Criminology : theory and context [Third edition] 9781315847191, 1315847191, 9780273722779

Table of contents :
Content: pt. 1. Preliminaries and early history --
pt. 2. World War Two to the mid-1960s --
pt. 3. The mid-1960s to the early 1970s --
pt. 4. The 1970s --
pt. 5. The 1980s to the mid-1990s --
pt. 6. The mid-1990s into the new millennium.

Citation preview

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8

CRIMINOLOGY

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CRIM INOLOGY T

h eo ry

a n d

C

o n t e x t

Third edition

John Tierney Senior Lecturer in Criminology, School of Applied Sciences, Durham University

Routledge Taylor &. Francis Croup LONDON AND NEW YORK

First p ublished 1996 by Pearson E ducation Lim ited Second editio n p u b lish ed 2006 by L ongm an T h ird editio n p u b lish ed 2010 P ublished 2013 by R outledge 2 Park Square, M ilton Park, A bingdon, O xon 0 X 1 4 4RN 711 T h ird A venue, N e w Y ork, N Y 10017, U SA

Ron/ledge is an imprint o f the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © John T ierney 1996, 2006, 2010 T he rig h t o f John T ierney to be id entified as a u th o r o f th is w ork has been a sse rted by him in accordance w ith the C opyright, D esigns a n d P a ten ts Act 1988. A ll rights reserved. N o part o f this book m ay be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, m echanical, or o ther m eans, now know n or h ereafter invented, including p h otocopying and recording, or in any inform ation storage o r retrieval system , w ithout perm ission in w riting from the publishers. N otices K now ledge and best practice in this field arc constantly changing. A s n ew research and experience b roaden o u r understanding, changes in research m ethods, professional practices, o r m edical treatm ent m ay becom e necessary.

P ractitioners and researchers m ust alw ays rely on their ow n experience and know ledge in e valuating and using any inform ation, m ethods, com pounds, o r experim ents described herein. In u sing such in form ation or m ethods they should be m indful o f th eir ow n safety and the safety o f others, including parties fo r w hom th ey have a professional responsibility.

T o the fullest extent o f the law , neith er the P u b lish er nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assum e any liability for any injury a nd/or dam age to persons or pro p erty as a m atter o f products liability, negligence or otherw ise, o r from any use or operation o f any m ethods, products, instructions, o r ideas co ntained in the m aterial herein. ISBN 1 3 :9 7 8 -0 -2 7 3 -7 2 2 7 7 -9 (pbk) B ritish L ibrary C atalog u in g -in -P u b licatio n D ata A catalogue record for this book is available from the B ritish Library L ibrary o f C ongress C a taloging-in-P ublication D ata T ierney, John. C rim inology : th eo ry a n d c o n tex t / John T ierney. — 3rd ed. p. cm. Includes b ib lio g rap h ical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-273-72277-9 ( p b k .: alk. p a p er) ISB N -10:1-4058-2361-5 1. C rim inology— H istory. Sociological aspects.

2. C rim inology— G reat B ritain— H istory.

4. Crim e— Sociological aspects— G reat B ritain.

3. C rim e— I. Title.

H V 6021.T 54 2009 364— dc22 T ypeset in 11.2 5 /1 3 S to n e P rin t by 75

2009030701

For Ben, Dominic and Christian

Tierney has m ade an enorm ous contribution by offering a thorough, com prehensive, and accurate review and record of the fie ld . . . the book should be read by all students o f crim inol­ ogy looking for an account of the essential them es, key debates and contem porary tw ists in the theoretical explanation of crime. Professor Colin Sumner

Criminolog)1is m arked by alm ost all those qualities one m ight hope to find in an introduction to a burgeoning and often incoherent discipline. It is a near encyclopedic sum m ary o f m ajor Am erican and British w ork th a t succeeds in being well structured, accessible, clearly w ritten, judicious and historically inform ed. T hat is quite a feat. Professor Paul Rock, LSE

This new edition o f John T ierney’s 1996 textbook repeats and vindicates the approach o f the successful first edition. It looks outwards: at the m arket dem ands of students for a reliable guide not to disem bodied 'problem s’ or ‘issues’, b u t to crim inology as ‘thinking about crim e’. Tierney’s guidebook correctly does this by looking in w a rd s- a textbook that carefully explains the texts o f crim inological theory as a living history. Stan Cohen Emeritus Professor o f Sociolog)’, London School o f Economics

CONTENTS

Preface to th efirst e d itio n ..................................................................................................xii Preface to the second e d itio n ...........................................................................................xiii Preface to the third e d itio n .............................................................................................. xiv I n t r o d u c t i o n ..........................................................................................................................1 The organisation of the b o o k ............................................................................................... 2 Selecting m a te ria l................................................................................................................... 3 P a rt I

P re lim in a rie s a n d E arly H isto ry 1

C rim inology, c rim e a n d deviance: so m e p r e lim in a r ie s .............................. 7 Key th e m e s.................................................................................................................... 7 Introduction .................................................................................................................7 Good old comm on s e n s e ............................................................................................7 Setting the scene ..........................................................................................................9 C rim inology................................................................................................................ 11 C rim e ............................................................................................................................13 Deviance ......................................................................................................................21 Other term s and concepts ....................................................................................... 25 Selected further re a d in g ...........................................................................................25

2

M e a su rin g c rim e a n d c r im in a lity ................................................................... 27 Key th e m e s................................................................................................................ 27 Introduction .............................................................................................................27 Official sta tistic s.......................................................................................................27 The 'dark figure’ of c rim e ........................................................................................29 Public re p o rtin g .......................................................................................................29 Changes in the la w ..................................................................................................... 30 The role of the police .................................................................................................31 Ways o f se e in g ............................................................................................................ 33 The im plications for criminal sta tistics............................................................... 34 Victim surveys............................................................................................................ 35 The usefulness of crim inal statistics ....................................................................43 Local crime surveys and left realism ....................................................................46 Recent crime tre n d s ................................................................................................. 47 Selected further re a d in g .........................................................................................49

CONTENTS

3

C rim in o lo g y a n d c rim in o lo g is ts u p to W o rld W a r T w o ........................... 51 Key th e m e s ......................................................................................................................51 In tro d u c tio n ................................................................................................................... 51 Tree o f sin, tree o f k now ledge ..................................................................................... 51 The crim inological tree o f knowledge: separating the tree from the w'ood ... 53 Classicism and positivism .......................................................................................... 54 Positivist crim inology ................................................................................................. 56 The turn o f the century to the 1 9 3 0 s........................................................................59 E u g en ics...........................................................................................................................62 Selected fu rth er r e a d in g ..............................................................................................64

P a rt II

W o rld W a r T w o to th e M id -1 9 6 0 s 4

T h e d isc ip lin e o f c rim in o lo g y a n d its c o n te x t - 1

....................................... 69

Key th e m e s ......................................................................................................................69 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 69 The em ergence o f crim inology ................................................................................. 70 Sociological crim in o lo g y ............................................................................................ 77 Sociological crim inology in Britain from the 1950s to the m id-1960s.............78 Sociological crim inology in the United S ta te s .......................................................82 Selected fu rth er r e a d in g ............................................................................................. 86 5

S ocial d is o rg a n is a tio n a n d a n o m ie ...................................................................87 Key th e m e s ..................................................................................................................... 87 Introduction ..................................................................................................................87 The sociology and crim inology o f Emile Durkheim (1 8 5 8 -1 9 1 7 )....................87 The Chicago S c h o o l......................................................................................................95 M ertonian strain th e o r y ........................................................................................... 102 Selected furth er r e a d in g ........................................................................................... 107

6

S tra in , su b c u ltu re s a n d d e li n q u e n c y ..............................................................109 Key th e m e s ................................................................................................................... 109 In tro d u c tio n .................................................................................................................109 A. K. Cohen: developm ents in strain th e o r y ........................................................109 R. Cloward and L. Ohlin: oppo rtu n ity k n o c k s .................................................... 112 Selected further re a d in g ............................................................................................ 115

7

C rim in o lo g ic a l th e o ry in B r i t a i n .......................................................................116 Key them es ...................................................................................................................116 In tro d u c tio n ................................................................................................................ 116 Am erican in flu e n c e s.................................................................................................. 116 Sociological crim inology in B rita in ........................................................................119 Developing a British perspective ........................................................................... 122

viii

CONTENTS

C ultural diversity theory ...........................................................................................122 Schools and the ‘problem o f a d ju s tm e n t'..............................................................126 Subcultural theory: taking s to c k ............................................................................. 128 Selected furth er reading ............................................................................................131 P a r t III T h e M id -1 9 6 0 s to th e E arly 1 9 7 0 s 8

T h e d isc ip lin e o f c rim in o lo g y a n d its c o n te x t - 2 ...................................... 135 Key th e m e s ....................................................................................................................135 In tro d u c tio n ................................................................................................................. 135 The developm ent o f sociological crim inology in Britain ..................................135 The break with orthodoxy: the new d e v ia n cy ...................................................... 136 The New Left ................................................................................................................ 142 Radicals and the new deviancy: the im pact on British c rim in o lo g y .............. 144 Selected fu rth er reading ........................................................................................... 146

9

N e w d e v ia n c y th e o ry : th e in te r a c tio n is t a p p r o a c h to d e v ia n c e ........ 147 Key th e m e s ................................................................................................................... 147 In tro d u c tio n ................................................................................................................. 147 Labelling theory ..........................................................................................................148 Learning to becom e ‘deviant’ ...................................................................................149 Prim ary and secondary deviation ...........................................................................151 The am plification o f d e v ia n c e ..................................................................................152 Conceptualising d e v ia n c e ......................................................................................... 153 Criticisms o f the new deviancy ............................................................................... 154 Selected fu rth er r e a d i n g ........................................................................................... 160

P a rt IV T h e 1 9 7 0 s 10

T h e d is c ip lin e o f c rim in o lo g y a n d its c o n te x t - 3 ...................................... 165 Key th e m e s ................................................................................................................... 165 I n tro d u c tio n .................................................................................................................165 Deviance and politics ................................................................................................165 The sociology of law: m aking laws, m aking d e v ia n ts........................................ 167 Crim inology in the 1970s: other d ire c tio n s ......................................................... 172 O rthodox c rim in o lo g y ...............................................................................................176 Radical critiques and the grow th o f the New R ig h t............................................ 178 Selected further r e a d in g ........................................................................................... 183

11

P o st-n e w d e v ia n c y a n d t h e n e w c r im i n o lo g y ..............................................184 Key th e m e s ................................................................................................................... 184 In tro d u c tio n .................................................................................................................184 Deviance and p o w e r .................................................................................................. 185

