saw society as a natural body that must adapt to the environment and be protected against crime. The actions of the true criminals indicted their inability to live according to the basic human sentiments necessary in the society and their elimination served to protect society, for the lesser criminal incapacitation by life imprisonment or transportation would sufce. For Garofalo the society ruled over the individual and the individual represented just a cell of the social body that could be removed without much loss. Enrico Ferri Enrico Ferri (18561929) had a varied career as a university professor, trial lawyer, member of parliament, newspaper editor, public lecturer and author. He spent a year studying with Lombroso and became his lifelong friend. Ferris work always emphasised the interaction of social, economic and political factors which contributed to crime but all of which worked at an individual level on the predispositions of the person. In Ferris Criminal Sociology crime was the effect of multiple causes that include anthropological, physical, and social factors. Such factors produced criminals who were classied as: (1) born or instinctive, (2) insane, (3) passional, (4) occasional, (5) habitual. The positive science of criminality and of social defence against it was easy to distinguish from the classical tradition.
The science of crimes and punishments was formerly a doctrinal exposition of the syllogisms brought forth by the sole force of logical fantasy. Our School has made it a science of positive observation, which, based on anthropology, psychology, and criminal statistics as well as on criminal law and studies relative to imprisonment, becomes the synthetic science to which I myself gave the name criminal sociology.

It is also fascinating to see the ambiguity of the relationship between knowledge and politics which be-riddles positivism. While positivism claims to be value free and apolitical when we see it in application as with Ferri we can see a structure whereby it is claimed that this knowledge is the truth which must therefore be applied and the strength of this claim overrules moral-political debate. Such a structure can give rise to dire consequences. For most of his life Ferri was a committed Marxist and was a Member of Parliament for many years, he actually lost a professorship because of his Marxist learnings. But if Lombroso was a slave to facts, Ferri was in awe of the principle of determinism as in his attempted merger of Marxian and Darwinian principles into conclusions that today seem highly dubious:
The Marxian doctrine of historical materialismaccording to which the economic conditionsdetermineboth the moral sentiments and the political and legal institutions of the same group, is profoundly true. It is the fundamental law of positivist sociology. Yet I think that this theory should be supplemented by admitting in the rst place that the economic conditions of each people are in turn the natural resultant of its racial energies. (1917, p.118)

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Chapter 3: Competing Traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology

Throughout his life Ferri attempted to integrate his positive science with political change he believed wholly in the constructivist project. The various attempts to change the penal code were rejected because they constituted too great a change from classical legal reasoning and, disappointed in socialism, Ferri turned to fascism as the system most likely to implement the type of reforms he thought necessary. Thorstin Sellin once said that fascism appealed to Ferri because it afrmed the primacy of the States authority over the individual and constrained the excessive individualism he had often criticised. Legacy of the positive school Garofalo and Ferri saw science and the opinions of scientists as the tools by which society would change itself and rule over individuals. The decisions of panels and like bodies judging according to their positivist principles would not include the opinions of those they were evaluating and judging, nor the opinion of the victim or other members of the public. Part of their legacy was a trend towards classication and specialised treatment, with a demand for specialised institutions. Positivism may also be linked to a change from the classical ideas on coercive policies towards the disreputable poor, to the development of welfare policy patterned by a deep alteration in conceptions of human nature and social agency. Many recent critics from the conservative side have blamed forms of positivism for a demoralising of criminality. The classical school helped to create the practical and administrative systems for processing offenders. It created a system capable of handling large numbers and a process that could adapt to changing social sensibilities. Judges were curtailed in their ability to dispense discretionary judgments and this protected the offender from procedural injustice. Classicism provides sets of procedures which aim to ensure uniformity and predictability many have argued, however, that the theory does not really face up to the fact that the criminal laws themselves may be arbitrary and that equal treatment of unequal circumstances may itself be unjust. Traditional positivism also did not put the creation of criminal laws onto the questions to be analysed and it was left until the advent of more critical approaches in the 1960s and 1970s for this issue to be raised. Activity
Address the following questions 1. What were the background conditions for the rise of classical criminology? What were the key inuences upon Beccaria and how did Beccaria use previous writers to fashion a new legitimacy for criminal justice? 2. What assumptions concerning human nature underlie classicism? In what way does the classical perspective believe it is possible to control human behaviour? Does it seek to eliminate crime or simply manage it? 3. What principles of punishment are inherent in the classical perspective? Are these still appropriate today? 4. What accounts for the continuing appeal of classicism? Why do you think we have seen a redeployment of classical ideas in the past 15 or so years?

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Sample questions
1. The differences between the classical and positive schools in criminology are grounded not only in differing conceptions of human nature but also different approaches to government. Discuss. 2. Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. Discuss in relation to the academic development of the Classical tradition in Criminology. 3. The classical conception of crime as rational action is unscientic and has survived only because of its ideological utility. Discuss. 4. Either (a) Crimes need no fancy explanations: they occur whenever social control is weak and opportunities present themselves. Discuss [Note: this is a good example of a question that draws upon different parts of the course, from social control theory, common-sense explanations, and opportunity theory.] or (b) What makes the assumptions of the classical perspective in criminology so appealing? 5. Positivist criminology never escaped from the basic assumptions of classical criminology. It remained wedded to the need to correct crime and was thereby unable to appreciate the meaning of crime to the offender. Discuss. 6. The assumptions underlying the classical criminological conception of crime as rational action continue to guide the criminal justice system because they accord to a greater degree than those of positivism with our moral intuitions. Discuss.

Activity Assessing student work

Read carefully through the following essay. Try and put yourself in the position of a university lecturer and assume that this essay is to be an assessed part of the course, worth at least 25 per cent of the marks. What criteria would you use to mark it? How would you grade this essay in terms of coverage of the material, consistency in being directed to the question, use of readings and concluding back to the question as it was asked? Question The classical conception of crime as rational action is unscientic and has survived only because of its ideological utility. Discuss. Answer The foundations of the classical conception of crime are derived from Cesare Beccarias work Dei Delitti e delle Pene, written in 1764, in which he proposed a new way of understanding and responding to crime. The spartan simplicity of his proposal for an exact scale of punishments for equal acts without reference to the individual involved or the special circumstances in which the crime was committed 46

Chapter 3: Competing Traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology

(Vold and Bernard; 1986: 20) may account in part, for the appeal that these notions still have. A fundamental underpinning of why punishments should be exacted equally was the concept of the willingness of individuals to sacrice a portion of their personal liberty in order to have a more stable, safe and secure environment. The paradox here is that whereas on the one hand our own individual selshness means we would like not to be constrained by collective responsibility, some of our needs are in fact better met if we conform to a social contract. However, social contract theorists did not take into account the fact that some societies are unfair. (ibid.: 28) The classicism of Beccaria was informed by the view that humans are rational in the pursuit of their aspirations and will rationally avoid pains including the pain of being punished. In his view, the pain of punishment must be proportionate to the social harm caused, invariable with no allowance made for individual circumstances. The aim, to make an example of an offender and knowledge of their fate will constrain others from non-conformity. Rational individuals will maintain the social contract and avoid the pain of punishment. Punishment must also be prompt and certain. These last two qualities make so much stronger and more lasting in the human mind the association of these two ideas (of) crime and punishment. The association of ideas is the cement that forms the fabric of the human intellect. (Roshier 1989: 7) Roshier claims that the failure of Beccaria to allow for the unique circumstances in which the same class of crimes may be committed resulted in a moral problem because his insistence that personal characteristics of offenders and circumstances of their offences should be excluded from consideration in determining punishments violates such deep-seated feelings of justice that it has proved to be unacceptable under any criminal law jurisdiction. (ibid.: 7) Roshier, too, is subscribing to a basic notion of human nature that somehow there are deep seated feelings that are more true than those ideas expounded by rational deliberation and can be relied on to guide judgments about relative culpability and suitable punishments. This highlights the aw in classicism which insisted that punishment was a means to deter future offenders, rather than re-educate those engaged already in offending. When Beccarias schema formed the basis of the French legal Code of 1791, changes were gradually introduced to take account of extenuating circumstances. This formed the basis of neoclassicism. It was obvious that all offenders were not created equally and thus could not be equally capable of exercising free will, or making rational choices about responsible or irresponsible behaviour. Most obviously, children could not be considered as equally culpable as adults, although both may steal, nor should those who were insane or brain damaged be held as accountable as their more sane or intellectually capable fellows. An invariable scale of punishments imposed on the basis of the crime, not the criminal, may be methodical but it is not rational. Even a system of punishment, which is more responsive to individual circumstances, may not, strictly speaking, be rational, as it can not be demonstrated that it results in controlling crime. Beccaria would have argued that the power of punishment to act as a deterrent is diluted when punishment is no longer invariable, and proposing that offenders were identiably different in some way, from non, offenders, could mean that people no longer associate the punishment of the other with their own propensity to transgress and thus be liable for punishmentNevertheless, Vold and Bernard quote Taylor, Walton and Young when they claim that, The neoclassical view is, with minor variations, the major model of human behaviour held to by agencies of social control in all advanced industrial societies (whether in the West or the East). (Vold & Bernard: 1986: 27)

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Arguably, the enduring appeal of classicist or neoclassicist approaches well into the late twentieth century derive in part from the wish for a simpler world and a sense of security as well as the endurance of deeply held beliefs about human nature and the nature of existence. This is despite the rise of social sciences and their plethora of competing theories and the historical record that the world was never simple, and people have never felt secure and that non conforming behaviour has always been managed with more or less brutality but with a view that it was inevitably linked to social and economic poverty. A lack of control over ones own and other peoples life circumstances, uncertainty and anxiety are not new to the human condition, only the circumstances have changed. One hundred years ago in the Western nations, maternal and infant mortality, accident and epidemics resulted in destitute orphans, widowed spouses, impoverishment, hardship and bereavement. Post-modern theorists argue that the exposure of the limits of rational, scientic discourse has contributed to the current sense of loss of control and anxiety in a period where it is evident that control is lost because of globalising and hegemonic forces in the economic, geopolitical and cultural spheres. As the cultural underpinning of the condence of the modern West relies upon certain cultural assumptions, such as (the ideas of) progress, prosperity and the power of social engineering, mushrooming ofcial crime rates taunt these, showing their falseness, exposing the weakness of modernity. (Morrison: 1995: 3) If the macro issues are well beyond the understanding and control of ordinary citizens, they can at least seek to reassert control over transgressions that threaten their property and their sense of personal security. Modernity hasnt delivered equal benets to all citizens and modern structural and personal inequalities have emerged which lead to unlawful behaviours. However, The contented seem to believe that others in society only fail for lack of effort. Or deciencies of their constitution such as a low IQ, and thus argue that payments for welfare and public infrastructure should be reduced in real terms. It involves a collective refusal to look seriously at the problems of the discontented. (Morrison: 1995;1) The work by Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein in demonstrating statistically that American society is increasingly stratied according to peoples intelligence, arguing further that intelligence is the most powerful determinant of poverty and hence of a swathe of serious social problems, from crime to unemployment and welfare dependency. (The Economist; 22/10/94:59) Only 12 months previously he is described as writing a devastating analysis of Americas gures for out of wedlock births the single most important social problem of our time. (ibid.:) I would argue that the more important problem is Murrays serious lack of understanding that welfare policies, and social contracts, arent necessarily strictly utilitarian many people just dont like seeing other people suffer and will seek to alleviate it. But for those who are dedicated to narcissism and hedonism, the contented post moderns no matter that the imsiness of Mr Murrays central pillars suggest that his work is less scientic than political. (ibid.: 60) Social changes leave many within Western urban populations isolated, lacking the connections, which arise, along with the tensions, in the interdependencies of extended families, church, based solidarities and regional identities. The community is either conceived of as non-existent or as some imaginary we of popular opinion or the silent majority. Talk-back radio hosts, who put the lie to Murrays theory of people of below average intelligence only earning low wages, orchestrate the voices of this the silent majority who all know and agree that crime is bad, and is getting worse and it should be harshly dealt with. After all, we were subject to disciplinary practice as children in order to shape conforming behaviour so punishment has intuitive appeal. The same awe that is outraged at the levels of car theft and home

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burglary, are collecting the afternoon paper, avidly reading what amounts to a worldwide incident sheet and the latest in inadequate political responses which appear to demonstrate a willingness to solve the problem but actually avoid doing anything seriously substantial. Social theorists like Charles Murray help generate prots for media owners whose circulation is boosted by featuring sensationalist articles about crime which results in more advertisers seeking to cost-effectively reach large market segments through a high circulation publication. The same audience which enjoys a good crime novel, or watching the Prime Suspect series or seeing a Dirty Harry rerun is fascinated by ctional crime but not so pleased when the tawdry reality of car theft, or burglary impacts directly on their well-being. Humans may be capable of rational calculation but they are also highly emotional animals, and often turn their calculators off and demand the death penalty. Hence, it might be argued, the utility of classicism for political parties who generally undergo what is often called a law and order auction in the weeks prior to an election. With so many other areas beyond their ability to control, the ruling elites seek a point of differentiation not on how they are prepared to eliminate conditions which cause crime, but how they will satisfy ill conceived but popular ideas of managing offenders. Crime itself as a category lends itself to this. Although the bulk of crime is property based and non-violent, homicide and violent assault are what people fear, and all crime and criminals are conated into the one category such that trafc ne defaulters are as much criminal as a sadistic serial rapist. Criminologists berate themselves, our science has failed to deliver policies that will prevent crime. The return to classicism in criminology the just deserts movement has been worse than a failure. It has been a disastrous step backwards. (Braithwaite, J. 1992 quoted in Morrison: 1995: 3) How could criminology deliver policies, when within the discipline there are so many competing positions and within society, an implicit interest in responding to crime rather than preventing it And which crimes can be prevented and how? Close reading of the classical social theorists reveals a basic agreement; the abolition of crime is possible under certain social arrangements It should be clear that a criminology which is not normatively committed to the abolition of inequalities of wealth and power, and in particular of inequalities of property and life-chances, is inevitably bound to fall into correctionalism. (Taylor, Walton and Young:1973: 281) And so it has. People respond from within whatever framework of understandings is available to them, including their prejudices, unchallenged assumptions about the natural order and the desire for situations, which maximise their comfort. Rather than investing in developing a social contract which might, over the long term, reduce the rate of offending behaviour, there seems currently only a willingness to invest in more jails, enact truth in sentencing legislation and enhance police powers to manage those crimes which offend public opinion. None of these responses redress the inequality that can give rise to many criminal behaviours but do serve to consolidate the relationships of authority, including who has the right to knowledge and who can inuence elected ofcials and public policy. Hence, despite the data which suggests that juvenile detention just consolidates criminal behaviour, or that imprisonment doesnt deter future offenders it can be asserted by political and media spokesmen that the world is simple, that categories are knowable and absolute, that values are immutable and that they are dedicated to using every means available to defending them.

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Students bibliography
Morrison, W. (1995) Theoretical Criminology: From modernity to post modernism, (London. Cavendish Publishing). Roshier, R. (1989) Controlling Crime The Classical Perspective in Criminology, Milton Keynes: (Open University Press). Taylor, Walton and Young (1973). The New Criminology, Unwin Brothers Ltd., (The Gresham Press). Vold and Bernard, Theoretical Criminology (1986) Oxford: Open University Press). Muncie, J. and McLaughlin, E. (1996), The Problem of Crime, (London: Sage), pp.142 Muncie, J; E. McLaughlin, & Mary Langan, (eds) (1998), Criminological Perspectives, (London: Sage Publications) Nelken, D. (ed.) (1994), The Futures of Criminology, (London: Sage) Padeld, Nicola (1995), Texts and Materials on the Criminal Justice Process, (London: Butterworths) pp.131 Schlesinger, P. and H. Tumber, (1994), Reporting Crime: The Media Politics of Criminal Justice, (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Walklate, Sandra (1998), Understanding Criminology, (Buckingham: Open University Press), pp.115

Websites
www.homeofce.gov.uk www.homeofce.gov.uk.crimepre/crsdoc2.htm www.homeofce.gov.uk/bcs2000/bcs2000.htm www.homeofce.gov.uk./rds/pdfs/40years.pdf www.homeofce.gov.uk/rds/publf.htm

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Chapter 4: Individual and biological perspectives

Chapter 4

Individual and biological perspectives

A. Individual Constitutional Factors (Biological theories) Essential reading
Core texts
Burke, R. An Introduction to Criminological Theory, 2001, Chapter 5, Biological, Theories,. Jones, S. Criminology, 1998, Chapter 14 Biological Factors and Crime, Chapter 15, Intelligence, Mental Disorder and Crime. Morrison, W. Theoretical Criminology: from modernity to post-modernism, 1995, Chapter 6 Criminological Positivism I: The Search for the Criminal Man, or the Problem of the Duck. Lanier and Henry, Essential Criminology, Chapter 5, Born to be bad: Biological, Psysiological, and Biosocial Theories of Crime.

Supplementary reading
Mike Fitzgerald , et al. Crime and Society: readings in history and theory, Chapter 15, R.J. Sapsford, Individual deviance: the search for the criminal personality. Wilson James Q. Thinking About Crime, (Random House, New York, 1975). Wilson James Q. and Richard J. Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature, (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1985). J. Lilly et al. Criminological Theory: context and Consequences, Chapter 7, Conservative criminology: Revitalizing Individualist Theory. Mednick, SA. et. al. The Causes of Crime: New Biological Approaches, 1987, (Cambridge University Press).

Commentary
We have seen from our consideration of the early rise of positivism that positivists regarded assumptions of free will and using moral codes to bind together social relations as outmoded in the face of the hopes for scientic knowledge. Accordingly, a biological perspective appeared to offer the promise that if man was examined like other animals the laws of nature that governed human nature could be established. Under this perspective, human behaviour is determined by factors, which while universal to the species, reside to a greater or lessor extent in the constitution of the individual individuals are therefore to an extent predetermined into a life of crime. For much of the twentieth century a sociological perspective dominated, individual explanations were thought to have been buried with the repudiation of Lombroso. However, a search for physical and constitutional factors continued and interest has recently become stronger. Many of the problems encountered by the Italian school have continued for those who have sought the explanation of crime in the constitution of those who have been apprehended for committing crimes. Individualist perspectives often appear to reduce the issue of crime to that of the criminal or offender. Put another way the complex interaction of history, power and social

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processes at play in the dening and location of the institutions of the criminal justice system are disregarded in favour of only considering what is thought to be some kind of natural phenomena such as criminality or criminal propensity. In his critical analysis of criminological knowledge, Discipline and Punish (1977), Michel Foucault pointed to the close connection of institutions and the production of individualist criminological knowledge. It is as well to bear this in mind when you read the accounts of research such as Sheldon or Kretschmer. Sheldon gained his data from studying boys referred to his clinic by social services and the juvenile court; Kretschmer took his subjects from asylums for the criminally insane. In similar fashion Lombroso found his data, his criminals, in prison. Thus the basis of his theory on crime, his movement to study not the criminal law but the criminal, presupposed the naturalness of the criminal law and the State. The State provided the criminals for these positivists to work upon. As Ferraro put it in 1911: A criminal is a man who violates laws decreed by the State to regulate the relations between its citizens. (Ferraro, 1972 [1911]: 3) When Goring analysed Lombrosos work he came up with a large list of possible correlating factors. When we follow though his conclusions we see that Goring soon moves from a search for the cause of crime into the terrain of searching the general causes of human conduct he lacks the strength of theoretical structures connecting physical human constitution with behaviour and then crime. Since crime is not a natural but a social construction, individualistic forms of positivism have no way of carefully ascribing importance to their theoretical concepts and little way of linking variables with the natural phenomena under investigation. There has been a large array of attempts to link individualistic features to the commission of crime. They have ranged from attempts to map physical structure of individuals to types of crime, through well-funded twin studies, chromosome research, to chemical inuences such as concern with premenstrual tension. Vold is apt when he says that these researches often become a matter of shadow boxing with the general issue of the constitutional factor in human behaviour crime dissolves as the issue of concern. In A General Theory of Crime, Gottfredson and Hirschi review biological positivism and summarise the whole body of work as virtually meaningless. They conclude, for instance, that the genetic effect as determined by twin studies is near zero. This does not mean that biology has not an explanatory role but that the methods positivism has inherited have made the research doubtful. Specically:
Biological positivism accepted the States denition of crime as a violation of law and of the criminal as someone arrested, convicted, and sentenced for a crimeAcceptance of the States denition of crime, sciences presumed view of causation, and the substantive variables assigned to it by the disciplinary division of labour did not lead biological positivism to an idea of crime. On the contrary, they led it to search for the biological causes of state-dened crime, an ostensibly empirical enterprise that was actually constrained by a priority of principles. As a result, biological positivism has produced little in the way of meaningful or interpretable research. Instead it has produced a series of ndings (e.g., physiognomy, feeblemindedness, XYY, inheritance of criminality) that survived only so long as was necessary to subject them to replication or to straightforward critical analysis. (1990: 62)

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For Gottfredson and Hirschi, if biological positivism, and positivism in general, really wanted to say something meaningful about crime it would have to come up with some abstract concepts which related to human behaviour and which dealt with human facilities. Their own suggestion is the concept of self-control, the study of which would shed light of the propensity to engage in a range of similar behaviour. James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnsteins Crime and Human Nature (1985) was a return to individualist explanations of crime which received large-scale publicity. Their approach was biosocial in which constitutional factors were argued to predispose individuals to engage in criminal behaviour. They set out to answer two questions: why some individuals are more likely than others to commit crime, and why some persons commit serious crimes at a higher rate and others do not. Thus, like Gottfredson and Hirschi, they distinguish between criminality or the propensity of individuals, and crime, which is regarded as a more general entity in which factors such as opportunity play a large role. The nature of their biosocial approach is clear from the following extract: The existence of biological predispositions means that circumstances that activate behaviour in one person will not do so in another, that social forces cannot deter criminal behaviour in 100 per cent of the population, and that the distribution of crime within and across societies may, to some extent, reect underlying distributions of constitutional factors. Crime cannot be understood without taking into account predispositions and their biological roots. (1985: 103) As you can imagine their work suffered severe criticism. They favoured some work that had been conducted with dubious methodology and they concentrated on street crime thus neglecting White Collar crime. As well as the ontological issues of how could a biological approach explain a social construction such as crime commission (addressed in Morrison, Theoretical Criminology), most critics have focused on the methodological problems in the history of these studies. Walters and White are representative in their criticism:
the large number of methodological aws and limitation in the research should make one cautious in drawing any causal inferences at this point of time. Our review leads us to the inevitable conclusion that current genetic research on crime has been poorly designed, ambiguously reported, and exceedingly inadequate in addressing the relevant issues. (Heredity and crime: bad genes or bad research, Criminology 27, 1989: 478

Hall Williams once said that criminology involves studying almost every aspect of human development and behaviour (Criminology and Criminal Justice, 1982: 9). Thus it appears that the issue of the biological aspect to human behaviour will always be part of criminology. How much weight is placed upon it as an explanation has varied over time and is linked to the fact that presenting theories of crime in individual terms detracts attention away from the possible social causes and acts as a conservative barrier to social programmes. You are free to speculate as to the mixture of biological and social forces there is much to dispute!

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Sample questions
1. The whole idea of a biological or constitutional cause for crime is fundamentally awed. Discuss. 2. If crime is normal behaviour is there any explanatory role for those theories that seek to explain criminality by reference to individual pathology? 3. The earlier reductionism of biological and sociological perspectives is becoming overcome. Everybody now recognises that only a socio-biological account can fully explain why any particular individual commits crimes. Discuss.

B. Mental Factors and Crime Essential reading

Burke, Roger An Introduction to Criminological Theory, 2001, Chapter 6, Psychological Theories. Morrison, Wayne Theoretical Criminology: from modernity to post-modernism, 1995, Chapter 7, Criminological Positivism II: Psychology and the Positivisation of the Soul. Lanier and Henry, Essential Criminology, Chapter 6, Criminal Minds: Psychiatric and Psychological Explanations for Crime. Vold G. and T. Bernard, Theoretical Criminology, Chapters 5 and 7. Hans J. Eysenck, Crime and Personality, 1977.

Commentary
Various theories have been proposed which propose a place for mental factors from madness to low IQ in the explanation of crime. The British psychologist Eysenck argued for a comprehensive theory of crime based on the personality of the offender his work also reviews earlier efforts. On a policy level there have been great efforts put into predicting dangerousness and the concept of psychopathology. There are grave doubts whether adopting these terms amounts to anything substantial. Psychological theories have often been seen as totally opposite to sociological theories, and thus the leadership of sociology for most of this century had marginalised psychological explanations. As Gottfredson and Hirschi put it:
Sociology possessed a conceptual scheme that explicitly denied the claims of all other disciplines potentially interested in crimeCriminology became a eld closed to the possibility that disciplines other than sociology had anything to contribute By failing to mount a defence of their own position, psychologists effectively removed themselves from direct involvement in mainstream criminological issues. (1990: 70)

It is valuable, however, to attempt to integrate sociological and psychological perspectives. There are a number of possibilities: psychological disturbances could be the channel or medium through which sociological conditions operate. Here, psychology is a subset of sociology. Durkheim held this view,

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psychological mechanisms may be the process of individualisation. Thus the individual is dened through his/her psychology, but the material for this is always contextual and sociology tells us about the context, psychological theories may be the building blocks for larger sociological theories. Sutherlands Differential Learning theory is an example of this.

