Foundations of Critical Criminology – Week 8 Lecture
Neo-Positivist Criminology (1840-Present)
Scientific strategies required to control crime, not punitive measures, which are known 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 two cultural and social factors.
Scientific specialists required, not social reformers, such as judges, social workers or psychologists. Because crime is on to logical and thus measurable.
The practice of punishment should be eliminated, and control put in the hands of scientists.
This was rejection of the humanistic assumptions of the classical period, but an expansion of the classicism’s hidden impulse toward determinism.
Positivist Criminology
2 versions: LIBERAL and CONSERVATIVE
LIBERAL positivism assumed sociocultural factors and therefore implied some improvement is possible by moral instruction, education and CPED.
CONSERVATIVE positivism assumed biogenic and psychogenic factors, and therefore no social improvement:
Either eradication.
Eugenics
therapeutic measures, psychotherapy/surgery, Lobotomy’s chemical therapy.
Indefinite detention.
Contemporary theory and research now include research into gene therapy. (Maori warrior gene, black criminality)
Neo-Classism
Jurisprudential reform and restatement of the classical position: People can be improved.
Despite its subtexts of class-based determinism, the classical position maintained that individuals could be improved by punishment, most notably fines.
For fines to be effective as punishment, however, property would have to be equally distributed. (If their material and social conditions have been improved)
Expanded the role of moral experts: social workers, psychologists, and moral reformers.
To avoid the contradictions inherent to classicism and to maintain its humanistic presumption’s, NEO classicists introduced conditions for diminished liability and gradients of punishment. (mens rea = the guilty mind) such as:
Age (juvenile courts, reform schools).
Mitigating circumstances such as social background.
Offenders past record.
Factors of incompetence: insanity, impulsiveness.
Degrees of liability (knowing reckless secondary murder, manslaughter, etc.)
Exigent circumstances.
Plea bargaining.
Functionalism and Structuralism: Foundations of social determinism.
Nicholas Kittrie the right to be different: deviance and enforced therapy.
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 and crime as a product of a man’s constitution.
2 schools of determinism: Social Determinism & Bio-Psychological Determinism.
Harold Pepinsky
Every major theory of causes of crime, including Marxist theories, assumes that people’s propensity to violate the law is correlated with poverty. With the existence of what criminologists of the 19th century called the “dangerous classes.”
Emile Durkheim
Crime is not only observed in most societies of a particular species, but in all societies of all types. There is not one in which criminality does not exist, although it changes in form and the actions which are termed criminal are not everywhere the same. (Crime is functional, you cannot get away from it…) (Society like a body? Crime is similar to pathology, where you will inevitably get it)
Crime is normal because it is completely impossible for any society to be entirely free of it to exist.
What confers on deviance and criminals, their character is not the intrinsic importance of the acts, but the importance the common consciousness ascribes to them.
Early contribution to Symbolic Interactionism
Within a certain numerical limit crime blade, a functional role in maintaining the status quo. Thus, there is a natural equilibrium between crime and obedience. Too much of one or the other is socially destructive.
Crime helps society determine where its moral boundaries are, and when those boundaries should be changed.
Criminals help members of the community have an object to unite against.
Furnished positivism with support for the status quo, in that he did not question the political economy and the criminal law that was based upon it, that is, he paradoxically assumed there was something called a “conscience collective.” (Inherent norm, any deviation is encoded within the body)
Durkheim and others could not explain how the “conscience collective” came into being.
^ In order to get ppl to cooperate…you need an enemy.
Chicago School
Ecological theories Poor immigrants and negatively racialized groups are presumed to be highly non-conformist. This is based on arrests, imprisonment, school expulsions, etc.
Social disorganization. (Rockefeller: Key issue, how to discipline the work/labour force)
Communities and families are dysfunctional because parents are not respected. Authority figures, parents and elders lack intent and capacity to be moral role models.
Routine Activities theory Everyday life in contemporary capitalist societies bring victims into close contact with those who would predate on them.
Differential Association theory crime is a function of:
Social disorganization and poverty in which there are pro criminal traditions.
‘Crime’ is a learned social activity that ‘criminals’ learn.
Functional School (Columbia School)
Derives from Emile Durkheim’s conceptions about civilized existence is based on a moral consensus about right and wrong.
Crime is normal and serves to clarify pro social norms and roles.
Manifest functions are norms set out by society to maintain order. (Ex. Punishments deters unwanted behaviour)
Latent functions are the unintended consequences of manifest functions.
Functional role of “crime”: prisons are ‘schools for crime’ which expand ‘criminality’ which in turn expands employment to control ‘crime.’
Anomie theory (Ex. Wild west) Create a state of ‘Normlessness.’ more ‘crime’
Social structure an Anomie (Strain Theory) Ideals of capitalists and consumer society creates desires in the urban poor that cannot be legitimately achieved. Crime is the result.
General Strain Theory. Stress is created by frustration and aggression, peers and eroded social bonds.
Failure to achieve positively valued goals. (Seen as failure of the person, exclude those to get help)
Removal of positive and desired stimuli. (Ex. Loss of parents to affectively socialize child.)
Experience with negative stimuli (Ex. Rape, sexual assault, bullying, child abuse. Adverse school experience. (Transgenerational, intergenerational, like the indigenous ppl’s)
End up throwing police and prisons at a problem socially constituted by capitalism
State Frustration. Criminality and delinquency arise among the urban poor because:
‘Criminality’ is a subculture.
‘Crime’ is a reaction to the problems created by hegemony of middle-class culture.
So, what does this say about rural contexts? Do not have crime and probably more of it than urban areas? Is there no subculture of criminality?
Differential Illegitimate Opportunity. Unlawful behavior is not open to all. Based on opportunity, an exposure to those will teach the trade. (Neoliberals causing deregulation that let’s corps. Do all these evil things and screw us all)
Social Control Theories
Social control theories assume inner/outer controls (why people obey).
People conform and comply because doing so makes them feel good about themselves. (Parents telling kids not to lie)
Dishonesty makes us feel bad.
Lyndon Johnson, and Gulf of Tonkin incident (1964)
Doug Ford and ‘guaranteed income supplement Justin Trudeau on injection mandate.
Howard Becker on the “hierarchy of credibility.”
Through dominance of elite bias, we are socialized:
To expect compliance and obedience.
To have social bias against subordinate groups.
To give credibility to statements by power holders.
Power holders are constitutional liars (politicians, corp leaders etc.) because:
They are responsible for their institutions fulfilling their obligations.
Failure is routine and built into government, hospitals, militaries, police, prisons, schools etc.
Because they are responsible in this way, officials usually must lie. Officials must lie because things are seldom as they ought to be. For a great variety of reasons, well known an account of an institution’s operation from the point of view of subordinates. Therefore, casts doubt on the official line and may possibly expose it as a lie.
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