Foundations of Critical Criminology – Week 6 Lecture
Section 25 of the Criminal Code – “The Police may break the law to uphold the law”, so the state gives itself permission to break the law (both behaviourally and definitionally). Then there’s nothing objectively real about crime. How dominant groups define what constitutes a crime (by Beh. Or Def.)
Definitional Explanations
To the extent criminal law is normatively biased against groups marked by stigma, disfavor, and social distance because they are relationally and psychosocially subordinate the process by which they become objects of social derision, demonization and the object of moral entrepreneurialism is the focus of definition and theories of crime.
Definition of theories generally assume a pluralistic orientation to rules, and power (has no analysis of group conflict = class, colonialism imperialism, race, sex
Implicit tolerance for consensus about social rules.
If “Political society is built upon a foundation of repressive force”, then how knowledge gets produced, consumed, and resisted is inherently political in nature. It is all socially constructed. It is not objectively real.
What is meant by political in terms of knowledge depends on your theory of society and how you believe what counts as problems should be addressed
Consensus (conservative)
Wide agreement on norms and values.
“Conscience collective”
Crime is either badness or sickness.
Pluralism (liberal)
There is conflict, but most of the rational groups shape norms and values and influence the making of to produce ideology.
Conflict (radical)
Because powerful groups use coercion and control the means of production and ideology, consent is manufactured.
Each perspective on how social relations is organized make different assumptions on what the solution to crime as a social problem might be.
Lewis Mumford on the History of Determinism
The Myth of the Machine focussing on the emergence of Kingship
Concept of predetermined order
Establishing one’s personalities, characteristics and who and what they will be, is based on the calendar.
The scientific determinism, not less than mechanical regimentation, had their inception in the institution of divine kingship.
The fundamental mathematical and scientific foundations have been laid in astronomy.
This was then the constellation of rational insights. An irrational perception that produced the new technology of power (Human Power).
Power means to regulate conduct established predictability of outcomes and you do this through coercive mechanisms.
Nicholas Kittrie, The Right to Be Different
Seeking the sources of criminal behavior and the means for its prevention, scientific criminology directed its attention to two major and possibly controllable elements:
Crime as an expression of conditions surrounding man.
Crime as a product of man’s constitution. (Colourfully and homonymously contrasted as “nature” and “nurture”.)
Scientific criminology replaces classical criminology’s assumption of free will was replaced by 2 schools of determinism on social determinism, 1 hand and bio-psychological determinism, on the other.
Only in more recent times as a mixture of both been put forward in the form of a multi-factorial approach.
Robert Boyle – Father of modern chemistry
Criminals and prisoners were seen as “dangerous parasites.” They pose a threat to society and should be rid of by killing and or deportation. Or we could use them for medical experimentation of dangerous chemicals
Pathology is endemic to the dangerous class.
Thomas Malthus
Also applying biological concepts to the social realm
The poor are a threat to civil society. They are irrational, are given to vice and live-in misery and ill health.
Populations, especially of the poor, will grow unchecked (geometrically). While food production grows as a slower rate (arithmetically).
If society is not to be overrun by unchecked population growth of the poor, then government must:
Cut public assistance which promotes large families and vice.
Promote abstinence (eugenics.) To prevent misery, disease, and death.
Benjamin Rush – Found member of America and “father” of US psychiatry
First American physician to urge the medicalization of social problems and their coercive control by therapeutic rather than punitive sanctions.
Argued that madness was seated in blood vessels.
Alcohol use, in any amount, was a disease.
“ANARCHIA” A diagnosis for everyday systems. Passion for democratic governments Blackness of skin signified ‘congenital illnesses.
He tried to prove, by empirical means, that mental and physical illness were the same.
So basically, the United States was founded as a criminal enterprise because it was in resistance to established legal authority.
August Comte – Father of Sociology
Positive sociology Sociology as a science and science as a religion. (The study of man is a religion?)
The “objective” study of what later Durkheim called ‘social facts.’
He was a scientist who applied the principles of studying the natural world to discern its patterns to human and social relations.
Data generated by government into moral issues such as crime, poverty, prostitution, for managing the social, became the basis for ‘scientific’ inquiry into causes.
Many things in common with Ben Rush (both social reformers and “father’s”)
Positivism in Sociology.
It falls under the philosophy of science or the study of how to arrive at empirically verified truth.
Social behavior has causes, just as in nature, there are causes leading to effects and consequences.
The idea that “truth” is determined not by metaphysics (reasoned speculation) but the results of ‘scientific procedure.’
‘Science’ will resolve political questions of authority and morality.
It treats ‘Social facts’ like material nature as pre given; ‘Social facts’ as products of social life are based on a pre-political consensus (Ex. murder, rape, and theft etc.)
Autonomy of ‘social facts’ Facts are independent of the economic-political, and psychological dimensions of social life — Hence consensus.