Others are up to you!

Sample questions
1. The gures have demonstrated that heredity is a very strong predisposing factor as far as committing crimes is concerned. Discuss. 2. Does the historical record demonstrate that attempts to explain crime by theories based on individual propensities exempt the social fabric from blame, and thus reinforce policies of punitive control? [This is a discussion which takes into account the different policy implications of individualist and sociological accounts]. 3. Is the concept of the psychopath sufciently reliable to be of use in criminology or does it result in the unjustied labelling of individuals? 4. Are learning theories of criminality (such as that proposed by Hans Eysenck) capable of explaining criminal behaviour?

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Notes

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Chapter 5: Introduction to sociological perspectives

Chapter 5

Introduction to sociological perspectives

Essential reading
Core texts
Burke, Roger, An Introduction to Criminological Theory, 2001. Chapter 7, Sociological Theories. Morrison, Wayne Theoretical Criminology: from modernity to post-modernism, 1995, pps.175188, Chapters 12 and 13. Tierney, John Criminology: theory and context. (Prentice Hall, 1996). D. Downes and P. Rock, Understanding Deviance, third edition (Clarendon Press, 1998). The book is subtitled A Guide to the Sociology of Crime and RuleBreaking. Vold and Bernard, Theoretical Criminology, fourth edition Chapters 8, 9, 11, 12 and 13. Taylor, Walton and Young, The New Criminology, (Routledge, 1973).

Supplementary reading
Heidensohn, Frances Crime and Society (1989). Fitzgerald, Mike et al., Crime and Society: Readings in History and theory. J. Lilly et al. Criminological Theory: context and Consequences. Reiner, R. Crime, law and deviance: the Durkheim legacy, in Steve Fenton, Durkheim and Modern Sociology.

Learning objectives
By the end of this chapter and associated reading you should be able to: appreciate the dominance of sociological understandings be able to discuss the inuence of Durkheim upon criminology and be familiar with the work of David Matza dene and use anomie theory reinterpret anomie theory for contemporary conditions appreciate the restraining and criminogenic effects of culture not understand jokes about sociologists.

Commentary
There is no one sociological perspective, indeed for much of the 20th century sociology simply was the governing paradigm for criminology, and the question then was what kind of sociology? This is still largely the case. Our concentration here is on anomie, culture and control. American literature often distinguishes between strain theory and control theory. In strain theory it is assumed that individuals would normally conform to the social norms and thus their infraction is because of some strain or pull otherwise. In control theory it is assumed that infraction is actually normal and naturally occurs when there is an absence of social control. As we shall see the Chicago School also popularised the notion of social disorganisation theory

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whereby processes internal to city growth lead to disruptions in the processes which normally control behaviour. American literature in particular talked of subcultural theory, of status theory and opportunity theory. The work of Matza is associated with neutralisation theory that holds that while most of us hold to the norms and values of our society, some of us learn to rationalise infractions and therefore neutralise the binding force of norms. Recently there has been a resurgence of socialisation theory, which concentrates upon the family situation and the learning of roles. In giving a foundational personality to sociological perspectives special attention can be paid to the work of Emile Durkheim. First, along with Karl Marx and Max Weber he is regarded as one of the three father gures of modern sociology. Durkheim was actually the rst professor of sociology anywhere in the world. Second, he set out a framework for doing sociology (sociological positivism) which has structured much of what has subsequently developed as sociology. In particular he argued for building sociological theories up from clear data. Thirdly, his specic writings of crime, suicide and anomie have provided a great deal of stimulus for criminology. Durkheim is a rich writer who was for some time regarded as out of fashion having committed the sociological sins of being too functionalist and having neglected power. However, Durkheim is not such an absolutist writer as his critics have made out and we cannot but scratch the surface of his work. In criminology he is famous for three things: i. the notion that crime is normal ii. the legacy of anomie theory iii. the argument that in conditions of advanced division of labour the basis of moral obligation and social solidarity will become increasingly problematic. Crime as normal. This is part of Durkheims functionalist account of deviance. Deviance is required for society to work its labelling processes and demarcate the sacred from the profane, the acceptable from the unacceptable. Anomie. The comes from the concept of normlessness or, alternatively, valuelessness. Note the duality of anomie. Anomie comes out a fundamental difference between physical and social needs. Physical needs can become fulled naturally, for example physical hunger can be satiated and then the body itself will resist additional food. Social needs, however, such as wealth, power, prestige, are regulated externally through the constraining forces of society. Our social desires are therefore without natural limits or forms, they are an insatiable and bottomless abyss. As a consequence freed from regulation the human experience becomes meaningless, it is social interaction that dened the limits and forms of our humanity. It is not true, then, that human activity can be released from all restraintits nature and method of manifestationdepend not only on itself but on other beings, who consequently restrain and regulate it. However, just as an absence of regulation can cause anomie, a pathological over regulation also causes anomie. Throughout all Durkheims work there is a concern with the mean. Social processes span a continual tension between over-regulation and under-regulation, between integration and isolation, between socially provided identity and individuality.

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In criminology an essay published in 1938 by Robert Merton (Social Structure and Anomie, American Sociological Review, 3: 67282), and usually referred to as the most famous essay in the history of sociology, was a direct application of anomie theory. This lead on to work on subcultural theory, gang studies, and on to theories that highlighted a different set of lower-class values to the mainstream middle class. The source of moral obligation and social solidarity Durkheims work alerts us to the more complex nature of social solidarity in modern societies of advanced division of labour. At its broadest Durkheim alerts us to the problematic of modernity to the necessity for a public philosophy which links together the diverse ethnic and social groupings. Subcultural theory This came into prominence with American writings such as Albert Cohens Delinquent Boys, Cloward and Ohlins Delinquency and Opportunity, and Walter Millers theory of lower-class culture. Miller, for example, sees lower class culture as a distinct tradition many centuries old with a structure of its own. He argues six focal concerns constitute the traditions: trouble. Thus lower class men have a preoccupation with trouble and associated ghting, drinking and sexual conquests toughness. A macho image-stressing hardness, fearlessness, and skill in physical prowess smartness. A capacity to outsmart others search for excitement. Brought on by the extreme uctuations which characterise lower-class work cycle a resignation to fate. This enables fatal outcomes, such as violence and perhaps prison for trouble to be accepted an ambivalent desire for autonomy.

Socialisation theory The question of whether faulty upbringing or inadequate supervision links to delinquency has been tied in with issues of the broken home or forced separation from the mother or father. Here we are in the interconnections of sociology and psychology. What is the inuence of being brought up in a one parent family will obviously determine on the social context of that family. Much early literature does not take this into account however.

Further reading
Fitzgerald et al. Crime and Society, Chapter 17, gives a general overview of the literature. Elliott Currie in Confronting Crime, Chapter 6, addresses the conservative resurgence on this issue.

The work of David Matza: one writer analysed as an example As we have seen when positivism became a force within criminology a determinist view of human nature was accepted as required by the name of science. Within American writings of the 1960s an anti-deterministic current surfaced. From the control perspective came the argument that strain theories over-predicted delinquency. If the root cause of crime was found in slum life, criminal traditions and differential learning, lack of legitimate opportunity and the emphasis upon property acquisition,

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how was it to be explained that most of the individuals living in such situations did not appear to indulge in persistent criminal or delinquent behaviour? David Matza replaced hard determinism by the concepts of drift and soft determinism. First, at odds with the structure of doing criminology as it then was, Matza asked criminology to begin its theories with a notion of crime which saw it as an infraction and to take seriously the empirical features which characterised infractions (what we might call crime). For Matza an infraction entailed going against what had been socialised as the moral code of the society and the empirical features of crime were that it was often transient (rather than permanent), intermittent (rather than pervasive), characterised not by commitment or compulsion but looser factors and represented something which most delinquents simply grew out of with age. Second, in a latter 1969 work, Becoming Deviant (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall) Matza drew a contrast between correction and appreciation as differing stances to deviant phenomenon. Matza claimed that the goal of ridding ourselves of the deviant phenomenon, however utopian, stands in sharp contrast to an appreciative perspective and may be referred to as correctional. The overriding concern with causation or etiology: systematically interferes with the capacity to empathise and thus comprehend the subject of enquiry. Only through appreciation can the texture of social patterns and the nuances of human engagement with those patterns be understood and analysed. (1969: 15) The appreciative attitude is on the other hand a subjective view; it demands a commitment to render the phenomenon with delity and without violating its integrity.
It delivers the analyst into the arms of the subject who renders the phenomenon, and commits him, though not without regrets or qualications, to the subjects denition of the situation. This does not mean that the analyst always concurs with the subjects denition of the situation; rather that his aim is to comprehend and to illuminate the subjects view and to interpret the world as it appears to him. (1969:25)

Contrary to these two themes Matza found that positive criminology accounted for too much delinquency. Taken at their terms, delinquency theories seemed to predict far more delinquency than actually occurs. In the 1950s Sykes and Matza (1957) had criticised the total determinism of sub-cultural theory arguing that even the most obvious criminals or delinquents were not committed to an alternative set of cultural values but were actually conventional in their beliefs. Why then were they not restrained by that powerful instrument of self-control in the modern West, namely the conscience and the feelings of guilt (as opposed to shame which is engendered by considering what others feel abut our actions). Should not guilt be aroused in the psyche of an individual when that individual contemplated the performance of an anti-social action? Sykes and Matza highlighted the process whereby the offender while not invincible against guilt has strong avoidance mechanisms that they termed techniques of neutralisation. Sykes and Matza claimed that the delinquent did not live in some different or inverted world where the norms and values were the opposite from those prevailing in conventional society. Instead we are told he/she shares the values of the larger society. Theories of delinquent subculture over-predicted crime and over-stressed the difference between delinquents and non-delinquents. This raised the issue to be explained in terms of why individuals who accepted the conventional morality and who were essentially integrated into the society and respectful of its regulations violated its conventions? Sykes and Matza argued that while learning the

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conventional values of the society individuals could also learn certain excuses or techniques of neutralisation which temporarily at least neutralised conventional norms and thus permitted violations in specic cases and under certain circumstances without necessarily rejecting the norms themselves. Five distinct techniques are developed, all of which have some basis in the society at large. Denial of Responsibility. The offender has learnt to take the words of the social scientist or humane jurist or social worker who sees him as a product of his environment; he presents himself as the helpless object of social forces (slum neighbourhood, bad parents, peer group pressure). Thus guilt cannot be aroused since the deeds are not his own. Thus his deeds are not his, but the product of orders, the product of the forces of the society, the country or the military. Ultimately he can see it wasnt really him who did it. Denial of injury. The delinquent argues that the behaviour has not really caused any harm. Thus vandalism is only mischief, car theft is borrowing, stealing is getting paid and done to those who could afford it anyway, gang ghting is a private quarrel. Psychologically the spatial distancing of modernity aids this, consider a computer fraud. Denial of a victim. Like the solider who is only ghting the enemy, the delinquent is facing a victim who is also guilty. In other words they had it coming so why should the offender care what happened? It is the victims who are the wrongdoers. Appeal to higher loyalties. The delinquent presents himself as torn between two groups, those who were the victims and the smaller group to which he belongs and owes some allegiance, demonstrates loyalty towards or defends his belonging to. The needs of this smaller group, the army unit, the family, the gang or the country in the hour of need, serve to change the nature of the acts he would not otherwise normally do. What was regrettable, perhaps evil, because it was required by his loyalty to this group it now becomes justied, perhaps obligatory.

These four defenses do not appear to be positive forces, they appear to have the impact of shielding the actor from the consequences of his/her acts. As avoidance mechanisms, they prevent the self-esteem of the offender being washed away and serve to present him as someone worthy of respect and appreciation. The fth technique serves to deect the shaming powers of the others who are in communication with the offender. Condemnation of the condemners or Rejection of the rejectors. The delinquent shifts the focus of attention from his own deviant acts to the motives and behaviour of those who disapprove of his violations. This time the other who is to be viewed as the enemy, if guilt is to be avoided, is the whole class of those who disapprove of the behaviour in question. The captors are either hypocrites, actually deviants in disguise, or impelled by personal motives.

Sykes and Matza go on to suggest that the delinquent has picked up and emphasised one part of the dominant value system, namely, the subterranean values that coexist with other, publicly proclaimed values possessing a more respectable air. (1961: 717) These subterranean, or latent, values include a search for adventure, excitement, and thrills, and are said to exist side by side with such conformity, inducing values as security, routinisation and stability. Citing the work of Arthur Davis and Thorsten Veblen, Sykes and Matza argue that delinquents are actually conforming to society rather than transgressing it when they put the desire for big money central to their value system. Overall, subterranean values make delinquency desirable, while the techniques of neutralisation allow this desire to take direction and become effectual.

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Drift theory
In Delinquency and Drift, (1964, New York, Wiley) Matza specically built an alternative picture of the delinquent under the dictates of soft rather than hard determinism.
The image of the delinquent that I wish to convey is one of drift; an actor neither compelled not committed to deeds nor freely choosing them; neither different in any simple or fundamental sense from the law abiding, nor the same; conforming to certain traditions in American life while partially unreceptive to other more conventional traditions; and nally, an actor whose motivational system may be explored along lines explicitly commended by classical criminology his peculiar relation to legal institutions.

Matzas appreciation leads not to romanticism or heroics. We are dealing not with the sensational committed criminal of the media reports, nor the heroic ghter against the status quo that Marxist accounts sometimes appeared to suggest. Instead, Matza stresses the mundaneness of delinquency, its pettiness and its transitoriness. He also puts central the ambiguity of the moral order. Arguing that the contact and experiences of the juvenile with the correctional system is itself a criminogenic factor. The concept of human nature used by Matza is much more open than how the positivists viewed it; note that neutralisation only makes delinquency possible, as Matza put it:
Those who have been granted the potentiality for freedom through the loosening of social controls but who lack the position, capacity, or inclination to become agents in their own behalf I call drifters, and it is in this category that I place the juvenile delinquent,

Matza did not consider delinquency as some natural or steady state that overtakes an individual with the correct propensities once controls are relaxed but something that is involved in processes. Two processes acted as triggering factors, namely the combination of preparation and desperation. Preparation was the process whereby a person discovered that a given infraction could be successfully accomplished by someone, and that the individual had the ability to do it himself and that the fear or apprehension connected with the event could be managed. Thus even if the person realised that a delinquent infraction could be managed, it might not occur unless someone learned that it was possible, felt condent that he or she could do it, and was courageous or stupid enough to minimise the dangers. If these processes did not interact, the possibility would not become a reality. Desperation came into play when the self experienced a form of fatalism, a feeling that the self was overwhelmed and felt a consequent need to violate the rules of the system so as to reassert individuality.

Where does this direction lead the criminologist? In Theoretical Criminology, Morrison suggested that it lead into extentialism, a perspective downplayed by traditional criminology. Activity 1
Assessing the relationship between Culture and Crime The topic may be seen as rst, asking for an understanding of the idea of Anomie: from Durkheim to Merton; secondly, thinking about crime and culture more generally.

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Activity-related reading
Morrison, Theoretical Criminology: from modernity to post-modernism, pps.175183; Chapter 12 Criminology and the Culture of modernity, especially pps 273281; Chapter 13 Crime and Culture in the post-modern condition. Lanier and Henry, Essential Criminology, Chapter 10 The Sick Society: Anomie, Strain, and Subcultural Theory.

Background, particularly on Durkheim and Merton

Vold and Bernard, Theoretical Criminology Chapter 9 on Durkheim, Chapter 11 Strain Theories.

Sample questions
1. Why does Durkheim speak of crime and being normal in society? What does he mean by anomie? Do you agree that human desires are essentially insatiable and regulated only by cultural messages? 2. In what way(s) is Mertons adaptation of anomie theory different from Durkheims? What have been the main criticisms of Mertons work? Are these justied? 3. Do you accept that there are overriding cultural messages of success in modern society? Do all people share or accept these messages? 4. Are the cultural messages of contemporary conditions much more complex than Merton allowed for? What are they? Does it make any sense to talk in terms of individuals having a different location in social structure? Do some people feel strain more then others, or are contemporary cultural messages so mixed that strain occurs across the social order? 5. How can Japans low crime rate be accounted for? Does it make sense to talk of cultures of shame as opposed to guilt?

Activity 2
Assessing student work Read the following and assess this as a 1,500 word essay addressed to the question: Assess the inuence of Durkheim upon criminology? I Emil Durkheim Emile Durkheim was the rst French academic sociologist. He faced criticism from others because he represented a discipline that was not legitimate at his time. Born in the eastern French province of Lorraine in 1858, son of a rabbi and descending from a long line of rabbis, he decided quite early that he would follow the family tradition and become a rabbi himself. He studied Hebrew, the Old Testament, and the Talmud, while at the same time following the regular course of instruction in secular schools. Shortly after his traditional Jewish conrmation at the age of 13, Durkheim, under the inuence of a Catholic woman teacher, had a short-lived mystical experience that led to an interest in Catholicism. But soon afterwards he turned away from all religious involvement and became an agnostic. At about the time of his graduation, Durkheim had settled upon his lifes course, which was not the traditional philosophers calling. Philosophy seemed to him too far removed from the issues of the day, too much devoted to frivolous hairsplitting. He

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wanted to devote himself to a discipline that would contribute to the clarication of the great moral questions of the age and to make a contribution to the moral solidication of the world. But such moral guidance, Durkheim was convinced, could be provided only by men with solid scientic training. Thus, he decided that he would dedicate himself to the scientic study of society. II Durkheims theories Durkheims concepts regarding social interactions among members of a group are truly some of the great contributions to modern thought. Durkheims positivism is a method of using indices as expressions of underlying moral phenomenon. By understanding trends and changes in these observable indices, Durkheim argued, we can underlying morality of a society. He rejected biological and psychological interpretations which attempted to explain behaviour by focusing on the individual. Durkheim rather focused attention on social-structural factors. Social phenomena arise, Durkheim argued, when interacting individuals constitute a reality that can no longer be accounted for in terms of the properties of individual actors. A political party, for example, though composed of individual members, cannot be explained in terms of its constitutive elements. Rather, a party is a structural whole that must be accounted for by the social and historical forces that bring it into being and allow it to operate. Durkheims work focused on the cohesion or lack of cohesion of specic groups, not on individual traits. He showed that group properties are independent of individual traits and must therefore be studied in their own right. For example, a signicant increase of suicide rates in a particular group indicates that the social cohesion in that group has been weakened and its members are no longer sufciently protected against existential crises. In order to explain rates of suicide in various religious or occupational groupings, Durkheim studied the character of these groups and their characteristic ways of bringing about cohesion and solidarity among their members. He did not concern himself with the psychological traits or motives of the component individuals, because these vary. In contrast, the structures that have high suicide rates all have in common a relative lack of cohesion, or a condition of relative normlessness. This allowed Durkheim to engage in comparative analysis of various structures. By comparing the rates of suicides in various groups, he was able to arrive at an overall generalisation. By this procedure he came to the conclusion that the general notion of cohesion could account for a number of differing specic rates of suicide in a variety of group contexts. Certain groups may have a rm hold on their individual members and integrate them fully, while others may leave individuals a great deal of freedom of action. Durkheim demonstrated that suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration. When society is strongly integrated, it holds the individual members of that society under tight control. People who are well integrated into a group are cushioned to a signicant extent from the impact of frustrations and tragedies and thus, are less likely to resort to extreme behaviour such as suicide. To Durkheim, men were creatures whose desires were unlimited. Unlike other animals, they are not satised when their biological needs are fulled. The more one has, the more one wants, since satisfactions received only stimulates instead of lling needs. It follows that mans desires can only be held in check by external, societal controls. When social regulations break down, the controlling inuence of society on an individual is no longer effective and individuals are left to their own devices. Such a state of affairs Durkheim called anomie. Anomie refers to a condition of relative normlessness in a whole society or in some of its component groups. It characterises

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a condition in which individual desires are no longer regulated by common norms and where, as a consequence, individuals are left without moral guidance in the pursuit of their goals. Durkheim explained anomie in terms of the relations between individuals rather than the biological propensities of individuals. By taking this approach, Durkheim invented a sociological theory of deviant behaviour. He used anomie to describe a condition of deregulation that was occurring in society. This meant that rules on how people ought to behave with each other were breaking down and thus people did not know what to expect from one another. It is normlessness, Durkheim felt, that led to deviant behaviour. Durkheim introduced the concept of anomie in his book The Division of Labor in Society, published in 1893. In The Division of Labor in Society, Durkheim proposed the concept that societies evolved from a simple, non-specialised form called mechanical, towards a highly complex, specialised form, called organic. Mechanical solidarity exists where individual differences are minimised and the members of society are much alike. Organic solidarity, in contrast, develops out of differences, rather than likeness between individuals. People behave and think alike and more or less perform the same work tasks and have the same group-oriented goals. When societies become more complex, or organic, work also becomes more complex. In this society, people are no longer tied to one another and social bonds are impersonal. Durkheim used anomic suicide as an index to measure the degree of social integration. He concluded that there are no societies in which suicide does not occur, and many societies show roughly the same rates of suicide over long periods of time. This indicated that suicides may be considered a regular occurrence. However, sudden spurts in the suicide rates of certain groups or total societies point to some disorder not previously present. Thus, abnormally high rates in specic groups, or in total societies, can be taken as an index of disintegrating forces at work in a social structure. In a condition of anomie there is a breakdown of social norms. Thus, the social norms no longer control the activities of members in society. Individuals cannot nd their place in society without clear rules to help guide them. Changing conditions as well as adjustment of life leads to dissatisfaction, conict and deviance. He observed that social periods of disruption (economic depression, for instance) brought about greater anomie and higher rates of crime, suicide and deviance. According to Durkheim, a society which is experiencing too high a rate of crime is a society in which the balance between regulation and individuality has broken down. A society in which there is no crime would be a rigidly over-policed oppressive society. Durkheim also discovered that within any particular society, groups may differ in their degree of anomie. Social change may create anomie either in the whole society or in some parts of it. Business crises, for example, may have a far greater impact on those on the upper class than on the lower. When depression leads to a sudden downward mobility, the men affected experience a loss of moral certainty and customary expectations that are no longer sustained by the group to which these men once belonged. Similarly, the rapid onset of prosperity may lead some people to a quick upward mobility and hence deprive them of the social support needed in their new styles of life. Any rapid movement in the social structure that upsets previous networks in which lifestyles are embedded carries with it a chance of anomie. In his discussion of deviance and criminality, Durkheim departed from the conventional path. While most criminologists treated crime as a pathological phenomenon and sought psychological causes in the mind of the criminal, Durkheim

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saw crime as normal in terms of its occurrence. He believed that crime is normal in any society. The use of the concept of crime is merely the strongest labelling procedure which maintains social solidarity. Thus, even in a society of perfect saints, crimes which appear venial to the layman will create there the same scandal that the ordinary offence does in ordinary consciousness. Furthermore, no society could enforce total conformity. If society could, it would be so repressive as to leave no leeway for the social contributions of individuals. Deviance from the norms of society is necessary if society is to remain exible and open to change and new adaptations. But in addition to such direct consequences of crime, Durkheim identied indirect functions that are no less important. A criminal act, Durkheim reasoned, elicits negative sanctions in the community by arousing collective sentiments against the infringement of the norm. Hence, it has the unanticipated consequence of strengthening normative consensus in the society. III Criticism It is the reliance of law as an expression of social interaction among individuals which makes Durkheims views so important to the sociology of law. However, there are areas in which Durkheims analyses fall short, particularly in the limited role given to power in politically and economically advanced societies, such as those societies in much of the Western world. As a result, the conscience collective may be only the expression of those in positions of political and economic power. Law is one of the focal points of conict and struggle in modern societies and a major means by which power is legitimised. It is also the form in which coercion is most routinely exercised. Durkheimss insistence on viewing law as straightforward expressions of a conscience collective prohibits the exploration of the effect of those in power and their effect on society. Punishment and criminal law therefore might not be expressions of a collective but of those who are in political, economic and social positions of power. Another criticism of Durkheims work focuses on his use of statistics. The data Durkheim analysed was ofcial statistics from the 1840s to the 1870s and this information is subject to error. These errors prejudice the analysis. If the crime statistics used are suspect, then so is the whole analysis. Furthermore, statistics have a fatal aw, in that they are not capable of being converted into real facts since the original data involve a process of interpretation and symbolic construction of meaning. IV Conclusion Emile Durkheim, the agnostic son of devoted Jews, was passionately devoted to the quest for truth and knowledge. Even though some of Durkheims work is subject to criticism, his contributions to modern thought were invaluable. His concept of anomie still provides a valuable tool for use by criminologists and sociologists today. He instigated and created the theories that spurred modern thought to focus not only on the individual for answers to human behaviour, but to take a step back and look at society as its own creature. His science of sociology is left to serve and guide the whole of humanity.

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Students bibliography
Abraham, J.H.: The Origins and Growth of Sociology, (London, England, Penguin Books Limited, 1973). Aron, Raymond: Main Currents in Sociological Thought, (London, England, Penguin Books Limited, 1967). Luke, Steven & Scull, Andrew: Durkheim and the Law, (New York, St. Martins Press, 1983). Maus, Heinz: A Short History of Sociology, (New York, The Citadel Press, 1962). Morrison, Wayne: Theoretical Criminology: From Modernity to Post-Modernism, (London, England, Cavendish Publishing Limited, 1995).

