Module 11 Summit: Conflict, Critical, and Labelling Theories

Class and Assessment Reminders

Focus: Students respond to one of four crime/justice policy proposals.
Proposals: Addressing abolition of youth detention centers, mandatory EM of DVO breaches, harm minimization at schoolies, and digital consent for sexual activity.
Student Deliverables:
- Initial reaction to the proposal.
- Considered response using empirical research.
- Analysis of the problem the policy addresses.
- Main points of the proposed solution.
- Perspectives of relevant stakeholders.
- Recommendations for amending or adopting the proposed policy.
- Reflections on how and why their initial reaction changed.
Assessment 3 information:
- Information Session: 9:00 a.m., Monday, 20 May via Collaborate.
- Worth 40% of final grade.
- Completed via Word template with preformatted text fields.
- Submitted and marked via Turnitin.
- Total word count: 1500 words.
- Reaction: 250 words.
- Response: 1000 words across 4 prompts.
- Reflection: 250 words.
- Due the end of Week 12: Sunday, 2 June at 11:59 p.m. AEST.

Historical Context: 1960s – 1970s: Era of great social change including civil rights movements, criminalisation of ‘victimless’ crimes and widespread government corruption.
Theoretical Tradition:
- Less concerned about individual criminal behaviour.
- Focus on how something gets categorised as criminal, by whom, and for what purposes.
- Law as a product of “the relative power of groups determined to use the criminal law to advance their own special interests or to impose their moral preferences on others”.
- Many forms of conflict theory exist.
Foundational Concepts:
- Conflict is a fact of life; society is characterized by conflict.
- Resources are scarce, generating conflict as groups attempt to control them.
- Control of resources creates power, used to maintain and expand the resource base of the dominant group at the expense of others.
- Dominant groups use societal mechanisms to maintain dominance.
- Law is a societal mechanism providing the group in power with control over less powerful groups.
- Laws express the values and interests of the dominant group and restrict behavior common to less powerful groups.
- Law application focuses on the behavior of less powerful groups, disproportionately ‘criminalising’ their members.
- Conditions under the capitalist political economy are the primary cause of political and economic actions that generate crime (Marxist criminology).

Two Economic Classes:
- Bourgeoisie (ruling class): Owns the means of production.
- Proletariat (working class): Experiences false consciousness and class consciousness.
Key Tenets:
- The law is a tool of the ruling class.
- Crime is the product of class struggle.
- Crime is understood through relationships to the mode of production.
Problem Populations:
- The poor stealing from the rich.
- Those who refuse to work.
- Those who retreat to drugs.
- Those who refuse schooling or do not believe in the benefits of family life.
- Those who actively propose a non-capitalist society.

Theoretical Tradition:
- Similar to conflict theories but focuses on features of ‘powerless’ groups.
- Considers factors like gender, race and ethnicity, gender identity and sexual orientation, ability and differences, and age.
- Crime is a consequence of social inequality.

State and territory incarceration rates per 100,000 adults vary significantly between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
The Senate has voted to reject critical race theory from the national curriculum.
Gender pay gap statistics: A man earns 1 while a woman earns 0.78, reflecting a 21.7% gender pay gap.
Australian attitudes towards gender equality: Rejectors (17%), Trailblazers (19%), Indifferent (6%), Moderate (23%), Conflicted (12%), Hopeful (24%).

Aims: To sensitize us to the ‘invisibility’ of women as offenders, victims, CJS practitioners and policymakers, and scholars.
Key Points:
- Most criminology is ‘androcentric’.
- Females have unique pathways into and out of offending / victimisation.
- Importance of intersectionality.

Theoretical Tradition:
- Emphasis is placed on the reaction to deviant behavior.
- Foundations in symbolic interactionism.
- Symbolic interaction principles.
- "Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things."
- "The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with others and the society."
- "The meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he/she encounters."
The Labelling Process:
- Primary deviance.
- Societal reaction.
- Label application.
- Internalisation.
- Self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Secondary deviance.
- Reinforced through restricted opportunities, courtesy stigma and social networks, and employability issues.
Reintegrative Shaming:
- Disintegrative shaming stigmatises the person and may lead to secondary deviance.
- Reintegrative shaming separates the act from the person, focusing on forgiveness and reintegration.

Social Policies:
- Limiting / rectifying inequality.
- Addressing systemic racism and sexism.
- Reducing the wealth gap.
- Closing the ‘school to prison pipeline’.
- Therapeutic (rather than punitive) responses to at-risk kids.
- Public criminology and ‘academic activism’.
Criminal Justice Policies:
- Redefinition of crime to include harm inflicted on society.
- Reallocation of criminalisation away from ‘street crimes’ to corporate crimes.
- Diversion.
- Decriminalisation.
- Records sealed / expunged.
- Restorative justice practices.
- Deinstitutionalisation and reintegration opportunities.