CONTROL, PUNISHMENT + VICTIMS

Crime control - Situational crime prevention - Clarke

‘A pre-emptive approach that relies on simply reducing the opportunities for crime’. 3 features: Directed at specific crimes, involve altering the immediate env of crime, aim at increasing the effort/risks of comm crime and reducing the rewards. E.g target hardening - CCTV in shops(shoplifters) or locked windows(burglars). So takes a rational choice theory of crime, that criminals weigh up costs/benefits before committing.

Crime control - Displacement

Situational crime prevention doesn’t reduce crime, just displaces. Will respond to target hardening by moving to where targets are softer, chaiken - crackdown on subway robberies displaced them to the streets above. Spatial - moving somewhere else, temporal - diff time, target - diff victim, tactical - diff method, functional - diff types of crime.

Crime control - Env crime prevention: Wilson + Kelling

From ‘Broken windows’ article, where broken windows stands for all signs of disorder and lack of concern for others that are found in some neighbourhoods e.g noise, graffiti, broken windows. These aren’t attractive for police, as they focus on the ‘bigger’ crimes, so the police aren’t present and the community feel powerless, so the ones that can move out do, and it becomes a magnet for deviants. Twofold strategy of improvement - env improvement strategy(repair things, remove things. And police must adopt a zero tolerance policy.

Crime control - Env crime prevention: Wilson + Kelling (Evidence)

E.g New York, ‘Clean Car Programme’ instituted on subway where cars were taken out of service immediately if they had graffiti, and returned once clean. Stops ppl committing crime. H:NYPD also had 7000 extra officers, and could be other factors, such as a general decline.

Crime control - Social and community crime prevention

Place emphasis on potential offender and their social context. These remove the conditions that predispose indiv to crime in the first place. Tackle root causes, such as poverty. Perry pre-school project - for disadvantaged black children exp group of 3-4 yr olds were offered a 2 year enrichment project, in a longitudinal study compared to a control group without the programme, by age 40 they had significantly fewer lifetime arrests for crime, and they graduated and were in employment.

Surveillance

The monitoring of public behav for the purposes of population or crime control.

Surveillance - Foucault: The birth of the prison

Sovereign power - Before 19th century, when monarch had absolute power over people and their bodies, control exerted by inflicting visible punishment on the body. Disciplinary power - from 19th century, governs the mind aswell as the body, through surveillance. Disciplinary power replaced soveriegn because surveillance more efficient way of controlling ppl. The panopticon - illustrates disciplinary power with this, prisoner cells visible to guards from watchtower, but prisoners can’t see guards and know they may be watched. So they have to behave well due to self surveillance, leading to self-discipline, which rehabilitates them. This also applies to schools, factories, and the family. H: overestimates power of control its self and how that changes behav.

Surveillance - Synoptic surveillance

Media also plays a role in the ability to see people. Late modernity, know centralised surveillance that is the synopticon - where everybody watches everybody. Thompson - politicians fear media’s surveillance as it may uncover damaging info about them, acting as a form of social control. And, public monitor eachother with cameras such as one on bikers helmets, or dash cams, and ring doorbells. So, ppl dont commit crime this way. H: McCahill - police have power to confiscate cameras, there’s ways around it.

Surveillance - Serveillant assemblages

Haggerty + Erickson - surveillance technologies now involve the manipulation of virtual objects(digital data) in cyberspace rather than physical bodies in the physical space. Now an important trend of towards combining different technologies, e.g cctv footage being analysed with facial recognition software. These are surveillant assemblages. So, moving towards a world in which data from different techs can be combined to create a sort of ‘data double’ of the indiv.

Surveillance - Actuarial justice and risk management

Feeley + Simon - a new ‘tech of power’ is emerging throughought justice system. Differs from Foucaults disciplinary power in 3 ways: focuses on groups rather than indiv, not interested in rehabbing offenders, but preventing them from offending, also uses calculations of risk, deriving from insurance industry which calculates statistical risk of events happening to particular groups. They apply this idea to surveillance and crime control, e.g airport security screening checks are based on known offender ‘risk factors’, using info about passengers such as religion, can be profiled and given a risk score, anyone above a score is stopped, questioned etc. This predicts and prevents future offending. H:can lead to wrong doing of marginalised groups, bc of SFP and labelling.

Surveillance - labelling

Ditton et al - in one major city centre CCTV system, cameras were capable of zooming in on vehicle tax discs from hundreds of metres away to see whether the tax had expired. But, system managers did not think this was a suitable use of the technology and so the offences of the motorists were left unchecked. But, CCTV operators make discriminatory judgements about who among the thousands of ‘suspects’ they should focus on, e.g Norris + Armstrong - ppl focus on a disproportionate amount of young black males. These are based on typifications which leads to a SFP of some groups.