Sample questions
1. Gangs and other forms of criminal organisation are a reaction to inadequate opportunities in some parts of society. Discuss. [This question can be seen as specically relating to the American literature on status theories, alienation and delinquent subcultures. Downes search for gangs in London is relevant as is material from social ecology and an appreciative stance would be benecial. A variety of approaches can be taken to such a question.] 2. Evaluate the use of anomie theory as an explanation of trends and patterns in crime. 3. How relevant is Mertons version of strain or anomie theory to explaining crime today? In what ways can you suggest his theory be modied to make it more effective? 4. The culture of late-modern societies emphasises consumption and taking control of ones life, while poverty and powerlessness is the reality of vast numbers of peoples lives. Crime is an understandable result. Discuss. 5. In what ways can aspects of contemporary culture act as criminogenic forces? 6. How could techniques of neutralisation act as criminogenic factors?

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Notes

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Chapter 6

Social ecology: crime and the city

Essential reading
Morrison, Theoretical Criminology: from modernity to post-modernism, Chapter11 Locality and Criminology: from the Polis to the Post-modern City. Taylor, Ian Crime in Context: A Critical Criminology of Market Societies, Chapter 4 Crime in the City: Housing and Consumer Markets and the Social Geography of Crime and Anxiety in Market Society.

The following chapter which is good on presenting the work of the Chicago school, but is weak on critical analysis.
Vold and Bernard, Theoretical Criminology, Chapter 10 Social Ecology.

A rather long and detailed account of the traditional approaches of criminology is:
Bottoms, Anthony and Paul Wiles Environmental Criminology in Mike Maguire et al. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, second edition (1997). Roger Burke, Criminology Theory, Chapter 13 Environment Criminology, is short and succinct. Lanier, Mark and Henery, Stuart Essential Criminology, Chapter 9 Crimes of Place: Social Ecology and Cultural Theories of Crime provides a very good overview. Downes and Rock, Understanding Deviance, Chapter 3. The University of Chicago Sociology Department has a very detailed and sympathetic account of the Chicago School.

Supplementary reading
Taylor, Walton and Young, The New Criminology, 1973, pp.11025. F. Heathcote, Social Disorganisation Theories, in Fitzgerald et al. Crime and Society, 1981 Chapter 16. Shaw, C.R. and McKay, H.D., Juvenile Delinquency in Urban Areas. (University of Chicago Press, 1942). An original text worth consulting for a real feel of the times.

Learning objectives
By the end of this chapter you should be able: to give an account of the way the city has been studied in criminology critically reect upon the methodologies and assumptions in the criminological tradition of dealing with the city reect upon modern city life and its criminogenic forces reect upon the advent of mass consumer culture.

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Commentary
The nature of the topic When we consider the changes that have transformed the contemporary world the transition from life lived in rural conditions to urbanity stands out. Modern social life is predominantly lived in the large city. However, by comparison to the images and criteria of how life has been lived for the majority of social history what we take for normal, modern city existence, was an unnatural style of life. As compared with the rhythm of traditional social existence, our normalcy is a social creation where our daily routine depends upon previous designs (both architecturally and in city planning), resource allocations and the movement of both people and environmental terrain. Decisions as to resources, trafc planning, zoning legislation not only affect daily life, but also they have constituted the very things we take for granted as the contours of that life. What was order like in the traditional European town/city? Cities were normally walled, the walls providing a demarcation from the country and acting as a defence from attack. Security was emphasised through an architecture of protection and containment, a series of barriers and walls in a system of concentric circles or other shapes radiating out from a central area of the keep, with a fortied drawbridge which could be raised or lowered across a moat, normally with a portcullis at the point of control of access to the castle. The early watchman or lookout kept watch beyond the city walls and moat. The system served both as defence from outsiders and detection of unusual movement. The space that a moat took up, for instance, is both a barrier to be crossed and an obstacle that in crossing should throw up warning. The city, although small by todays standards, was the focus of elite life and the pursuit of knowledge, art and culture. Inter-city travel, conducted by road or sea, was the prerogative of a small ruling or cultural elite or the by-product of trade. The stranger was easily visible. The pace of life was slow, most people followed the trade of their family and the traditions and customs enjoyed in the city were mainly the same as the countryside. In 1800 only slightly more than 4 per cent of the worlds population lived in cities with populations of more than 20,000, by the mid-1980s the gure was over 60 per cent. Cities not only no longer have walls but it is in many cases virtually impossible to estimate precisely how many people inhabit them, and instead of the stranger being the obvious exception, city life is a life amidst strangers. We have already seen some of the nineteenth century descriptions of urban life; many of their observations are still relevant. However, the most famous tradition of analysing urban life in criminology ows from the work of the University of Chicago department of sociology. The city became the focus of serious sociological concern when American sociologists sought to develop a scientic approach upon the problems of order in the modern city in the face of the rather turbulent activity of the early years of this century. Chicago at the time had the reputation of being the crime capital of the world and professional crime and juvenile delinquency featured as an important area of research alongside homelessness, suicide, drunkenness and vice. The sociology of the University of Chicago drew upon work being done by bio-ecologists on the structure and development of plant associations and constructed an ecological approach. As used in biology the ecological approach highlighted a process whereby vegetation and animal life adapts to the environment by distribution over a localised area in an orderly pattern which enables adaptation to the environment and the attainment of complementary uses of habitat resources.

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By analogy a similar process was visualised in the city. The various sub-populations were viewed as jostling for spatial positions that provided terrain to perform their diverse functions in a developing division of labour. To Robert Park the city was:
a great sorting and sifting mechanism, which, in ways that are not yet wholly understood, infallibly selects out of the population as a whole the individuals best suited to live in a particular region and a particular milieu. (Robert E. Park, Human Communities, Glencoe, The Free Press, 1952: 79).

Members of the University of Chicago sociology department (the Chicago school) transformed the earlier ideas of criminal areas, contamination and the social physics of the nineteenth century English observers of urbanisation. In their hands crime rates became a result of variables demonstrated in the physical environment of zones of the city. A model was constructed wherein cities grew outwards in a series of concentric zones from a centre with each of the zones exhibiting specialised activities and populations. In the centre was a business and industrial zone. Outside this was a zone of transition characterised by a high predominance of sub-standard housing held for speculation in expectation of commercial and industrial expansion. In this area the housing is undesirable and deteriorating but cheap. It is also in close proximity to industry and business and it houses slums of primary immigrant settlements, the poor and dispossessed and the vice business. Zone three is characterised by a secondary immigrant settlement and working mens homes, while zone four is a better residential area and the fth and last is a commuter zone. Shaw and McKay mapped out juvenile-court referral rates and found that these correlated closely to the zones. Rates were highest in the innercity or core areas and grew less the further out from the centre. They attributed causal signicance to the concept of social disorganisation or disturbance of the biotic balance and social equilibrium; a condition found particularly in the interstitial areas (areas in between the organised natural areas). In time the general processes of invasion, dominance and succession which determined the concentric growth patterns of the city were complemented by a series of individual case studies which portrayed the actual conditions in which individuals found themselves buffeted around. Note certain points The ecological approach is expressly positivistic; all the emphasis is on observable entities. The social ecology movement was not concerned to produce a self-critical analysis of the use of theory in its investigations, instead it appeared condent about taking explicitly the methodology of a natural science and applying it into the social. One practitioner dened it in 1925 as the study of the spatial and temporal relations of human beings affected by the selective, distributive and accommodative forces of the environment. (McKenzie, R.D. The Ecological Approach to the Study of the Human Community, in Park, R.E., et. al., The City, University of Chicago Press, 1925.) As with most forms of positivism the task is twofold, rst to draw up a set of data, in this case the patterns of spatial distribution and movement, and second, to use this to get to the underlying reality which is to be analysed through this data. The data gives the clues as to the underlying processes, but if the data is doubtful, and the Chicago School relied heavily on ofcial police and court statistics to measure delinquency in the differing areas, then so is the whole set of forces which are claimed to lie underneath. (An early critic was Robinson, Sophia, M., Can Delinquency Be Measured?, (Columbia University Press, New York, 1936).

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The approach appears to reduce the social to the geographical. As the American sociologist David Matza was later to point out to place the cause of social disorder as social disorganisation and to locate this in terms of invasion and interstitial zones has the effect of making social diversity the product of social pathology it implies that there is some natural and normal formation of city life and that the conicts and strife were a reection of the competitive principle of ecological progress. The reconciliation in social ecology of the apparent diversity of Chicago life and deviance was achieved via the concept of social disorganisation. You may feel that this introduces a value position as to what is the desirable form of proper social life and thus contravenes the actual self-image of social ecologys valuefree empirical, scientic status. To locate delinquency as caused by transitional areas in the city where the structure and socialisation practices had broken down indicates a background assumption of one grand value consensus on social life, which is problematic. As critics such as Taylor et al., (The New Criminology, 1973: iii) have pointed out the social reality of the modern city cannot be reduced to a series of observations on the spatial and physical level. This environmental determinism ignores the whole range of institutional, political, cultural and ideological interactions of intentional actors. One legacy of the early Chicago schools work is the techniques of information gathering it enables. This has hidden effects. On the one hand it seems to reduce the city to a mechanical inventory for study and on the other the lack of comprehensive theory allows the data to be used in pseudo theories. Hence combining the idea of competition, data correlating of high rates of delinquency with concentrations of immigrant groups, may give simplistic solutions. Perhaps one legacy of this approach is that it destroys for good the notion that social process is able to be viewed the same as in the hard sciences! Social processes can only be understood in the light of their meaning in peoples lives, which is a result of social and cultural factors.

The ecological approach of the Chicago School and the explanation of crime Natural areas were classied by the dominant behaviour of their inhabitants. Local communities were a coming together of diverse individuals (Chicago was experiencing mass immigration) but a process of selection took place amongst these individuals and the environment which produced a biotic balance of communities. Successive waves of immigration caused different types of housing, living and working zones to appear with specic cultural and physical characteristics. Diversity was selected out of the communities with each natural area being symbiotic for particular types of behaviour. Shaw and McKay demonstrated consistent differences in criminal activity between zones over an extended time, putting the highest rates in the zone of transition. Deviance was a natural and compatible response to locational and social factors in these zones. The concept of disorganisation provided the connection between types of area and social behaviour. Thus poor housing, squalid overcrowding, lack of community provisions in transitional areas were not seen directly as the causal inuences of delinquency but operated through the breakdown of inter-area social control. This notion of disorganisation has had a lasting impact in presenting the urban environment as a criminological factor. You must ask, however, what is a socially disorganised area? Shaw and McKay dened disorganisation by means of certain features and processes. Quantiable features were rates of truancy, tuberculosis, infant mortality, mental disorder, economic dependency, adult crime and juvenile delinquency. The dominant features
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and processes were subsumed in three: the economic status of the community, the mobility of the community, and its heterogeneity. By implication poverty, high mobility, and heterogeneity lead to weak social control and high delinquency. The idea of social disorganisation We have seen that the thesis of social disorganisation is the crucial criminogenic factor in the social ecology model, how does this work? In the social ecology model urban society is seen as a complex whole made up of a set of interdependent parts (e.g., institutions) which attempt to establish and maintain an equilibrium state. When there exists a high degree of internal cohesion binding individuals to institutions and institutions to institutions primarily through consensus of values, norms, and roles), society is said to be in a state of organisation. Conversely, when consensus is disrupted a state of disorganisation ensues. Such disruptions produce disorganisation of varying degrees which will result in a breakdown of the traditional social control mechanisms that ordinarily prevent deviations from established norms and roles. Crime is one consequence of this disruption. The intellectual father gure is said to be Emile Durkheim and his thesis of modernisation (see Morrison Chapter 2; Vold and Bernard, Chapter 9 Durkheim, Anomie and Modernisation). Chicago seemed to be the pure form of the processes of rapidly increasing urbanisation, migration and industrialisation. This social change was seen to be undercutting traditional forms of social organisation with its informal methods of social control. Thomas and Znaniecki (1920) argued that in times of sociocultural change the relations between individuals and groups undergo a cyclical process of emancipation from traditional institutions and reconstruction of institutional ties on the basis of new freedoms. During this process, bonds between the individual and the group (i.e., informal social control) were thought to vary constantly. To Thomas and Znaniecki (1920) social disorganisation provided both a social (a disruption in traditional social control mechanisms of the group) and a social psychological explanation (an emancipation of the individual from the controlling inuence of the group) of deviance. For them social disorganisation represents a decrease in the effectiveness of the existing social rules to control the behaviour of individuals. Parks (1928) model of human ecology presented a thesis of variations in the degree of social disorganisation. Park proposed that individuals in a society with laissez-faire government and a free-market economy are characterised by a spirit of competitiveness for their very survival. Out in such a society there exists only limited opportunities to satisfy this need. As a result of individual efforts to accommodate to this discrepancy, population distribution patterns segregate various groups. Over time the process of segregation produces residential enclaves reecting the social position history and economic roles of their inhabitants (i.e. natural areas). Because of the constant movement of individuals responding to competition (i.e. the search for employment and a better way of life), heterogeneity grows within these segregated areas. As a result primary relationships are strained, diminishing traditional social control mechanisms of the group. This process, by which authority inuences of an earlier culture and system of social control, is undermined and eventually destroyed, is social disorganisation. Expanding on the effects of heterogeneity, Sellin (1938) maintained that each person is a member of, or identies with, many groups and thus is exposed to many conduct norms that may conict in any situation. The resulting conict of norms was especially heightened in periods of migration and immigration. Thus, as societies

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become more complex, social differentiation results in social disintegration and conicting situations. For example, Sellin (1938) asserts that unlike primitive societies which possess:
a culture of well-knit social fabric, [modern society] shows a multitude of social groups, competitive interests, poorly dened interpersonal relationships, social anonymity, a confusion of norms and a vast expansion of impersonal control agencies designed to enforce rules which increasingly lack the moral force which rules receive only when they grow out of emotionally felt community needs. (p.5969).

Shaw and McKay (1942, 1969) attempted to integrate the ecological orientation of Park (1925), the cultural conict perspective of Sellin (l938) and the social psychological explanation of Thomas and Znaniecki (1920), to explain how urbanism created social disorganisation and crime. By implication the cure of crime lay in policies designed to prevent social disorganisation. Shaw and McKay begin with the urban community as the theoretical unit of analysis. Communities can be differentiated on the basis of their social organisation/disorganisation. Social disorganisation represents the inability of the community as a distinct social fact to realise common values (i.e., the inability of the community to establish integrative networks around common values and goals) (Kornhauser, 1978, p.63). The degree of heterogeneity in the community, the degree of population movement (inter- and intra-city mobility) and the economic situation (as reected in the physical characteristics of the area as well as the resources of its members), represent characteristics which reect the position of a community on the organisation/disorganisation continuum. Social disorganisation is the sole explanatory concept in Shaw and McKays original formulation. Ethnic heterogeneity, residential mobility and economic depression/deprivation are viewed merely as indicators of a communitys degree of disorganisation. Implicit in Shaw and McKays work is a rank ordering of these indicators in their relative contribution to the disorganisation of an area. Poverty appears to be the chief contributor to the inability to achieve social organisation: The interpretation of these is straightforward, poor communities and poor people have inadequate resources. (Kornhauser, 1978: 63). Population instability and racial composition, respectively, add further discriminating power (the inuence of heterogeneity can be assessed only after controlling for community economic level Kornhauser, 1978: 64). Thus social disorganisation consists of many components and is not itself directly measured in most empirical studies. In fact, Shaw and McKays empirical testing of their theory treats disorganisation as an unmeasured concept (Shaw and McKay employed the following empirical indicators of disorganisation: population increase and decrease, percentage of families on relief, median rentals, proportion of home owners and the percentage of foreign-born and Negro heads of families). To Shaw and McKay, disorganised communities not only imply the inability of a community to function as an integrated whole but also the inability of the social unit to control its members through informal means. Characterised by poverty, residential instability and ethnic diversity, Shaw and McKay suggest that primary relationships fail to develop, making the existence of co-ordinated efforts at informal social control improbable. Thus, the inability of the community to function as an integrated whole is assumed to weaken the informal social control mechanisms within the community (i.e., the inability to establish and maintain common ideals precludes the establishment of common action designed to protect and perpetuate conventional values, norms and roles). Consequently, it is assumed that well-to-do, stable, homogeneous (i.e., organised) communities possess powerful consistent networks of
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informal social control, while extremely unstable, heterogeneous, poor (i.e., disorganised) communities have weakly co-ordinated efforts of control. Indeed, Shaw and McKay argue that in organised communities:
the similarity of attitudes and values as to social control is expressed in institutions and voluntary associations designed to perpetuate and protect these values. Among these may be included such organisations as the parent-teacher association, womens clubs, service clubs, churches, neighbourhood centres and the like. (1969: 171)

Shaw and McKay equate organisation with social control. They emphasise the effects of direct external informal controls on the socialisation and behaviour of its members (i.e., scrutiny, supervision and surveillance designed to preclude deter or detect deviances. (Kornhauser, 1978: 24) The weakening of informal social control and the absence of bonds established around common values in disorganised communities permit the growth of alternative roles to which youth may be exposed. According to Shaw and McKay (1969: 188), the development of these divergent systems of values and behaviours requires a type of situation in which traditional control is either weak or non-existent. Thus, unconventional behaviours are allowed to ourish. Specically, alternative role models may arise from weakened control while differentiation provides rival cultures or values which implicitly offer a competing opportunity structure. (To Shaw and McKay this rival culture was the presence of a delinquent tradition in the area.) The presence of an alternative opportunity structure ultimately becomes a fourth measure of the degree of disorganisation of a community. Criticisms of social disorganisation Social disorganisation can be criticised for being a class-relative reference point adopting a denition of organised which indicates a middle-class suburb and which labels certain communities as disorganised for being different to this. The circularity or tautology of the argument is apparent since deviance is dened in terms of disorganisation and disorganisation is indexed by deviance. Kornhauser (Social Sources of Delinquency, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1978: 118120) locates the problem in the failure of social ecology theorists to be explicit about the causal structure of their theories. She claims if they really meant that poverty, heterogeneity and mobility cause social disorganisation and that crime and delinquency are correlated consequences then they are on safer ground. But can social disorganisation be quantiable? Or are all those ideas class specic? An alternative, more hermeneutical (i.e. interpretative), approach relies heavily upon descriptive and oral recollections. These studies seek to explain slum and ghetto communities in terms which are internal to them. They seek to suspend the classreference label of disorganised in favour of drawing out what the forms of organisation internal to these communities are. Contrast this with the account of England that Engels gave in The Condition of the working class in England. He interpreted crime as a rational reaction to relative deprivation or developed accounts of the deprived working classes, the surplus population of casual workers, street sweepers, beggars, prostitutes and pedlars who were provoked by their acute distress to wage an inarticulate form of warfare against the bourgeoisie. While deviance was not, however, organised or effective class activity it showed the potentiality for developing such activity. Engelss observations are not merely empirical descriptions but are an exercise in normative interpretation; it is obvious that aspects of city life offend his notions of social justice.

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His recognition of the spatial dimensions of crime and his relating this to the process of economic development also point to the role of economic determinants in shaping the process of urbanism. Henry Mayhews street biography (three readings are contained in Fitzgerald et al., Crime and Society) contain a wealth of description as to the occurrence of everyday deviance and crime a normal occurrence alongside Londons poverty and decrepit living environments as well as the transmission of deviant values between deprived children and the ragged schools. Although the state of the economy and the lived-in environment appear as causal factors, Mayhew and Binney also concentrate upon inadequate parental socialisation and control. Similarly Charles Booths massive enquiry which began in 1886 was based on the notion that the statistical method was needed to give bearings to the results of personal observations and personal observation to give life to statistics. His treatise on Life and Labour of the People in London (19023), which runs to 17 volumes, places crime in a social, environmental and locational context making deviance part of the life and work of both perpetrators and victims. Deviance is seen as socially created rather than being a pathological condition of individuals alone. Certain writers, such as Phillipson (1971), Taylor et al., The New Criminology, (1973), have claimed that socially disorganised areas are actually quite organised; it is just that their forms are not regarded as appropriate although they fall within a sociological denition of organisation. The view held by the form of urban sociology based rigidly upon the ecological model is criticised as giving a simplistic view of the slum or inner city as a breeding ground for social problems. The city, it is argued is more than a particular formation of physical environment that is pathological, decaying, poorly serviced, squalid and insanitary. The Chicago School had added to the apparent convergence of ofcial rates of crime, illegitimacy, family instability, mental illness and so forth, claiming causal links. Their associations tted in perfectly with the assumptions of architectural determinism (thus slum clearance projects) which in simple terms held that clearance of physical slums lead to the destruction of social disorganisation. That policy can now be seen as a failure and the culture of poverty theorists, such as Oscar Lewis (1959), who depicted a cultural orientation of those living in poverty as characterised by an absence of social organisation beyond the family, a tendency to authoritarianism, helplessness, dependence and inferiority can be seen as expressions of the oversimplications of such analyses. Participant observation, conversely, has depicted the high degree of organisation within the slum (e.g. Thrasher, 1929, and The Gang, 1937; Suttles, G. The Social Order of the Slum, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1968). Studies show that there are sets of social control effective there (Whyte, Street Corner Society, 2 ed. 1955; Glazer and Moynihan, 1963). There is little evidence that formal agencies of social control (namely, the police, schools and welfare,) are any more effective on their own in middle class areas in directing behaviour and structuring social organisation, but that in such areas these agencies ow out of middle-class cultural forms themselves and complement them. However, the feelings of social or individual satisfaction, or frustration are problematically present in any area and it is unfounded to deny their existence in the slum. In subsequent years the Chicago school took a pluralist approach to the cultural make up of the city and adopted a synthetic observation of daily life in order to obtain policy orientated ndings relevant to the perceived needs of the local populations and some degree of social welfare planning. The work of Howard Becker, such as Outsiders (1963), is a case in point. David Matza was to calls this a neo-Chicagoan

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approach and labelled it appreciation rather than correctional. However, even then their approach remained largely within the uncontested context of a free market economy and a capitalist political democracy. The world of everyday deviancy was experienced and communicated; it was set into the wider geographical structure of the city, but the structural ows which were deemed relevant were so tied to ecological modelling or the lived in context of everyday reality that questions of economic structure or of a differential distribution of power in the national political economic context were never allowed to be raised as factors which constrained or created daily city life. Conversely, Anthony Giddens in his works such as Sociology: a brief but critical introduction argues that studying the modern city cannot be divorced from considering the general social characteristics of societies and the general social transformations brought about by the formation and development of capitalism. Whereas in pre-capitalist society and the city was the centre of state power it only hosted a limited range of productive and commercial operations; the vast majority of the population were engaged in agrarian occupations. It was capitalism, which moved the population into city life; moreover, it did this in the main by developing entirely new cities. Manchester, the site Engels observed, for instance, moved from 10,000 inhabitants in 1717 to 300,000 in 1851 when it was a manufacturing centre and more than 2,400,000 at the end of the nineteenth century. For Giddens, if the driving force behind the growth of urbanity was capitalist development then the traits of contemporary urbanism displayed the effects of commodication, the process where all entities in the social world come to be perceived as goods, capable of being bought and sold in order to generate prot. Thus we can make sense of modern urbanism and the structuring of daily life within it by seeing how space itself becomes commodied in capitalist societies. Modern urbanity is marked by increasing alienability of land and housing (alienable means that property can be transferred by some mode of payment). For example the policy of the 1925 English Property Law Legislation is precisely to simplify conveyancing, the State guarantees registered title to increase the alienability of land. This commodication is the mediation that ties together the physical milieu and the productive system of capitalism. Giddens highlights three features: capitalist urbanism becomes a created environment which dissolves previous divisions between the city and countryside, replacing it with a distinction between the built environment and the environment of open space; in pre-capitalist societies human beings lived close to nature and many cultures conceived of themselves as participating in the natural world. Capitalist societies radically separate human life and nature, in the rst instance in the capitalist workplace, in which the technological factor sever human beings from the inuence of the soil, weather, or cycle of the seasons. The situating of the workplace in an urban milieu of commodied space, moreover, strongly reinforces this. The settings of our lives are almost wholly of human manufacture; therefore the very concept of urban sociology is problematic; the urban environment is constituted as a built environment through a process in which capitalist production, class conict, and the State are intertwined. Perhaps what is needed is a specie of intermediary concepts, such as theories of housing classes, which complements the ecological heritage with accounts both of how citydwellers strive to inuence decision-making about the milieu in which they live. The immediate context in which people live is housing markets, connected to industrial and nancial capital, on the one hand, and labour markets on the other. Locating the distribution of urban neighbourhoods in the active struggles of

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groups in housing markets emphasises factors of generalised importance in the capitalist societies. Considering factors such as access to decision-making as to allocation of local authority housing, budgets, zoning priorities, political conict between local authorities and central government, leads us away from any notion that the differentiation of city areas and housing types are a natural process. Activity
Assessing the imaginative grasp of criminology Few would dispute that cities are the dominant location of modern human experiences, they are the site where offenders predominately live, commit crimes and of victimisation. But how are we to conceive of cities and through what perspectives are we to locate and understand the social issues and diversity of urbanism, such as the coexistence of national monuments, luxury housing, shopping malls, diverse places of entertainment and clubs, poverty, ghettos, crime and victimisation? I begin with two sets of contrasting quotes. The rst comes from Robert Park (who along with Burgess and McKenzie founded the tradition of human ecology): Cities, and particularly the great metropolitan cities of modern timesare, with all their complexities and articialities, mans most imposing creation, the most prodigious of human artefacts. We must conceive of our cities thereforeas the workshops of civilisation, and, at the same time, as the natural habitat of civilised man. (Robert Park, 1936: 133) The city may be regarded as a functional unit in which relations among individuals that compose it are determined, not merely by the citys physical structure, nor even by the formal regulations of a local government, but rather more by the direct and indirect interaction of individuals upon one another. Considered from this point of view, the urban community turns out to be something more than a mere congeries of peoples and institutions. On the contrary, its component elements, institutions, and persons are so intimately bound up that the whole tends to assume the character of an organisma super-organism. (Human Communities, The Free Press, Glencoe, Ill, 1952: 118) The second is from David Harvey (currently Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford): Capitalist urbanisation occurs within the connes of the community of money, is framed by the concrete abstractions of space and time, and internalises all the vigour and turbulence of the circulation of capital under the ambiguous and often shaky surveillance of the State. A city is an agglomeration of productive forces built by labour employed within a temporal process of circulation of capital. It is nourished out of the metabolism of capitalist production for exchange on the world market and supported out of a highly sophisticated system of production and distribution organised within its connes. It is populated by individuals who reproduce themselves using money incomes earned off the circulation of capital (wages and prots) or its derivative revenues (rents, taxes, interest merchants prots and payments for services). The city is ruled by a particular coalition of class forces, segmented into distinctive communities of social reproduction, and organised as a discontinuous but spatially contiguous labour market within which certain distinctive quantities and qualities of labour power may be found. (The Urban Experience, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989: 229) Question: what kind of imaginative grasp or intellectual consciousness of urbanism is implied by the two approaches?