CONTENTS

Am erican conflict t h e o r y .......................................................................................... 186 Politicising d e v ia n c e ...................................................................................................189 Critical c rim inology....................................................................................................190 M arx and Engels on crim e ........................................................................................193 Taylor, W alton and Young and the politicisation o f deviance ......................... 196 Politicising deviance: nuts, sluts, p re v e rts . . . and rev o lu tio n aries?.............. 196 Youth subcultures and p o litic s................................................................................ 198 Critical crim inology: deviance, crim e and p o w e r ...............................................202 Phenom enology and c rim in o lo g y .......................................................................... 209 E thn o m eth o d o lo g y .....................................................................................................210 C ontrol th e o r y ............................................................................................................. 211 Feminist perspectives and c rim in o lo g y ................................................................ 216 Selected fu rth er reading ........................................................................................... 219 P a r tV

T h e 1 9 8 0 s to th e M id -1 9 9 0 s 12

T h e d isc ip lin e o f c rim in o lo g y a n d its c o n te x t - 4 ...................................... 223 Key th e m e s ................................................................................................................... 223 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 223 The shift to the right in British p o litic s ................................................................ 224 Crim inology’s external history ............................................................................... 226 Social o rg a n isa tio n .....................................................................................................228 The growth o f policy-oriented research ............................................................... 230 The nature and context o f re se a rc h ........................................................................233 Policy-oriented research and the le f t ..................................................................... 237 British crim inology in the late tw entieth c e n tu ry .............................................. 239 Selected fu rth er r e a d in g ........................................................................................... 244

13

C rim in o lo g ic a l t h e o r y ...........................................................................................245 Key th e m e s ................................................................................................................... 245 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 245 M ainstream crim in o lo g y ..........................................................................................245 L ongitudinal research and crim inal c a re e rs ........................................................ 246 The historical roots ................................................................................................... 257 Feminism and c rim in o lo g y ...................................................................................... 258 G ender and c rim e ....................................................................................................... 271 Adm inistrative crim inology ....................................................................................277 Right-wing c lassicism ................................................................................................283 Neo-positivism and right realism .......................................................................... 284 Radical crim inology .................................................................................................. 289 Critical crim inology and left re a lism ..................................................................... 292 Final rem arks on this p e r io d ....................................................................................298

x

CONTENTS

W inning the fight against crim e?........................................................................300 Selected further reading ........................................................................................ 301 P o s tscrip t................................................................................................................ 302 P a rt VI T h e M id -1 9 9 0 s in to th e N ew M illen n iu m 14

T h e d isc ip lin e o f crim in o lo g y a n d its c o n te x t - 5 ...................................305 Key th e m e s.............................................................................................................. 305 Introduction ...........................................................................................................305 New Labour, old p ro b le m s .................................................................................. 306 Restorative justice ................................................................................................. 312 Im prisonm ent ..........................................................................................................314 Social policy and New' L ab o u r...............................................................................315 Crime prevention, crime reduction and comm unity safety ............................316 Crime and criminal justice: the wider c o n te x t................................................. 320 Criminology in the new m illennium ..................................................................326 Selected further re a d in g .......................................................................................332

15

T h eo re ctica l persp ectiv es: re c e n t d e v e lo p m e n ts .................................... 334 Key th e m e s..............................................................................................................334 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 334 Postm odernist perspectives.................................................................................336 Feminist persp ectiv es........................................................................................... 341 Perspectives on m ascu lin ities............................................................................. 348 Control perspectives............................................................................................... 351 Cultural perspectives............................................................................................ 355 Critical p erspectives..............................................................................................358 Final remarks ......................................................................................................... 376 Selected further re a d in g .......................................................................................377 Postscripts ..............................................................................................................379

References.......................................................................................................................... 383 N am e i n d e x ...................................................................................................................... 419 Subject in d e x .................................................................................................................... 424

xi

P R E FAC E TO T H E FIRST E D I T I O N

This book is w ritten as an in troduction to crim inology, or, m ore specifically, sociolog­ ical crim inology. The aim has been to w rite an accessible and com prehensive text, but one th a t does no t shirk from engaging with w hat are som etim es com plex issues and debates. The approach is based on a good m any years’ experience teaching crim inol­ ogy and related subjects to a wide range o f groups. Now som e thanks. W riting this book has m eant a frequently obsessive preoccupation with a century of crim inological thought, and lengthy sojourns in, if not quite a garret, at least an attic room where I w atched the seasons roll by through a Velux window. My than k s to my wife and sons for p u ttin g up w ith the resultant d isruptions to family life, and for continuing to provide m uch appreciated encouragem ent. 1 hope th at 1 can m ake up for all those gam es o f S ubbuteo I should have played w ith my youngest son, bu t d id n ’t because I was consorting w ith various crim inal and crim inological m iscreants. A wel­ come respite from w riting, especially during those periods when my brain seem ed to be turning into taram asalata, was provided by the T hursday night folk m usic sessions at the C olpitts pub in D urham , which offered com radeship and an incentive to work out som e new guitar tunings. My thanks to those colleagues at New College D urham and at the University of N o rth u m b ria who provided encouragem ent. For various reasons my thanks are also due to the following people - som e o f w hom I’ve never m et. To Stan Cohen for Folk Devils and Mora! Panics, and to the person w ho a while ago lent me a copy and got me started; to Colin Sum ner for helping to keep key conceptual debates alive; to the late Steven Box for w riting the best Preface to a crim inology book (Box, 1981); to Mike Brogden who has been a friendly face at som e dire conferences; to M artin Scorsese for the film Goodfellas, which should be p a rt o f a crim inology sta rte r pack; to the anony­ m ous reviewer of the original book proposal who generously described me as no t part of the m ainstream ; and to Dick Hobbs, Barbara H udson and Mike M aguire, who offered extremely useful criticism s and com m ents on an earlier draft o f the book. Needless to say, I take responsibility for the final product.

P R E FA C E TO T H E S E C O N D E D I T I O N

Since w riting the first edition o f this book the only constant in my life has been the Velux window m entioned in the earlier Preface. Shortly after the book was published I moved from New College D urham to the University o f D u rh a m ’s D epartm ent of Sociology and Social Policy (now School o f Applied Social Sciences). A lthough I ended up w ith a less grand-sounding job title th an previously, in term s o f teaching and research this proved to be a productive move. It gave me an opp o rtu n ity to work alongside various crim inologists, namely, Bob Roshier, Dick Hobbs, Jim Sheptycki, the late Ian Taylor and Robin W illiam s (who has evolved into a crim inologist). All of them , for countless reasons, co ntributed to the experience o f living in ‘interesting tim es’, and deserve thanks. So too does Georgios A ntonopoulos for his help in track­ ing down various pieces o f inform ation for this book. O f those referred to in the first Preface, I’ve yet to m eet M artin Scorsese (who tends not to tu rn up at crim inology conferences). Finally, and for all sorts o f reasons, thanks to my three sons, Ben, Dom inic and C hristian, whose qualities and accom plishm ents never fail to am aze me.

P R E FA C E TO T H E T H I R D E D I T I O N

For the benefit o f w hat I suspect is a sm all m inority o f readers who actually read pref­ aces, I am happy to re p o rt th at the Velux window continues to soldier on. As I do, and with a slightly grander-sounding job title th an last tim e. This preface to the third edition gives me an opp o rtu n ity to add a few m ore thanks to my previous lists. To Stan Cohen, Paul Rock and Colin Sum ner for their m uch appreciated com m ents about this book. To Tom M orello for perm ission to use the lyrics to his song ‘The Fabled City’ as a postscript to this edition. And, o f course, to Nigel M ellor and W illy Russell for perm ission to use th eir w ords as postscripts for the first and second editions respectively. Each was chosen because I felt th at they articu ­ lated sentim ents highly relevant to three recent periods in history. To colleagues in D urham University’s School o f Applied Social Sciences for su p p o rt and encourage­ m ent. And special thanks to my son Ben and Tim Dillon for designing the cover of this th ird edition. A dditional thanks are due to artist Ryan G raeff for perm ission to use his ‘B andit’ image.

xiv

IN T R O D U C T IO N

Since the late 1960s the area o f study broadly described as crim inology has expanded enorm ously in Britain. Nowadays all sorts o f w riters, researchers and teachers m ake m any and varied c ontributions to issues o f crim e and social control, and represent various political and theoretical positions. W ithin academ ic crim inology con trib u ­ tions come from m any different discipline areas: psychology, psychoanalysis, geogra­ phy, history, econom ics, political science, jurisprudence, biology, sociology, and so on. Clearly, given the vast arm y of particip an ts in the ‘crim inological project’, there are com peting views regarding the agenda to be followed. In fact, one o f the central questions th a t will accom pany the discussion o f crim inology’s history here is w hat is it/o r? The book is as m uch about crim inology’s history as an academ ic discipline as it is about crim inological theory. A lthough im p o rta n t ideas and pieces o f research from oth er disciplines will be referred to, the prim ary focus is unasham edly sociological crim inology. The book is also unasham edly concerned with im p o rta n t theoretical developm ents. There is little detailed discussion o f specific form s of crim e such as ram -raiding, burglary or bank robbery, though there are plenty o f references to research based upon these them es. At the risk o f disappointing the reader before we have begun, the argum ent here is th at we can only m ake sense o f specific types o f contem porary crim e by having a grasp of the theoretical ideas and debates th at have sprung up over the years. T his is why all crim inology program m es in British universities devote a significant am ount o f tim e to theoretical crim inology. A central dim ension to the book is an engagem ent w ith conceptual debates over ‘w hat things m ean’. O ur everyday w orlds are filled with references to crim e, crim i­ nals, punishm ent, discipline, the law, and so forth, bu t w hat do these term s mean? How have these m eanings and u nderstandings been constructed? W hat im pact does crim e have on people’s lives? To w hat extent are m eanings and u nderstandings shared by society’s m em bers? How have these phenom ena been approached w ithin academ ic crim inology? T hroughout the book, therefore, the reader will be invited to consider seriously a range o f questions and issues th at are often taken for granted. A lthough I have attem p ted to present these debates and issues in such a way as to m ake them accessible, I have also been concerned to avoid sim plifying them to the point o f distorting the m aterial and patronising the reader. One o f the things I’ve noticed w hilst researching this book is th at som etim es the ideas and theories o f clas­ sic, or at least frequently referred to, w riters suffer the fate o f messages in Chinese w hispers: the original m essage becom es d istorted, or caricatured or oversim plified.

I

C R IM IN O LO G Y

This book, therefore, is an invitation to the reader eventually to read those original texts, so th a t they can judge them for them selves. T his is also a book about social and political history, in so much as the m ain con­ cerns and general shape o f crim inology as it has developed over the years cannot be understood w ithout considering the context provided by th at history.