Autonomy of the scientists from the social facts under consideration: Value free.
Violations of social order have root causes that are discoverable.
Scientific strategies required to control crime are based on “cure” and “treatment”, not punitive measures which are known not to reduce recidivism or prevent crime.
Crime is delinked from its social and political construction and becomes an autonomous fact inherent to the body or to cultural and social factors.
Scientific specialist required, not social reformers, such as judges, social workers, or psychologists, because crime is on to logical and thus measurable.
Punishment should be eliminated, and control put in the hands of scientists.
This was a rejection of the humanistic assumptions of the classical period, but an expansion of the classicism’s hidden impulse toward determinism.
Founders of Positivist Criminology
Adolphe Quetelet — Social physics and mechanical regularity of crime craniology and body mass index. Social statistician
He drew on the first set of crime statistics in history, produced by the French government to formulate his theory of “social physics” the laws of nature are reproduced in society.
He observed that the annual recording of crime statistics revealed a high degree of constancy.
Crime results from social organization, BUT unhealthy morality was biologically determined and by virtue of the social class, some groups were more predisposed to commit crime.
Government statistics on crime, poverty and education led him to conclude that social affairs, like the mechanical bodies of the heavens, had lawlike properties regulating them.
These objective regulatory factors include: Poverty, Illiteracy, Age, Sex and Body Mass index (BMI) / Craniometry. (Height, weight, any deviations would lead to criminality, shape of the skull, size of skull, measured averages that would suggest someone is more likely to commit crime
Andre Michel Guerry — Statistical and moral mapping. Cartographer
Like Quetelet, he relied on statistics of crime to formulate his “theory of crime”.
He called his approach moral statistics.
Rather than formulate an abstract theory of crime rooted in the body, he looked at data on specific areas of France where crime was being recorded: Urban and, within that, specific areas correlated with poverty.
Crime reflected multifactorial sources that added up to causation.
Disputed that poverty caused crime, but suggested it was a source.
Poverty, race, and physiological characteristics we’re sources do not cause for crime.
He disputes the ‘education crime connection’, since crimes such as those against the person were shown to be higher among the educated than property crime which was higher among the poor.
Cesare Lombroso — Crime race and homo criminalists (Atavism and the born criminal)
He founded the school of thought called Positivist Criminology, which was rooted in early psychiatric theories of determined behavior.
Moral conduct was determined by intelligence and psychology from birth.
Crime was a result of mental impairments to be found among “savages” and the lower sorts.
Some people were simply born evil and therefore predisposed to crime. Atavistic man
The poor were congenitally and genetically of poor moral character, hence organically criminogenic. (Idiots, sex workers, criminals, ppl with tattoos, they were immoral to him)
From extensive of Ethnographic study of sex workers and prisoners (highlights primitive aspects in committing crime). He conceived of the idea of ‘homo criminalis’ or atavistic man to explain born criminality in post enlightenment, civilized Europe.
Extensive use of the theory of craniometry and phrenology added a biological dimension to his theory.
This biological dimension established the basis for crime and racialization.
Non-European racial origins, especially those who could not be seen to “blush”. Especially Africans, could not demonstrate shame.
3 Major Classes of Criminals:
Born Criminals Atavistic Reversions (Ex. Throwbacks to the primitive and savage past; 1/3 of all criminals)
Insane Criminals Idiots, imbeciles, alcoholics, epileptics, depressed
Criminaloids (a large non-specific class of criminals given to vicious and criminal behavior. 1/3 of all criminals)
According to Lombroso, most crime is curable. But what to do when scientific treatment fails?
There exists a group of criminals born for evil, against whom all social cures break as though against a rock, a fact which compels us to eliminate them completely, even if by death.
Raffaele Garafolo
In the criminal, the moral senses are damaged from birth.
Criminality is natural, rooted in environmental conditions an inherited traits.
Criminal positivists are scientific experts, not moralists such as judges and lawyers.
Punishment does not work. Therapy is the only cure.
Enrico Ferri
“Theory of Criminal Saturation” Just as in a given volume of water at a given temperature, we find the solution of a fixed quantity of any chemical substance, not an atom, more or less. So, in a given social environment, we find the Commission of a fixed number of crimes.
Treated crime like molecules
Death for those whose acts grow out of a ‘permanent psychological anomaly’ which renders the subject forever incapable of social life.
Summing up Positivist Criminology
Consensus based moral norms.
Criminality determined by:
Environmentalism (sociogenic)
Embodied criminality biogenic and psychogenic (biogenic)
Socio-cultural (sociogenic)
Some combinations of all the above.
Methods of treatment correspond to analytical categories.
A combination of:
Medical discourses (Atavism)
Social Darwinism (dangerous and degenerate classes.)
Colonial and race science theories of cultural and biological inferiority.
Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck
Crime is caused by:
Environmental factors.
Biological factors.
Psychological factors.
