Class, Power and Crime

Walter B. Miller

The lower class has developed an independent subculture with its own distinctive norms and values that class with those of the mainstream culture, explaining the higher crime rate.

Merton

Strain theory of the working-class who are denied the opportunity to achieve ‘money success' legitimately’

Cohen

Status frustation for the working-class who find themselves at the bottom of the official status hierarchy due to blocked opportunities, leading to delinquent subculture and alternate status heirarchy.

Labelling theory approach

• Reject the view that official statistics give a valid picture of which class commits most crime

• Instead of seeking the causes of W/C criminalisty, they focus onwhy the come to be labelled, emphasising stereotypes.

Criminogenic capitalism

• Crime is the only way the W/C can survive due to poverty

• Crime may be the only way to obtain consumer goods, resulting in utilitarian crime

• Alienation and lack of control leads to frustration and aggression

• ‘Dog eat dog’ system

David Gordon (1976)

Crime is a rational response to the capitalist system and hence it is found in all social classes despite official statistics

William Chambliss (1975)

Laws to protect private property are the cornerstone of the capitalist economy, illustrated through the English law into Britains East African colonies

Laureen Snider (1993)

The capitalist state is reluctant to pass laws that regulate the activities of the businesses or threaten their profitability.

Selective enforcement

The police and courts tend to ignore the crimes of the powerful whilst criminalising the W/C and powerless groups.

Frank Pearce (1976)

Laws that are occasionally passed appearing to only benefit the W/C also benefit the ruling class by creating a false class consciousness among the workers. Selective enforcement encourages W/C to blame the criminals rather than capitalism for their problems.

Evaluation of Marxism

• Ignores the relationship between crime and non-class inequalities

• Deterministic and over-predicts W/C crime

• Not all capitalist societies have high crime rates

• Ignored intra-class crimes

Taylor et al (Neo-marxism)

Takes a voluntaristic view - the idea of free will and crime is a meaningful actions and a conscious choice with a political motive.

A fully social theory of deviance (Taylor et al Neo-marxism)

1. The wider origins of the deviant act

2. The immediate origins of the deviant act

3. The meaning of the act itself

4. The immediate origins of the social reaction

5. The wider origins of the social reaction

6. The effects of labelling

Feminist criticism of critical criminology

Gender Blind, focusing on male criminality at the expense of female criminality

Left realist criticism of critical criminology

Romantises working-class criminals as ‘Robin Hoods’ who are fighting capitalism by redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor but in reality these criminals prey on the poor

Burke (2005)

Critical criminology is both too general to explain crime and too idealistic to be useful in tackling crime

Reiman and Leighton (2012)

‘The Rich get richer and the Poor get Prison’ book shows that the more likely a crime is to be committed by higher-class people, the less likely it is to be treated as an offence.

Edwin Sutherland (1949)

‘White collar crime’ - a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation

Occupational Crime

Crime commiited by employees for their own personal gain, often against their organisation of work

Corporate crime

Crime committed by employees for their organisation in pursuit of it’s goals

Pearce and Tombs (2003)

Define corporate crime as any illegal act or omission that is the result of deliberate decisions or culpable negligence by a legitimate business organisation, intended to benefit the business