Crim - Reading

Reading 1:

What is Crime and Who is the Criminal?

Introduction

• Debate among criminologists on the definition of crime and its application to certain behaviors and demographics.

• Crime is often poorly defined, causing issues in criminological research.

  • tied to state’s power

  • state: selective with what is punishable. often turns a blind eye to other behaviours which are more social/environmental harm

• Association of crime with harmful behavior leading to penalties (fines, imprisonment, etc.).

• Popular examples include murder, robbery, drug trafficking, and organized crime. (as shown by media) - clearly harmful

• Public reaction to crime depends on area (urban or rural), culture, and history

Disconnect Between Harm and Crime

• Some harmful behaviors are not classified as crimes; powerful individuals/groups often escape accountability.

• Example: Copying software is illegal but hard to prosecute, while politicians' negligence in crises (oil spills) may not be categorized as crimes.

• Understanding the institutional relationships is critical to explain crime classification perceptions.

Social Processes Impacting Crime Definition

• The role of the criminal justice system in defining crime and how various social factors influence drastic variations in definitions and perceptions across communities.

• Examples:

  • Indigenous communities face higher crime victimization rates.

  • Police-community mistrust complicates reporting and response.

Divisions in Criminology

• Mainstream criminology often follows state-defined metrics, overlooking social forces behind crime.

• Critical criminology explores alternatives to conventional definitions, including human rights implications.

Legal Definitions

• Criminal Law's Role: Defines behaviors imposing moral blame, warranting investigation and punishment.

• Crimes Act and Criminal Code in Australia outline defined criminal behaviors such as:

  • Offences against the state (e.g., treason).

  • Violence-related offenses (e.g., assault, manslaughter).

  • Theft and fraud.

• Legal definitions can be inconsistent and are influenced by variable enforcement practices.

  • Example: Behavior that is merely socially normative might still face legal ramifications depending on broader social contexts.

• Criminal Law sets limits on police + justice agencies to balance their investigative powers against rights of protected but accused individual

• due to wider range of illegal behaviours - harder for people to reintergrate back into society - results in doubt of the efficient use of the law, state’s policing, and justice resources

Pre-crime and Over-criminalization

• Pre-crime Concept: Identifying signs of potential criminality to prevent future crimes, typically justified by terrorism and safety arguments.

• should criminal law be applied to enhance investigations, limit extent of lethal force by police?

• multiple arrests within the same Indigenous community can be more destabilising than the harm of the original crime

  • due to stigmatised effects of criminal punishment

  • social processes linked to criminal enforcement + punishment explain Indigenous over-representation

    • results in increased public visibility → easier for police to detect → spiral effect of specifically targeting indigenous people (population profiling)

    • showcases systematic and political marginalisation of Indigenous people

• Divisionary strategies: recognise adults and young people involved in ‘pre-crime’ or minor one off offences

  • better served a reintegrative strategy over formal criminal punishment

  • prevents continuance of behaviour once offender is released

Human Rights Definitions

• minimum standards directed at governments + protect citizens

  • not enforceable in the same way as the law

  • criminal law and its enforcement can still violate international human rights law

    • Safety of the person: equal treatment + freedom

      • no torture, cruelty, slavery, racial/religious/political persecution

    • Individual freedom: freedom of opinion/expression/thought/religious belief/peaceful protest

    • Fairness: against arbitrary arrest, detention or exile- right to fair public hearing and presumption of innocence

    • peaceful enjoyment of property and privacy

• Human rights laws incorporated into Australian law - embedded into criminal procedure

Reading 2:

Introduction:

• explanations/theories for crimes are formed with different (even almost contradictory) perspectives

• most draw on disciplines (eg. medicine, psychology, law, politics, history, economics, sociology)

  • how these are viewed + thought about depend on time and social context

• origin of criminology - traced to several thinkers from Enlightenment era

  • questioned status quo

  • theorised best ways to govern people + unruly desires

  • due to them being earlier understandings:

    • based off of mystical + supernatural + religious

    • eg. christians believed crime as manifestation of evil + product of the flawed nature of human kind

Explaining crime: some fundamental debates:

• explaining deviancy rests on core philosophical beliefs about drivers of behaviour:

  • free will vs determinism

  • nature vs nurture

  • normal vs pathological

  • driving vs restraining forces

  • person vs situation

Classicism:

• classical school of criminology sees crime as:

  • free will (rational choice theory)

  • dependant on person’s rational pursuit of pleasure + avoidance of pain (pleasure pain principle)

  • argues law should be proportionate + predictable rather than severe + arbitrary

• Hobbes idea: government + law needed to organise society + people’s lives

  • with citizenship = unspoken contract with power - certain freedoms given up for protection against violence - (social contract theory)

  • mutual exchange - gave state power and responsibility to protect and regulate society

• Beccaria: On crimes and punishment - idea

  • state power must be limited for the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people

  • ‘utilitarianism’: judges morality of decisions based on the consequences

• Classical thinking remains evident in western democracies and legal procedures

  • led to proportionate sentencing + notion of deterrence

  • Notion of deterrence:

    • crime can be deterred through certainty of detection

    • threat of punishment + bad consequences prevent + discourage crime

  • embed thought that humans are rational, capable of making reasonable choices, want to maximise pleasure + minimise pain

• Doesn’t consider how situations and conditions influence deviance - assumes everyone’s equal

Positivism:

• pattern of taking a rational scientific approach to understanding the world

  • challenging old ways of using spiritual and religious beliefs to understand human behaviour

  • something we can observe and measure

  • someone is biologically / psychologically predisposed to committing crime

biological positivism:

• phrenology: contours of a person’s head (eg. bumps, or lumps_ reflect brain abnormalities + used to identify certain traits (eg. dishonesty, criminality)

  • no longer relevant

  • founded by Gall

• Lombroso: criminals were biological throwbacks

  • crime was NOT a result of poor choices

  • crime = innate instinct of under-evolved humans

  • used distinguishing features:

    • overly large/small skull, asymmetrical face, tattoos

    • being female made them less evolved than male criminals

  • NOT random or representative - racist, sexist, misinformed

• search for the ‘criminal gene’ is still alive:

  • looking into brain chemistry - hormones - chromosomal abnormalities - diet - brain injury

• IF criminality is from - biological flaws - inheritance - biological trait

  • implications for prevention but also ethical considerations are huge

• focuses on treating people medically - no measure of punishment should be able to deter criminal actions (contradictory to classical thinking)

• Fitter Families:

  • human breeding = farm breeding

  • high quality + high quality = HIGHER quality

    • like the rich marrying the rich to make them more rich

• Nazi Germany: Aryan race

Psychological positivism:

• focussed on personality + development + cognitive +/ psychosocial changes

  • psychological traumas = progeniters (leads to) criminal conduct

• Sigmund Freud: criminal behaviour = response to underlying mental conflicts

  • individuals environment = secondary influence

    • shapes desires + reactions to desires

• Hans Eyseneck: person’s propensity (tendency) to be conditioned = key to a person’s likeliness of committing crime

  • eg. extraversion, neuroticism, psychopathy

  • links to biological characteristics

Sociological criminology: Structures, processes and reactions

• explanations: focus on forces outside of an individual’s direct control - and how they may be the main driver of crime

• notion of crime = intrinsically fluid + linked to social reaction and control

  • because crime is not the same across time and place

• shift focus from individual —> situation + social forces

• crime is a result of:

  • social structures

    • how society is set up + how it functions

  • Social processes:

    • how people interact + what they experience

  • Social reactions:

    • how people react + respond to social realities

Social structures: From Durkheim to strain theory

• Durkheim: first to focus directly on deviance + to see it a consequence of certain social facts

