Radicalised Theories of Crime

1
Radicalised Theories of Crime

• Mike Keating 2007

2
Radical Developments in Criminology

• Conflict Model
• Marxism
• Critical Criminology
• Left ( Right) Realism
• Feminism
• Postmodernism

3
The Conflict Model

• Sellin (1938) and Vold (1958)
• Society has no collective conscience but a
  variety of conduct norms primary secondary
  cultural conflicts
• Social orderdoes not reflect a consensus among
  the groups, but reflects instead the uneasy
  adjustmentof the many groups of varying
  strengths and different interests. Conflict is
  therefore one of the principle and essential
  social processes in the functioning of
  societyThe conflicts among organised groups are
  especially visible in legislative politics, which
  is largely a matter of finding practical
  compromises between opposing interests
• (Vold et al 2002229)

4
Hence

• State (CJS) does not represent the common
  interest of all or justice (the public interest).
• The law represents the values and norms of the
  dominant culture over subordinate cultures
• or
• The victory of some groups over others
• The whole process of law making, law breaking
  and law enforcement directly reflects deep-seated
  and fundamental conflicts between group interests
  and the more general struggles among groups for
  control of the police power of the state
• (Vold 2002230)

5
Consequently

• Members of the dominant group find it easy to
  lead law abiding lives
• Members of minority power groups or segments
  are more likely to get into trouble
• Especially when
• their behaviour gives great offence to law
  enforcers
• and
• ii) they have little power to resist
• Law enforcement criminalises the weak and ignores
  the offences of the powerful.
• See Turk (1969), Quinney (1970), Chambliss
  Seidman (1971), and Reiman (1979)

6
The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison

• Street crime defined as real crime
• These crimes are more commonly associated with
  the poor
• The poor become criminalised by CJS
• White collar or corporate crimes are not defined
  as real crime.
• These crimes often overlooked by CJS
• The offender at the end of the road in prison is
  likely to be a member of the lowest social and
  economic groups in the country.
• See also prison populations by racial group
  especially in US.

7
Farepack bad luck or fraud?

• In 2006 Farepack Xmas Savings Club collapsed.
• The parent company European Home Retail (chaired
  by Sir Clive Thompson) had been in trouble since
  2000 and brought in William Rollason in 2003 to
  sort out the company.
• In August 2006 EHR shares were suspended.
• Farepack funds were used to service EHR debt to
  HBOS.
• In October 2006 HBOS pulled the plug and the
  company collapsed.
• 120,000 customers (mainly low paid workers) lost
  savings up to 40m.
• Companies should not be allowed to get away with
  this sort of daylight robbery, and their
  directors should not be allowed to be immune from
  the harm they have caused
• (Dave Prentis UNISON)
• See Farepack Forgotten Victims Centre for Crime
  Justice Studies and unfairpak.co.uk

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Marxist theory crime

• Marxist theory of society Economic
  infrastructure Social relations (classes).
• Law as part of the superstructure to maintain
  class interests NOT part of a social contract
  e.g. property crimes such as taking of wood and
  poaching.
• Political economy of crime Capitalism as
  criminogenic.
• The Law criminalises the poor ignores the
  powerful.
• Crime as primitive rebellion by the poor to be
  symbolically dealt with by the law.

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Marxist criminology social bandits

• Bonger
• Hobsbawm
• Quinney
• Chambliss
• Box
• Spitzer

10
Critical Criminology and the NDC

• Critique of sub cultural theory, strain theory
  and labelling placed within the context of
  Marxism.
• To restore a social context for the classic
  sociological work, by exploring the political
  economy of both the criminal actor and the
  juridical reactor
• Left Idealism justifies working class
  criminality as the authentic response to
  alienation and social control (not a pathological
  condition).
• Developed a critique of class bias in CJS
• Supported campaigns such as Hillsborough Justice
  Campaign.
• http//www.arasite.org/critcrim.html

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Jock Young Left Realism

• Accepts that class differences and poverty are
  important in the commission and prosecution of
  crime. Relative deprivation and
  marginalisation are key factors.
• Challenges the idea of crime as authentic voice
  of rebellion
• Emphasises the evidence that victims of street
  crime are working class NOT the rich powerful
• Their fear of crime is real (based on experience
  not a moral panic) and is more concerned with
  street crime than the crimes of the powerful
• See Scouser buzzin off bizzies video on
  myspacetv.com.

12
Jock Youngs Square of Crime

• The State (CJS) front line agents in the
  identification prosecution of crime
• Victims may provoke or contribute to
  victimisation (aka precipitation)
• Society (general public) issues of poverty,
  employment, family breakdown and social control
• Offender type, rates, numbers.
• All crime prevention efforts, of whatever type,
  involve some relationship between the four
  corners of the square
• (Burke 2005)

13
Right realism

• Defines street crime as real crime.
• Assumes that the rise in crime and public fear of
  crime are real
• Rejects theories which relate crime to class
  inequalities and class bias in the administration
  of justice. Crime a matter of poor parenting
  criminal culture
• CJS needs to target crime prevention with common
  sense (realistic) policies e.g. zero tolerance,
  ASBOs, 3 strikes and youre out, welfare reform
  etc
• Halt the developmental sequence of community
  decline and re-establish order.

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Feminist Criminology

• Rejection of Malestream criminology as gender
  blind
• (Laws are) man made in the interests of men, in
  accordance with a paternalistic attitude towards
  women... The innumerable studies of criminality
  and delinquency that exist do not include women
  and girls in their subject matter. They are
  written by men, on the subject of men for an
  audience of men
• Smart (1977)

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Feminist Criminology raises specific issues

• i) What are the gendered patterns of crime?
• ii) Why do women commit so few crimes relative to
  men?
• iii) What explanations are offered for female
  criminals?
• iv) Women as victims of crime.
• v) Women in the CJS discriminatory practices in
  courts prisons.
• vi) Rethinking the links between masculinity
  crime

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and three key questions

• The Woman Question taking female offending
  seriously. Challenging simplistic stereotypes.
• The Man Question - The maleness of crime has
  been so taken for granted as to be rendered
  invisiblestudies have tended to be on men as
  offenders rather than offenders as men.
• (Smith 2005353)
• The Convergence Question are women becoming
  more promiscuous and predatory?
• Can increasing female criminality be accounted
  for by the liberation thesis?

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Post Modernism Criminology

• Rejects the priviledged status of scientific
  criminology (modernism)
• Argues for a relativist approach to deviance
• Metanarratives replaced by discourses
• Modernist discourse as dominant (e.g.CJS)
• Oppositional discourses need to be given
  legitimacy (e.g. prisoners).

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Criminology as an extension of social control

• I fail to understand how the discourse of
  criminology has been able to go on at this level.
  One has the impression that it is of such
  utility, is needed so urgently and rendered so
  vital for the working of the system, that it does
  not even need to seek a theoretical justification
  for itselfIt is entirely utilitarian. (We need)
  to investigate why such a learned discourse
  became so indispensable to the functioning of the
  nineteenth century penal system
• Foucault cited in Carrabine etal (200490)

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Conclusions

• Rejects idea of public interest consensus.
• Society made up of conflicting groups.
• Law represents the interests of the powerful.
• CJS is biased.
• Criminology is part of the system.