Deficiencies in human development and socialization increase risk of crime.
Strategies:
Social reform.
Change in environmental condition.
Programs and personal effort toward pro social behavior from childhood onward.
Therapy.
William Bennett – Drug Czar
I know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down.
Richard Jensen and Murray Herrenstein.
Proposed a psychogenic theory of crime.
Criminality is a function of inherited intelligence.
Higher crime rates indicate lower IQ.
Crime rates are highest among African Americans. Therefore, lower IQ, therefore criminal by nature.
Solution, let them die out by cutting social assistance.
Just like Thomas Malthus
Frederick Goodwin – When trying to explain the ‘predisposition of African American boys for violence:
“If you look at for example, male monkeys, especially in the wild, roughly half of them survive into adulthood. The other half die by violence. There are some interesting evolutionary implications of that, because the same hyper aggressive monkeys who kill each other are also hypersexual. So they copulate more and therefore they reproduce more to offset the fact that half of them are dying. The loss of social structure, particularly within the high impact inner city areas, has remove some of the civilizing evolutionary things that we have built up, and that maybe it isn’t just the careless use of the word. When people call areas of certain cities jungles.”
Considerable fraudulent research claim that African American men had higher proportions of the extra Y chromosome than Euro American males
Such research leads to claims that there is a gene for violence, as in case of the celebrated “Maori warrior Gene”.
J. Philippe Rushton — Genetic Similarity Theory, Intra-group altruism, out-group antagonism, racial conflict the defining historical dynamic
r/K reproduction theory
Drawn from ecological/biological evolutionary theory about species survival adaptation correlated with sexual reproduction strategy.
Parental investment and quantity vs. quality of offspring.
R ——- K
“R” = Multiple Offspring and minimal parental investment.
“K” = Few offspring and high parental investment.
Human evolutionary psychology application of r/K theory.
Genetic differences in IQ correlate with race.
Intelligence, brain size and genitalia in the males of a race correlate with morality of the whole racial group.
Differential social indicators such as crime statistics, poverty, and educational attainment by race are taken as confirmation of the hypothesis of r/K.
Vertical racial hierarchy according to Rushton’s adaptation of the r/K theory, which mimics the “Great Chain of Being.”
Asians Larger brains, more intelligence, lower rates of maturation, smaller male genitalia, more sexually restrained, more law abiding, more socially organized.
Caucasians Moderate levels to Asians
Africans Lower levels to Caucasians
The Great Chain of Being.
An anthropomorphic theory of natural and social order.
Nature is gradiated from lowest beings through to the highest with ‘gods and angels’ as the highest manifestation.
Humanity follows a pattern GRADIATION from the ‘savages’ through to the ‘civilized’.
Greeks imagine themselves as the highest expression of humanity aesthetically, culturally, and politically. Above all others were Barbarians.
All civilised groups across time and space have thought the same. (Ex. Mesopotamia, China, India, Japan, Maya, Aztec. Etc.)
Plato
Argued that crime results from what is today called relative deprivation. That is envy and jealousy of others who possess socially valued goods acquired by legitimate means. Some seek to acquire those goods by illegitimate means.
The principle has already been laid down that the best of either sex should be united with the best as often and the inferior with the inferior as seldom. And that they should rear offspring of the one sort of union, but not of the other. If the flock is to be maintained in first rate condition.
Aristotle
Renaissance borrowings of race science, both biological and environmental, from Imperial Greece and Rome, was transmitted to the so-called Enlightenment.
A man is thus by nature a slave. If he can become the property of another, and if he participates in reason to extent of apprehending it in another. Though, destitute of himself it himself, he differs from animals which do not apprehend reason but simply obey instincts. But the use which is made of the slave diverges but little from the use made of tame animals. Both he and they supply their owner with Bodley help in meeting their daily requirements.
Social biological determinism leads to the following:
Searches for gene therapy.
The use of genetic mapping by the state through the collection of genetic material from person’s either:
1.) Accused
2.) Charged
3.) Convicted
In the US, 40% of African Americans are registered in the combined DNA index system (CODIS). 35 states in US have extensive legislation to collect DNA from anyone suspected charged and convicted of criminal offences, even children.
What is Race?
The social construction of “ascribed” differences between human beings within a specific culture and social order based on:
Skin colour
eye colour.
Religion.
History.
Region.
Language.
Facial features
etc.
Something you were born with, CANNOT change, but you are socially ordered by others
Racism
The construction of an ideology that allocates groups into inferior and superior categories.
The prejudice + power to discriminate explicitly or implicitly to accrue, in aggregate, advantages, benefits, and privileges to members of the dominant group at the expense of the inferior group.
ONLY dominant group members can be racist. Why? Because point #1 and #2, they make the groups, they control the coercive and privelges
Prejudice
An opinion of bias or stereotype that is generalized to a whole group.
Without the power to extract benefits from prejudice, there is NO racism.
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