Chapter 8: Social Conflict, Critical Criminology, and Restorative Justice

Critical Criminologists

Researchers who view crime as a function of the capitalist mode of production and not the social conflict that might occur in any society system regardless of its economic system.

Critical Criminology

The view that capitalism produces the economic competitiveness that increases conflict, destabilizes social institutions, and pushes the have-nots to commit crime.

Communist Manifesto

In this document, Marx focused his attention on the economic conditions perpetuated by the capitalist system. He states that its development had turned workers into a dehumanized mass, living at the mercy of their employers.

Productive Forces

Technology, energy sources, and material resources.

Productive Relations

The relationships that exists among the people producing goods and services.

Capitalist Bourgeoisie

The owners of the means of production.

Proletariat

A term used by Marx to refer to the working class members of society who produce goods and services but who do not own the means of production.

Lumpen Proletariat

The fringe members at the bottom of society who produce nothing and live, parasitically, off the work of others.

Dialectic Method

For every idea, or thesis, there exists and opposing argument, or anithesis,

Thesis

In the philosophy of Hegal, and original idea or thought.

Antithesis

An opposing argument

Synthesis

A merger of two opposing ideas.

Supranational Crime

War crimes, crimes against humanity, and gross violations of human rights.

Surplus Value

The Marxist view that the laboring classes produce wealth that far exceeds their wages and goes to the capitalist class as profits.

Marginalization

Displacement of workers, pushing them outside the economic and social mainstream.

Dropout Factories

High schools in which 60 percent of the students do not finish high school.

Globalization

The process of creating transnational markets, politics, and legal systems in an effort to form and sustain a global economy.