T H E O R G A N IS A T IO N OF T H E B O O K

The book is stru ctu red around two central them es: 1 The historical developm ent o f crim inology as an academ ic discipline, prim arily w ithin a British context. 2 The m ain crim inological theories th at have em erged as the discipline has devel­ oped, together w ith an overview o f contem porary crim inological theory. This will involve draw ing on theoretical work from countries oth er th an Britain, especially the United States. The m aterial is organised on the basis o f six parts, each m ade up o f a n u m b er of chapters. Part I com prises three chapters. C hapter 1 sets the scene by identifying som e pro b ­ lem s associated with defining term s such as crim e and deviance. In particular, the role o f crim inology in challenging accepted com m on-sense u nderstandings o f these phenom ena is discussed. C hapter 2 takes us into a discussion o f som e o f the difficul­ ties faced when m easuring the am ount and distrib u tio n o f crim e in society; these dif­ ficulties are both ‘technical’ and ‘conceptual’. C hapter 3 introduces a historical dim ension by exam ining the history o f crim inology from the nin eteen th century through to W orld W ar Two. Unlike the rest of the book, in this chapter the them e of crim inology’s developm ent as an academ ic discipline w ithin specific social and po lit­ ical contexts, and the them e o f developm ents in crim inological theory, are com bined. In Parts II, III, IV, V and VI, however, as sociological influences begin to appear, these two them es are, for analytical purposes, separated out for each historical period. Each p a rt th u s addresses a particular historical period. The first chapter in each p art aim s to provide an introduction to the social and political changes over that period, and their im pact on the nature and social organisation o f crim inology as a discipline. This not only allows an appreciation of the im portance o f these external influences but, by focusing on crim inology as a discipline, it establishes a fram ework w ithin which the discussion o f theory in subsequent chapters in th at p a rt can be situ­ ated. By analogy, it is rath er like walking the W em bley tu r f and acclim atising to the stadium before actually playing in a Cup Final. W here there has been ‘delayed action’ regarding the influence of a particular theory on British crim inology, then reference will be m ade to earlier periods. 2

IN T R O D U C T IO N

SELECTIN G MATERIAL

There are som e interesting problem s in w riting an introductory text such as this. One specific problem is th at over the years the am ount o f published work in crim inology has grown enorm ously, assum ing a kind o f wedge shape, w ith the thin end receding into the past. Why, we m ight ask, should in troductory texts continue to reproduce this work from the past? One can often pick up a m odern a u th o r’s sensitivity to the recycling o f older th eo ­ ries. They alm ost apologise for reproducing a well-known and well-used quotation, or revisiting som e w ell-trodden ground. There are no apologies here, though: m ost o f the m ajor passages are quoted in an effort to provide a com prehensive introduction. This earlier m aterial is often interesting in its own right, and w hat is w ell-trodden ground to the professional crim inologist may be entirely new to the reader. Further­ m ore, this m aterial is im p o rta n t in th at it will have influenced subsequent crim inolo­ gists, and may continue to exercise a powerful influence in som e quarters. An u nderstanding o f m odern crim inological theory presupposes fam iliarity w ith what has gone before. A lthough this clearly involved m aking judgem ents, I have dwelt on certain theoretical ideas and debates from the past because I feel th at they have an im p o rta n t contem porary resonance. Acknowledging th at they may not m ean much to the reader at this stage, som e exam ples to look out for are: in the nineteenth cen­ tury, D urkheim on m odernity; in the 1920s and 1930s, discussions o f disorganisation and the u rban crim inal area by the Chicago School; and, in the 1960s, the conceptual problem s raised by new deviancy theory. In the final analysis, o f course, any in tro d u c­ tion to crim inology would be glaringly incom plete if it did no t discuss the earlier work. Having said that, a large portion o f the book concerns itself w ith m ore recent developm ents in term s o f the discipline, its context, and its theories.

3

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PART

PRELIM INA RIES A N D

I

EARLY HISTORY

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CHAPTER

I

CR IM IN OL OG Y , CRIME AN D DEVIANCE: SOME PRELIMINARIES

C

\

Key them es • Good old common sense • Setting the scene • Criminology • Crime • Deviance V______________________________________________________________________________

IN TRO DUCTIO N

This first chapter invites the reader to think critically about term s such as ‘crim e’ and ‘deviance’ and, indeed, the notion o f ‘crim inology’ itself. Challenging taken-for-granted, com m on-sense understandings is an im portant dim ension to this. The chapter indi­ cates som e o f the ongoing disputes and debates w ithin crim inology regarding its sub­ ject matter, conceptual language, research m ethodologies and purpose. The chapter includes a brief discussion o f sources o f crime-related data; this is returned to in the next chapter.

GO O D OLD CO M M O N SENSE

O ne o f the tasks o f crim inology should be to question taken-for-granted assum ptions regarding what crim e and deviance are, what crim inals are like, and so on. It should, in other w ords, question com m on -sen se know ledge. However, as Howard Becker has pointed out, the term ‘com m on sen se’ is used to m ean tw o different things. S om e­ tim es com m on sense describes an approved quality o f mind:

the com m on m an [j/c], his head u n e n cu m b ere d by fancy theo ries and a b strac t profes­ sional no tio n s, can at least see w hat is right there in fro n t o f his nose. Philosophies as d isp arate as p ragm atism an d Zen en sh rin e a respect for the com m on m a n ’s ability to see, w ith Sancho Panza, th a t a w indm ill is really a w indm ill. [From now on, ra th e r th an

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clutter up the text with ‘sic’, whenever a quoted author uses such genderised language, disapprobation can be taken as given.] (Becker, 1974:50) This m eaning o f com m on sense is found in injunctions such as ‘Use your com m on sense’, and, expressed like this, is difficult to criticise. In reality, though, it is not always easy to distinguish this com m on sense from the second type, though we all like to thin k o f ourselves as Sancho Panza. This second, less estim able, way in which the term ‘com m on sense’ is used is described by Becker as follows: Common sense, in one of its meanings, can delude us. That common sense is the tradi­ tional wisdom of the tribe, the melange o f‘what everybody knows’, that children learn as they grow up, the stereotypes of everyday life. (Ibid.: 49) Defined in this way, com m on sense refers to generally held views about the social w orld which in som e cases can, and should, be contradicted, or at least questioned by the social sciences. As Becker describes it, there is the possibility o f delusion, o f being m isled by com m on sense. This is congruent with the observation m ade by the a n th ro ­ pologist Alfred Kroeber: ‘T hat a belief is com m on is as likely to stam p it as a com m on superstition as a com m on tru th ’ (Kroeber, 1952: 27). From this perspective, generally held beliefs about the nature o f crim e, crim inals, deviance and associated them es need to be carefully scrutinised and, if necessary, challenged. This challenge, though, involves m ore than just setting the record straight by providing ‘factual’ inform ation. Fundam entally, it is to do with the taken-for-granted m eanings o f these categories. They are not neutral objects, given in nature, bu t are social constructions, and as such are the outcom e o f processes involving relationships o f power. As Pat Carlen says: ‘the very task o f theory is to engage in a struggle over the “m eaning o f things” (including all m aterial and ideological co n stru cts)’ (Carlen, 1992: 62). Com m on sense is particularly active in debates about crim e and crim inals, and particip an ts will, o f course, insist th at theirs is the ‘no nonsense’ rather than the ‘delusion’ variety. Over the years a steady stream o f politicians, journalists, researchers and practitioners have, som etim es tentatively, som etim es confidently, explained the ‘causes o f crim e’, or announced a trea tm e n t/p u n ish m e n t package that they believe will actually work. We have had a bew ildering galaxy o f causal explana­ tions, taking in bad genes, chrom osom e deficiencies, deform ed personalities, un em ­ ploym ent, deprivation, trendy parents, lone parents, trendy lone parents, sim ple greed, blocked o pportunities, peer group pressure, status frustration, too m uch money, too little m oney and artificial colouring in fish fingers. Suggested treat­ m en t/p u n ish m e n t regim es have been equally wide ranging, and some o f them have been tried out. T hus offenders have been incarcerated in hulks on the River Tham es,

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tra n s p o rte d to A ustralia, hanged, p elted w ith eggs in village stocks, to rtu re d in dungeons, given sh o rt sh a rp shocks in d e te n tio n centres, injected w ith m ind-altering drugs, sterilised, m ade to face th eir victim s, sent on safari to Africa an d locked up in prison. Each o f these wildly varying causes an d tre a tm e n ts m ay very well represent com m on sense for som e people.

SETTING THE SCENE

T his first c h ap ter will indicate som e o f the basic conceptual deb ates w ithin crim i­ nology. T his will entail a p re lim in a ry e xam ination o f how the academ ic terra in of crim inology m ay be m ap p e d out, a n d som e o f the a tte n d a n t difficulties involved in defining the core term s ‘crim e’ and ‘deviance’. T he ch ap ters th a t follow will exam ine these issues in g reater detail. O ne o f the tasks o f crim inology is to unravel, o r d e co n stru c t, the concept o f crim e and in the process challenge com m on-sense u n d e rsta n d in g s th a t are taken for g ran ted . It is n o t u n co m m o n for p oliticians an d jo u rn alists, for instance, to ignore th e com plex stru c tu re s a n d processes w ithin w hich crim e a n d crim inality are c o n sti­ tu te d , an d to rely in stead on a dan g ero u s rh eto ric w hereby crim e is reduced to a sim ple causal factor. C ritically q u e stio n in g w hat is m ea n t by ‘crim e’ opens up a whole range o f questio n s lying at the h e a rt o f the crim inological e n te rp rise such as: 1 W hat type o f crime? It is com m onplace for crim e to be discussed as if it was m ore or less one specific type o f behaviour, and the em phasis is usually on ‘co n v en tio n al’ crim e such as b u rg lary an d robbery. ‘C rim e’, though, covers a vast n u m b e r o f quite different so rts o f activity, including w hite-collar an d c o rp o rate crim e, dom estic violence, ram -raiding, child sexual abuse, and rape. 2 Explanations o f crime? Clearly, given the wide range o f possibilities, it is futile to believe th a t one e xplanation can be fo u n d w hich covers all crim e. F urth erm o re, even if one p a rtic u la r type o f crim e is exam ined, the pro b lem s involved in seeking out an e xplanation are still e n o rm o u s. In fact, if we narro w ed it dow n to one p a rtic ­ u lar p erso n w ho stole a b a r o f chocolate from a store, try in g to explain why they did it raises im m ensely com plex issues. 3 Who decides what is a crime? Crim e only exists because law s exist; therefore crim e is n o t a fixed, absolute quality o f an act. Over the years laws change a n d vary from one society to an o th er. F u rth erm o re, alth o u g h all legal ju risd ic tio n s are likely to have laws p ro h ib itin g , say, m urder, th ere is wide v ariation in how th is offence is defined. If we take as an exam ple a case w here som eone is assaulted, goes into a com a, a n d subseq u en tly dies. W h e th e r or n o t the assailant can be charged w ith m u rd e r varies from one ju risd ic tio n to a nother, d e p en d in g upo n , am ong o th er things, the length o f tim e the victim is in a com a before they die.