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For Park the city has a natural life of its own with inherent process that operate as: a great sorting and sifting mechanism, which in ways that are not yet wholly understood, infallibly selects out of the population as a whole the individuals best suited to live in a particular region and a particular milieu. (1952: 79) From Park we appear to get an imaginative image of naturalness, of functional processes and of individuals tting into these processes as if in some kind of natural selection. Against this image of naturalness, Harvey offer the ambivalence of human projects within capitalist markets: The city is the high point of human achievement, objectifying the most sophisticated knowledge in a physical landscape of extraordinary complexity, power, and splendour at the same time as it brings together social forces capable of the most amazing sociotechnical and political innovation. But it is also the site of squalid human failure, the lightning rod of the profoundest human discontents, and the arena of social and political conict. It is a place of mystery, the site of the unexpected, full of agitations and ferments, of multiple liberties, opportunities, and alienations; of passions and repressions; of cosmopolitanism and extreme parochialisms; of violence, innovation, and reaction. The capitalist city is the arena of the most intense social and political confusions at the same time as it is a monumental testimony to and a moving force within the dialectics of capitalisms uneven development. (1989: 229) Do we need to arrive at one master-theory or master-narrative of urban development by reference to which we understand the reasons why individuals think and act as they do in modern life? Perhaps we now know that the attempts by Park and others to construct a general theory systematising the available knowledge as a social entity, as Parks college Louis Wirth (1938) dened the project, was doomed. For Harvey a general theory of urbanism is probably impossible to construct. Urbanism is far too complicated a phenomenon to be subsumed easily under some comprehensive theory. (1988: 195) Unfortunately, for most of this century criminologists visualised urbanism through the lenses of Parks and Burgesss human ecology. Criminology workers with the legacy of the social ecology approach bequeathed by what has come to be called the Chicago School. Only recently, and then in attenuated form, did awareness of the broader economic and political structures creep into this imagined domain. The writers of the Chicago school acknowledged some economic considerations, but these were treated as of secondary importance in the studies informed by the ideas of social/human ecology. As Susan Smith notes, the Chicago school made an attempt to combine the practical interests of empathetic ethnography with the technical interests of systematic empirical-analytical science in order to implement policyrelevant ndings sensitive to the needs of the public. The work was welfareoriented, but remained trapped, however, in the unchallenged context of a laissefaire economy and a capitalist political democracy. The world of common-sense deviancy was experienced and communicated; it was set into the wider geographical structure of the city; but its unacknowledged sources and unintended consequences were rarely considered, and never tied into the differential distribution of power which permeates all social life. Crime, Space and Society, Cambridge: (Cambridge University Press, 1986: 195) Question: did this approach render criminology a tame, uncritical, discourse?

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Changing conceptions of the city

Most urban geographers have today escaped from the social ecology model. Even in criminology the model is not used but Vold and Bernard claim that despite the many severe criticisms that have been levelled at the work of the Chicago School of Human Ecology, it [is] a gold mine that continues to enrich criminology today. The individual cases studies remain classic portrayals of delinquents and their social worlds, the urban research methods have led to a wide variety of empirical studies, and the cultural transmission theory underlines much of contemporary theoretical criminology. (1986: 183, largely repeated exactly in the fourth edition). However, most criminological work on the city is extremely tedious and narrowly focused for that. In recent years it has changed focus and the ideas of routine activity, the locality of crime commission, target hardening and the redesigning of estates etc. to cut down on localised features which appear linked to crime commission have gained in importance. The hope is that changes in the geographic ordering of routine activities will alter the pattern of crime (Bottoms and Wiles, The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 1997: 353). Writers such as David Harvey, on the other hand call upon us to develop a selfconsciously normative discourse of urbanism. He uses in part ideas from Henri Lefebvre, who was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist whose publications began in the 1930s and ended with his death in 1991. The everyday was a central concept that Lefebvre considered to be his major contribution to Marxism. It denotes a level between the individual and history. The right to the city (La droit a la ville). For Harvey we need not only to look at routine activity but seek an understanding of the processes whereby such routines are produced. Another vital concern today is the ghetto. The Chicago School explained the ghetto in a lopsided fashion. As Harvey notes, Engels, writing some 80 years before Park and Burgess, noted the phenomenon of concentric zoning in the city, but tried to place it in a perspective where economic class inuenced the spatial structure of cities.
Manchester contains, at its heart, a rather extended commercial district, perhaps half a mile long and about as broad, and consisting almost wholly of ofces and warehouses. Nearly the whole district is abandoned by dwellers, and is lonely and deserted at night.The district is cut through by certain main thoroughfares upon which the vast trafc concentrates, and in which the ground level is lined with brilliant shops. In these streets the upper oors are occupied, here and there, and there is a good deal of life upon them until late at night. With the exception of this commercial district, all Manchester proper, all Salford and Hulmeare all unmixed working peoples quarters, stretching like a girdle, averaging a mile and a half in breadth, around the commercial district. Outside, beyond this girdle, lives the upper and middle bourgeoisie, the middle bourgeoisie in regularly laid out streets in the vicinity of working quarters. The upper bourgeoisie in remoter villas with gardensin free, wholesome country air, in ne, comfortable homes, passed every half or quarter hour by omnibuses going into the city. And the nest part of the arrangement is this, that the members of the money aristocracy can take the shortest road through the middle of all the labouring districts without ever seeing that they are in the midst of the grimy misery that lurks to the right and left. For the thoroughfares leading from the Exchange in all directions out of the city are lined, on both sides, with an almost unbroken series of shops, and are so kept in the hands of the middle and lower bourgeoisie[that] they sufce to conceal from the eyes of the wealthy men and women of strong stomachs and weak nerves the misery and grime which 80

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form the complement of their wealthI know very well that this hypocritical plan is more or less common to all great cities; I know, too, that the retail dealers are forced by the nature of their business to take possession of the great highways; I know that there are more good buildings than bad ones upon such streets everywhere, and that the value of land is greater near them than in remote districts, but at the same time I have never seen so systematic a shutting out of the working class from the thoroughfares, so tender a concealment of everything which might affront the eye and the nerves of the bourgeoisie, as in Manchester. And yet, in other respects, Manchester is less built according to plan, after ofcial regulations, is more an outgrowth of accident, than any other city; and when I consider in this connection the eager assurances of the middle class, that the working class is doing famously, I cannot help feeling that the liberal manufacturers, the Big Wigs of Manchester, are not so innocent after all, in the matter of this sensitive method of construction. (Engels, The Condition of the English Working Class in 1844, p.467)

As Harvey points out, Engelss depiction of urbanism in 1844 was and still is far more consistent with hard economic and social realities than was the essentially cultural approach of Park and Burgess. In fact with certain obvious modications, Engelss description could easily be made to t the contemporary American city (concentric zoning with good transport facilities for the afuent who live on the outskirts, sheltering of commuters into the city from seeing the grime and misery which is the complement of their wealth etc.). It seems a pity that contemporary geographers have looked to Park and Burgess rather than to Engels for their inspiration. The social solidarity that Engels noted was not generated by any superordinate moral order. Instead, the miseries of the city were an inevitable concomitant to an evil and avaricious capitalist system. Social solidarity was enforced through the operation of the market exchange system. Engels reacted to London thus:
These Londoners have been forced to sacrice the best qualities of their human nature, to bring to pass all the marvels of civilisation which crowd their city, a hundred powers which slumbered within them have remained inactive, have been suppressed in order that a few might be developed more fully and multiply through union with those of othersThe brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest becomes the more repellent and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together within a limited spaceThe dissolution of mankind into monads, of which each one has a separate principle, the world of atoms, is here carried out to its utmost extreme.Hence it comes too, that the social war, the war of each against all, is here openly declaredpeople regard each other only as useful objects; each exploits the other, and the end of it all is, that the stronger treads the weaker under foot, and that the powerful few, the capitalists, seize everything for themselves, while to the weak many, the poor, scarcely a bare existence remainsEverywhere barbarous indifference, hard egotism on one hand, and nameless misery on the other, everywhere social warfare, every mans house in a state of siege, everywhere reciprocal plundering under the protection of the law, and all so shameless, so openly avowed that one shrinks before the consequences of our social state as they manifest themselves here undisguised, and can only wonder that the whole crazy fabric still hangs together. (op. cit., 235.)

Engels, in The Housing Question (1872), pointed to the whole gamut of consequences, which owed from this sort of competitive market process.
The growth of the big modern cities gives the land in certain areas, particularly in those which are centrally situated, an articial and colossally increasing value; the buildings erected on these areas depress this value, instead of increasing it, because

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they no longer correspond to the changed circumstances. They are pulled down and replaced by others. This takes place above all with workers houses which are situated centrally and whose rents, even with the greatest overcrowding, can never, or only very slowly, increase above a certain maximum. They are pulled down and in their stead shops, warehouses and public buildings are erected. (p.23.)

This process (which is clearly apparent in every contemporary city) results from the necessity to realise a rate of return on a parcel of land which is consistent with its location rent. It does not necessarily have anything to do with facilitating production. The process is also consistent with certain other pressures.
Modern natural science has proved that so-called poor districts in which the workers are crowded together are the breeding places of all those epidemics which from time to time afict our towns.Capitalist rule cannot allow itself the pleasure of creating epidemic diseases among the working class with impunity; the consequences fall back on it and the angel of death rages in its ranks as ruthlessly as in the ranks of the workers. As soon as this fact had been scientically established the philanthropic bourgeoisie began to compete with one another in noble efforts on behalf of the health of their workers. Societies were founded, books were written, proposals drawn up, laws debated and passed, in order to close the sources of the ever-recurring epidemics. The housing conditions of the workers were examined and attempts were made to remedy the most crying evils.Government Commissions were appointed to inquire into the hygienic conditions of the working classes. (p.43.)

As Harvey notes, today it is social pathology, epitomised by drugs and crime, which is important, but the problem does not seem essentially different. The solutions devised still largely have the same characteristics that Engels noted: that is how to control these areas from above or outside. Look at the work of Mike Davis in City of Quartz (partly summarised at the end of the chapter on cities in Morrison, Theoretical Criminology.)

Current American concerns: the urban underclass and broken windows

Following a famous article by Professors James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling (Broken Windows: The police and Neighbourhood Safety, Atlantic Monthly, March 1982), criminologists as well as many journalists refer to the realities of such innercity neighbourhoods as evidence of the broken windows syndrome that when a broken window in a building goes unxed, soon all of its windows will be broken. The broken window is an invitation to incivility, disorder, and crime:
Where disorder problems are frequent and no one takes responsibility for unruly behaviour in public places, the sense of territoriality among residents shrinks to include only their own households; meanwhile, untended property is fair game for plunder or destructionand a concentration of supposedly victimless disorders can soon ood an area with serious, victimising crimes. (Skogan, Disorder and Decline, pp.1011)

In the writings of the moral right Broken bottles, dened as evidence of drug and alcohol abuse, has an even worse effect on community order and safety than broken windows. As one recent work puts it:
The fact that government itself licenses the entire mess by letting the liquor stores proliferate and the broken bottles pile up so high in poor, inner-city neighbourhoods is the single most compelling symbol that nobody cares, the ultimate invitation to disorder and crime, the sharp-edged evidence of moral poverty. Without adopting either the most sinister or the most cynical perspective on the subject, it seems clear that the high concentrations of liquor outlets in these urban neighbourhoods reects 82

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the relative power of alcohol producers and wholesalers, who supply liquor outlets, banks who loan money to store owners, and state regulators whose activities are more oriented towards the interests of alcohol industry lobbying than the regulation of that industry, and the relative powerlessness of the poor and unemployed individuals and groups who live in greater concentration in these areas of high outlet density. The time has come to experiment with policies aimed at cutting crime by cutting alcohol availability and consumption. The place to begin the experiment is in those poor, minority, high-crime neighbourhoods where the density of liquor outlets far exceeds city-wide averages. The theory behind this policy experiment should be guided by the large and methodologically sophisticated body of research which documents that in inner-city neighbourhoods the relationship between poverty on the one side and crime and disorder on the other is mediated by community norms and the extent of citizens attachments to traditional institutions like home, school, and church.

We could generally accept, perhaps, the statements of the right that as a rule, the stronger the community norms and traditional institutional attachments, the weaker is the link between poverty and crime and the lower are the chances that children growing up in disadvantaged settings will become deviant, delinquent, or predatory (assault, rape, rob, burglarise, deal deadly drugs, murder). But what is one to make of the arguments that we need to return to religion etc. Some studies have shown that religious afliation fosters less drinking. Indeed, one major study nds that, even after controlling for all relevant individual characteristics (race, gender, education, parental education, family structure, religious involvement, and so on), youths whose neighbours attend church are more likely to nd a job, less likely to use drugs, and less likely to be involved in criminal activities whether or not the youths themselves attend church or have other attachments to traditional institutions. As is pointed out in Morrison, Theoretical Criminology, we might not have to see this as the role of religion but of cultural inhibitions, which empirically have traditionally taken a religious form. This, however, puts the onus on the role of culture and cultural inducements to crime or to refrain from crime. Which returns us to the notions of culture and completes the interaction between social ecology and broader ideas of sociology.

Sample questions
1. What theoretical and policy contributions can social ecology theory make to the problem of urban crime in contemporary Britain? 2. How have criminologists attempted to develop a science of the city capable of highlighting criminogenic processes? Have they succeeded? 3. How have criminologists sought to explain the criminogenic effects of city life? Have they been successful?. 4. Is the concept of an emerging underclass of any use for criminological theorising or does the use of this term simply create an unnecessary and misleading label?

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Notes

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Chapter 7

Labelling otherwise known as symbolic, or social interactionism or social reaction theory

Essential reading
Core texts
Burke, Roger, An Introduction to Criminological Theory, 2001. Chapter 8 Labelling Theories. Morrison, Wayne Theoretical Criminology: from modernity to post-modernism 1995 Chapter 14 Labelling Theory and the work of David Matza. Tierney, John Criminology: theory and context, 1996, Chapter 9 New Deviancy theory: the interactionist approach to deviance. Taylor, Walton and Young, (1973) The New Criminology, Chapter 5. Becker, Howard. The Outsiders, (1963) esp. Chapter 1. Vold and Bernard, Theoretical Criminology, Chapter 14. Downes and Rock, Understanding Deviance, 1998, Chapter 7 Symbolic Interactionism.

Additional reading
Cohen, S. Folk Devils and Moral Panics, (second edition., Oxford, 1980). Lemert, E.M. Human Deviance, Social Problems and Social Control, Englewood Cliffs, 1967. Plummer, K. Misunderstanding Labelling Perspectives in Downes and Rock, (eds) Deviant Interpretations, Oxford, 1979.

Commentary
A famous quotation from Howard Becker gives a avour of the perspective
the central fact about deviance [is that] it is created by society. I do not mean this is the way it is ordinarily understood, in which the causes of deviance are located in the social situation of the deviant or in social factors which prompt his action. I mean, rather, that social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an offender. The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label. (The Outsiders: 89.)

The consequences of the above position range from potentially devastating to the whole positivist tradition of investigating crime and the criminal, to merely adding another area of study.

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The attack on positivism ows from the reinterpretation of language which the philosophical perspective underlying the labelling approach gives. Words such as the offender, the criminal, dangerousness, indeed all naming words, are now seen not as a reection of a natural reality, but as a snapshot of a social process. Let us, however, be clear. The radical analysis of labelling is not dominant, it has been accommodated within the mainstream sociology of deviancy without, it seems, upsetting the condence of empirical work. Remember the condence of positivism: a belief in a determinate external reality out there that it is possible to measure accurately. The labelling perspective is part of an alternative position, a perspective that states we can never get to this reality. It claims reality is linguistically constituted, therefore, we can say that the limits of our world are the limits of our language. What is the self in a non-positivist conception? It is an existential self. A self that owes its character to no innate human nature, no given or xed biological character is recognised. Instead, for us, as Pascal said, there is nothing that cannot be made natural; there is nothing natural that cannot be lost. We construct our own selves, society constructs human nature. The role of instinct, or natural drives, is lessened through the inescapable sociality of mankind. The structure of socialisation, of learning, is the structure to the human self. Our ability to be plastic, to learn throughout life, enables our culture to also learn. To hold a cumulative technological power that transforms the environment we live in as a species. The ability to socially label, to create typologies, categories and, in turn, laws, is part of this cultural technology. Culture replaces natural instinct as the means of human survival. The reality humans face is a cultural one; our descriptive terms, our arrangement, the divisions we nd ourselves thrust into, constitute our cultural heritage. Culture, the tool by which humanity surmounts natural reality becomes the world humanity confronts and becomes the reality which creates the pressures and demands of social human existence. Thus the crude empiricist image of reality, a presence out there which we can safely perceive through our senses, gives way to the realisation that all senses of reality are culturally channelled and induced. Freed from nature, man becomes the subject of culture. Dependence on nature is replaced by dependence on culture. As the anthropologist Geertz put it, a person abstracted from culture would be:
functionally incomplete, not merely a talented ape who had, like some underprivileged child, unfortunately been prevented from realising his full potentialities, but a kind of formless monster with neither sense of direction nor power of self-control, a chaos of spasmodic impulses and vague emotions. (Geertz, C., The Interpretation of Cultures, (New York, Basic Books), 1973: 99)

The reality of social life is therefore a linguistic reality. And, since language is one kind of symbolic system, a set of conventionalised sounds and signs, we can say that our reality is primarily based on symbols. The external world is for us a world clothed in symbols. These symbols identify or indicate certain aspects of the environment to us and structure our responses to them. All objects can wear several sets of identiers, different meanings, and, therefore, be different objects. Often the thing(s) our object(s) is socially, may be viewed in incompatible ways. But whether there is one thing with different meanings, or one meaning with different things, things and meanings remain inseparable. They are parts of a bonded whole, since things only exist socially in so far as they have meaning interest, value, purpose, function, for us. For the social world we can say that the only way we recognise things in the

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world is by conferring meaning or value on them. We endow the world with symbols and respond to the meanings contained in them. So there are as many things in the world, and only such things, as we have meanings for at any one time. Language and other symbolic systems codify these meanings. In using language, or other kinds of signs such as gestures, we impose a sort of grid on reality. Since language and other symbolic systems are social products, this is a socially constructed grid. Thus Alasdir MacIntyre has said that the limits of action are the limits of descriptionthe delineation of a societys concepts is therefore the crucial step in the delineation of its life. (MacIntyre, A., A mistake about causality in social science, in P.Laslett and W.G. Runciman (eds), Philosophy, Politics, and Society, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1962)

Role, status and stigma

I have claimed language is a major determinant of reality for a culture. Age, sex, race, class subdivide this reality into a series of smaller realities setting up a series of subcultural realities. But on an everyday level even these subcultural realities tend to become too large for most individuals. The working class Tory for instance is someone who appears to have stepped out of a confusion of status; as a worker he should, in class terms, vote Labour, the party of the working man. But class status is only one element in the structuring of an individuals self position. His relation to the kind of job he has and aspires to, his schooling, the home life he enjoys, the life lived among friends and neighbours, his sporting contacts, all provide a range of roleplaying in which various and perhaps conicting experiences are possible. Various statuses engaged. Being young or old, being a woman, is to have a particular social status. So is being married or unmarried; being a teacher or parent, a neighbour or taxpayer, a prisoner, an offender, a mental patient or a disabled person. Each status carries with it a set of expectations and reactions, an ensemble of rights and obligations, a package of social relations, which both carry stress, and which the living in accordance with constitutes the performance of a role. A role is the dynamic aspect of status it tells us how to think, feel and behave in ways appropriate to a given status. Thus a set of behaviours appropriate for sets of status has been prepared a mother is caring and exhibits the behaviour of care, a soldier brave and performs bravely, a patient submissive and obedient to the doctor. To occupy a particular status is to slip into a role as into a suit of clothes tailored for the occasion. The role is binding on both actor and audience. It is a reciprocal relationship. It can constrain behaviour more directly and more forcibly than either language or class.

Labelling and the ascription of roles

This is a process which you may wish to think about. Where do you get your own sense of self-identity and your image of the roles available for you? We do not invent our roles but nd them latent in the statuses we occupy, waiting to be actualised by our performance. The script has been largely written for us before we appear. As opposed to a stage actor however, we largely learn our parts unconsciously, unaware of the social script. Yet the most apparently spontaneous and personal behaviour, when we feel most ourselves, often turns out to be a replaying of the lines of a symbolic script written long ago.

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Focusing attention onto the power of the authorities to ascribe criminal identities
As well as the quotation of Becker consider the avour of:
I propose to shift the focus of theory and research from the forms of deviant behaviour to the processes by which people come to be dened as deviant by others. Such a shift requires that the sociologist view as problematic what he generally assumes as given namely, that certain forms of behaviour are per se deviant and are so dened by the conventional or conforming members of a group. (Kitsuse, J., Societal Reaction to Deviant behaviour, in Rubington and Weinberg (eds.), Deviance: The Interactionist Perspective, New York, 1968: 19-20). The critical variable in the study of deviance is the social audience rather than the individual actor, since it is the audience which eventually determines whether or not an episode of behaviour or any class of episodes is labelled deviant. (Erikson, K., Notes on the Sociology of Deviance, in Becker, (ed), The Other Side, New York, 1964: 11).

Important terms within criminology

The labelling or symbolic interactionalist approach was taken as resting upon three simple premises: human beings act towards things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with ones fellows these meanings are handled in, and modied through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters. (Blumer, 1969: 2)

Sample questions
1. How adequate is labelling theory as a general account of crime? 2. Is labelling theory only applicable to marginal forms of deviance? 3. The irony of formal state intervention in social control is that labelling offenders as criminals leads to more crime being committed but society needs this labelling in order to afrm its central values. What assumptions lie behind this statement and do you agree with its analysis? 4. Critically assess the legacy of the labelling perspective. 5. The theoretical implications of labelling theory undercut the rationale for much of the ofcial criminal justice system. Either labelling theory was wrong or it had to be ignored for the criminal justice system to continue to expand. Discuss. 6. Labelling theory was a reection of the anti-establishment mood of the 1960s and left no lasting theoretical legacy. Do you agree? 7. The implications of labelling theory should have resulted in a large-scale reassessment of criminal justice policy; instead they have been mostly neglected. Discuss. 8. One major cause of crime is the criminal law. We use it too much and in areas where other forms of control would be more appropriate. Discuss with reference to specic areas of criminalisation. 88

Chapter 7: Labelling otherwise know as symbolic, or social interactionism or social reaction theory

Activity
Grade the following essay. (Assume it was written as an essay with a 1,500 word limit note it ought to be possible to write four 1,000 word answers in a three-hour examination.) What question do you think it is written in response to? If you can identify a question, what marks would you give it out of 10 for:

coverage of material (are there any important points you think the writer has missed structure, i.e. it is well laid out and follows a consistent theme usage of texts and quotes from major writers.

How easy do you think it is to mark? How would you mark your own attempts?

Essay
Introduction Emanating from the traditions of the Chicago school and borrowing conceptually from sociological approaches such as interactionism, labelling theory can be viewed as a major break from earlier classical and positivist explanations of crime and criminality. Its heritage is partly critical because it challenges the assumption of a consensus in society regarding core values and norms.1
1 White, R, and Haines, F, Crime And Criminology An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, p.5).

The central tenet of the labelling perspective is that crime and criminal behaviour is a social process and to give them meaning relies as much on social reaction and context as on the nature of the behaviour itself. Hence, the focus of concern for labelling theorists is with the complex processes of action and reaction and how they result in an individual adopting a deviant identity and lifestyle. Labelling theory and the process of interaction Labelling theory has a wide range of intellectual inuences but the strongest link is to the symbolic interactionist perspective in sociology, in which the self is viewed not as a structure but as a process. In what Mead called the self as a social construct, each persons self-image is thought to be constructed largely through interactions with other people. The underlying assumption of process which is at the heart of the labelling approach can be explained by breaking it down into four main stages: i Negative labelling According to labelling theory, what counts as a crime is dened by social action and reaction and who is considered criminal or deviant is determined by the labelling process. The importance of the labelling act is summed up by Becker: deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an offender. The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label.2

Howard Becker. Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: The Free Press, 1966, p.14.

