Criminology Final

Mass Incarceration

• Systematic imprisonment of whole groups of the population (poor & minority)

• A consequence of the carceral state

Causes:

• “War on Poverty'“ - laws increasingly enacted to criminalize behaviors associated with poverty and homelessness (bans on sleeping in public, loitering, and begging) effectively imprisoning people for their socioeconomic status.

• “War on Drugs” - campaign against illegal drugs, focusing on drug prohibition through stricter laws regarding drug use. This led to mass incarceration and its racial disparities. Black and hispanic communities were getting targeted, but the same rates of drug use was happening within other racial groups and not getting scrutinized

• Racialized tough on crime policies.

• “Tough on Crime” policies: emphasizes strict punishment and harsher sentencing laws.

• Militarization of the police

• Racial capitalism - racial hierarchy and exploitation are fundamental to accumulating wealth, and the criminal justice system (prisons and policing) serve as key mechanism to control, exploit, and profit from marginalized racial groups, especially Black communities.

Carceral State

The mode of governmentality in modern states and their pervasive use of punishment, surveillance, policing, and discipline to regulate individuals and populations.

Consequences:

• physical and mental health crises

• economic instability (job loss)

• family/community disruption

Critical Criminology

Dynamic, interconnected, yet diverse range of theories, perspectives, and methods that share a commitment to providing an alternative approach to the ways in which crime, justice, and the discipline of criminology are examined.

• critical criminologists are united in their emphasis on economic and social conditions, the flows and uses of power, the interplay between crime, race, gender, and/or class, and the concern to seek out marginalized perspectives and investigate multiple truths.

• think of it like this, critical thinking is seeing the world from alternative perspectives, so critical criminology is thinking about crime differently than what has already been presented.

• critical approaches began to focus instead on the processes by which the law is made and by which individuals and groups become criminalized.

Marxist Perspectives

Marxist Criminology connects crime to the broader social, economic, and political structures of capitalist society

• laws and the justice system serve the ruling class (bourgeoisie) to maintain power and protect property, not to ensure true justice for the working class (proletariat)

• crime stems from inherent inequality, exploitation, and competition.

• the state uses its power proactively to maintain the power structures and dynamics of production that sustain the unequal capitalist order.

• the state preserves capitalism at all costs, whether the ruling class wants it or not, because capitalism benefits the state.

Marxist Perspectives

• conflict between the two classes over access to resources

• society is unequal- the ruling class controls most social institutions, including the government and police, and look to maintain their control over access to power and resources

• leaves the working classes disadvantaged in society

• power imbalance is key to how marxists view crime

• ruling class intends to maintain superiority over the lower classes to stop them from having access to their property and capital.

• they use the criminal justice system and the government to create laws that protect their property and criminalize the activities of the ruling class.

• forms of protest are being criminalized; such as causing a disturbance. used to keep people down and make it so that they can not do anything to gain their rights.

• controls the working class through their control to social institutions such as education and media.

• denies them access to higher status positions in society

• portrays negative stereotypes of certain groups

• employment: keeping wages low so they are reliant on work in order to survive.

• Marxist argues that capitalism allows the ruling class to exploit workers by keeping their wages low and their profits high, while also trying to sell them goods that will profit the ruling class further.

• the lower class then turns to crime in order to achieve these goods.

• Bourgeoisie looks to control the Proletariat

• role of law/crime is to control the proletariat and protect ruling class/state interests

Feminist Perspectives

• Double Deviance theory: Women who commit crimes are not conforming to gender norms. Because of this, they may be punished and surveilled more than the typical criminal for not only breaking a law, but also violating social norms and expectations about acceptable female behavior.

• Chivalry thesis: female offenders receive more lenient treatment (less arrest and prosecution) from a male-dominated criminal justice system due to paternalistic attitudes, viewing women as weaker and needing protection, masking their true crime rates.

Critical Race Theory

• Interdisciplinary framework that connects the work of legal scholars, activists, and social scientists who explore how race shapes the dynamics of governmental institutions.

• transformation of unequal societal structures

• racialization is a central pillar of the establishment of the US and the organization of society

• belief that “whiteness” is superior and all other skin colors come below it

• how power dynamics are embedded into the justice system

  • War on Drugs disproportionately impacting black communities

  • racial profiling like stop and frisk disparities (brief detention and pat down if officers have reasonable suspicion a crime is occurring and believing a person is dangerous).

  • mass incarceration

  • police violence

• racism in the US is the common, ordinary experience of most people of color

• legal advances (or setbacks) for people of color serve the dominant group’s interests

• race is not biological but socially constructed to benefit dominant groups

• dominant groups stereotype minority groups to favor their needs and interests.

War on Drugs

Profound unequal and devastating impact on Black communities through disproportionate arrests, harsher sentencing laws, and lifelong collateral consequences that restrict social and economic mobility, intending to keep them oppressed.

Punishment & Control

Formal/informal methods to deter crime, incapacitate offenders, and maintain order with goals like deterrence, rehabilitation and incapacitation.

• deterrence: using punishment’s threat to prevent crime

• incapacitation: physically removing offenders to stop them from offending

• social control: increased police presence, surveillance, mandatory minimum sentences

• carceral state, death penalty

• long, drawn out penalties leads criminals to reoffend. When they exit jail after a long time, they often have nowhere to live and no money, so they continue committing crimes to survive. prison is a school for crime

Crimigration

• criminal law and immigration law intersect, creating severe consequences for non-citizens, turning many minor offenses into grounds for deportation, detention, or inadmissibility, even for lawful permanent residents.

• crimes can trigger deportation or block their paths to legal status, impacting non-citizens lives beyond typical criminal penalties

• disproportionately affects minority immigrant groups, leading to mass deportations and family separations

Green Criminology

Studies environmental crimes and harms. Focuses on injustice to humans, animals, and ecosystems. Examines power, pollution, illegal wildlife trade, waste dumping, and resource exploitation to promote ecological justice and sustainability.

• investigates how corporate and state power influences environmental policy and perpetuates harm

• considers humans, animals, ecosystems and future generations as victims

• advocating for environmental justice for marginalized communities and the planet

• explore community-based conversation, ecological restoration, and sustainable practices.

Abolitionism

Abolishing state and formal mechanisms of crime control, particularly prisons, and the advocation for alternative forms of justice

• prisons maintain and reproduce structural inequality and social division similar to the chattel-colonial system

• prisons are a reformed version of death and torture. therefore abolitionists prefer full removal of prisons rather than remove.

• crime is a social construct to maintain white/western/civilizational cultural dominance; existing definitions and discourses about crime should be dismantled.

Dismantling the skewed system that targets marginalized groups. The justice system rides on the belief that white man is universal and normal, and all other genres of human beings are pathological, under or de-evolved, culturally or genetically defective or inferior.

• prisons are so disgusting and unsanitary that it is not even a safe or healthy environment

• prison models slavery in the sense that it disproportionately targets black people, and is an inhumane torture device

• “In what new skin this old snake will come forth next” (Douglass, 1865)