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4 When does a crime exist? This is an intriguing question. Some crim inologists, loosely described as ‘realists’ - and no t to be confused w ith left and right realists discussed later - approach crim e statistics as if there exists a real, objective am ount o f crim e ‘out there’. The task, then, is to develop suitable m ethods for accurately m easuring these crim es. O thers take an ‘in stitu tio n alist’ view and argue th at crim e rates are socially constructed: th at is, they are produced by organisational behav­ iour and various subjective processes on the p a rt of, say, the police. M ore extrem e versions go further and argue from a ‘constitutive’ position th at ‘crim e’ itself does not have an independent existence, bu t is socially constructed. T hus crim e is seen as a social entity created not by an offender, but by control agents who, in specific cases, designate an act as ‘crim inal’. From this perspective, crim e is a product of various processes m ediating betw een an original act and a final judgem ent regard­ ing its crim inal or non-crim inal status. Using this reasoning they reject, for example, the view that last night a certain num ber o f cases o f ‘threatening behaviour’ occurred in the town centre, and yet only som e were discovered, the rem ainder form ing p art o f the ‘dark figure’ o f crim e. Thus, because this offence is dependent on interp retatio n s by, say, the police, it cannot exist as a ‘real’ thing detached from these interpretive processes. Crime is therefore not conceptualised in the sam e way that, for instance, the n um ber o f individuals carrying the Aids virus is conceptu­ alised. Some have argued th a t a crim e only exists as a social entity when a court finds a person guilty. It is im p o rta n t to appreciate th at debates regarding the definition o f key term s are not m erely sem antic quarrels, a luxurious digression from the real business o f crim i­ nology. Because phenom ena such as crim e and deviance are not theoretically neutral objects w aiting ‘out there’ to be identified and analysed, it is necessary to consider seriously how best to conceptualise these areas o f study. How they are conceptualised will have profound im plications for the types o f theories developed. U nfortunately, for a large p a rt o f its history academ ic crim inology has often not suspended w hat Colin Sum ner calls ‘a com m onsensical acceptance o f these categories’ (Sum ner, 1990: 26). As a result, m any analyses have proceeded w ithin a conceptual fram ew ork built upon ‘w hat everyone know s’, w ith crim e and deviance treated as if they were non-problem atical, ahistorical categories o f h arm fu l/im m o ral behaviour. This is not necessarily because crim inologists have been, or are, unaw are o f the conceptual diffi­ culties inherent in these categories. In practice, a crim inologist will often pu t the debate to one side because it is not thought relevant to the particular project in hand. The bracketing off o f these fundam ental conceptual debates is, perhaps, m ost vividly a p p aren t when the m ass m edia - say, television - invite a crim inologist to com m ent on a crim e-related issue. Due to the structural constraints im posed by the genre itself, with its dem ands for bite-sized nuggets o f sagacity, the crim inologist who launches into a detailed critique o f the concept o f crim e is unlikely to be asked back again.

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The com plexity o f these definitional issues m akes life difficult for w riters o f in tro ­ ductory textbooks, and for those delivering in troductory lectures in crim inology. Usually the problem s are resolved, or at least tem porarily am eliorated, by offering a b rief discussion on why defining crim inology is complex, and why basic term s such as ‘crim e’ and ‘deviance’ are difficult to define and m easure. Following an overview, en passant, o f ‘problem s w ith crim e statistics’, and ‘crim e as a socially constructed entity’, the rest o f the chapters or lectures may proceed, sustained by a few working definitions. This partly accounts for the heavy use o f inverted com m as in such text­ books (or, in the case o f a lecture, the frequent use o f jiggling fingers as sign language for inverted com m as). The vocabulary of crim inology is replete w ith term s requiring this treatm ent, for exam ple, ‘tru e ’ or ‘real’ crim e rates, the ‘dark figure’ o f crime, ‘deviant’, ‘m ad ’, ‘b a d ’, ‘p e rv ert’, ‘im m oral’, ‘m eaningless violence’, ‘hooligan’, ‘u n d e r­ socialised’, ‘sick’, ‘m aladjusted’, ‘hyperactive’, and so on. Essentially, the message being transm itted, quite correctly, is th at these are risky concepts.

CRIM INOLOGY

It w ould be reasonable for stu d en ts o f crim inology to ask at the outset: W hat is crim i­ nology and w hat do crim inologists do? The com plexities surrounding this apparently sim ple enquiry can be indicated by noting th at it is not unusual for elderly crim i­ nologists still to be debating these questions as they head for their dotage. The term ‘crim inology’ obviously suggests th at ‘crim e’ lies at its core, and the Shorter Oxford Dictionary stretches the definition to ‘the scientific study o f crim e’. This, however, m erely points the stu d en t in a general direction. As a definition it is loaded with in te r­ esting epistem ological problem s. From a m ore academ ic view point, A Dictionary o f Criminology defines crim inology as:

The study of crime, of attempts to control it, and attitudes to it. Crime is interpreted in its widest sense, so as to include minor as well as major law-breaking, and also conduct which, but for the special status or role of those involved, would be regarded as lawbreaking; e.g. excessive punishment of children by parents, antisocial practices of com­ mercial undertakings. (Walsh and Poole. 1983: 56)

Moreover, a glance at the four editions o f The Oxford Handbook o f Criminology (M aguire et al., 1994, 1997, 2002, 2007), for instance, indicates the wide range of activities in which crim inology takes an interest: the politics o f law and order; crime data; violent, white-collar, professional and organised crime; crim e prevention; polic­ ing; pre-trial processes; sentencing policies; probation and com m unity sanctions; prisons; ‘race’, gender and m ental disorder and crime; victims, and so on.

C R IM IN O LO G Y

And w hat o f ‘deviance’? If crim inology is the study o f crim e, can crim inologists study deviance and still work w ithin recognised academ ic param eters? D uring the 1960s a large n u m b er o f academ ics, som e o f w hom had previously described th em ­ selves as crim inologists, began to call them selves sociologists o f deviance. This sig­ nalled a shift from the study o f crim e, as such, to the study o f a b roader range of rule-breaking activities, som e illegal, som e not. Today there are those who continue the sociology o f deviance tradition, but academ ics have on the whole reverted back to the label o f ‘crim inologist’, though they may well engage in the study o f w hat they see as non-crim inal form s o f deviance (having said that, quite a few working in this field, however, use the term as a flag o f convenience). A lthough there are clearly basic param eters w hereby crim inology has an identity and recognisable shape, it is by no m eans a totally integrated, theoretically hom oge­ neous discipline. Internal divisions and disputes can be outlined as follows.

A range of disciplines Over the years, those describing them selves as crim inologists have based their work on m any different academ ic disciplines, first one, then another, becom ing dom inant. As Stan Cohen puts it: ‘Som ew hat like a parasite, crim inology attaches itself to its host subjects (notably, law, psychology, psychiatry, and sociology) and drew from them m ethods, theories and credibility’ (Cohen, 1988: 4). At the sam e tim e, represen­ tatives o f the various disciplines have given tem porary attention to issues o f crime and crim inality, w ithout, as it were, leaving th eir original discipline and em igrating to crim inology. Frances H eidensohn (1989: 3) pain ts a suitable image: crime has sometimes featured as a social science tourist attraction, a Taj Mahal or Tower of Pisa, which everyone visits - once. Hence major theorists such as Durkheim, Parsons or Merton have made key but brief appearances on the crime scene.

Competing focuses Crim inologists continue to debate w hether the p ro p er focus o f crim inological study should be the offender, the offence, reactions to offending, the victim , or various com ­ binations.

Competing agenda There are extensive debates w ithin crim inology regarding w hat the discipline should really be aim ing to achieve. Should it, for exam ple, concern itself in the m ain with investigating the causes o f crim e, or with providing data and ideas useful in term s of

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penal or policing policy? O r should it be p a rt o f a struggle for civil liberties, o r reform o f the c rim inal justice system , o r the tran sfo rm a tio n o f society? The range o f p o s­ sibilities is im m ense.

Rival theories Reflecting b ro a d er deb ates w ithin the social sciences, crim inologists have over the years subscribed to rival th eoretical schools such as functionalism , M arxism , interactionism an d phenom enology, to take sociological crim inology as an exam ple.

Varieties of methodology Again reflecting m ore general deb ates a n d d evelopm ents w ith in the social sciences, crim inologists have argued the case for a range o f different research m ethods: q u a n ti­ tative and qualitative; positivist and phenom enological; d isp assio n ate and politically co m m itted , and so on.

Political orientations A lthough n o t always explicitly stated , crim inology, like any social science, is an aca­ dem ic terra in co n ta in in g various com p etin g political o rien tatio n s. D isputes are not always restricted to tra d itio n a l political an tag o n ists: som etim es th e m ost vitriolic exchanges are fo u n d am ong those ostensibly sh arin g the sam e political sym pathies.

CRIME

S ta n d ard defin itio n s o f crim e equate it w ith b ehaviour th at breaks the crim inal law. T he term is also used to d en o te a single event, for exam ple a crim e was co m m itted last n ig h t’, o r such events collectively, as in crim e today is a m ajor p ro b le m ’. D ictio­ n a ry d efinitions will generally a d d an evaluative d im en sio n such as evil a c t’. A lthough at first glance these sta te m en ts m ay ap p ea r u ncontroversial, they are in need o f som e discussion. Indeed, th ere are significant conceptual issues at stake here, th o u g h as I have said, they are n o t always a ddressed, even w ith in crim inology. In this context we can e ndorse w hat Colin S u m n er (1 9 9 0 :2 6 ) has w ritten : The first step of any intellectually rigorous enquiry into m atters of crime and deviance must be to suspend a commonsensical acceptance of these categories and to investigate the social relationships, ideologies and contexts which combine to form them and give specific historical meaning.