The idea that deviancy is something that is conferred upon an individual by society, saw a major shift of focus away from the offender to those who do the reacting. Erikson saw the social audience as being a crucial factor because how they respond will ultimately determine whether the act or individual is labelled a crime or deviant. In Theoretical Criminology, Morrison identies three types of audience and the one labelling theory has concentrated upon most is made up of the ofcials within the criminal justice system. It is this relationship between the offender and those who

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have the power to label that has been the key area of analysis for labelling theorists. They argue that crime is not an objective phenomenon, rather it is shaped by selective labelling and the nature of interactions between members of the criminal justice system and the general public. Becker, in his work on people who were considered to be on the margins of society, believed the primary reason for their status as outsiders is because their behaviour has been labelled deviant by societys powerful interest groups. Again it is a case of behaviour only becoming deviant in the labelling process. (ii) Stigmatisation A consequence of the labelling process is that stigmatisation can occur. When an individual is stigmatised it not only affects how they see themselves but also how others perceive them. Thus, based upon the initial negative labelling, a person is predominantly viewed by others in terms of one particular pattern of behaviour or character trait. An example which clearly illustrates this comes from a (in)famous BBC video on Greek Asylums, where a man incarcerated in an asylum on the island of Leros said to his interviewer Im not ill. Its you who thinks Im ill because Im here. (iii) In response to negative labelling and stigmatisation a new identity is formed One impact stigmatisation has on some people is that they engage in further deviant activity (remember the adage if youve got the name you might as well play the game). Another consequence is that the labelling process provides an impetus for people who have similarly been cast as outsiders to associate with each other. Membership to this sort of criminal subculture can often end in individuals adopting a criminal self-image. (iv) Commitment to deviant label According to Lemert, in order to understand the role the labelling process plays in a persons commitment to criminal activity, it is necessary to distinguish between primary and secondary deviance. Referring to initial deviant behaviour (e.g. petty theft, underage drinking) primary deviation simply means the act is performed without the individual seeing themselves differently (i.e. as a thief or a drunk). However, it is with secondary deviation that the focus of labelling theory lies. It is said to occur when, as a result of the social reaction to the initial deviant behaviour (e.g. being arrested for shoplifting and ofcially labelled as deviant) the individual undergoes a reorientation not only of their behaviour but their self-concept as well. What this ultimately means is that they take on the role based upon their status. As I put it: the application of labelsbrings out the behaviour that the label was supposed to control. Criticisms A major drawback to labelling theory is that is concentrates exclusively on crime as dened by social reaction. Critics argue this is ne for minor delinquency but crimes such as murder and rape are not determined on a subjective basis. Rather, they are characterised by a high degree of social agreement regarding their criminality. One other criticism levelled at this approach is that it cannot explain why some people are able to reject certain labels and others do not have this same capacity.

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A lasting legacy? Where labelling theory seems to have the most impact is in the area of juvenile justice. The notion that young people are especially vulnerable to the labelling process and if subjected to ofcial social reaction, this could end up in pushing them into further deviant activity, was also a feature of Matzas drift theory. Recently the Australian criminologist John Braithwaite has also looked to labelling theory when proposing a new idea of reintegrative shaming as the key to crime control. His argument is that for shaming to be most effective, it must be reintegrative as opposed to stigmatising. He highlights the undesirable effects of labelling, where outcasts are created and the risk of reoffending is heightened and says that, by contrast, reintegrative shaming seeks to shame the evil deed while maintaining a relationship with the offender, based on respect.3 The offender is then given the opportunity to re-enter society by way of recognising what they did was wrong, apologising to those harmed by their actions and being repentant.4 At the level of policy development with respect to juveniles, labelling theory has left a lasting impression. In a number of states and territories in Australia, schemes and programmes are operating which serve to divert young offenders away from the formal systems of juvenile justice, thereby reducing the likelihood of stigmatisation. Other procedures where the labelling inuence can be seen include the destroying of ofcial records once a juvenile has reached a certain age and has not reoffended, the placing of limitations on taking ngerprints and body samples and lastly, publicity restrictions in cases before the Childrens Court. Conclusion As Frank Tannenbaum, the rst labelling theorist said, the person becomes the thing he is described as being. The premise of labelling theory is that crime and criminal behaviour is a social process and how they are determined depends upon who does the labelling. The power to labelling is substantial and has a lasting impact on both the psychological and social development of offenders. A negative consequence of being stigmatised is that the individual assumes the identity with which they have been labelled and then acts accordingly. However, the juvenile justice system in particular has introduced procedures and programmes which attempt to protect young people from being negatively labelled and the stigma that follows:

Vold, George B; Bernard, Thomas J. and Snipes, Jeffrey B Theoretical Criminology (fourth edition), (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998).

Braithwaite J. Shame And Modernity (1993) The Brit Journal of Criminology 118 4 Braithwaite, J. Crime, shame and reintegration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 1001

Students references
1. White, Rob and Haines, Fiona Crime And Criminology An Introduction, (Oxford: University Press,1996). 2. Becker, Howard S Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. (The Free Press, New York, 1966) 3. Braithwaite, John Shame and Modernity, The British Journal of Criminology, (1993) vol. 33, no. 1, pp l-18. 4. Braithwaite, John Crime, shame and reintegration, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989) 5. Morrison, Wayne Theoretical Criminology: From modernity to post-modernism, (Cavendish, London, 1995) 6. Vold, George B; Bernard, Thomas J. and Snipes, Jeffrey B Theoretical Criminology (fourth edition), (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998).

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Notes

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Chapter 8

Critical criminology and the development of Realist perspectives

Reading
Core texts Critical criminology
Burke, Roger, An Introduction to Criminological Theory, 2001. Chapter 11 Critical Criminology. Downes D. and Rock, P. Understanding Deviance, 1998, Chapter 10 Radical Criminology. Jones, Stephen, Criminology, 1998, Chapter 10. Conict, Marxist and Radical Theories of Crime. Lanier and Henry, Essential Criminology, 1998, Chapter 11 Capitalism as a Criminogenic Society: Conict and radical Theories of Crime. Tierney, John Criminology: theory and context. 1996, Chapter 11 Post-new deviancy and the new criminology. Vold and Bernard, Theoretical Criminology, Chapter 15 Conict Criminology and Chapter 16 Marxist Criminology.

The classic British texts:

Taylor, Walton and Young, The New Criminology, 1973. Taylor, Walton and Young, Critical Criminology, 1975. Contempory Critical texts: Taylor, Ian Crime in Context: A Critical Criminology of Market Societies. (Polity Press, 1999) [ISBN 0-7456-0667-9].

Commentary
Which is a sustained critique of the criminogenic effects of mass consumerism and the international marketplace. It is structured by placing crime and fear in the context of the massive social transformations of the late twentieth century.
Young, Jock The Exclusive Society. (Sage, 1999) [ISBN 0-8039-8151-1].

analyses the rise of a society of plenty in which a signicant portion is excluded. Youngs work is the culmination of an intellectual journey from the neo-Marxism of The New Criminology (1973) through left realism into this pragmatic but committed analysis of the complexity of late modernity and the need for social justice. The book should be read. Perhaps his thesis can be summed up by his nal paragraph:
Crime and intolerance occur when citizenship is thwarted; their causes lie in injustice, yet their effect is, inevitably, further injustice and violation of citizenship. The solution is to be found not in the resurrection of past stabilities, based on a nostalgia and a world that will never return, but on a new citizenship, a reexive modernity which will tackle the problem of justice and community, of reward and individualism, which dwell at the heart of liberal democracy.

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On Left realism Young, J. The Failure of Criminology: the need for a radical realism in R. Matthews and J. Young (eds) Confronting Crime Sage, 1986. Lea, J. and Young, J. What is to be done about Law and Order?, (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1984). Stenson, K. and Brearley, N. Left Realism in Criminology and the Return to Consensus Theory, in Reiner, R. and Cross, M. (eds) Beyond Law & Order: Criminal Justice Policy and Politics into the 1990s, (MacMillan, 1991) Supplementary Hall S. et al. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order, 1978. A radical analysis of the moral panics surrounding the rise of mugging in relation to the British State. Pitch, T. Critical Criminology, the Construction of Social Problems and the Question of rape 13 Int. Jo. Soc. of Law, 35 1985, is an empirical application of critical criminology in the area of rape. Quinney, R. Class, State and Crime, second edition 1980, is a classic American text applying Marxist theory. Commentary In the 1960s and 1970s a dramatic change came over the study of crime. It was a movement from accepting a consensus view of social order to one where social order 1 was riven by conict. It drew on a variety of roots from Marxism to labelling. For most of the twentieth century a positivist approach dominated criminological development focusing upon criminal behaviour rather then criminal law, on the supposed determining causes of such behaviour, and on the differentiating of criminals from non-criminals. Recently a return to the eighteenth century classical roots has occurred with a particular focus on the role of the criminal law in generating legal labels that constitute the demarcation between the criminal and the non-criminal. In part, the drive behind the new or critical approach in criminology was an attempt to expose the background assumptions and structural biases in the traditional research which leave unproblematic the denition and meaning of crime. As Wiles put it in 1976:
Laws and rules, rather than dening the boundaries of criminology, now have to be included within criminological explanations. Criminology was forced to encompass the political nature of deviance and its control, and so examine the relationship between theory and ideology. (1976: 17)

You may nd it interesting that the rst edition of Vold published in 1958 was regarded as radical in that it openly espoused a conict perspective. Therein Vold stated that he saw social order as congeries of groups held together in a dynamic equilibrium of opposing groups, interests and efforts. The continuity of group interaction, the endless series of moves and countermoves, of checks and cross-checksin an immediate and dynamically maintained equilibrium provides opportunities for a continuous possibility of shifting positions, of gaining or losing status, with the consequent need to maintain an alert defence of ones positionConict is viewed, therefore, as one of the principal and essential social processes upon which the continuing ongoing society depends. (Theoretical Criminology, 1958: 204) How that text was turned into the boring banality of the fourth edition must be a research project in its own right.

This developed aspects of the interactionists labelling theories. However, one of the consequences of radical interactionism is an invitation into an existentialist world, a world where many realities are acknowledged and no monopoly on any is claimed. The world of radical interactionism is emergent and capricious, dened and structured through direct experience and is essentially a human creation, thus, it is said only humans can understand it. But in the late-modern world the multiplicity of life experiences and images threatens to overwhelm the individuals ability to comprehend with the alienating result of creating a domain of abstracted individuals. Critical criminology however, seizes upon a deep structural analysis, a holistic approach which attempts to go beyond experience and tells us of the foundational pressures which constrain and produce the bedrock conditions of possible knowledge and of law-making processes. The usual mode of analysis here is Marxist in derivation.

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In general the New Criminology stepped outside of the traditional boundaries of criminology refusing to accept the products of the legal enforcement mechanism as its data. Instead the processes of criminalisation, of state power, of historical development, of the development of legal ideologies, are brought directly into the picture. We are asked to consider the human price of modernity and to face up to the radical disparities beneath the formal equality and liberty of the liberal subject. The Rule of Law is seen in the Marxist tradition as an ideology hiding the alienation of man in modern bourgeois (or industrial) society. The separation of man and women from humanity via technology, via visions of worth according to property, via ethnicity, via gender, is at issue. Formal legal and political equality, concealed and even made greater real social and economic inequality. Behind the operation of the free market lies the rule of the productive system (the factory); behind the freedom of trade lies the subjection of colonies and now the third world; behind the freedom to be your self lies the ideological packaging of what it means to be a desirable and successful modern. The now classical British text of the New Criminology is The New Criminology: for a social theory of deviance, by Taylor, Walton and Young. Their approach to knowledge is expressly one of praxis, a combination of theory and practice. The criminologist is a committed member of his/her society, a person who lives the struggle to create a more human and free society:
one of the central purposes of this critique has been to assert the possibility - not only of a fully social theory but also of a society in which men are able to assert themselves in a fully social fashion. With Marx, we have been concerned with the social arrangements that have obstructed, and the social contradictions that enhance, mans chances of achieving full solidarity a state of freedom from material necessity, and (therefore) of material incentive, a release from the constraints of forced production, an abolition of the forced division of labour, and a set of social arrangements, therefore, in which there would be no politically, economically, and socially induced need to criminalise deviance. (1973: 270)

The authors of The New Criminology are clear as to their values, a normative commitment to the abolition of inequalities in wealth and power, and the creation of the kind of society in which the facts of human diversity are not subject to the power to criminalise. (The New Criminology: 282; Critical Criminology: 44). We can see that this perspective differs fundamentally from the view of human nature which underlies the pessimistic liberalism of 18th century writers such as Thomas Hobbes. As H. Collins summarises it, Marxist philosophy contains an image of moving beyond the institutions of law: The supposition that law will always be necessary rests upon beliefs about certain constant qualities of human nature such as greed and selshness. The theory of alienation includes the assertion that the materially determined constant of the human psyche may be fundamentally transformed; under the communist relations of production, a novel type of personality will emerge which will be exempt from egocentric lusts for power and wealth. Accordingly the usual reason given by liberal political philosophy for the existence of coercive systems of behavioural control like law will no longer be extant. Men will naturally agree about the proper standards of behaviour and conform to them without the need for sanctions. (1982: 120) This line of thinking has been labelled Left Idealism. Here the law is viewed as an expression of ruling, class interests and working-class behaviour necessarily violates these interests expressing a set of requirements of the working class or proletariat.

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The existence of crime is not the normal state of society and a never to be overcome by phenomena but the positive result of the current structures of capitalism in particular, the emphasis on property:
a society which is predicated on the unequal right to the accumulation of property gives rise to the legal and illegal desire to accumulate property as rapidly as possible. (Taylor et al., 1975: 34)

The British writers Taylor, Walton and Young were not specically advocating a naive socialism but capitalism was clearly represented as criminogenic. In his 1980 text, Richard Quinney stated that crime control and criminality were to be understood in terms of the conditions resulting from the capitalist appropriation of labour. Thus:
The only lasting solution to the crisis of capitalism is socialism. Under late, advanced capitalism, socialism will be achieved in the struggle of all people who are oppressed by the capitalist mode of production The essential meaning of crime in the development of capitalism is the need for a socialist society. (Class, State and Crime, 1980: 67-68)

When, however, what would appear a natural empirical assumption of this approach, i.e. that crime is a form of class warfare and largely inter-class, is subjected to empirical analysis it appears open to doubts. Crime is largely intra-class, committed by people of similar socio-economic background on others largely as opportunity arises (true even of White Collar fraud). Left idealism turns to complex notions of ideology and the division of working-class perceptions to account for this at the expense of making their position untestable, unfalsiable, and thus regarded as unscientic by many. Its optimistic position is also out of touch with the late modern times which has witnessed the end of communism in Eastern Europe and new positions of Reformism and Left Realism have gained currency. For some commentators, while it is essential that Critical Criminology raises the issues of power, exploitation and human subjection, the task is to face up to some of the empirical issues about what is actually to be done to increase the life chances of the powerless. This is what the New Left Realism attempts to do.

New left realism

See Burke, Roger Criminology Theory, Chapter 15 Left Realism. Walklate, Sandra Understanding Criminology, Chapter 4 Understanding left realism, and Chapter 3 Understanding right realism.

Texts representative of left realism are:

Elliot Currie, Confronting Crime (Pantheon, 1995); and Crime and Punishment in America (Metropolitan, 1998) Mooney, Jane Gender, Violence and the Social Order. (Macmillan, 2000) Young, Jock The Exclusive Society, (Sage, 1999)

The key early text is Lea and Youngs What is to be Done About law and Order? There is a short but concise discussion in Downes and Rock Understanding Deviance, towards the end of the chapter on Radical Criminology. Our present times certainly no longer believe that it is sufcient to follow Marx and place private property as the root of all evil, instead a more complex and greater appreciation of the problems are to see alienation as rooted in the technological foundations, organisations and scale of modern society. Left realists try to confront

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the huge inequalities of our present time in a pragmatic but focused manner. One theme of recent discussions in the UK concerns the idea of the exclusive society. Jock Youngs The Exclusive Society is the topical text. Youngs thesis is that the last third of the twentieth century witnessed a transformation in the lives of citizens in the advanced industrial societies. The golden age of the post-war settlement with high unemployment, stable family structures, and consensual values underpinned by the safety net of the welfare state gave way to a new world. A social ordering characterised by structural unemployment, economic precariousness, a systematic cutting of welfare provisions and a growing instability of family life and interpersonal relations. Pluralism and individualism replaced a social order displaying a relative consensus of values. A world of material and ontological security from cradle to grave is replaced by precariousness and uncertainty and whereas social commentators in the 1950s berated the complacency of a comfortable never had it so good generation, those of today talk of a risk society where social change becomes the central dynamo of existence and where anything might happen. Key driving factors are changes in market forces that have transformed both the spheres of production and of consumption. The move from Fordism to Post-Fordism involves the unravelling of the world of work where the primary labour market of secure employment and safe careers shrinks, the secondary labour market of shortterm contracts, flexibility and insecurity increases as does the growth of an underclass of the structurally unemployed. For Young, a criminogenic culture is generated in that market values that encourage an ethos of every person for themselves, fits on top of a more unequal and less meritocratic society. At the same time the force of informal social control weakens as communities are disintegrated by social mobility or left to decay as capital finds more profitable areas to invest and develop. Families are stressed and fragmented by the decline of communities, systems of support, the reduction of state support and the more diverse pressures of the changing patterns of work. As the pressures that lead to crime increase, the informal forces, which control it, decrease. The very nature of order is problematised in that rules are both more readily broken and their status questioned. Exclusion in the market gives rise to exclusion and divisions within civil society; but the responses of the State have repercussions in reinforcing and exacerbating the exclusions of civil society and the market place. Highlighting the downside of contemporary capitalism is not enough for the realist, one must seek to at least to identify some aspects which can be used to build new communities. There is little desire to return to some face-to-face society, some organic community of living, social bonds and commonly shared ideologies and interests. Many of the left recognise the bondage of family, status, and religion that prevailed in these simpler societies. The new right in current social theory wishes a return to traditional deference of authority, of socialisation into the need to work, into the image of secure societies. The issue is not to return to some simple traditional social ordering of the supposed past but to think creatively for the future! To construct vibrant perceptions for pluralist, multi-ethnic and participatory societies of the future.

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Sample questions
1. It is becoming apparent to a whole generation of criminologists and sociologists that it is increasingly difcult to distinguish between crime and political and moral dissent. Is this a fair characterisation of radical criminology today? 2. Radical criminologists have disputed the assumptions of the positivist theorists. What new insights or perspectives, if any, have emerged from their theorising about the causes and distribution of crime in society? 3. Modern capitalist society is inherently criminogenic. Do you agree? 4. We are all realists now. The idealism of the New Criminology or the romanticism of labelling theory is no longer appropriate. Discuss. 5. Radical criminology has died, we are all realists now. Discuss and evaluate this claim.

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Chapter 9

Feminist criminology
Essential reading
Core texts
Burke, Roger, An Introduction to Criminological Theory, 2001. Chapter 10 Feminist perspectives. Downes and Rock, Understanding Deviance, 1998, Chapter 11 Feminist Criminology. Morrison, Wayne, Theoretical Criminology: from modernity to post-modernism, 1995, Chapter 16 Modernity Gender and Crime: from the biological paradigm into feminist interpretations. Tierney, John, Criminology: theory and context. 1996, pps.26672. Walklate, Sandra, Understanding Criminology, 1998, Chapter 5 Gendering the criminal.

Supplementary reading
Daly, K. Different ways of conceptualising sex/gender in criminological theories and their implications for criminology, Theoretical Criminology, 1 (1), pp.2551. Heidensohn, Frances Crime and Society, 1989, Chapter 5 Gender and Crime. Box, Stephen, Power, Crime, and Mystication, 1983, Chapter 5 Powerlessness and crime the case of female crime. Heidensohn, Frances Women and Crime, 1985, MacMillan. Carlen, P. and Worrall, A. (eds) Gender, Crime and Justice. Open University Press, 1987 Leonard, E. B. Women Crime and Society: a critique of Criminology Theory, (Longman, London, 1982) Smart, C. Women, Crime and Criminology, A Feminist Critique. (Routledge, 1976) and Law, Crime and Sexuality. Sage, 1995. Morris, Alison, Women, Crime and Criminal Justice. (Basil Blackwell, 1987)

Learning objectives
By the end of this chapter you should be able to: discuss whether traditional theories adequately explained the differences in offending between males and females describe the approaches traditional theories took to explaining this difference evaluate the difference feminist perspectives have made to criminology.

Commentary
It has been a staple of criminology that the gender is a major correlate with criminal involvement. Males commit more offences than females and their offences are more serious than those of females. As Harris put it:
Such differences are striking indeed: sex appears to explain more variance in crime across cultures than any other variable. This appears so regardless of whether ofcially known or hidden (true) rates of crime are indexed. (Sex and Theories of Deviance: Toward a Functional Theory of Deviant Type-Scripts, American Sociological Review, 1977, p.4) 99

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Historically serious crimes, such as homicide, were largely the preserve of males. As Nagel and Hagan put it:
The relation between gender and criminality is strong and is likely to remain so. Women have traditionally been much less likely than men to commit violent crimes and that pattern persists todayWhile the relative increase in womens property crime involvement is signicant, female participation, even in these crimes, remains far less than that of men.(Gender and Crime: Offence Patterns and Criminal Court Sanctions, in Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, Vol. 4. 1983, p.91)

Males account for the vast majority of those arrested for crimes involving force or fraud and the victim and self-report studies support the picture. Regardless of age or type of crime, male involvement is substantially higher than female. Indeed, as Frances Heidensohn makes clear, if there is an understatement in ofcial statistics it is of the crimes done to women:
There is little or no evidence of a vast shadowy underworld of female crime hidden in our midst like the sewers below the city streets. As we have become increasingly aware in modern times, quite the opposite is true. There is a great deal of crime which is carefully hidden from the police, from families, friends and neighbours. Much of this takes the form of domestic violence, the abuse of children both physically and sexually, incest and marital rape. The overwhelming majority of such cases involve men, usually fathers and husbands injuring or abusing their wives and children. (Crime and Society, 1989: 87)

Writers within the labelling perspective have pointed out how such events as child abuse and wife-beating have traditionally not been viewed as things which the criminal justice system would involve itself with. Stephen Pfohl (The discovery of child abuse, Social Problems, 1977) showed that the discovery of childabuse which occurred in the United States in the late 1960s was clearly developed by paediatric radiologists who read the x-rays in hospitals calling increasing attention to the abuse of children. Concern for the safety of the children was not the only reason another was to demonstrate the importance of paediatric radiology and thereby enhance the low prestige of their speciality within the medical community. Kathleen Tierney demonstrates how the wife-beating problem emerged in the mid-1970s as an important social issue when feminist organisations and networks were strong enough to make domestic violence socially visible, establish victim shelters and earn the passage of new laws and policing priorities. The media picked up the issue because:
it mixed elements of violence and social relevance[it] provided a focal point for serious media discussion of such issues as feminism, inequality, and family life in the United States without requiring a sacrice of the entertainment value, action, and urgency on which the media typically depend. (The battered women movement and the creation of the wife-beating problem, Social Problems, 1982: 213-214)

This is one way in which gender awareness or gender power has changed elements in what is conceived of as crime; another area of concern is the very ability of criminology to develop itself as an intellectual endeavour which takes gender seriously. In other words to start to include the gender issue within its theorising; that is, to include the processes whereby identity and gender (as opposed to sexuality) are created. To Leonard (1982) the development of criminological theory is a history of male writings creating theories, such as Mertons anomie, which appear to be general to both male and female but which are really only male theories. Leonard thus asked the question whether theories of crime constructed by men and intended to be generalisable, i.e. to be of general applicability, were actually theories of men explaining (male) crime. It appears the answer is theory contingent. While

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some theories do have relevance for both men and women, many appear to really be about males. Another related question is can traditional theories adequately explain the gender difference in criminal activity? Again the answer may be that this differs by theory.

