Criminology SG Ch1to4

Criminology
LLB
BSc Accounting with Law/Law with Accounting
BSc Management with Law/Law with Management
2001 2660025, 2770303
W.J. Morrison
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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.
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Published by: University of London Press
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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
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university cannot be held responsible for any omissions or errors.
i
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
Durkheim`s 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
Commentary........................................................................................................33
Chapter 4: Individual and biological perspectives ........................................51
A. Individual Constitutional Factors (Biological theories)................................51
Commentary........................................................................................................51
B. Mental Factors and Crime..............................................................................54
Commentary........................................................................................................54
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Criminology
Chapter 5: Introduction to sociological perspectives ....................................57
Commentary........................................................................................................57
Further reading....................................................................................................59
Drift theory..........................................................................................................62
Activity-related reading ......................................................................................63
Chapter 6: Social ecology: crime and the city ................................................69
Commentary........................................................................................................70
Changing conceptions of the city ......................................................................80
Current American concerns: the urban underclass and broken windows` ......82
Chapter 7: Labelling otherwise known as symbolic, or social
interactionism or social reaction theory ..........................................................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
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
Commentary........................................................................................................99
Popular explanations for differential involvement in crime............................101
The theory of one male theorist........................................................................102
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Contents
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
Chapter 11: Policing ........................................................................................131
Reading..............................................................................................................131
Issues ................................................................................................................131
Learning objectives ..........................................................................................131
Commentary......................................................................................................132
Criminology
iv
Notes
1
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 State`s
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 State`s 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 State`s
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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Criminology
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 Vold's 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 Master`s 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].
Agood account of the development of (mainly) British criminology, putting it in
appropriate academic and social contexts. Amassive collection of major review
articles on most areas of criminology that is certainly valuable for reference is:
3
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 refects 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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Criminology
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 West`s dedication to the notion
of progress, prosperity and control over nature. The existence of so much crime in
Western societies shows the underside of modernity`s 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
Currie`s 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.
5
The diversity of criminology
Criminology is diverse, historically growing as a fuctuating 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. Alot 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 briefy 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 self-
conscious study of a history. Ahistory 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
6
Criminology
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 socio-
historical 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
7
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 infuence 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 discipline`s 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 State`s 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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Criminology
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 mankind`s ability
to assimilate its consequences and link its meanings (need one mention the present
nuclear capability? or the vast increase in the world`s 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 one`s 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 didn`t
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 world`s 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. London`s 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.
9
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 society`s 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 people`s 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 Bacon`s 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 man`s
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.
10
Criminology
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 will-little 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.
11
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?
12
Criminology
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 circumstances.which may have an infuence 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 crime.To 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 crime.The 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 refect 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
13
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
people`s lives, and this social reality must be the primary material of analysis.`
(Paul Rock, Deviant Behaviour, pp. 19-20).
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
14
Criminology
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. Baffed by the defect`s 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, fared 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 deviant`s 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 faw. 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
15
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 one`s 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 woman`s 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 man`s virtue is
another man`s 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 conficts 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 mono-
dimensional 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)
Criminology
16
Notes
17
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) pp1-15.
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 Nature`s 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.16-34 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.
18
Criminology
Walker, M. 'Self-reported crime studies and the British Crime Survey` Howard
Journal, 22: 168-176. 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 refection 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 refect 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, Petty`s hope that
his 'Numbers, Weights, or Measures would make 'intellectual arguments about the
nature of government superfuous, had become a cardinal part of the ideas of the
political economists.`
Bentham`s 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,
19
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 refection 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 fow 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`.
20
Criminology
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 statistics-if 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 Atkinson`s 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
21
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.
Akey 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 inficted 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?
22
Criminology
One of the purposes of victim surveys is to identify what is commonly called the
dark gure` of crime-offences 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 non-
domestic 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 offences-for 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 socio-
economic 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,
23
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`.
24
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 city`s 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 UCLAand 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. Aformer 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.
25
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 department`s 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 street-
level 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.
It`s 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 city`s 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 York`s 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
26
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
nation`s rising rates of incarceration, put it: This Broken Window theory can quickly
deteriorate into the Broken Head theory. And don`t kid yourself that that`s not what`s
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 NYPD`s 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.
There`s 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. Astory in The American Lawyer attributes much of the
reduction in New York City`s 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.
27
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.
28
Criminology
Question
What can the study of statistics and surveys teach us about crime`?
Answer
In order to provide an answer to the above statement the writer`s 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 refecting 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 infuential in the resource and strategic planning of the home
ofce and police forces`.
2
The latest ofcial gures (comparable to the BCS) indicate that the total number of
notiable offences`
3
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
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.
2
(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.
4
`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.
6
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).
7
(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 òfcial picture' of crime might
look signicantly different.
29
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
street`.
13
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
refect 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 crime
16
. 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 BCS-
generated 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
8
From 1 April 1998, the coverage of
notiable offences has been expanded to
include all indictable offences, all triable-
either-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 police's `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
Found at http://www.homeofce.gov.org
10
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. 43-45).
12
(Maguire et all, 1998, p.155).
13
I bid.
14
(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
15
Davies et al, (1995 at p.74). See also
Dingwall and Harding's `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).
30
Criminology
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 today`s climate. The emphasis upon the petty nature of most law-breaking was
designed to defect a possible moral panic in reaction to the huge amount of new`
crime revealed by the survey, but it also refected 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 fuctuations
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
18
(Mayhew et al, 1993, pp. 149-51). 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 69-75.