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W riters sym pathetic to this view will endeavour to challenge generally accepted assum ptions regarding w hat crime and deviance are, what crim inals are like, and so on. This does not mean that all crim inologists are agreed on how best to conceptualise these phenom ena. In an analysis of crim inology and the state, Robert Reiner (1988: 138) raises one o f these conceptual debates. He begins by giving a standard legal textbook definition o f crime as: ‘an illegal act, om ission or e v e n t. . . the principle consequence of which is that the offender, if he is detected and it is decided to prosecute, is prosecuted by or in the nam e o f the State’. Following this he quotes an often cited and, from the perspective of jurisprudence, definitive statem ent by Lord Atkin in a 1931 case: The domain of criminal jurisprudence can only be ascertained by examining what acts at any particular period are declared by the State to be crimes, and the only common nature they will be found to possess is that they are prohibited by the State. (Ibid.: 138) Reiner uses these statem ents as a vehicle for m aking the point th at lawyers have for a long tim e accepted th at no hum an activity is, in an absolute sense, crim inal. On the sam e them e, he also notes a fam ous observation m ade by the labelling theorist H ow ard Becker, which caused a stir am ong crim inologists in the 1960s: ‘deviance is not a quality o f the act the person com m its, bu t rath er a consequence o f the applica­ tion by others o f rules and sanctions’ (ibid.: 138). This, says Reiner, ‘may have been news to crim inology, bu t it was p latitudinous to crim inal law yers’. There are a num ber o f im p o rta n t conceptual issues lying just below the surface here, which take us beyond the point th at Reiner is m aking. The observant will have noticed, for instance, th at though Reiner is referring to crim e, in the quotation Becker uses the term ‘deviance’. T his raises the question, to w hat extent can these two term s be used interchangeably? However, the specific point being m ade by Reiner can be com m ented on. It is true th at the judge, Lord Atkin, and the sociologist, Becker, are both stressing th at crim e and deviance respectively are relative concepts. In other words, th at no act possesses an inherent quality of ‘crim e’ or ‘deviance’. A close scrutiny o f w hat Atkin and Becker are saying, though, shows th at they are approach­ ing this idea from different directions, so th at it m eans different things. Atkin is say­ ing th a t w hat is defined as crim inal depends upon the nature of the crim inal law in th a t society. And, by inference, w ithin a particu lar society the law changes over tim e, and also varies betw een one society and an o th er at the sam e m om ent in tim e. So, although law may be necessary, at least as far as the eye can see into the future, the nature o f th at law - w hat is in a legal sense b anned - is always contingent on the nature o f th at society. The law, therefore, does not express absolute m oral strictures. As it happens, this idea (in the context o f deviance) is discussed by Becker (1963: 9) a few pages on from the q uotation given by Reiner above: ‘deviance is created by society . . . social groups create deviance by m aking the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance’. In the passage quoted by Reiner, Becker is looking at the relative nature of

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deviance from a different point o f view to this. In the earlier passage the focus is on specific acts which are labelled as ‘deviant’, no t because they are inherently deviant, but because o f a process of interaction betw een the ‘deviant’ and those in a position to apply the label. Unlike Atkin, Becker is going fu rth er than sim ply referring to the defining fram ew ork created by an already existing set o f rules at a general level. He is referring to particular cases and the processes at work w hereby deviance is socially constructed. This is to shift the em phasis away from the factors th at ‘cause’ the behav­ iour in the first place, to the dynam ics involved in the definition o f some o f these behaviours as ‘deviant’. This discussion of Becker directs attention to the actual processes o f crim inalisation and deviantisation: th at is, to how the law or norm s operates in practice. This was no t w hat Lord Atkin was referring to. Although the law may appear to be a tightly form ulated and im personal set o f codified legal rules, it is often am biguous and less clear-cut. Furtherm ore, in practice the crim inal law is locked into a whole series of organisational dem ands and processes, as well as being subject to individual in te r­ pretations. All o f this will have enorm ous im plications for the way in which crim e is constructed w ithin a particular society. The policing o f the 1984-85 m iners’ strike in Britain, for instance, illustrates well how legal statu tes and com m on law pow ers can, via police discretion, provide an extremely flexible resource. The highly discretionary dim ension continued into the courts: The role of judges and the courts during the strike have been equally questionable. With regard to the criminal law, most controversial of all has been the systematic use by mag­ istrates of restrictive bail conditions to prevent miners from effectively picketing or par­ ticipating in the strike. Magistrates have forged close relationships with the police, have declared their hostility to striking miners and have accepted the wide discretion used by the police in defining offences. (Fine and Millar, 1985:14) From the point of view o f critical crim inologists, the creation o f the law and its enforcem ent, as well as decisions not to legally ban certain acts, are not neutral p ro ­ cesses guided by the com m on good. Rather, they reflect the interests of the powerful in society. On the oth er hand, som e w riters take the view that the crim inal law, and hence w hat is defined as crim e, reflects a society-wide consensus regarding wrongful behaviour (this issue is retu rn ed to below when discussing ‘deviance’). It is difficult to disagree with the argum ent th at in contem porary Britain there is general agreem ent am ong the public regarding the w rongfulness of, for instance, m urder, rape and b u r­ glary. The problem , though, is th at ‘crim e’ em braces an enorm ous range o f acts and om issions, and it would be equally difficult to argue with any certainty th at all of these acts and om issions are disapproved o f at the level o f a consensus, in other words, th at the crim inal law in its entirety reflects the ‘will of the people’. Some crim inologists argue th at there is a consensus in society regarding basic m oral standards, bu t this is not always reflected in crim inal law. Therefore, they say,

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crim inology should focus on those acts th at violate codes o f conduct based upon these shared m oral standards, rath er than on crim e perse. Sellin (1938), for exam ple, argued that the subject m atter of crim inology should be those acts th at violate w hat he called universal ‘conduct n orm s’, w hether or not the acts are technically crim inal. The pro b ­ lem here, though, is one o f actually identifying such norm s, a problem th at Sellin failed to resolve. This kind of approach, whereby w hat is studied by crim inology is detached from legal definitions o f crime, does m ean th at the crim inologist would no longer be restricted to studying only those activities th at happen to be defined as ille­ gal within a particular jurisdiction, at a particular m om ent in tim e - a huge advantage in the eyes of some crim inologists. Schw endinger and Schwendinger (1975), for instance, attem pted to develop a radical version o f such an approach. They argued th at crim inologists should define ‘crim e’ (and therefore their subject m atter) in term s of universal codes o f conduct relating to fundam ental hum an rights: ‘individuals who deny these rights to others are c rim in a l. . . im perialism , racism , sexism and poverty can be called crim es according to the logic of our argum ent’ (ibid.: 148).

Measuring crime Finally, as p art o f this prelim inary look at the notion o f crim e, it will be useful to exam ine briefly attem p ts to m easure the am ount, nature and d istribution o f crim e in society. At this stage questions of reliability and usefulness need not concern us (these will be p art o f the m ore detailed discussion o f crim inal statistics in the next chapter). The m ain aim is to indicate the sources o f inform ation available and to relate these to conceptualisations o f crime. Official crime statistics Crim inal statistics for England and Wales are published annually by the Hom e Office (in the publication Criminal Statistics), though quarterly updates are also published (sim ilar statistics covering Scotland and N o rth ern Ireland are published by, respec­ tively, the Scottish Office and the N o rth ern Ireland Office). These are the crim e fig­ ures th at are reproduced in the m ass m edia (nowadays in tandem with figures from the British Crime Survey - see below) accom panied by, if the figures show a decrease on the previous year, a sigh o f relief - or, if they show an increase, by a sigh o f anxiety. For a governm ent, a decrease will signal an opp o rtu n ity for self-congratulation th at its crim inal justice policies are working; an increase is obviously m ore o f a problem , and can stim ulate w onderous verbal sorcery from governm ent sources in an effort to vin­ dicate their policies. The figures them selves are based on w hat are called ‘notifiable offences’ recorded by the police forces o f England and Whales, and the m ore serious offences are m eant to be in this category. However, although offences such as hom icide and rape are included, som e o f the offences so classified will be seen by m any people as not particularly

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serious. Supposedly less serious ‘sum m ary offences’ (m ade up largely o f m otoring offences), which are dealt with by the m agistrates’ courts, are not recorded in the crime statistics. There are, however, figures available for ‘persons proceeded against’, and these add up to about three tim es the num ber of persons convicted or cautioned for notifiable offences. The latest Home Office figures show that in England and Wales, in the 12 m onths up to the end of Septem ber 2008, 4,836,900 offences were recorded by the police. Victim surveys These have becom e increasingly p opular over the last few years in Britain and in the United States. They can be incorporated into a conservative or a radical crim inologi­ cal tradition, and they reflect a growth in th at field o f crim inology called victimology (W alklate, 1989, 2007; Hoyle and Zedner, 2007). Victim surveys are based on asking people if they have been the victim o f a crim e, usually over a tw elve-m onth period, and w hether they rep o rted this to the police. Various supplem entary questions may then be asked. In this country the largest victim surveys are the British Crime Surveys carried out under the auspices o f the Home Office in 1982, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000 and, since 2001, on an annual basis. As well as these national sur­ veys, a n u m b er o f sm aller-scale, localised surveys have been carried out, and these p u rp o rt to provide m ore detailed in-depth data on victim experiences. One o f the aim s o f a victim survey is to gather supplem entary or alternative inform ation to th at provided by official statistics and, in particular, to obtain some idea o f the n um ber of offences th at are not reported to the police by the public, and therefore not recorded. In this context it should be noted th at in som e cases crim es are reported, but are then not considered to be crim es by the police. Inevitably, and using com m on-sense language, all victim surveys show th at there is m ore crime com m itted than appears in official statistics. The concept used here is the ‘dark figure’ o f crime. It is frequently p ointed out th at the British Crime Surveys indicate that, because o f a lack of reporting by the public, only around one in four crim es com m itted are recorded in official statistics. This is an average figure derived from a widely varying propensity to report, depending on the nature o f the offence as perceived by the vic­ tim . C rim inal dam age (vandalism ), for instance, is m uch less likely to be reported th an the theft of a car. The one-in-four ratio, though, has to be treated w ith caution, in th at som e categories o f offence used in the British Crime Surveys are different to those used by the police, and there are certain offences which, by definition, will not be picked up by such surveys, for exam ple shoplifting and fraud. In fact, Sparks et al. (1977) suggest th at about eleven tim es m ore crim e is com m itted than is recorded in official statistics; this gives an enorm ous ‘dark figure’ o f crime. Self-report studies These are questionnaires asking people if they have com m itted any o f the offences listed (for exam ple, over the last twelve m onths). Clearly it is asking a lot o f som eone