Popular explanations for differential involvement in crime

One approach has been to deny that women are substantially less involved (for example O. Pollak, The Criminality of Women, 1950). See the rebuttal by Frances Heidensohn quoted earlier. Differences rooted in the biological or psychological make-up (examples, the work of C. Lombroso, La donna delinquent, la prostituta e la donna normal, and The Female Offender, 1895; W. Thomas, The Unadjusted Girl, 1923; O. Pollak, The Criminality of Women, 1950). Differential socialisation. For example, Carol Smart began her 1976 analysis using a mixture of socialisation and role theory:
Girls are generally more closely supervised than boys, and are taught to be passive and domesticated while boys are allowed greater freedom and are encouraged to be aggressive, ambitious and outward goingboth socialisation and the later development of consciousness and self-perception does vary considerably between the sexes. As a result of this girls are usually expected to be non-violent and so are not allowed to learn how to ght or use weapons. Girls themselves tend to shrink from violence, and look for protection rather than learn the skills of self-defence, hence few women have the necessary technical ability or strength to engage in crimes of violence, armed robberies or gang ghts. (1976:66)

Role identity. For example Scutt writing in 1976 talks in terms of a role you may certainly nd long outmoded:
Girls are encouraged to be passive and gentle; they are taught not to ght with each other and their brothersDuring childhood they are constantly reminded of the role expected to be adopted in the future; ever present is a mother who represents the adult they will become. Not so with boys. Father is away from home at the ofce every day. (Role conditioning theory: an explanation for disparity in male and female criminality, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, Vol. 9. 1976)

Both Smart and Scutt, however, are clear that role and socialisation theory can only provide part answers and that consideration must be given to other factors. Opportunity theory. The simple proposition that females have fewer opportunities to commit the sort of delinquency which is the subject of the criminal justice system. S Box gives favourable consideration to this in the chapter referred to in the reading. Smart gives a picture of women whom because of their sex role, which is mainly focused on domestic arrangements, are denied the opportunity to engage in anything other then petty or domestic offences. (1976: 68) Power. See the chapter of S. Boxs text entitled Powerlessness and crime the case of female crime. Involvement in different forms of control, males as the subjects of formal social control, females of informal (see for example, the analysis of Hagen. Smart puts an aspect of this simply: girls have greater restrictions placed on [their] freedom

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of movement, but control is more than this. We can see that socialisation, role structuring and opportunity are closely related and constitute a particular complex of social control. The expectation that emancipation will cause the rates of offending to converge. The work of Adler (Sisters in Crime, 1975) was representative of this notion. She asserted: women are indeed committing more crimes than ever before. Those crimes involve a greater degree of violence. (1975: 3) To give a fuller avour of her account:
women, like men, do not live by bread alone. Almost every aspect of their life has been similarly altered. The changing status of women as it affects family, marriage, employment, and social position has been well documented by all types of sociologists. But there is a curious hiatus: the movement for full equality has a darker side which has been slighted even by the scientic community In the same way that women are demanding equal opportunity in elds of legitimate endeavour, a similar number of determined women are forcing their way into the world of major crimesformerly committed by men only. Like her sisters in legitimate elds, the female criminal is ghting for her niche in the hierarchy [of crime]. (1975: 13-14)

Others have claimed that:

The new female criminal is more a social invention then an empirical reality and that the proposed relationship between the womens movement and crime is, indeed, tenuous and even vacuous. Women are still typically non-violent, petty property offenders. (Steffensmeier, 1980, quoted in Box, 1983: 192)

The number of women subject to custodial punishment is, however, increasing. Between 1970 and 1980 the average daily population of women in custody almost doubled from around 800 to 1,500, while at 10th August 2001 the population of women in prison stood at 3,288 with a further 549 female young offenders (aged between 1521). An interesting aspect of this is the suggestion that an improved perception (from the point of view of feminism) of women as responsible individuals causes them to be less perceived by the (mostly male) agents of formal social control as weak, neurotic or sick and thus more suitable for punishment.

The theory of one male theorist

The Canadian sociologist Hagan found an explanation for the association between crime and gender:
in the social organisation of the world of work, the stratication system, and the different means to control men and women. (Modern Criminology: crime, criminal behaviour, and its control, 1987: 268. Also developed with others in Class in the household: a power-control theory of gender and delinquency, American Journal of Sociology 92: 788816)

Structurally, Hagan argued, women were more restricted in their entry into the world of work, men were more commonly ascribed to the public arena (i.e., the world of work) and women to the private sphere (i.e., the home). One consequence of this restriction of women was to make them less available for the public ascription of criminal and delinquent statuses. Hagan was clear that both crime and work are sexually stratied. This is backed up by Auld et al.s (1986) analysis of drug dealing which argued the reasons for girls not becoming involved in heavy drug dealing were not only cultural but economic. A product of the males wish to dominate this irregular economy. Historically, the development of a complex division of labour required by
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industrialisation and large-scale trade and commerce developed a differentiation between informal and formal agencies of social control a decline of inuence of local groupings, such as kinship groups, and the prominence of state sponsored system of segregative control to cover the arena of work and public spaces. Private spaces, the domain of the family and largely the terrain of women remained subjected to informal systems of control. The new forms of work and the experience of social life in public spaces required and brought into being a new form of social control, namely, crime control, as operationalised in modern forms of criminal justice. In the main, men have been the daily objects of this control because they were the subjects moving most readily into the new and more public areas of work. For Hagan:
the result was to subject men increasingly to the formal control of the emerging criminal justice system, while leaving women to the informal social control of the familytwo well, established statistical regularities the exclusion of women from the race for stratication outcomes and less crime among women have as a common source, patterns of informal social controls involving women, which are established and perpetuated within the family. (1987: 268-9)

Hagans concept of informal social controls extended beyond the family to include activities of peer and work groups importantly it included the pressures that went to create femininity rather than masculinity. Additionally, Hagan argued that females are not only the objects, more often than males of informal social control but also the instruments, specically mothers over children while daughters more than sons were the objects of this control. Analysers of child, rearing practices are united in saying that women are the primary socialisers. In the construction of gender roles for the children certain requirements of each role are instilled in the developing child. As Udry saw it:
by age three, the boy will begin to perceive that some new requirements go with being male. Males are not supposed to be passive, compliant, and dependent but on the contrary, are expected to be aggressive, independent, and self-assertive. (The Social Context of Marriage, 1974: 53)

For Hagan the relationship to control lay in the fact that aggressiveness, independence, and assertiveness connote freedom (or the absence of control) more than restriction. In this relationship criminal and delinquent behaviour are recognised as pleasurable, if not liberating. Crime and delinquency can be fun. (1987: 271) Thus women dene risk-taking less positively than men; women dene involvement in crime and delinquency less positively than men do; women are therefore less likely to be involved in criminal and delinquent behaviour than men. The result Hagan suggested is that women are systematically over-socialised. Women are kept in a restricted world vis--viz the world of work and public space through a socialisation sequence that moves from mother to daughter in a cycle that is self-renewing. Some commentators appear to argue that there is a new breed of violent, aggressive women offenders, or that behavioural differences between the genders are diminishing, or that as the opportunities for womens participation in the world of work increase then they will become more frequently the subject of the agents of formal social control and therefore patters of crime will become more alike. But Hagan pointed to the increasing double burden he saw women facing. Participation in some new kinds of work did not relieve them of responsibilities for childcare. Alternatively, the relief of some upper-class women is at the expense of employing underclass home help. Thus, he argued, the home-based concentration continues and male and female rates of criminality are likely to remain quite different for some time to come.

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You may note that in her 1987 text (Women, Crime and Criminal Justice), Allison Morris differentiated biological, psychiatric and womens liberation theories (which she considered mistaken) from traditional sociological theories (which she considered had the potential to explain female crime and why female crime occurs less then male crime. She stated:
Special theories for womens crimes have not been particularly successfulOne implicationis that we need to reconsider the relevance of women to criminological theories. There is no reason to suppose that explanations for womens crime should be fundamentally different from explanations for mens crime, though gender must play a part of any such explanation (1987: 75)

Feminist perspectives Feminists of various persuasions have argued that traditional criminological theories have ignored the true experiences of women. For Leonard (1982) the traditional approaches of criminology leave women invisible, marginal or position women only within narrow types of deviant behaviour. In 1989 Heidensohn argued that criminology has not as yet faced up to the full implications of the message of crime and gender, specically:
that masculinity is at least as much a problem to be analysed and explained as femininity. In fact logically it is an even greater problem, since it is masculinity which is associated with crime and delinquency, whereas femininity is linked to conformity. (1989: 97)

Feminist analysis highlights the underlying patriarchal structure to social relations. To quote Chesney-Lind:
It is increasingly clear that gender stratication in patriarchal society is as powerful a system as class. A feminist approach to delinquency means construction of explanations of female behaviour that are sensitive to its patriarchal context. Feminist analysis of delinquency would also examine ways in which agencies of social controlact in ways to reinforce womens place in male society. (1989: 97)

Feminist theory has been used to show how patriarchy is an essential backdrop in understanding much of rape and other sexual and physical violence by men against women as well as some offences committed by females. Additionally, incorporating feminism reorientates our appreciation of the usual. Masculinity provides an example. Instead of being the assumed normal, we are asked to analyse the full meaning and structuring of masculinity, its contradictions and weakness and how these may be connected with violence, sexism, and inter-personal domination and resistance. Read and reect upon the chapter in Walklate, Gendering the criminal. Feminism is an underdeveloped source of theoretical inspiration it is at the cutting edge of modern social theory and open to new insights and creative approaches.

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Sample questions
1. Either a. Attitudes about sex and gender, rather than genuine difference in the criminal behaviour of the sexes, inuence the response of the criminal justice system to men and women. What evidence is there to support this statement? or b. What are the most important claims of feminist perspective in criminology? 2. Why do women commit substantially fewer offences than men? 3. The impact of feminist criminology has been stronger in criticising the generality of previous theorising than in suggesting new theories on offending. Do you agree? 4. Whilst feminist criminology has highlighted the neglected status of women in traditional criminology it has failed to offer new insights into the causes of offending. Discuss. 5. Traditional theories explained the difference in offending between males and females quite adequately; the addition of feminist perspectives has just unnecessarily confused our understanding. Discuss. 6. While feminist criminology has not explained why women commit so much less crime than males it has refocused attention upon the most important variable associated with offending, namely masculinity. Discuss. 7. Criminology has largely been the study of men by men to the neglect of analysing gender issues. But we now realise that a key to the explanation of crime is understanding why so few women commit crime. Discuss.

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Notes

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Chapter 10

Punishment and the Institutional framework

Essential reading
Note: The reading on the philosophy of punishment is vast. It has been a much discussed issue since writing began (some references are given later in the case study section of this chapter). The outstanding contemporary book on social theory and punishment is:
David Garland, Punishment and Modern Society. (Oxford University Press, 1990).

On the link between criminology and social policy see core texts:
Heidensohn, Frances, Crime and Society, Chapter 7. Downes and Rock, Understanding deviance, Chapter 12 Deviance Theories and Social Policy. Currie, Elliot, Confronting Crime: an American challenge, Chapter on prisons is powerful reading. Bob, Roshier, Controlling Crime: the classical perspective in criminology, Chapters 8 and 9. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison.

The most sophisticated exposition of current crime control is:

Garland, David, The Culture of Control: crime and social order in contemporary society, (Oxford University Press, 2001) [ISBN 0-19-829937-0].

Learning objectives
By the end of this chapter and the associated reading you should be able to: discuss the philosophical justications for punishment differentiate the philosophical accounts of punishment from sociological accounts discuss the relationship between punishment and the institutional framework that operates in its name discuss the prison and account for the rise in imprisonment in recent decades.

Commentary
It will be obvious from the rest of the course that there is a substantial interrelationship between conceptions of crime and social responses. Chapter 12 of Downes and Rock, Understanding Deviance, Deviance Theories and Social Policy gives a good general coverage. This is similar to Chapter 18 Theory, Research and Policy, of Vold and Bernard, Theoretical Criminology. The legal orientation is focused around the use of punishment. Philosophy and aims of punishment The philosophy of punishment attempts to propose rational justications and logical structures that will provide normative direction to the power to punish.

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Punishment is clearly dened by classical writers such as Thomas Hobbes and Bentham as an evil. They are clear that it is pain, moreover it is pain deliberately inicted upon a person adjudged by courts of the nation to be an offender and provided under the institution of the law. For utilitarians punishment is one of the instruments of government to be applied for the greater good. Critics of liberal capitalist modernity, such as Karl Marx, have sometimes denied absolutely that there is any moral right to punish in contemporary societies. For them only in an absolute just society would a moral right exist. The philosophical approach that underlined the period of classical criminology mixed ideas of retribution and deterrence. Punishment was either required as a form of Just Desert, a suitable form of retribution for a crime regardless of future outcomes (and thus required simply to do justice), or was an instrument of deterrence (where the future outcome was to be the guiding factor). Positivism, with its notions of differentiation and determinism (or pathology and the illness model) introduced notions of reform and rehabilitation that were viewed as the most progressive justication for most of the twentieth century. In fact we should not actually talk of rehabilitation or reform as a justication of punishment since these perspectives sought to make punishment redundant in favour of corrective measures of treatment of the offender, sometimes on the model of crime as a sickness. It is possible to list seven ofcial purposes of sanctions imposed on offenders: restraint or incapacitation: to stop the particular behaviour at issue individual or specic deterrence: using punishment to reduce the likelihood that the particular offender will repeat the offence in the future general deterrence: punishing one person to reduce the likelihood that others will commit a similar offence reform or rehabilitation: imposing a sanction (which may be exactly the same thing as a punishment) called a corrective measure or treatment to correct what was wrong with the individual who committed the crime moral afrmation or symbolic action: punishment is used to afrm certain social values and to demarcate the acceptable from the unacceptable, so drawing the moral boundaries of the society retribution: the punishment is expected to match the harm done, to return justice to a balance restitution or compensation: where the sanction seeks to regain a balance through restoring the value of goods taken or compensating the owner for the loss.

It is a debatable point whether the actual things done in the name of these justications actually achieve them. For example, were prisons ever treatment institutions? Understanding punishment: a case study in contrasting philosophical and sociological accounts. The questions or issues you should bear in mind here are: What is the role of the philosophy of punishment? Is it to rationalise and justify social activities so that they have the appearance of legitimacy? Or does the philosophy of punishment guide social action and put acceptable limits on our activities? How do we understand punishment socially?

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Perhaps we can distinguish between punishment as a philosophical concern and punishment as a concern of social theory, i.e. of sociology. The general idea I suggest would be that a philosophy of punishment is one of the mechanisms whereby a normative framework is established for how society is governed, while sociology is a means by which society is understood. In this way the philosophy of punishment is a part of the process of providing a philosophical foundation for the domestication of power. Legitimacy is essential. As Bauman puts it:
In all order-building and order-maintenance endeavours legitimacy is, by necessity, the prime stake of the game and the most hotly contested concept. The ght is conducted around the borderline dividing proper (that is, unpunishable) from improper (that is, punishable) coercion and enforcement. The war against violence is waged in the name of the monopoly of coercion.1

Zygmunt Bauman, The Individualised Society, Polity, 2001, p.209.

The backdrop to the discussions on punishment: creating modernity and moving to postmodernism? Shall we question whether societies progress in moral as well in technical terms? At least until recently this was the accepted explanation of penal change. Our societies, we were told, had moved from times where the criminal law was an instrument of repression and arbitrary power to a time where the operation of the criminal law and the power to punish was rational, humane and just. But a widespread doubt has come over the issue of whether human societies always progress in moral as well in technical terms. This century has seen vast technical progress but not only has the connection between technical and moral progress become untenable, further we have seen clear examples of moral regression (the Nazi regimes stand as an obvious example). Furthermore, the scale of some of the problems the human race faces currently are so vast that any assertion that they have progressed morally seems somewhat doubtful. The imperfection of human society and of the international order are painfully obvious at a time where we appear to have gone full circle in terms of a risk society. Having moved from the naturally precarious existence of primitive life through the growth of nations, the civilising process and the development of modernity to a stage of new threats to the survival of the human race that owe their foundation to our own cultural creations (for example, ecological disaster, nuclear proliferation and the state of the third world on a supra-nation level, the state of the inner cities and the crime problem on an intra-nation level). In the face of this, one tendency is to foreclose on the possibility of progress. Give up the notion of the perfect society, or the utopian order of things. But it seems dangerous to give up on the notion of progress for the image of the possibility of progress is both an important rallying banner and also instinctively plausible. In a world of uncertainty, in a world where nobody knows all the answers, and where all claims to truth are contingent or methodological, it is important to preserve both the critical perspective and the conditions of change. Or another way, it is important to keep our societies open (as a group of liberal writers are fond of saying). The possibility of progress, therefore, implies the necessity of social and political change. And change is strongly driven by the phenomena of hope, by, that is, the spark which a new vision of possibility, the encountering of a new opportunity, the realisation that old boundaries were not as impenetrable as had been thought. The vision of the different, of new and improved life chances which turns latent desire into action and thus into change. The banishing of hope amounts to a weakening of the critical attitude and lowers the possibility of change, for whoever has given up hope has in actuality accepted the conditions around him.

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Identifying opposing views on the philosophy of punishment It is important to be able to dene in general terms what punishment means to us. Consider a representative quotation:
Punishment is viewed as a social act. That is, it takes place in the context of, and with the active and passive participation of, communities of people. Punishment has a symbolic character which is oriented towards denouncing what are deemed to be harmful or socially repugnant activities. It thus has the function of establishing what is right and what is wrong behaviour by providing a public disapproval of an offender and/or their offensive behaviour. Punishment has been said to resonate at a psychological and emotional level in that the administration and rituals associated with punishment provide a focal point for the expression of deeply felt emotions. A feature of punishment therefore is symbolically to draw the lines in terms of acceptable behaviour or conduct, and following of appropriate rules. Furthermore, it functions to reafrm certain forms of authority and belief. That is, the authority of any particular governing regime is in part based upon how punishment is organised and carried out in practice. (White, R., and Perrone, S., Crime and Social Control: An Introduction, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1997, p.138.)

Ten, C.L. Crime, Guilt and Punishment: A Philosophical Introduction, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987, p.2.

Punishment involves the iniction of some unpleasantness on the offender, or deprives the offender of something valued. But punishment is not just the iniction of something unpleasant on the offender: the imposition is made to express disapproval or condemnation of the offenders conduct which is in breach of what is regarded as a desirable and obligatory standard of conduct.2 Philosophical discussions differentiate levels of questions: what is the general justication of punishment? who may justiably be punished? how, or how much, may someone be punished?
3

Golding, M.P., Criminal Sentencing: Some Philosophical Considerations, in Cedarblom, J.B., and Blizek, W.L., (eds), Justice and Punishment, Ballinger Publishing Company, 1977, p.89.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Particular approaches may be more relevant to one or other question. Retributivism, for example, may be more relevant to the second question than to the rst. To the question: on whom may punishment justiably be imposed? a relevant and retributivist answer would be only on deserving offenders. But retributivism may have little, and perhaps next to nothing, of relevance to say about the general justication of punishment.4 This particular question is concerned with why a society should have the institution of punishment in the rst place, why it should have penal laws at all (i.e. laws that prescribe or forbid various kinds of conduct and that threaten punishment for violations). On this issue, a deterrence answer appears more apt: a society has penal laws because it wants to deter people from doing, or not doing, certain things. But deterrence may have a lesser relevance to the question who may justiably be punished? than it has to the general justication of punishment. Many writers recognise this (Martin Golding, for example, states that the classical theories of punishment should be construed as answers to different questions rather than as 5 rival answers to the same question.) The philosophical debate on punishment has traditionally broken up into two main camps. On the one side are those who adopt a deontological approach (that something simply is right to do in itself, for example the retributionists, where punishment is right to inict because it is required to do justice). On the other are those who adopt a consequentialist approach (for example, utilitarianism, or deterrence theories where punishment is a lesser evil required because the consequences of inicting it are better then the consequences of not inicting it).

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Consequentialist or Utilitarian philosophy

In classical Greece, Plato had Protagoras state:
In punishing wrongdoers, no one concentrates on the fact that a man has done wrong in the past, or punishes him on that account, unless taking blind vengeance like a beast. No, punishment is not inicted by a rational man for the sake of the crime that has been committed (after all one cannot undo what is past), but for the sake of the future, to prevent either the same man or, by some spectacle of his punishment, someone else from doing wrong again. (Plato, Protagorus)

In the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes set out a sentiment picked up in classical criminology:
In revenges or punishments, men ought not look at the greatness of the evil past, but the greatness of the good to follow, whereby we are forbidden to inict punishment with any other design than for the correction of the offender and the admonition of others.6

Farrer, J.A., Crime and Punishments, Chatto & Windus Publishers.

In this approach, since punishment is itself an unpleasant experience for the offender who is punished, the iniction of punishment can only be justied if it prevents greater suffering. The deterrence model was developed by the classical school of criminology during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Taking a rationalist view of man as a pleasure seeking, pain-avoiding creature, the objective is to construct and depict the institutions that deal with crime in such a way that they give a strong message to potential offenders of the consequences of offending. The appropriate penalty will deter potential offenders from committing crimes.7 As Bentham states:
When we consider that an unpunished crime leaves the path of crime open, not only to the same delinquent but also to all thoseentering upon it, we perceive that punishment inicted on the individual becomes a source of security to all. That punishment which considered in itself appeared base and repugnant to allis elevated to the rst rank of benets not as vengeance but rather, as an indispensable sacrice to the common safety.8 Bentham suggests that punishment may prevent the occurrence of offences in three ways: by making it impossible or difcult for the offender to break the law again, at least in certain ways; by deterring both offenders and others; by providing an opportunity for the reforming of offenders. Emphasis placed on potential offenders is secondary deterrence and deterrence of the offender themselves is primary deterrence.9

Grupp, S.E., Theories of Punishment, Indiana University Press, 1971, p.7.

8 Bentham, J. Principles of Penal Law, in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 1, p.396.

Ibid.

The utilitarian theory therefore, is based on the premise that it justies punishment solely in terms of its benecial effects or consequences. Many utilitarians subscribe to the idea that the main benecial effects of punishment is to be viewed in terms of the reduction of crime, and believe that punishing offenders will have the following benets: punishment acts as a deterrent to crime deterrent effects can be both individual and general. Punishment deters the offender who is punished from committing similar offences in the future, and it also deters potential offenders the offender who is punished is supposed to be deterred by his experience of punishment and the threat of being punished again if he reoffends and is convicted (the individual deterrent effect). general deterrent effect works through the threat of their being subjected to the same kind of punishment that was meted out to the convicted offender.

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10

Ibid.

In addition, punishment may have reformative or rehabilitative effects. The offender who is punished will be reformed in the sense that the effect of punishment is to change his values so that he will not commit similar offences in the future because he believes such offences to be wrong. But if he abstains from criminal acts simply because he is afraid of being caught and punished again, then he is deterred rather than reformed and rehabilitated by punishment. So the effects of individual deterrence and rehabilitation are the same, however, the distinguishing feature lies in terms of the difference in motivation.10 The incapacitate effect provides a third consequence. Simply put, the offender cannot reoffend if dead or under penal restraint, for example in prison, irrespective of whether the person is at all deterred or reformed by punishment. Incapacitation appears justied particularly for those who are not deterred or beyond treatment. However, on a general level, consequentialist arguments appear best able to support the whole structure of law enforcement. Regardless of the prevailing crime rates, it is assumed that many persons are in fact deterred; were it not for the operation of the deterrent machinery, the crime rates would still be higher. In this case, punishment of many offenders is morally justied on grounds of deterrence alone. While there are some that argue with this position, it can be argued that 11 deterrence is the primary purpose of the States sanctions. Thus for the deterrence theory the minimal aim of punishment is the protection of society. It would achieve this purpose in two ways: by preventing the offender from repeating his offence and by demonstrating to other potential offenders what will happen to them if they follow his example.

11

Grupp, S.E., op. cit., p.7.

Why punish at all? Do we need the threat of punishment?

For the twentieth century liberal philosopher H.L.A. Hart, the case for punishment as a general social practice or institution, rested on the prevention of crime. People are punished because we thereby deter potential offenders from becoming actual offenders, and therefore it is not to be found either in the inherent appropriateness of punishing wrongdoing or in the continently corrective or rehabilitative powers of nes or imprisonments on some criminals. Note Wasserstroms argument:
a view such as Harts is less a justication for punishment than a justication of the threat of punishment. For it is clear that if we could somehow convince the rest of society that we were in fact punishing offenders, we would accomplish all that the deterrent theory would have us achieve though our somewhat more visible punishments. This is so because it is the belief that punishment will follow the commission of an offence that deters potential offenders. The actual punishment of persons is necessary only to keep the threat of punishment credible.12

12

Wasserstrom, R. Some Problems with Theories of Punishment, in Cedarblom, J.B. and Blizek, W.L. (eds), Justice and Punishment, Ballinger Publishing Company, 1977, p.186.

13

Mabbott, J.D. Punishment, in Grupp, S.E., (ed), Theories of Punishment, Indiana University Press, 1971, p.41.

Is it the threat of punishment and not the punishment itself that deters? If so while deterrence seems to depend on actual punishment, to implement the threat, it really depends on publication and may be achieved if men believe that punishment has occurred even if in fact it has not. Bentham apparently said this clearly: for a 13 utilitarian apparent justice is everything, real justice is irrelevant. Punishment is therefore to be conceived of as a necessary evil rather than a positive good, a means to an end rather than an end in itself. It follows that we ought to minimise if not eradicate punishment. In Justice and Punishment Wasserstrom concluded that two extreme positions emerge in considering the effects of the threat of punishment:

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On one side of the spectrum, are those like Jeremy Bentham, who considered man to be a rational being choosing between two possible modes of action on the basis of a calculation of risks of pain and pleasure before deciding upon his actions. Benthamites believe that we always act in accordance with our own enlightened self-interest. The consequence of this model is stated as follows: if we make the risk of punishment sufcient to outweigh the prospect the gain, the potential law breaker will, as a rational being, choose to stay within the limits of the law. The other side of the spectrum are those who state that this model is unrealistic and subscribe to the view that When people remain law abiding, it is not because of fear of the criminal law, but because of moral inhibitions or internalised norms. If an internal restraint is lacking, the threat of punishment does not make much difference since criminals do not make rational choices, calculating gain against the risk of punishment; they act out of emotional instability, lack of self-control, or because they have acquired the values of a criminal subculture.14

14 Andenaes, J., Punishment and Deterrence, University of Michigan Press, 1974, p.110.

15

Lacey, N. State Punishment: Political Principles and Community Values, Routledge, London, 1988, p.28.
16

Golding, M.O., op. cit., p.96.