19
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
Ibid at p. 17.
21
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. 17-25.
22
(Davies et al, 1995, p.77).
23
BSS, 1998, at pp. 22-26.
24
(Hough and Mayhew, 1983, p.33).
25
BCS, 1998, at p.19.
26
(Maguire, 1997, p.168).
27
(Muncie & McLaughlin, 1996, p.21).
This image was strengthened in the rst
BCS report by the calculation of the
àverage 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 Blair's
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 òfcial' statistical reform
(as a result of a white paper on national
statistics) will still be subject `to charges
of political manipulation'.
31
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 mystication`
32
continually accepted by society through the use of
criminal statistics and victimisation surveys.
Student`s bibliography
Ashworth, Andrew (1994), The Criminal Process - An Evaluative Study, (Oxford:
Clarendon Press), pp.125-155.
Bottomley, K. & Coleman, C. (1981), Understanding Crime Rates, (Farnborough:
Gower)
Box, Stephen (1983), Power, Crime and Mystication, (London: Routledge),
pp.1-15.
Coleman, Clive, Moynihan, Jenny (1996), Understanding Crime Data, (Buckingham:
Open University Press), pp.1-90, 132-143.
Croall, H. (1998), Crime and Society in Britain, (London: Longman), pp.15-39.
Davies, Croall & Tyrer (1995), Criminal Justice: An Introduction to the Criminal
Justice System in England and Wales (London: Longman), pp.34-78.
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.2-15, 38-48, 98-115.
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.360-365
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.135-179
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.1-42.
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.1-31
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.1-15.
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
32
Box (1983).
Criminology
32
Notes
33
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`.
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 infuence
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.
34
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 infuences 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 man`s 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 Foucault`s 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
infuence of positivism, conversely, is to lower the attention given to State power.
35
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
36
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 today`s 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 be.an act of violence of one or many
against a private citizen, it must be.public, 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 Beccaria`s 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.
Acareful 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 Beccaria`s 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
37
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 approach-his 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 man`s 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: 381-382). He also suggested how capital
punishments might nonetheless be used to maximum effect:
A scaffold painted black, the livery of grief-the ofcers of justice dressed in
crepe-the executioner covered with a mask, which would serve at once to
augment the terror of his appearance, and to shield him from ill-founded
indignation-emblems 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 tragedies.Whilst all the actors in this terrible drama might move in
solemn procession-serious and religious music preparing the hearts of the
spectators for the important lesson they were about to receive.The 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: 383-384).
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 Foucault`s 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 unless.he 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
38
Criminology
nished. Foucault has used Bentham`s 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 Bentham`s 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 bills.indicating 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 1825-30 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 (1796-1874) 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
39
rather than a concentrated long-standing effort. For Quetelet scientic evidence
resulted from, and was a refection 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
Disraeli`s 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:
40
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 criminal.as inevitably
as water turns into steam at boiling point.` (1845: 144-5)
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 author`s 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 (1812-1887) 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
41
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 fows both from fear and self-interest. It is a reaction to the
image of what this failure of socialisation could accomplish but it also refects 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 self-
motivation. 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 pestilence.a stream of vice and disease.a
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
42
Criminology
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 (1835-1909), 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 1859-1863 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 faming 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,
43
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 fesh, 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 L'Uomo 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 infuence of social factors and he speculated somewhat as to the interaction of
genetic and environmental infuences (to some extent a precursor to modern socio-
biological 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.
Lombroso`s work was subjected to intensive scrutiny by Charles Goring who
published The English Convict in 1913, only four years after Lombroso`s 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 Lombroso`s 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 (1852-1934) 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 infiction 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 Lombroso`s
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.
44
Criminology
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, Garofalo`s 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 (1856-1929) 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.
Ferri`s 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 Ferri`s 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 materialism.according to which the economic
conditions.determine.both 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)
45
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 State`s 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 infuences 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?
46
Criminology
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
Beccaria`s 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`
47
(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 faw in classicism which insisted that punishment was a means to deter future
offenders, rather than re-educate those engaged already in offending.
When Beccaria`s 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 punishment.Nevertheless, 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)
48
Criminology
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 one`s own and other people`s 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 hasn`t 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 people`s 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 America`s 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 Murray`s serious lack of understanding that welfare policies, and social
contracts, aren`t necessarily strictly utilitarian - many people just don`t 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 fimsiness
of Mr Murray`s 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 Murray`s 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
49
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 confated 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
infuence elected ofcials and public policy. Hence, despite the data which suggests
that juvenile detention just consolidates criminal behaviour, or that imprisonment
doesn`t 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.
50
Criminology
Student`s 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) OxIord: Open University Press).
Muncie, J. and McLaughlin, E. (1996), The Problem of Crime, (London: Sage),
pp.1-42
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.1-31
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.1-15
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
51
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`.
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
52
Criminology
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 Lombroso`s 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 infuences 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 State`s denition of crime as a violation of law
and of the criminal as someone arrested, convicted, and sentenced for a
crime.Acceptance of the State`s denition of crime, science`s 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)
53
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. Herrnstein`s 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,
refect 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 oI how could a biological approach explain a social
construction such as crime commission (addressed in Morrison, Theoretical
Criminology), most critics have Iocused on the methodological problems in the
history oI these studies. Walters and White are representative in their criticism:
the large number of methodological faws 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
54
Criminology
Sample questions
1. The whole idea of a biological or constitutional cause for crime is fundamentally
fawed.`
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 crime.Criminology 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,
55
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.
Sutherland`s 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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