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to adm it to breaking the law, and so self-report studies strive to m inim ise potential problem s by stressing anonym ity, and by using back-up data from official records and even polygraphs (lie detectors). D epending on the sam ple used, researchers will attem p t to correlate am ounts and types o f offending behaviour with variables such as class and age. Carried out for, and published by, the Home Office, the annual Offending, Crime and Justice Survey provides detailed inform ation based upon self-reported offending in England and Wales. W hilst the age o f respondents in the first survey in 2003 ranged from 10 to 65 years, subsequent surveys have focused on a younger age group of 10 to 25-year-olds. To a large extent the surveys are longitudinal, in th at each year they seek to question the sam e sam ple o f individuals; however, as som e o f these drop out, new people are added in order to m aintain an overall sam ple o f around 5,000. The m ost recent survey (Roe and Ashe, 2008) found th a t 22 per cent o f respondents said they had com m itted one o f the survey’s tw enty core offences during the previous twelve m onths; however, the bulk of this offending was occasional and relatively triv­ ial. Ten per cent said they had com m itted one of the serious offences and, according to the survey, groups o f serious offenders tended to overlap w ith groups o f frequent offenders. Since their inception self-report studies have consistently discovered significantly m ore w idespread offending am ong the general public th an official inform ation would suggest. Again, though, it has to be stressed th at this kind o f blanket statem ent is in need of qualification. The seriousness o f offence and frequency o f offending have to be considered, along with the actual m ethods o f research used, before reaching too m any conclusions. Police and court records These provide another, official, source of inform ation for crim inologists. Unlike the sources above, here we are dealing directly w ith individuals who have been defined and processed by the crim inal justice system , this procedure culm inating in a convic­ tion or a caution. M aguire (1994:271) m entions an eye-catching piece o f inform ation derived from these sources: not many more than one in ten offences recorded by the police result in a caution or a conviction: in other words, in the vast majority of cases, nothing is officially known about those responsible. Indeed, it has been further calculated . . . that only about one in fifty of the comparable crimes identified by the British Crime Survey result in a con­ viction - a figure which drops as low as one in 200 where ‘vandalism’ (criminal damage) is concerned.

Other sources In recent years we have seen huge increases in the am o u n t and type o f crim inal justice-related data available for analysis; this has been facilitated by the expansion in

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com puter-based data storage system s. It has also been encouraged by the m anagerial­ ist em phasis now placed on auditing and perform ance indicators by central govern­ m ent. Crime and D isorder Reduction P artnerships in each borough, district and unitary authority in England and Wales, for instance, were, following the 1998 Crime and D isorder Act, obliged to conduct three-yearly local audits o f crim e and disorder. M ore recently, the 2006 Police and Justice Act placed a statu to ry duty on local p a rt­ nerships to conduct these audits on an annual basis (they were also given the new title o f ‘strategic assessm ents’). W hile these tend to rely largely on police data, they are expected to collect data from a wide range o f oth er sources, for exam ple the health service, social services and probation, and they often com m ission th eir own local research (increasingly, inform ation o f this so rt is being stored in regional data w are­ houses). T hus vast am ounts o f data relating to such things as crim e m apping, the w hereabouts o f certain types o f offenders, and victim s and the fear o f crim e are now available (though access to ‘sensitive’ data is constrained by certain protocols - see Tierney and Hobbs, 2003). These data are collected by, or for, a whole range o f agen­ cies and organisations, including the Hom e Office, the police, universities, local authorities and private research com panies.

Varieties of crime W ith the above as a backdrop, we can return to a discussion o f the concept of crime. It should be apparent that the word ‘crim e’ can crop up in various contexts, and refer to a variety of phenom ena. This can be illustrated further by listing som e of the chief ways in which ‘crim e’ is used, though in each case it is describing different phenom ena: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Crimes deem ed to be such by a court finding a defendant guilty. Crimes recorded by the police as notifiable offences. Crimes reported to the police by the public. Crimes reported to, or discovered by, the police, b u t no t recorded by them . The dark figure o f crim e. Crim es actually com m itted. There is a seventh, ra th e r different category th at could be added, and has already been referred to briefly. This is where the term ‘crim e’ is used to describe activities th at are no t at p resent against the law, bu t from the perspectives o f som e observers are w rong or im m oral. T hus som eone m ight say, ‘It’s a crim e the way he treats his wife’, m eaning th at although not illegal, the h u sb a n d ’s behaviour is ‘w rong’, and perhaps should be m ade illegal. On a m ore com plex level, this principle has been applied to such things as racism , sexism and im perialism (see Schw endinger and Schwendinger, 1975).

W hen discussing the m easurem ent of crime in society, some criminologists have used the iceberg analog)', in which recorded crime is seen as merely the tip of the iceberg.

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? Figure 1.1

Profile o f the seven conceptions o f crime

W hatever the ultim ate value o f this analog)', it can be used as a basis for illustrating graphically the seven ways o f conceptualising crime noted above (see Figure 1.1). Pro­ portions are based upon artistic licence rather than reality. This discussion can be extended to include the n otion o f a ‘crim e rise’ and the notion o f a ‘crim inal’, to point to sim ilar conceptual problem s when using these term s.

Varieties of crime rise As Jason D itton (1979) has show n, the notion of a ‘crim e rise’ can m ean a num ber of things: 1 As a result o f new laws, acts th at were previously non-crim inal now becom e crim inal. 2 M ore crim inal acts are discovered. 3 M ethods o f classification change so th at acts previously defined as non-crim inal are now crim inal. 4 There is m ore m ass m edia coverage o f crime. 5 M ore crim inal acts are com m itted.

Varieties of criminal As w ith ‘crim e’ and ‘crim e rises’, the term ‘crim inal’ can also be used to m ean different things. An interesting question (with an answ er th a t is less obvious than m ight be thought) is, w hat is a crim inal? Here are a n um ber of possible answers: 1 Som eone who really com m itted the offence and is found guilty by a court. 2 Som eone who is found guilty bu t did no t com m it the offence.

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3 Som eone who com m itted the offence, and the offence is recorded, bu t has not been caught. 4 Som eone who com m itted the offence, bu t no one is aware of it, except the offender. Thus, for all three term s - crim e, crim e rise and crim inal - there are various defini­ tional possibilities. The fact th at these possibilities exist rem inds us th at crim inolo­ gists need to have a clear u nderstanding o f w hat they m ean when they use these term s. Finally, we tu rn to the concept o f deviance.

DEVIANCE

Sociological definitions o f deviance generally contain two elem ents: non-conform ing behaviour with respect to accepted norm s, and strong disapproval o f such behaviour. Deviance can therefore be crim inal or non-crim inal. This view of deviance is illus­ trated by the following exam ples: ‘Deviance may be defined as non-conform ity to a given norm , o r set of norm s, which are accepted by a significant n um ber o f people in a com m unity or society’ (G iddens, 1993: 116); ‘behaviour which som ehow d eparts from w hat a group expects to be done or w hat it considers the desirable way o f doing th in g s’ (Cohen, 1971: 9); ‘the violation o f the accepted norm s or social rules o f a group or society . . . the reaction to them is invariably one of disapproval, fear, suspi­ cion, hostility or outrage’ (Bilton et al., 1981:563). A crucially im p o rta n t p o in t to m ake is th at because a crim inologist describes some act they are studying as ‘deviant’ does no t m ean th at they personally consider the act to be ‘b a d ’, ‘im m oral’ etc. They are m erely recognising, or assum ing, th at w ithin soci­ ety, or som e section o f society, the act is strongly disapproved of, because it is judged to have violated certain norm s and values. Likewise, when a crim inologist refers to deviance in a generalised sense, outside specific exam ples, there is no im plication th at they are, in effect, referring to a set o f ‘b a d ’, ‘im m oral’ etc. types o f behaviour on a collective level. In general conversation and w ithin the m ass m edia, though, the word ‘deviance’ is very often used as sh o rth a n d for types o f behaviour th at suppos­ edly possess these negative qualities. In view of this, it is possible for a stu d e n t new to the subject to enrol on a university course entitled, say, ‘The Sociology o f Deviance’ u nder the m istaken im pression that, in som e absolute sense, the course is ‘really’ a course devoted to the sociological study o f bad, im m oral, perverted and u n natural behaviour. This is one reason why som e critical crim inologists argue th at in order to shift the em phasis away from an assum ption o f inherently ‘b a d ’ behaviour, crim ino­ logical studies should focus on the rules them selves and their application, th at is, on deviantisation processes, and no t on those labelled ‘deviant’. The advent o f a sceptical - and, on one level, radical - ‘new deviancy theory’ in the 1960s m arked the beginning o f an a tte m p t seriously to interrogate the concept o f ‘deviance’, though by then the concept had had a relatively sh o rt lifespan. A lthough

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they were no t necessarily answ ered, this led to a n u m b er o f critical questions being placed on the agenda: • • • •

W hose rules are being broken? In whose interests do these rules operate? W hy are the rules there in the first place? W ho is doing the disapproving?

The last question, asking who is doing the disapproving, is a good starting point for a discussion o f the concept of deviance. One of the central sociological problem s in this context concerns the issue o f a consensus; th at is, a general agreem ent or m ajority view over w hat is considered acceptable behaviour. T raditional crim inolo­ gists have tended to assum e th at there is a consensus, which is then translated into phrases such as ‘public o p in io n ’. Functionalist approaches to deviance, for exam ple, have built th eir work around the assum ption o f a consensus as the product o f sociali­ sation processes. Those outside the posited consensus are then viewed as either deviant them selves, or m arginal groups whose opinions are perverse and therefore u n im p o rtan t. For radical crim inologists, or radical sociologists o f deviance, especially M arxists, the notion o f consensus proved to be particularly awkward. This was because a capitalist society such as Britain or the United States was seen as being com posed of different classes and groups, giving a plurality of cultural form ations w ith differ­ ent understandings o f ‘accepted behaviour’. D eveloping an interactionist perspec­ tive, new deviancy theorists such as Edwin Lernert (1967), for instance, saw deviant behaviour as being m ore or less evenly distrib u ted thro u g h o u t society. The search for the initial causes o f deviance was seen as futile, because causes will vary enorm ously from one individual or group to another. The em phasis was therefore on reactions to som e o f the behaviour, reactions which lead to the application of the label ‘deviant’. From this perspective, only som e o f the rule breakers are discovered and labelled. Sociologically, then, these are ‘deviants’, and it is th eir behaviour and reac­ tions to it th at should be the p roper concern o f sociology. Consequently, notions of consensus are spirited away, and attention is tu rn ed to the labelling process and the u n fortunates who are unlucky enough to be selected by those possessing the power to label. However, the arbitrariness inherent in this m odel suggests th at in theory literally anyone could be selected for doing anything. In practice, though, behaviours ear­ m arked as deviant are not random ly selected. Therefore, consideration should be given to the nature and d istribution o f the power to accom plish labelling, and the structural settings w ithin which specific labelling processes operate. And there is still the thorny issue o f consensus. If a plurality o f cultures and subcultures exists in soci­ ety, each with their own quite different feelings about acceptable and unaccept­ able behaviour, how is the public labelling o f individuals and groups to be m ade