  • saw crime as central to function of society

    • beneficial in helping make behavioural boundaries - setting norms and expectations

    • expression of human desire to push boundaries

  • understanding of society: rests on common collective consciousness

    • linked to Hobbes: ‘social contract’ idea

    • common consciousness: represents healthy societies have shared set of values in which everyone is equally invested

      • social glue - helps maintain cohesion

      • crime reinforces because it represents unacceptable behaviour - provides reference for what is right and wrong

  • major social changes: mechanical —> organic societies

    • resulted in subtle + important changes in nature of collective conscience and its reinforced

    • Mechanical societies

      • social solidarity was straightforward - people preformed the same tasks as each other + held same beliefs

      • Life was predictable - one’s place in the world is predetermined + inherited

    • Organic societies:

      • social solidarity founded on individual interdependence

      • labour increased the need for interdependence between provision of essential good s and services

      • common consciousness defined by role difference, regulation, reinforcement = more delicate and complex

      • needs law and custom to regulate difference - not readily achieved in societies undergoing great social change

    • modernity: collective conscience weakens = anomie

      • conditions that arise when society in flux + standards unclear/poorly established

        • allows easy deviance

    • Modern understandings: societies represent a blend of mechanical and organic

The Chicago School

• Merton:

  • crime = largely function of individuals finding ways to adapt to anomie

    • anomie result from opportunities to attain goals being restricted

      • goals: good education, securing meaningful employment, homeownership, raising a family in comfortable circumstances

    • strain of blocked opportunities - results in a series of adaptations —> lead to crime

      • mode of adaptation: result from accepted/rejected dominant cultural goals + values + commonly accepted means to achieve

    • adaptations = individuals who saw crime as useful means to achieve goals - through ‘innovation’ + ‘rebellion’

    • some crime is ‘normal’ in response to pathological situation

  • If there was equal opportunity + less emphasis on material success —> less deviance and crime

Crime as a social process:

• efforts took another shift as people began to examine social processes + reactions over just social structure

• Edwin Sutherland: differential association theory

  • crime was a learned behaviour - culturally transmitted through interactions

  • whether someone became a criminal depends on people association and how they shaped their view of the world (especially what laws are favourable or not)

  • Crime more than just values

  • First to examine white-collar crime

• Control theories: the way societal norms work to control individual choices

  • returns to classical assumptions

• Travis Hirschi: social bond theory

  • what stops people from becoming deviant?

    • criminality

    • attachment

    • commitment

  • sees crime as a lack of self-control - due to inadequate social bonds (poor parenting, and weak familial bonds)

  • considering social conditioning and learning in the process of developing self-regulating behaviours

Crime as a social reaction: From conflict theory to critical criminology

• Conflict theories: examine the role of power in labelling certain behaviours as criminal - interests of preserving status quo

  • society not based on moral consensus but rather conflict + lack of consensus

    • meant that some people had power in ways others couldn’t access

    • criminalisation = product of unequal dynamic

  • more nuanced + complex approach - opposed to conservative legacies of classical thinking + ‘rational choice’

• Bonger: identify class struggles as a driver of crime - lower class routinely subjected to criminal law

• Tannenbaum: examined ‘dramatisation of evil’ + ‘Labelling theory’

  • young people doing delinquent activity attracted a ‘tag’ which labelled them —> affects identity - linked to how people treat them

  • increasing likelihood of reoffending and actively producing crime

  • power of applying lables - how groups powerfully influence individual behaviour

• shifting focus of criminology away from working class crimes towards crimes of powerful people

• Realists:

  • 4 key variables can be used to explain crime

    • victim + offender + state + community

  • Moral panics - result of media cyclically amplifying particular events

    • public more likely to readily accept harsh law and order policies

    • foundational to crime control

Contemporary explanations

• focus on forces that cannot be precisely measured (eg. power, class, gender, race, identity, sexuality)