17

Lacey, N. op. cit., p.182.

Is it the fear of punishment a belief in the reality of the threat rather than beliefs about its type or amount that deters. If so, the nature of the potential offenders beliefs about the likelihood of apprehension will be crucial to the efciency of the system.15 Moreover, the general deterrent value of punishment might be dependent on the 16 publicity it receives. The threat of punishment is seen to be justied simply by its necessity as a means of making the standards of the criminal law real: as a way of stating that the meeting of those standards is a matter of duty or obligation.17 To summarise the utilitarian position: the only acceptable reason for punishing a person is that punishing him/her will help prevent or reduce crime, thereby reducing the amount of suffering in the future the only acceptable reason for punishing a person in a given manner or degree is that this is the manner or degree most likely to reduce or prevent crime people should be punished only if the act of punishing produces the best 18 consequences by way of preventing or reducing crime as a consequence.

Morrison, W. Jurisprudence: From the Greeks to Post-modernism, Cavendish Publishing Limited, London, 1997, p.147.
18

What of punishing the innocent? Who may rightly be punished? The general deterrence argument for punishing the guilty also seems to justify inicting unpleasant treatment on those who have not in fact committed offences.

19

Ten, C.L., op. cit., p.13.

19 Note how Ten states the proposition:

Let us now assume that the benecial consequences of punishment outweigh the suffering that it inicts on offenders. Critics of the utilitarian theory argue that if punishment is to be justied solely in terms of its good consequences, then punishment cannot be conned to offenders. There might be situations in which punishing an innocent person would produce better consequences than alternative courses of action. The utilitarian is therefore committed to punishing the innocent person.

How can utilitarians respond? punishing the innocent is a logical contradiction because punishment implies guilt. This response which is sometimes proffered replaces argument by a mere appeal to denition: Punishment, it is said is something we do to an offender for an offence. Thus, punishment of the innocent is simply a contradiction in terms it is not punishment at all.20

20

Lacey, N. op. cit., p.38.

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21 22

Ten, C.L. op. cit., 17.

Bentham, J. Introduction to the Principles of morals and legislation (eds) Burns, J.H. and Hart, H.L.A., Menuen Publishers, London, 1982, p.158 164, in Lacey, N. State Punishment: Political Principles and Community Values, Routledge, London, 1988, p.39.

23 Duff, R.A., Trials and Punishments, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p.160.

the premises of the objection are challenged by utilitarians. It is suggested that punishing the innocent man will not in fact produce the best consequences if we take into account all the consequences of such punishment the innocent including the long term and less obvious consequences of such punishment including the long term and less obvious consequences. Here then the utilitarian response to the charge that they are committed to punishing the innocent they say that on balance, the punishment of the innocent will always produce worse consequences than otherwise. For example, it is claimed that the fact that an innocent man has been punished would soon leak out and what would then follow would be a loss of condence in the legal system.21 Similar sentiments have been expressed by Bentham.22 He stated that punishing the innocent would not always maximise utility because of the extra suffering caused to the victim by reason of his innocence and of the risk of damage to the general respect for the legal system should the travesty of justice ever be discovered. Therefore, the utilitarian response to the point that they allegedly approve of the deliberate punishment of the innocent is to respond in the negative and assert that such an action would have more harmful consequences than benecial results. Duff states that this misses the point the crucial charge is not that a consequentialist will in fact punish the innocent, but that he is ready to contemplate it as an open moral possibility.23 it is claimed that the only situations in which punishment, the innocent, is optimistic are hypothetical and fantastic situations rather than situations which arise, or are likely to occur, in the real world.24

24

Ten, C.L. op. cit., p.17.

Schedler, G. Can Retributivists Support Legal Punishment? 1980, 63, The Monist 185, in Duff, R.A., Trials and Punishments, op. cit., p.158 59.
26

25

On another level, one can argue that one cannot object to a consequentialist account of punishment merely on the grounds that it would sanction the punishment of the innocent. No practicable system of punishment can hope to punish only the guilty; in ensuring that we punish a reasonable proportion of the guilty, we will inevitably punish some who are in fact innocent.25 But for Duff 26 a system of punishment is most obviously defective if it involves the deliberate punishment of the innocent Punishment of the innocent is objectionable not merely because it does not give the victims a fair chance to avoid it, but because it is a perversion of law and punishment the aim of deterring potential offenders does not by itself require a system that inicts suffering only on offenders for their offences: We might deter potential offenders by punishing an innocent scapegoat under the pretence that he is guilty. But if so then:
Having threatened to impose punishment on offenders, we are then committed to punishing actual offenders not only by the need to make the threat believable, but also because we have in effect promised to do so; thus, in stating this, we are entitled to punish only those who have voluntarily broken the lawto punish an innocent is to deny him the respect which is his due, because instead of responding as we have legitimately threatened to respond to his own voluntary actions, we simply use him as a means to our further social ends.27

Duff, R.A., op. cit., p.154.

27

Id., p.172.

Bittner and Platt, The meaning of Punishment, 2 Issues in Criminology 79, (1966), in Andenaes, J. Punishment and Deterrence, University of Michigan Press, 1974, p.129.

28

Punishing as a means to an end?

Considerations of general deterrence have proved popular rhetoric, but punishment on this ground has been attacked as unjust. Bittner and Platt,28 contend that Punishment on the basis of deterrence is inherently unjust. For if an example is made of a person

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29

Kant, I., The Metaphysical Elements of Justice (1797), Ladd, J. (trans.), The Library of the Liberal Arts, Bobbs-Merrill 1965, in Andenaes, J. Punishment and Deterrence, University of Michigan Press, 1974, p.129.

30

Bittner and Platt, in Andenaes, J. op. cit., p.131.

31 Hart, H.L.A., Punishment and Responsibility, Oxford, 1968, p.23, in Andenaes, J. op. cit.

to induce others to avoid criminal actions then he suffers not for what he has done but on account of other peoples tendency to do likewise. This is a frequently raised criticism for Kants moral principle that man should always be treated as an end in himself, not only as a means for some other end is often quoted in support.29 Bitter and Platt suggest that Punishment is essential to the laws effectiveness and that without its application the law would be meaningless. Thus if it is ethically justiable to issue penal laws in order to regulate human conduct, it cannot be ethically unjust to apply the law in the individual case. It cannot be said that the offender suffers not for what he has done but on account of other peoples tendency to do likewise. He suffers for what he has done in the measure prescribed by the legislature.30 As H.L.A. Hart has put it, the primary operation of the criminal punishment consists of announcing certain standards of behaviour and attaching penalties for deviation, and then leaving individuals to choose. This, he asserts is the method of social control which maximises individual freedom within the framework of the law.31 Thus, the decisive point does not seem to be whether the law is based on considerations of deterrence, but rather whether it can be accepted as a reasonable means to a legitimate end.

32 Haan, W. Abolitionism and Crime Control: A Contradiction in Terms, in, Stenson, K. and Cowell, D. (eds), The Politics of Crime Control, Sage Publications, 1993, p.205.

From the abolitionist point of view, the notion of controlling crime by penal intervention is ethically problematic as people are used for the purpose of deterrence, by demonstrating power and domination. Punishment is seen as a self-reproducing 32 form of crime. Haan states that the penal practice of blaming people for their supposed intentions: is dangerous because the social conditions for recidivism are thus reproduced is irrational in that it assumes that crime is a result of the individual themselves is irrational in making us believe that punishment is the appropriate means of crime control rather we should not seek to isolate the criminal act, but view it in its overall environmental context.

Christie, N. Limits to Pain, Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1982, in Haan, W. op. cit., p.209.

33

Abolitionists deny the utility of punishment and claim that there is no valid justication for it. They criticise deterrence theory for its sloppy denitions of concepts, its immunity to challenge, and for the fact that it gives the routine process of punishment a false legitimacy in an epoch where the iniction of pain might 33 otherwise have appeared problematic.

Retributive theories
In the late nineteenth century the Victorian judge Stephen stated:
34

Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England 81 82 (1883), in Rubin, S. op. cit., p.654.

I think it is highly desirable that criminals should be hated, that the punishment inicted on them should be so contrived as to give expression to that hatred, and to justify it so far as the public provision of means for expressing and gratifying a 34 healthy natural sentiment can justify and encourage it.

Retributive theories require the features of punishment to be shaped by reference to the features of the offence for which it is meted.
Thus, a retributive theory is necessarily backward looking in its orientation to punishment. Its focus is on the offence and nothing else, especially not any social cost/benet or individual eugenics that can be calculated to result from punishments. The typical concerns of forward looking, consequentialist theories of punishment, have no place in a retributive theory. Hence, retribution in punishment ignores all features of the offenders character, the victims situation, all the effects of the threat or iniction of punishment insofar as these are distinct from the nature and gravity of 35 the offence and whatever else is central to characterising the offence itself. 115

35 Bedau, H.A., Concessions to Retribution in Punishment, in Cedarblom, J.B., and Blizek, W.L. (eds), Justice and Punishment, Ballinger Publishing Company, 1877, p.51.

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For retributivists the offenders wrongdoing is deserving of punishment the amount of punishment should be as proportionate as possible to the extent of the wrongdoing it is the offenders desert, and not the benecial consequences of punishment, that justies punishment.

36 Braithwaite, J. and Pettit, P. Not Just Deserts: A Republican Theory of Criminal Justice, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992, p.33.

Retributivists differ in their details of their explanation of how punishment is supposed to give the moral wrongdoer what he/she deserves. Some regard the punishment of wrongdoers as derivative from a fundamental axiom of justice that wrongdoers deserve to suffer. Braithwaite and Pettit state: Retributivism, as part of a deontological theory will give an axiomatic, underived status to some constraint or set of constraints (the relevant constraints being in relation to giving offenders deserved punishments). It will assess systems of criminal justice by reference to whether or not they satisfy those ultimate demands. That the constraints are axiomatic means that the requirement to satisfy them is prime. It does not turn on the assumption that 36 satisfaction promotes some independent target. Some retributivists try to connect punishment with broader issues of distributive justice, or justice in the distribution of the benets and burdens of social life. The offender is viewed as someone who had taken an unfair advantage of others in society, and thus the meting out of punishment is then needed to restore fairness and equality among its citizens.37

37

Ten, C.L. op. cit., p.5.

Punishment and desert

Kant, I. The Metaphysical Elements of Justice, (trans.) John Ladd, Bobbs-Merrill, Library of Liberal Arts, 1965, p.100.
38

Immanuel Kant 38 appears the denitive retributinist: the criminal must be paid back in mind because he must not be allowed to prot from his wrongdoing. To prot would be unjust to his victim, to civil society and indeed to the criminal himself. If the offender commits an offence then he should suffer the penalty, and that penalty should be proportionate to the amount of his wrongdoing. Garland summarises: Utilitarian argument and reformative purposes have given way to an emphasis upon desert, denunciation and punishmentwhat was originally intended as a liberal critique of modernist reasoning in favour of classic Enlightenment restraints has been taken up by a more punitive anti-modernism, which emphasises the importance of punishment as a symbol of sovereign power and social authority.39 The retributivist appears to defend the desirability of a punitive response to the offender: the punitive reaction is the pain the criminal deserves, and that it is highly desirable to provide for an orderly, collective expression of societys natural feeling of revulsion towards, and disapproval, of criminal acts. It is argued that this expression vindicates the criminal law and in so doing helps to unify society against crime and criminals.40 Hart put forward a model of the retributive theory of punishment: a person may be punished if, and only if, he has voluntarily done something morally wrong (i.e. committed a crime) the punishment must in some way match, or be the equivalent of, the wickedness of his offence; and the justication for punishing men under such conditions is that the return of suffering for moral evil voluntarily done, is itself just or morally good.
41

Gardland, D. Penal Modernism and Postmodernism, in Blomberg, T.G., and Cohen, S. (eds), Punishment and Social Control, Aldine De Gruyter, New York, 1995, p.192.

39

40 41

Grupp, S.E. op. cit., p.7.

Hart, H.L.A., Punishment and Responsibility: Essays in the Philosophy of Law, Oxford University Press, 1968, p.231.

42

Berns, W., Retribution as the Ground for Punishment, in Baumann, F. and Jensen, K.M. Crime and Punishment: Issues in Criminal Justice, University Press of Virginia, 1989, p.1.

If punishment is the deliberate iniction of pain and legal punishment the iniction of pain on a duly convicted criminal, the right to punish can rest only on the retributive 42 principle so understood. Under retributionism:

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43

Middendorff, W. The Effectivenes of Punishment, Fred B. Rothman & Co., 1968, p.51.

the punishment should be made as analogous as possible to the nature of the crime or to create a proportionate relationship between the offence and the punishment.43 This implies that the punishment must not be excessive. It must not exceed what is appropriate to the crime. We must always be able to say of the person punished that he deserved to be punished as he was punished: this is the reason why one views the punishment of the innocent as unjust punishment, as is punishment that is disproportionate with the crime. Furthermore, the person punished must deserve the pain inicted on him to be deserved, punishment must be of an offender who is guilty of an offence in 44 the morally relevant sense of offence. To assert that someone deserves to be punished is to look to his past wrongdoing as reason for having him penalised. this orientation to the past distinguishes desert from deterrence theory, which seeks to justify the criminal sanction by its prospective usefulness in preventing 45 crime.

McCloskey, H.J., A Non-Utilitarian Approach to Punishment, in Ezorsky, G. (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives on Punishment, State University of New York Press, 1972, p.121.
44

45 Von Hirsch, A. Doing Justice, The Choice of Punishments, Hill & Wang, 1976, p.46.

In brief, for punishment to be just it must be merited by the committing of an offence. It follows from this that punishment, to be justly administered, must involve: care in determining whether the offending person is really a responsible agent i.e. a autonomous individuals who are assumed to have the capacity to determine their own ends as free and rational creatures.46 Thus: if he has done nothing wrong for which he deserves to suffer, he ought not be made to suffer; e.g. he ought not be punished solely to deter others from doing something. Kant espoused the following view: Judicial punishment can never be used merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society, but instead it must, in all cases be imposed on him only on the 47 ground that he has committed a crime. Further: Even if a civil society were to dissolve itself by common agreement of all its members (for example, if the people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse themselves around the world), the last murderer remaining in prison must rst be executed, so that everyone will duly receive what his actions are worth and so that the blood-guilt thereof will not be xed on the people because they failed to insist on carrying out the punishment; for if they fail to do so, they may be 48 regarded as accomplices in this public violation of legal justice. Kants words, that we punish a man only because he has committed a crime require another interpretation if it is to be meaningful. In part, we do support the mans punishment because it is his desert for his deeds. [And] in part, the point is that he acted wrongly or immorally, as distinct from only illegally. He has done 50 something of a sufcient wrongfulness to be prohibited by the law. In the second passage Kant states we have an absolute and categorical obligation to impose a certain penalty. He must be punished if he has performed an act for which he deserves a penalty. Since the individual was seen as a rational, responsible and autonomous agent; retributivists make strong assumptions of voluntariness and responsibility. The agents free and informed choice to commit an offence means that they deserve to be punished, the deepest rationality of the offender as agent would allow him to see that he should be punished in the given circumstances. Punishment under these circumstances does thus not violate the 51 autonomy of the offender as a person, it rather respects him as such. As Duff

46

Morrison, W., op. cit., p.148.

47

Kant, I. The Metaphysical Elements of Justice (1797), Ladd, J. (trans.), The Library of the Liberal Arts Bobbs-Merrill 1965, in Morrison, W. op. cit., p.148.

48

Id. p.149.

49

Honderich, T., op. cit., p.12 13.

Honderich49 suggests two propositions arising from these passages of Kant:

50

Ibid.

51

Lacey, op. cit., p.154.

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52

Duff, op. cit., p.70.

states we accord him the respect which is his due as a responsible moral agentHe may therefore claim a right to bepunished, for his wrongdoing; a right to be treated, respected and cared for as a moral agent.52 The notion of desert is central and punishment is justied in terms of the desert of the offender. Retributivists base their assessments of desert both on the harm done by the act, and on the mental state of the offender as a further element which determines his culpability. To be deserving of punishment the offender must be moral culpable in that his act was done in the absence of one of the accepted excuses. One can then formulate retributive theories of punishment as those theories that maintain that punishment is justied because the offender has voluntarily committed a morally wrong act.53 Bedau,54 in his critique of retributionism examines certain features of an ideally just society to ascertain what would be the rationale for punishment in such a society namely, who would be punished and for what conduct; and what their punishment ought to be. He argues that the rationale for imposing a system of punishment in a just society would be to secure compliance with rules that are just and this he states is not a retributivist rationale, for imposing a system of punishment in a just society would be to secure compliance, its reasons for punishing a violator is not that he deserves it because of his guilt, but rather that society meant what it said when it threatened the punishment in the rst place and that, he claims is why this view is not reconcilable with the retributivist viewpoint. Honderich puts forth an explanation of the assertion that a man deserves a particular penalty, when we say this we imply: that he behaved culpably and ought therefore to be punished that the penalty imposed will give satisfactions equivalent to the grievance that was caused by his actions that similar penalties have been and will be, imposed for similar offences that he was responsible for his action and performed it with a knowledge of the possible consequences that would arise in the penalty system that, unlike non-offenders, he gained satisfactions attendant on the commission of the offence.
55

53

Ten, C.L. op. cit., p.46.

54

Bedau, H.A. Concessions to Retribution in Punishment, in Cedarblom, J.B. and Blizek, W.L. (eds), Justice and Punishment, Ballinger Publishing Company, 1977, p.51 73.

55

Honderich, T., op. cit., p.23.

The fth point concerns the idea of unfair advantage. The idea of unfair advantage One particular version of the retributive theory justies punishment in terms of the claim that the offender has taken an unfair advantage over law-abiding citizens.
56

Braithwaite, J. and Pettit, P., op. cit., p.158.

56 Finniss modied natural law theory stated that we have at the present time, a distribution of certain freedoms, a freedom to do certain things under the law and that these have been distributed in accordance with the rule of law. He then poses the question: What happens when someone breaks the law by committing a murder or robbery? He states that what this person has done is to gain for himself a greater quantity of social goods than to which he would ordinarily be entitled to, that he has assumed certain freedoms that the rest of us simply do not have. In this case, we need to punish the offender in order to restore the balance. 57 Herbert Morris displayed similar sentiments. In Persons and Punishment, Morris envisaged a general justifying aim of punishment, he saw this as being to restore the balance which the offence disturbed. He declared that there were benets and burdens in society: where the benets consisted of the non-interference by others, but he stated that this benet was only possible if there was a burden of self-restraint. When the

57

Ten, C.L. op. cit., p.52.

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criminal violated the rules of the criminal law, they were seen to have renounced the burden that other law-abiding citizens had accepted. The criminal was then seen as assuming an unfair advantage over the law-abiding citizens who had accepted this restraint on them. Punishment was therefore justied as it prevented the weakening of the disposition to obey the law among the law-abiding citizens. Retributive punishment is thus perceived as restoring the balance by cancelling out this advantage with a commensurate disadvantage. It thus ensures that lawmakers do not gain from their wrongdoing and punishment is justied because if we failed to punish lawbreakers it would lead to an unfairness for the law-abiding.58 Retributionism appears to rationally reconstruct something close to our normal sense of the concept of the punishment tting the crime. The amount that the offender is punished in order to bring about the just distribution of freedoms within society would be proportional to the amount of freedom that he had taken for himself unjustly. However, there are theoretical difculties inherent in such a theory. Firstly, Ten states that the scope of Morriss theory should only extend to the punishment of those who violate the rules which are necessary for the survival of society, for it is only those rules which can confer equal benets on all. The scope of this theory does not therefore cover all cases in which punishment is thought to be justied. Similarly, in his text he states that it is dubious to imagine that this theory can justify our present practices of punishment or anything of the sort. He suggests that this theory only applies if our society is a just one in which all citizens are genuinely equal, otherwise there is no equilibrium of equality for punishment to restore. For example, most detected offenders begin from a point of disadvantage socially, and thus punishment would only serve to increase that inequality. Secondly, there is no practical guidance about the fair measure of punishment in any particular case. Lacey asks what actual punishment would forfeit a set of rights equivalent to those violated by, say a rapist or murderer? It would be difcult to quantify the level of punishment in order to ensure that it reected the amount of freedom that the offender had assumed for himself.
59 60

58

Cavadino, M. and Dignan, J. The Penal System: An Introduction, Sage Publications, London, (second edition)

Ibid.

Thirdly, the view presupposes that there is an independent account of what counts as 59 an unfair advantage and a just equilibrium. Finally, Braithwaite60 states that the theory which holds up the achievement of an equilibrium between benets and burdens as the point of the system, by imposing a counterbalancing disadvantage over his non-violated fellows. Braithwaite suggests that for all this characterisation tells us, the theory ts a consequentialist mould just as comfortably as deontological one.

Braithwaite, J. and Pettit, P. op. cit., p.48.

Are compromise theories possible?

The strength of both utilitarian and retributivist rationales of punishment leaves many people uneasy as to what really justies punishment.
61 Hart, H.L.A., Prolegomenon to the Principles of Punishment, in Hart, H.L.A., Punishment and Responsibility, op. cit., pp.1 27.

Hart offers the reader with another way of considering the problem. He argues that the justication of punishment raises a number of different issues, and that any account which seeks to provide a single answer whether it be the pursuit of a single value or a plurality of values to a single question is inadequate. We have instead to look for different answers to different questions. Hart distinguishes between three such questions that must be answered in order to produce a valid justication of punishment:

61

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62

Ibid.

what justies the general practice of punishment? i.e. what is it that makes it necessary and right to have institutions of punishment in the rst place?62 who may be punished? i.e. concerning the liability to punishment; and how severely may we punish? i.e. of the amount of punishment which may be justiably imposed in the particular case.

63

Braithwaite, J. and Pettit, P. op. cit., p.48.

64 Hart, H.L.A., Prolegomenon to the Principles of Punishment, in Hart, H.L.A., Punishment and Responsibility, op. cit., pp.1 27.

63. Hart maintains that the General Justifying Aim of punishment is the utilitarian one of deterrence, protecting society from the harm caused by the crime, and which therefore leads to benecial consequences and not the retributive aim of inicting pain on offenders who are morally guilty. But the pursuit of the general justifying aim has to be qualied by principles of Distribution which restrict the application of punishment to only those who have voluntarily broken the law.64

65

Lacey, N. op. cit., pp. 1 27.

As to the question: Who may rightly be punished? Here, a principle of retribution in distribution is espoused, and thus only offenders may be punished for their offences.65

Punishment as a sociocultural paradigm

In order to appreciate the impact of punishment in society, one needs to consider the sociological account of punishment. From this perspective, it is argued that methods, justications and ramications of punishment are neither obvious nor rationally selfevident. To fully understand the various dimensions of punishment, it is therefore necessary to acknowledge its social foundations and purposes; that is to accept that punishment is a microcosm of wider social processes.66 As Garland states: punishment is a social artefact serving a variety of purposes and premised upon an ensemble of social forces.67 It is in this sense that punishment has some of the qualities of what Marcel Mausee described as a total social fact.68 It is an area of social life which spills over into other areas and which takes its social meaning as much from these associations as from itself, thus accumulating a symbolic depth of meaning which go beyond its immediate functioning. Therefore, according to Garland 69 punishment does not just restrain or discipline society, punishment helps create it.

66

White, R., and Perrone, S. op. cit., p.148.

67

Garland, D., Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory, London: Oxford University Press, 1990, p.20.
68

Id, p.274.

69

Id, p.276 (original quote from Michel Foucault).

Is punishment a necessary condition for social order?

70

Howe, A., Punish and Critique: Towards a Feminist Analysis of Penality, London: Routledge, 1994, p.116.

71

Cavadino, M. and Dignan, J. op. cit. p.68.

Emile Durkheim looked to the non-instrumental aspects of punishment its emotional aspect, its social origins, its expression of values and cultures70and its effect beyond the relationship of controlled and controlling. Punishment was not for Durkheim mere vindictiveness. Durkheim saw punishment playing an important role in the creation and maintenance of the solidarity that was a necessary condition for social order and the continued existence of society.71 Without punishment Durkheim anticipated the demoralisation of the upright people in the face of deance of the collective conscience: Criminal acts call forth a collective hostile response in the shape of punishment, and the punishment serves to restore and reinforce the outrage of the conscience collective. Durkheim saw punishment as not primarily deterrent or reformative, rather it was produced by collective retributive emotions that then had a useful denunciatory effect. Its true function was to maintain social cohension. He felt that if an emotional response did not come to compensate the loss, that this would result in the breakdown of social solidarity.72 For Durkheim, social solidarity was a necessary precondition for collective social existence, punishment being regarded as important because it was functionally linked to the maintenance and preservation of social solidarity.73

72

Ibid.

73

White, R. and Perrone, S. op. cit., p.149.

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Braithwaite, J. and Pettit, P. op. cit., p.126. (Quote from: Durkheim, Emile, Moral Education: A Study in Theory and Application of the Sociology of Education, (trans. E. Wilson and H. Schnurer), New York: Free Press, (1961), p.181 2.)