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palatable? O utside a to talitarian society, presum ably there has to be a degree o f p u b ­ lic disapproval, som e congruence o f opinion am ong the various groups regarding the labelled behaviour. The issue then becom es one o f determ ining the nature and source o f this disapproval, by exam ining, for exam ple, the role o f ideology. Radical crim inologists w ishing to develop a M arxist approach to u nderstanding deviance also had to grapple with the idea o f consensus. This was a p p aren t in the ‘new crim inology’ o f Ian Taylor, Paul W alton and Jock Young (1973), where they p re­ sented a radical M arxist alternative to new deviancy theory. They rejected the view th at a consensus existed, bu t m et problem s w hen actually defining w hat ‘deviance’ was. In fact, in this study no definition was forthcom ing. They attem pted to solve the problem o f a consensus by arguing th at although there was none, people thought there was, because o f the influence o f the m ass m edia and education. This suggested th at individuals did not really disapprove o f certain behaviours th at are labelled ‘deviant’, but at the sam e tim e believed th at m ost people did. In the mid-1970s the M arxist Colin Sum ner (1976) developed a different approach. He argued th at deviance was best conceived o f as a social censure - an adverse judgem ent - existing at the level of ideology. This is to depart from conceptualising deviance in term s of actual behaviour. To com plicate m atters further, at about the sam e tim e another M arxist writer, Paul H irst (1975a), rejected out o f hand the project o f developing a ‘M arxist perspective’ on deviance. For him , deviance was a pre-given bourgeois concept, not a M arxist theoretical object, and therefore was not a proper area for study, except in the form of revisionism . So, by the mid-1970s the debates were beginning to intensify. M ore recently, so-called left realist crim inology has accepted the existence o f a consensus with respect to certain sorts o f ‘conventional’ crim e. Put simply, this posi­ tion states th at it is absurd to believe th at large num bers o f people, and especially those who are victims, do not strongly disapprove o f crim es such as rape, burglary and robbery. To m any people, though, this will appear to be a p retty unrem arkable statem ent. In fact, presented in this way such statem ents m ask com plex theoretical issues pertaining to the deviantisation o f certain defined crim inal acts. The left realist position takes us back to the notion o f'stro n g public disapproval' w hereby deviance is defined, bu t can deviance be conceived o f in crude num erical term s? Furtherm ore, how do we know th at people in general strongly disapprove o f a particular type o f behaviour or person? Obviously, it is reasonable to m ake this assum ption w ith respect to som e behaviour. However, can we say the sam e about all exam ples o f so-called deviance as defined in the literature o f crim inology? Certainly, research does point to a significant consensus am ong the public with regard to the core areas o f the crim inal law as generalised categories (cf. B raithw aite, 1989). And W est (1982) found th at even known offenders disapproved o f th eir children’s delin­ quent behaviour. On the basis o f localised crim e surveys left realists have argued th at ‘the m ajor crim es as presently defined in criminal law, are agreed upon by the m ass o f the p o p u latio n ’ (Young, 1987: 355, original em phasis).

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However, even if we accept this proposition uncritically, the range o f behaviours constituting the academ ic study o f deviance over the years is m uch broader than this. A quick glance at the books in the crim inology section o f a university or col­ lege library, where the au th o r has designated the activities as ‘deviant’, will indi­ cate the possibilities: the blind, M ods and Rockers, Hell’s Angels, those with learning difficulties, ‘Paki’-bashers, gays and lesbians, naturists, ‘obese’ people, school tru an ts, m arijuana users and ‘topless’ barm aids. If a consensus is the lynchpin o f a definition o f deviance, how is th at consensus to be m easured? The danger is th at a researcher may sim ply feel, using com m on sense, th at a consensus exists; indeed, they m ight create a stigm atised group as a result o f doing the research. How could feelings o f dis­ approval over a vast range o f potential behaviours be ascertained anyway? No national survey, for instance, has been in stitu ted asking people w hat they feel about all these behaviours; and it w ould be o f only lim ited value. How do we discover w hat people ‘really’ feel, and w hat does th at m ean? An individual may nom inally be against som e behaviour, and yet do it them selves. On the oth er hand, they may feel th at they should preten d to be against som ething because they believe th at every­ one else is. The difficulties surrounding this issue can be sum m ed up with this, albeit crude, scenario. Im agine a sociologist o f deviance decides to do research on a specific type of deviant behaviour. How is he or she to know th at this is an exam ple of deviance? Are they to be debarred from doing this research because deviant status cannot som ehow be objectively assessed? Does it m atter? Given these sorts o f problem s we can p e r­ haps u n d erstan d how tem pting it is to dispense w ith the definitional niceties, and ju st get on w ith studying an activity because it can be reasonably assum ed th a t som e­ one, som ew here, will disapprove o f it. U nfortunately, as well as ignoring the central conceptual problem , this criterion probably applies to any activity. The question rem ains: how is deviance to be recognised? D ebates about how deviance and crim e should be conceptualised bubbled to the surface with the radicalism o f new deviancy theory, post-new deviancy theory, and left crim inology, which becam e influential during the 1960s and 1970s. M any o f the w riters involved dispensed w ith the concept o f crim e because it was so problem atic. As H eidensohn (1989: 8) says: Since the concept (of crime) is so flexible and the records so unreliable, and so far out­ side of the control of researchers, there has been a tendency to avoid confrontation, to argue against any engagement with the concept or especially with official records. And as she points out, for som e the solution was to focus on deviance - though the problem s are still there in abundance. From the m id-1970s, however, the focus in the m ain shifted back to ‘crim e’, and conceptual debates about ‘deviance’ have tended to be shelved. Sum ner (1990: 15) m akes this telling observation: ‘Students still ask “W hatever happened to the theoretical debate about deviance in the early

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1970s?’” He goes on to say th a t w ithin radical crim inology there has been a failure to ‘reconceptualize “deviant behaviour’” . Certainly, m ore recent work has been con­ cerned w ith reconceptualising crim e rath er th an deviance, bu t the ‘failure’ does not only apply to so-called radical crim inology.

OTHERTERMSAND CONCEPTS

The following is a b rief discussion o f som e associated term s and concepts th at stu ­ dents o f crim inology will come across in th eir reading. The crim inal law, against which crim e is defined, arises from : com m on law (or law m ade by judges), referred to as legal precedents; Acts o f Parliam ent, which create leg­ islation or statu to ry law; delegated legislation, which is legislation derived from p e r­ sons or bodies other th an Parliam ent; and directives from the E uropean Union. Crim e and offence technically m ean the sam e thing, though in the literature ‘crim e’ is often used to describe m ore serious offences. A rrestable offences are m ore serious offences, or offences with a fixed penalty, m eaning th at a police officer is legally entitled to take the alleged offender into custody. N on-arrestable offences are those where a police officer issues a sum m ons to an alleged offender to appear in court at som e future date, or issues an on-the-spot fine. However, failing to give a credible nam e and address (Mickey M ouse, D isneyland would be in this category) will result in an arrest. There is no consensus regarding the precise m eaning o f delinquency, though it usually refers to the offending behaviour o f young people, and the behav­ iour can stretch from serious crim inal offences to relatively m inor non-crim inal activ­ ities. Doli incapax m eans th at in England and Wales a child u nder 10 years (8 years in Scotland) cannot be guilty o f a crim inal offence. Prior to 1998 it was 14 years. How­ ever, in the case o f children aged 10-13, the prosecution is obliged to prove th at at the tim e o f the offence the child was aware th at their actions were wrong. A dult offenders are those aged 18 years and over; young offenders are those aged 14-17 years inclu­ sive; child offenders are those aged 10-13 years inclusive.

Se le c te d fu rth e r read in g (All texts discussed under ‘further reading’ at the end of each chapter are not listed in order of precedence.) There are a num ber of excellent general textbooks available to students. Four editions of the encyclopaedic Oxford Handbook have now been published, and all four are worth reading: Maguire, M., Morgan, R. and Reiner, R. (eds) (1994, 1997, 2002, 2007) The Oxford H andbook o f Criminology, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th edns, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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For an overview o f crim inological th eo ry and th e context o f its d ev elo p m en t in the U nited States, see: Lilly, J. R., C ullen, F. T. a n d Ball, R. A. (2 0 0 7 ) Criminological Theory: Context

and consequences, 4 th e d n , L ondon: Sage. Now in its fifth e d itio n , D ow nes, D. a n d Rock, P. (2 0 0 7 ) Understanding Deviance, 5 th edn, O xford: O xford U niversity Press, is a classic B ritish text w ritte n by two m ajo r figures in British crim inology. S u m n er, C. (ed.) (2 0 0 4 ) The Blackwell Companion to Criminology, O xford: Blackwell P ublishing, provides a collection o f critical discussions o f a range o f key th em e s and issues, m any o f w hich have em erged recently w ith in crim inology; at the tim e o f w ritin g it is only available in h a rd b ack . Two w ell-w ritten a n d accessible in tro d u c to ry tex tb o o k s th a t discuss crim inological th e ­ ory an d processes o f c rim inal justice are: H ale, C., H ayw ard, K., W ah id in , A. a n d W incup, E. (eds) (2 0 0 9 ) Criminology, 2 n d e d n , O xford: O xford U niversity Press; and N e w b u rn , T. (2 0 0 8 ) Criminology, C u llo m p to n : W illan. N ow in its seventh e d itio n , C larke, E. J. (2 0 0 7 ) Deviant Behavior, 7 th e d n , B asingstoke: Palgrave M acm illan is a highly reg ard ed th eo re tic al discussion o f deviance. W alters, R. (2 0 0 3 ) Deviant Knowledge: Criminology, politics and policy, C u llo m p to n : W illan is a critical discussion o f th e p olitical an d ideological co n tex ts w ith in w hich c rim i­ nological research is co n d u cted . Two in te re stin g th eo re tic al m odels o f crim e are the ‘p y ram id o f crim e’ and the 'p rism o f c rim e ’ in tro d u c ed an d discussed, respectively, by: H agan, J. (1 9 7 7 ) The Disreputable Pleasures, T o ro n to : M cG raw -H ill Ryerson; an d H enry, S. a n d L anier, M . M . (1 9 9 8 ) ‘T he p rism o f crim e: a rg u m e n ts fo r an in te g ra te d d e fin itio n o f c rim e ’, Justice Quarterly, 15(4), p p . 6 0 9 -2 7 . For an accessible overview o f legal term s an d legal processes, see: W illiam s, K. S. (2 0 0 9 )

Textbook on Criminology, 6 th e d n , O xford: O xford U niversity Press.