Punishment - Reduction

One justification for punishment is that it prevents crime. Deterrence - Punishing the indiv discourages them from future offending. ‘Making them an example’ also deters the public. Rehab - the idea that punishment an be used to reform or change offenders so they no longer offend, this includes providing education and training for prisoners so they are able to ‘earn an honest living’ on release, and AM courses. Incapacitation - the use of punishment to remove the offenders capacity to offend again. E.g imprisonment, execution, the cutting of hands. This is an instrumental one - crime reduction

Punishment - Retribution

‘Paying back’, a justification for punishing crimes that have already been committed, rather than preventing future crimes. Based on the idea that offenders deserve to be punished, and that society is entitled to take its revenge on the offender for having breached its moral code. This is expressive - expressing societies outrage.

Functionalist perspective on punishment - Durkheim : two types of justice

Upholds social solidarity. Retributive justice - In traditional society, little specialisation, and solidarity based on similarities between indiv, producing a strong collective conscience, when offended, they want to repress the wrongdoer. So, punishment is severe and cruel, and its motivation is purely expressive. Restitutive justice - Modern society, extensive specialisation, solidarity based on interdependence between indiv, crime damages this, so necessary to rep are, e.g through compensation. This aims to make restitution, restore things to how they were before offence,is instrumental and expressive. H:restitutive used more than retributive in traditional societies, in blood feuds, often settled by compensation rather than execution.

Marxism - capitalism and punishment

Punishment maintains existing social order. As part of the RSA, defends ruling-class property. Thompson - in 18th century punishments such as hanging were part of a ‘rule of terror’ by the aristocracy over the poor. This reflects the economic base of society, Melossi + Pavarini - capitalism puts a price on workers time, so they ‘do time’ to pay for their crimes and the prison and capitalist factory both have a similar strict disciplinary style, involving subordination and loss of liberty. Prisons were created for punishment after the 18th century, as part of enlightenment project to punish people, showing its a creation of capitalist society.

The era of mass incarceration - Garland

USA, and to a lesser extent is moving to this, for most of last century, American prison population was stable at 1000-120 per 100,000, in 1972, about 200,000 inmates in state and federal prisons, but from 1970s, numbers rise rapidly, now 1.5 mil prisoners, in prisons. Black Americans are only 13 % of population, but 37 % of prison pop. This is due to the growing politicisation of crime control, its now a ‘tough on crime’ approach instead of reintegrating ppl.

The Victims of crime

Those who have suffered any type of harm, economic loss, and impairment of their basic rights, through acts or omissions that violate the laws of the state. Christie - ‘victim’ is socially constructed, the stereotype of the ‘ideal victim’ favoured by the media, e.g a helpless old woman.

Positivist victimology

Miners - 3 features: aims to identify the factors that produce patterns in victimisation - esp those that make indiv or groups more likely to be victims, focuses on interpersonal crimes of violence, aims to identify victims who have contributed to their own victimisation. Early positivist focused on victim proneness - sought to identify the social and psychological characteristics of victims that make them different from and more vulnerable than non victims. E.g elderly. So victims ‘invite’ victimisation by being the kinda person they are, e.g displaying their wealth (lifestyle factors).

Pos victimology eval

Ignores wider structural factors that lead to victimisation, such as poverty and patriarchy (link to conflict approaches?)

Critical victimology

Based on conflict theory. Structural factors - patriarchy/poverty,powerless groups at more risk. States power to apply/deny label of victim - Victim a social construct, can apply it to some and not to others, e.g when police decide not to press charges against a man beating his wife, she is denied being a victim. Tombs + Whyte - ‘safety crimes’ at work where employers violations of law lead to death/injury, usually said that they are ‘accident prone’, and in some rape cases, people are blamed. The ideological function of this is that it hides the crimes of the powerful, and denies power to the less powerful.

Critical victimology eval

Disregards role victims play in victimisation e.g not making their homes secure.

Patterns of victimisation

Poverty groups. Younger people/ Minority ethnic groups, males, there’s loads of stats but I cba to put them u can learn from textbook if u want but a bitch doesn’t care.

Impact of victimisation

Physical/emotional - sleeplessness, helplessness etc. Can also have ‘indirect’ victims such as friends and witnesses. And hate crimes against minorities create waves of harm to the group. And makes people scared to become a victim.