74

Braithwaite calls this rationale for punishment one of moral education. He quotes Durkheim:74
Since punishment is reproaching, the best punishment is that which puts the blame which is the essence of punishment in the most expressiveway possibleIt is not a matter of making him sufferrather it is a matter of reafrming the obligation at the moment when it is violated, in order to strengthen the sense of duty, both for the guilty party and for those witnessing the offence those whom the offence tends to demoralise.

75

Garland, D. (1990), op. cit, p.26.

76

Id. p.43.

Durkheim thus saw the role of punishment as reafrming and perpetuating societys core values and in this sense punishment had an educative effect. Punishment was depicted as a group phenomenon of great intensity. It was supposedly propelled by irrational, emotive forces, which swept societys members into a passion or moral outrage.75 Punishment would then have the function of limiting the demoralising effects of deviance and disobedience. Punishment did not give moral discipline its authority, rather it prevented discipline from losing its authority. Punishment, here, had the role of preventing the collapse of moral authority. It ensured that once established, the moral order would not be destroyed by individual violations that robbed others of their condence in authority.76 In this view punishment is a straightforward embodiment of societys moral order and provides an instance of how that order represents and sustains itself.77 For Durkheim, crime is in one sense a creation of punishment rather than an instigator of punishment. Punishment has a broader role than simply responding to specic types of crime. Punishment is not just a negative response to crime, rather, punishment actually constituted crime in the sense that it dened what was criminal and had positive social effects such as reinforcing social solidarity.78

77

Id., p.26.

78

Howe, A. op. cit., p.8.

Punishment as an element of culture

79

Garland, D., (1990), op. cit., p.3.

80

Finnance, M. Punishment in Australian Society, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997, p.5.
81

Howe, A. op. cit., p.116.

82

Ibid.

Punishment has deep cultural signicance. In Punishment and Modern Society79 Garland sets out a sociological account of punishment and its role in modern society. He emphasises the signicance of punishment as an element of cultural history: and he claimed that one can not understand punishment and its evolution without understanding changing sensibilities. Further, that one cannot understand a culture without taking account of the role of punishment in its social order and formation.80 Garland advocates a move beyond the social control framework. He felt that what was required was a wider, more exible and more multi-dimensional framework which allowed for the impact of cultural sensibilities on the punishment processes.81 Punishment is viewed not simply as an exercise of power, it expressed social sentiments, notably passion. Indeed, the essence of punishment was for Garland, an irrational, unthinking emotion. Thus punishment needed to be conceptualised not only in terms of the power to punish, but also as an urge to punish as an emotional reaction which ared up at the violation of cherished social sentiments.82 Garland attempted to describe punishment as a cultural artefact, which embodied and expressed societys cultural forms.83 A sociology of punishment requires an analytical account of the cultural forces and values which shaped and inuenced the idea and the organisation of punishment. In particular, an account of the patterns that were imposed upon punishment, which involved complex, moral, religious and emotional forces which historians had identied as part of the motivational dynamic of penal reform. At the same time, these cultural forces must be considered against the background of social relations and historical change which had made it possible for people to reason in terms of this sociological setting; and in methodologies that would enable them to promote policies in accordance with their own sensitivities. Morals

83

Garland, D (1990), op. cit., p.193.

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84

Id. p.198.

and sensibilities needed to be located within the grid of social interests and positions in a way that reected the complex realities of cultural life. Thus Garland considered punishment as a complex cultural artefact, encoding the signs and symbols of the wider culture in its own practices.84 In this sense Garland sought to demonstrate how societys cultural patterns had come to be imprinted upon its penal institutions in a way that made punishment a practical embodiment of some of the symbolic themes. He stated that any phenomenological account of punishment:
Should never lose sight of the fact that punishment is also, and simultaneously, a network of material social practices in which symbolic forms are sanctioned by brute force as well as by chains of reference and cultural agreement. Penal institutions form a functioning part of a structure of social action and a system of power, as well as being a signifying element within a symbolic realm, and in reality, neither aspect ever exists without the other. Penal practices are shaped by the symbolic grammar of cultural forms as well as by the more instrumental dynamics of social action, so that in analysing punishment, we should look for patterns of cultural expression as well as 85 for logics of material interest or social control.

85

Id. p.199.

86

Id. p.198.

87

Id. p.201.

88

Id. p.210.

Penal culture, which Garland meant as being the loose amalgam of penelogical theory, experience, institutional and professional wisdom,86 was an evolving concept that cultural patterns changed over time and that these cultural developments tended to exert a direct inuence over patterns of punishment.87 Penal agents (the professionals involved in the penal process) and penal ideology were seen to work with broader cultural context, reecting the climate of public opinion and the mores of governmental direction. As a consequence, Garland suggested that the specic culture of punishment in any society would have its roots in the broader context of prevailing social attitudes and traditions.88 Culture is a determinant of punishment. The converse of this statement is also true: that punishment and penal institutions help shape the overarching culture and contribute to the generation and regeneration of its terms. It is a two-way process an interactive relationship.89 In this sense, punishment, like any social institution is modelled by broad cultural patterns that have their origins elsewhere. However, it also generates its own local meanings, values and sensibilities, which then contribute to the bricolage of the dominant culture.90 As Garland states:
Instead of thinking of punishment as a passive expression or reection of cultural patterns established elsewhere, we must strive to think of it as an active generator of cultural relations and sensibilities. The idea is to indicate just how penal practices contribute to the making of the larger culture, and to suggest the nature and 91 signicance of that contribution.

89

Id, p.249.

90

Ibid.

91

Id. p.250.

Punishment is therefore one of the many institutions that help support the social world by producing shared categories and authoritative classications through which individuals understand each other and themselves. For Garland, this is achieved by way of an understanding of penal culture. In turn, contemporary society and culture have a resounding inuence on penal culture.
92

Id. p.250.

Garland, D. Penal Modernism and Postmodernism, in Blomberg, T.G. and Cohen, S. (eds), op. cit., p.188.
94

93

Id. p.187.

Contemporary penality (what Garland referred to as penal modernism)92 claims to be based upon rationalised practices, and upon a utilitarian and rationalist orientation.93 Further, utilitarians may argue thus that retributitive principles are to be considered as an irrational disutility a pre-modern tradition based upon emotion and instinct94 and thus should be afforded no place in considerations of punishment.

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In a sociological account of punishment we may observe that the justications and consequences of punishment are not self-evident. Therefore, it is necessary to acknowledge its social foundations and purposes. It is through a study of punishment and penal culture that one may gain an understanding of the intrinsic nature of the concept. It has been observed that the concept of punishment does not exist in philosophical isolation, rather it is reective of the dominant culture and contemporary sensibilities. The idea of punishment is thus to be considered as a microcosm of wider social processes.

Reference material
Andenaes, J., Punishment and Deterrence, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1974). Baumann, Fred, E. and Jensen, Kenneth, M. (eds), Crime and Punishment: Issues in Criminal Justice, (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia 1989). Beccaria, C., [1764], On Crimes and Punishments, Henry Paolucci, (trans.), (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1963). Blomberg, Thomas, G. and Cohen, Stanley (eds), Punishment and Social Control (New York: Aldine De Gruyter 1971). Braithwaite, J. and Pettit, P, Not Just Deserts: A Republican Theory of Criminal Justice, (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992). Cavadino, Michael and Dignan, James, The Penal System: An Introduction, (second edition), (London: Sage Publications 1997). Cedarblom, J.B. and Blizek, William, L. (eds), Justice and Punishment, Massachusetts: (Bellinger Publishing Company 1977). Duff, R.A, Trials and Punishments, Cambridge: (Cambridge University Press 1986). Exorsky, Gertrude, (ed), Philosophical Perspectives on Punishment (New York: State University of New York Press 1972). Farrer, James. A. (ed), Crime and Punishments, (London: Chatto & Windus Publishers). Findlay, Mark and Hogg, R. Understanding Crime and Criminal Justice (Sydney: Law Book Company 1988). Finnane, Mark Punishment in Australian Society, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press 1997). Garland, David Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies (Aldershot: Gower Publishing Company 1985). Garland, David Punishment and Modern Society: A Study Theory (New York: Oxford University Press 1990). Grupp, Stanley E., Theories of Punishment (London: Indiana University Press 1971). Hart, H.L.A Punishment and Responsibility (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1968). Honderich, Ted Punishment: The Supposed Justications (London: Hutchinson & Company Limited 1969). Howe, Adrian Punishment and Critique: Towards a Feminist Analysis of Penality (London: Routledge 1994). Lacey, Nicola, State Punishment: Political Principles and Community Values (London: Routledge 1988). McMahon, M. The Persistent Prison?: Rethinking Decarceration and Penal Reform (University of Toronto Press 1992). Michael, Jerome And Adler, Mortimer J. Crime, Law and Social Science (New Jersey: Patterson Smith 1971). Middendorf, Wolf, The Effectiveness of Punishment, (New Jersey: Fred. B. Rothman & Company 1968).

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Morrison, Wayne Jurisprudence: From the Greeks to post-modernism (London: Cavendish Publishing Limited 1997). Newburn, Tim Crime and Criminal Justice Policy (London: Longman 1995). Pakenham, Frank The Idea of Punishment (London: Geoffrey Chapman 1961). Rubin, S The Law of Criminal Correction (West Publishing Company 1963). Saleilles, Raymond The Individualization of Punishment, Rachel Szold Jastrow (trans.), (Pattersin Smith Publishing Corporation 1968). Stenson, Kevin and Cowell, David (eds) The Politics of Crime Control (London: Sage Publications 1993). Sykes, Gresham M. Crime and Society (New York: Random House). Ten, C.L., Crime, Guilt, and Punishment: A Philosophical Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press (1987). Vold, George B. and Bernard, Thomas J. Theoretical Criminology (New York: Oxford University Press 1986). Walker, Nigel Sentencing In a Rational Society (London: The Penguin Press 1969). White, Rob and Perrone, S. Crime and Social Control: An Introduction (Melbourne: Oxford University Press 1997). Zimring, Franklin E. and Hawkins, Gordon The Scale of Imprisonment (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1991).

How are we to understand developments in penal policy? Reading

Ian Dunbar & Anthony Langdon, Tough Justice: sentencing and penal policies in the 1990s, (Blackstone 1998) [ISBN 1-85431-725-3]. Tim Newburn, Crime and Criminal Justice Policy, (Longman, 1995) [ISBN 0-582-234336 PPR].

Since the late 1970s there has been a dramatic increase in the use of imprisonment in both the UK and the US. The strengthening of the politics of formal social control and the analysis of David Garland In the face of the decline of informal social control reinforcement of formal social control through the police and punishment becomes more important and politically defensible. One favourite examination question has been whether prison works and how to explain the recourse to imprisonment in the face of questions as to its legitimacy of its effectiveness. Two key texts of the early 1990s highlighting this trend were Nils Christies Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags Western Style (Sage, second edition. 1994) which was a devastating analysis of the growth of a crime control industry, and Thomas Mathiesens Prison on Trial (Sage, 1990). Mathiesen took the accepted justications of punishment and applied them to the operation of the prison. He argued hat the prison was unable to operate in a way that proved itself legitimate by all of the supposed rationalisations. What of contemporary conditions? Prisons, policing and crime control are daily news items. To mainstream criminologists such as David Faulkner (who is also chair of the Howard League for Penal Reform) it is now obvious that a political revival of imprisonment has taken place in the US and the UK. Currently in the UK, instead of

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considering imprisonment a measure of last resort, both Labour and the Tories are presenting prison as an instrument of individual reform and public protection, with an enthusiasm not seen since the middle of the nineteenth century. In Faulkners opinion the movement appears to come from two directions. One is the development of training and rehabilitative courses within prisons for offending behaviour, drug abuse, for sex offenders which make ambitious claims for their success in terms of the prisoners return to normal life and the prevention of re-offending. As well as paying for another 2,660 prison places in the July spending plan, the Government announced a custody to work programme, aiming to double the proportion of prisoners going directly into jobs on release. Money has been provided to increase by 50 per cent the number of national qualications which prisoners achieve in prison. They have been rising and the governments strategy for women offenders is full of similarly good intentions, while the Tories go further and propose nancially self-supporting industrial prisons, where prisoners earn wages from which they will pay for their keep and support their families. The thesis here is that prisons work not only in preventing offenders from committing further offences against the public, but also in reforming their characters. The other direction is policies that deliberately increase the use of imprisonment - not only for dangerous or persistent offenders for failure to comply with orders or conditions. The prison population has risen by a half since 1992. The number of women prisoners has more than doubled, and the population of juveniles under 18 has tripled. The Tories want juveniles to be imprisoned in even larger numbers. The prison population is projected to increase by a further 7 20 per cent by 2007 depending on what assumptions are made of the effect of new policies and legislation. Overcrowding seems set to continue indenitely. It becomes more acceptable to send more people to prison if it is thought they will benet from their experience. This also applies upward pressure on the length of sentences: there is no point in sending people to prison unless they stay long enough to get that benet. For Faulkner, the trouble is that similar aspirations have failed in the past. Unrealistic expectations are built up around the effect of prison on future behaviour but nothing is done to change the offenders family and social environment, over which the prison has no control. Successive governments and the courts have failed to stabilise the prison population at a level where training and rehabilitation programmes can be sustained. Thus, measures to improve prisoners treatment and rehabilitation should not be promoted on a false prospectus; they have to be realistic and deliverable. How could the legitimacy of prison works be established? Faulkner suggests three conditions need to be satised: programmes must be monitored and evaluated. While the present government has supported research, programmes must be subject to checking and part of a wider assessment of the prison experience and its social effects: the prison population must be stabilised at a level that matches the capacity of the system to full the promises being made. There should be no new laws on sentencing until the Government and judiciary come to an understanding on its purpose and principles; on the intended size, composition and geographical distribution of the prison population; and on the sentencing practices and procedures for release by which that optimum size of the prison population is to be achieved. That is to say, assumptions about sentencing and the prison population must be turned into policies. There is no longer any other area of the public sector where it is acceptable just to predict and provide.
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there must be reform of the prison service itself of its relationship with other services and with the communities which it serves and from which it will need commitment and support; of the composition and skills of its staff; and of its values and culture.

There is need for human rights standards to be established and maintained in prison. This would be of benet both to the inmates and aid the professional integrity of the process. Racism, for example, where it exists, shows a more general lack of professional integrity. The prisons have experienced countless reviews and reorganisations over the past 40 years. All have been in response to an immediate political demand or operational crisis; none has found a lasting solution, and none has examined the system from rst principles, although Lord Woolfs report in 1991 came closest to doing so. The time has come to re-examine the foundations of the prison systems authority and legitimacy. The Human Rights Act provides a special opportunity and a point of reference: it may in time provide an imperative. But this is not a subject for just another review, with a chair, terms of reference, invitations to give evidence and a time limit set by the political agenda. For Faulkner and others, the UK needs a public debate in which everyone can take part through articles in journals, attending conferences and seminars, by contributions to ofcial rethinking. The state of policing and recourse to imprisonment poses a challenge to NGOs for example, the Howard League, the Prison Reform Trust, the crime reduction charity Nacro, Justice and the International Centre for Prison Studies and the media, to help shape the process of penal reform. Garland and the analysis of the culture of control David Garland, has produced a masterful overview of criminology and crime control in The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, OUP 2001 [ISBN 0-19-829937-0]. Garlands book is premised on a supposition of surprise. Specifically, that a criminological commentator writing in the 1960s and 1970s could never have predicted the rise of what he calls the culture of control:
recent developments in crime control and criminal justice are puzzling because they appear to involve a sudden and startling reversal of the settled historical pattern. They display a sharp discontinuity that demands to be explained. The modernising processes that, until recently, seemed so well established in this realm above all the long-term tendencies towards rationalisation and civilisation now look as if they have been thrown into reverse. The reappearance in ofcial policy of punitive sentiments and expressive gestures that appear oddly archaic and downright antimodern tend to confound the standard social theories of punishment and its historical development. Not even the most inventive reading of Foucault, Marx, Durkheim, and Elias on punishment could have predicted these recent developments and certainly no such predictions ever appeared. (p.3)

One may find Garlands supposition of a complete reversal overstated but there is no denying the development of a new complex of fashionable theories depicting the self as a rational calculator and control practices that maximise surveillance and depict the offender as someone other. Garlands narrative is sophisticated and wide-ranging. He asserts that up until the late 1970s crime control had an established institutional structure and established intellectual framework. Its characteristic practices, and the organisations and assumptions that supported them had emerged from a long process of development. First the modern structures of criminal justice had first been assembled in their classic liberal form and then increasingly orientated towards a

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more correctional programme of action. All this changed dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s. Now Garland asks, why is it that for both the UK and the US, countries that view themselves as liberal, non-oppressive states committed to individual liberty and market freedom, finding new and effective ways of controlling their citizens become such a high priority for their governments? Garland focuses upon the UK and the US to point out what he takes to be important similarities in the recent experience of these two countries. He suggests that these similarities stem not merely from political imitation and policy transfer but from a process of social and cultural change that has altered social relations in both societies. He calls these developments late modernity, which has transformed the experience of crime, insecurity, and social order bringing a new and powerful cluster of risks, insecurities, and control problems. The similar processes have been filtered through the different social, institutional and cultural characteristics of the two nations. The particular combination of racial division, economic inequality and lethal violence that marks contemporary US, has given it a penal response, a scale and intensity that often seems wholly exceptional. The US is a Western liberal democracy that routinely executes offenders and incarcerates its citizens at a rate that is 6 to 10 times higher than comparable nations. Garland argues that while the scale is different, there are strong similarities in the patterns of penal responses and in the focal points of public concerns, political debates and policy developments. Moreover, that there are important similarities in the problems to which actors in both nations appear to be responding. Specifically, the same kinds of risks and insecurities, the same perceived problems of effective social control, the same critiques of traditional criminal justice, and the same recurring anxieties about social change and social order. The most important currents of change: the decline of the rehabilitative ideal the re-emergence of punitive sanctions and expressive justice changes in the emotional tone of crime policy the return of the victim above all, the public must be protected politicisation of crime control and a new populism the reinvention of the prison the transformation of criminological thought the expanding infrastructure of crime prevention and community safety civil society and the commercialisation of crime control new management styles and working practices a perpetual sense of crisis.

In short the orthodoxys that prevailed for most of the last century (the twentieth), what he calls penal welfarism; have been replaced by a new eld. For many practitioners and theorists, there has been an alarming sense of the unravelling of a conceptual fabric that, for most of the best part of a century, had bound together the institutions of criminal justice and given them meaning. By contrast, today, for better or for worse, we lack any such agreement, any settled culture, or any clear sense of the big pictureideological lines are far from clear andthe old assumptions are an unreliable guide. (p.4)

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For most of the twentieth century the UK and US Governments (largely, albeit with opposing elements) viewed the direction in which social change was going as an achievement rather than as a problem. Continuing prosperity and full employment were to be delivered through a regulated economy at the same time as a social agenda which extended welfare and civil rights enhanced personal freedoms. But this dichotomy of economic control and social liberation was transformed as a new consumer capitalism revolutionalised individual tastes and tted with a new commercial service culture that made welfare agencies appear rigidly bureaucratic and unresponsive to client needs and preferences. A new complex of theories, a criminology of everyday life and contradictory theories of the criminology of the self (which depict offenders as normal, rational consumers, just like us) and criminology of the other (which offers images of a threatening outcast, the fearsome stranger, the excluded and the bitter). The rst type of criminology routinises crime, allays disproportionate fears and promotes preventative action. The second demonises the criminal, acts out popular fears and resentments and provides support for massive state punishment. They exclude a middle ground that was previously the terrain of welfarist criminology (that depicted the offender as disadvantaged or poorly socialised and made it the States responsibility, in social and penal policy, to take positive steps of a remedial kind). A new complex is accompanied by process of adaptation, denial and acting out. What are the costs of the new complex? Garland lists the following: a hardening of social and racial divisions; the reinforcement of criminogenic processes; the alienation of large social groups; the discrediting of legal authority; a reduction of civic tolerance; a tendency towards authoritarianism. Garland suggests that mass imprisonment and private fortication may be feasible solutions to the problem of social order but they are deeply unattractive at odds with the ideals of liberal democracy. Ultimately, Garlands text is a criticism of the governing assumptions deeply built into modernity that the sovereign state can successfully govern by means of sovereign commands issued to obedient subjects. Yet the State continually tries to convince us that it can. The result is a culture of crime control that intensies as it fails. What else could it do? Garland suggests: In the complex, differentiated world of late modernity, effective legitimate government must devolve power and share the work of social control with local organisations and communities. It can no longer rely upon state knowledge, on unresponsive bureaucratic agencies, and upon universal solutions, imposed from above. (p. 205)

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Sample questions
1. If imprisonment was really such a failure, the prison would not be so resilient a social institution. Discuss. 2. Critically evaluate the return to justice or just deserts movement in modern sentencing policy.

3. Penal policies that seek to incapacitate selectively dangerous offenders are awed empirically and ethically. Discuss. 4. If we remove the pains of imprisonment from imprisonment (as experimental prisons, therapeutic regimes, and alternatives to prison have attempted), can prison still serve as an effective method of social control? 5. Crime control has become an industry, devouring scarce social resources and intruding upon civil liberties; part of the problem and not the solution. Discuss. 6. EITHER: a. To what extent have political considerations rather than a rational sentencing policy been responsible for the recent dramatic increases in the use of imprisonment in the US and UK? OR: b. No rehabilitation or reform can take place within prisons and they should concentrate upon delivering humane punishment. Discuss. 7. The fact that imprisonment does not achieve the objectives normally referred to in the philosophical accounts is irrelevant since the main function of imprisonment is not to reform or to punish but to create the impression that governments are doing something about the crime problem. Discuss. 8. Most criminologists argue that the experience of imprisonment is harmful to offenders and may lead to reoffending, yet the last decade has seen a dramatic rise in the use of imprisonment in the US and UK. How can this rise in the use of imprisonment be explained? 9. What explains the dramatic rise in imprisonment rates in the US and the UK in last 10 years? Has this increase in the use of imprisonment resulted in lower crime rates? 10. Does prison work?

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Notes

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Chapter 11: Policing

Chapter 11

Policing
Reading
Newburn, Tim Crime and Criminal Justice Policy, Longman, 1995, Chapter 3 The police and policing policy. Jones, Stephen Criminology, Butterworths, 1998, Chapter 1 The Development of Crime and Crime Control as Social Phenomena: the role of the Police. Heidensohn, Frances Crime and Society, 1989, Chapter 6. Wilson, David John Ashton & Douglas Sharp, What Everyone in Britain Should Know About the Police, Blackstone, 2001 [ISBN 1-84174-261-9]. Reiner, Robert The Politics of the Police, second edition 1992, Harvester. Reiner, R and Shapland, J. (eds) Why Police? Special issue on Policing in Britain, British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 27, No. 1.

Issues
Understanding the history and development of the British Police.
Storch, R. The Plague of Blue Locusts, in M.Fitzgerald et al., Crime and Society. 1981.

Police Culture
Young, J. and R. Kinsey, Police Autonomy and the Politics of Discretion in D. Cowell et al., Policing the Riots.

Police Accountability
Brogden, M. et al., Introducing Policework, Chapter 7. Smith, Susan Crime, Space and Society, Chapter 6. Reiner, The Politics of the Police, Chapter 3.

Styles of Policing: Community or consensus vs para-military.

Kinsey, R. et al,. Losing the ght against Crime, Chapters 8 and 9. The Scarman Report, HMSO, 1981.

Learning objectives
You will be expected to: be able to give an outline of the history of British policing dene and discuss the major causes of controversy concerning contemporary policing.

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Commentary
Denition of Policing As a concept policing originally referred to the political social health of the community. Today we tend to associate it with the activities of a special organisation A general understanding of the role of the police is required. To what extent do the police act as the embodiment of the legal system, as the representatives of the rule of law? Police work is full of discretion, upon what basis do the police exercise discretion and how does this inuence the choice of who is charged, and structure the role of the police as gatekeepers into the criminal justice system? Sources of controversy about the police: 1. corruption scandals 2. the rule of Law and police accountability 3. the amount of force involved in policing 4. the involvement of policing in defending specic institutions or practices; 5. the service role vs thief catching 6. preventive policing vs reactive policing 7. police effectiveness 8. the development of policing in a pluralist and multi-ethnic society 9. the police as symbols of authority in a uid and questioning society.

Sample questions
1 The police are better seen as a social service than a crime control agency. Discuss. 2. Does community policing allow a facade of public consensus whilst avoiding real police accountability? 3. To what extent is the characterisation of policing as a contract or partnership with the community feasible or desirable? 4. Does police discretion pose an insuperable obstacle to the success of organisational reforms? 5. What problems are there in assessing the effectiveness of the police? 6. What are the main problems facing policing in the UK? How may these be addressed? 7. The most important obstacle to the modernisation of British policing is a confusion of objectives. At present the social service role takes up an undue amount of time and should be played down in favour of ghting crime. Discuss. 8. To what extent have changing social and economic conditions made the task of policing more difcult? 9. Can the aims and objectives of policing be ranked in a logical hierarchy so that a coherent and logical policy be created, or are they incompatible in practice? 10. The biggest obstacle to the reform of policing is outdated police culture. Discuss.

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11. Many commentators argue that British police forces have lost the trust of the people. What could be done to regain this trust? 12. Contemporary policing no longer strives to protect the whole society from offenders. Its function is becoming the protection of the super-class from the underclass. Discuss.

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Notes

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Notes

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