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CHAPTER

2

M E A SU R IN G CRIME A N D C R IM IN A L IT Y

C

\

Key th e m e s • Official statistics • The ‘dark figure’ of crime • Public reporting • Changes in the law • The role of the police • Ways of seeing • The implications for criminal statistics • Victim surveys • The usefulness of criminal statistics • Local crime surveys and left realism • Recent crime trends

'--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- J

IN TR O D U C T IO N

H ere w e d iscu ss in m o re d eta il th e va rio u s so u rces o f in fo r m a tio n rela tin g to crim e and crim in a ls. T h e read er is in tr o d u ce d to th e key p ro c e sse s at w ork in th e so c ia l c o n ­ stru ctio n o f crim e a n d crim in als; for ex a m p le, th e role p layed by th e p o lic e , w h o act as ‘g a te k e e p e r s’ to th e c rim in a l ju stic e sy ste m . T h e ch a p ter in c lu d e s an u p -to -d a te ov erv iew o f sta tistic a l d ata on a m o u n ts an d ty p e s o f crim e, a c o m m e n ta r y on th eir u sefu ln ess or o th e rw ise , an d a review o f h isto rica l tren d s.

O FFIC IA L STATISTICS

H ow m u c h c rim e ? H ow m a n y c rim in a ls? H ow m a n y v ictim s? It is im p o s s ib le to give a n y a c c u ra te o r s tra ig h tfo rw a rd a n sw e rs to th e q u e s tio n s p o se d . . . N o t o n ly d o e s e v e ry th in g d e p e n d o n w h a t is m e a n t by ‘c rim e ’, ‘c rim in a ls ’ a n d ‘v ic tim s ’, b u t even i f th e re w e re to b e b r o a d a g re e m e n t o n th e d e fin itio n a n d sc o p e o f

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these basic terms, it is very apparent that most of the extant methods of measuring the nature and amounts of crime, criminality and victimization would be inadequate to the task. (Bottomley and Pease, 1986:1) Give or take a few qualifications, all crim inologists would probably go along w ith this sobering assessm ent, which appears on the first page o f an im p o rta n t analysis of crim e data. C rim inologists can answ er questions (or find the inform ation) regarding such things as the n um ber o f people residing in HM prisons in England and Wales at a given m om ent, or the n um ber of offences o f crim inal dam age recorded by the police in a given year. The questions posed by Bottom ley and Pease, though, refer to qualita­ tively different phenom ena. In fact, the q uotation indicates two issues at stake here. One concerns the accuracy o f data, and the oth er concerns the conceptual m eaning of the phenom ena th at the data p u rp o rt to represent. Put a n o th e r way, it is no t just a question o f how close official statistics are to ‘real’ am ounts o f crim e; it is also a ques­ tion o f w hat processes are involved in the construction o f such figures and, u lti­ mately, w hat is m eant by crim e anyway. This does not m ean th at all statistical inform ation pertaining to crime, either official or not, is useless and unw orthy o f serious attention by crim inologists. It does m ean, though, that such inform ation has to be treated with extreme caution. O f course, a ju d i­ cious am ount o f caution is not always exercised by those who com m ent on, and use, these statistics, for example in support o f a political program m e. Furtherm ore, as Jack Douglas (1971b) has pointed out, crim inological knowledge produced by academics can be pu t to all sorts of nefarious uses by those representing particular ideological interests; to this extent, crim inological knowledge can be ‘dangerous knowledge’. There is, however, one question th a t at the level of com m on sense may be viewed as one to which crim inologists should be able to provide an answer: is there m ore crime now th an there was in the past? This question can form the basis o f a m ore extended discussion. Echoing Bottomley and Pease, the im m ediate response has to be that no simple answer can be given, for any engagement with the question necessarily triggers layers of statistical and conceptual problem s. To begin with, w hat is m eant by ‘the past’? PreW orld War Two? A hundred years ago, or beyond? A crude reading of the official crimi­ nal statistics for the last century - at least up until the 1990s - would leave no option but an affirmative answer to the original question. Apart from a few fluctuations - notably a dip at the end of the 1940s, and between 1950 and 1955 - total am ounts o f crime, and crime rates based upon offences per 100,000 of the population, continued to rise steadily. From the tu rn o f the tw entieth century up to W orld W ar One, u nder 100,000 offences were recorded by the police o f England and Wales for each year. Currently, the figure is 4,836,900 (for the twelve m onths up to the end o f Septem ber 2008). The categories o f th eft/h a n d lin g stolen goods and burglary add up to about 35 per cent of all offences recorded, a m uch sm aller pro p o rtio n o f total recorded crim e than in the

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m id tw entieth century. In the case o f violence against the person and crim inal dam ­ age, the opposite is true, with each representing about 20 per cent o f recorded offences. Theft o f or from a vehicle currently stands at around 700,000 per year, a fig­ ure which in itself is seven tim es the total n um ber o f offences recorded annually in the first p a rt o f this century. N eedless to say, all inform ation o f this nature needs careful scrutiny, and especially so if we extend the picture to include international com par­ isons, for then such factors as different jurisdictions and offence classification sys­ tem s have to be incorporated into tortuously com plicated analyses (for a m ore detailed up-to-date review o f official crim e statistics see M aguire, 2007). N ot surprisingly, m any viewed the gradual increases in recorded crim e during the tw entieth century in Britain, and in m any oth er industrialised nations, with some dismay, seeing them as confirm ation th at there was less crim e com m itted in the past. Indeed, a m ajority o f the public th o u g h t this even when recorded crim e began to decrease from the m id 1990s. However, even if crim es are sim ply viewed as objective events w aiting ‘out there’ to be discovered and recorded, there are still huge problem s involved in interpreting crim inal statistics and m aking com parisons across tim e. If conceptual problem s relating to the m eaning o f crim e are considered alongside these ‘technical’ problem s, then analyses becom e m ore com plicated. For the m om ent, though, it will be useful to concentrate on crim inal statistics at a technical level; th at is, to exam ine those factors th a t will determ ine their shape and accuracy’ (there are good, extended discussions in W iles, 1976a; Jupp, 1989; M aguire, 2007).

T H E ‘D A R K F I G U R E ’ O F C R I M E

The concept o f a dark figure of crim e has been m entioned earlier, when the iceberg analogy was introduced. It refers to those ‘h id d en ’ crim es th at are not recorded by the police, and are therefore absent from official statistics. D ata from victim surveys are used to estim ate the m agnitude of this dark figure - Sparks et al. (1977) suggest th at it is eleven tim es the official figure, though this latter statistic is an overall average which hides enorm ous variation betw een one offence and another. W hether or no t the ‘dark figure’ is an ap propriate way in which to thin k about crim e is an issue th at can be left to one side for now. W hat has to be stressed is th at it cannot be assum ed th at am ounts o f unrecorded crim e have stayed constant th ro u g h ­ out history, as the following discussion o f som e o f the m ain variables determ ining am ounts o f recorded crim e will illustrate.

PUBLIC REPORTING

Given th at about 80 per cent o f crim e know n to the police comes to their atten tio n as a result o f inform ation from the public, the willingness of the public to rep o rt crim e is a crucial factor. Obviously, statistical com parisons across tim e will need to take this

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into consideration. As a result o f m otor insurance being legally com pulsory, we can expect very high levels o f public reporting and police recording o f vehicle theft. Like­ wise, the spread o f household contents insurance, and the requirem ent to notify the police o f loss of property before a claim can be m ade, will increase the reporting of burglary. W ith oth er types o f offence - for exam ple, sexual offences, dom estic vio­ lence and child abuse - the evidence from victim surveys suggests substantial u n d e r­ reporting. Finkelhor’s (1979) study o f Am erican students, for instance, found th at 19.2 per cent o f w om en and 8.6 per cent o f m en had experienced sexual m olestation as children, though only rarely had they disclosed this to an o th er person. In m ore recent years there have been increases in am ounts o f these offences recorded by the police. A plausible argum ent is th at this results as m uch from such things as greater publicity and im provem ents in police procedures as from increases in the incidence o f such offending. O ther factors to note in the context o f public reporting are the spread o f tele­ phones, m aking contact with the police easier, and neighbourhood w atch schem es, whose raison d ’être is to encourage public reporting. There is also the degree o f public tolerance o f certain sorts of behaviour. If a m ore sensitised public exists, w ith a low­ ered tolerance threshold, then we can expect reporting to increase. Thus the official crim e rate can go up as m em bers o f a society becom e m ore dem anding in term s of notions o f civility and propriety.

CHANGES INTHE LAW

This factor in itself illustrates the m assive problem s involved in determ ining w hether or not there is ‘really’ m ore crim e today th an in the past. Over the years new laws are introduced, and others repealed, which m eans th at legal rules are in a con­ stan t state o f flux. C om pared to the early p a rt o f this century, the net o f crim inalised behaviour has w idened considerably - for exam ple, with respect to the use o f drugs, the treatm ent o f children and com m ercial fraud. In general term s, then, the further back one goes in history, the m ore difficult it is to m ake judgem ents about the m oral health o f a society on the basis o f crim inal statistics. On the oth er hand, providing there have been no significant recent legislative changes, com parisons betw een the present and the recent past are m ore valid. Since New Labour came to pow er in 1997, though, the in troduction o f new laws has led to the creation o f around 3,000 new offences. Changes in the law also involve changes in the counting rules and the classifica­ tion o f offences as im posed upon the police by the Hom e Office. A m ost striking, and consequently often referred to, exam ple o f this characteristic concerns the offence of crim inal dam age (vandalism ). A ccording to official statistics, in 1976 there were 93,000 offences o f crim inal dam age in England and Wales, w hilst in the follow­ ing year this had increased to 297,400. One explanation m ight be th at during this

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tw elve-m onth period there was a huge upsurge in crim inal dam age, an anarchic festival o f p ain t spraying and property destruction. Needless to say, this was not the case. The real reason for the increase was th at the 1976 figure excluded crim inal dam ­ age valued at £20 and under, w hilst in 1977 the police had been instructed by the Hom e Office to record instances of crim inal dam age valued at this figure and under as well. O f course, relying on m onetary value, for any class o f offence, will m ean that all subsequent figures are influenced by inflation. The im plications o f changes in the law (and the pow er to m ake these changes) can be illustrated fu rth er by a recent case tried in an Italian court. At the conclusion o f the trial in early 2009, E nglishm an David Mills, who is the estranged husband of British Labour m inister Tessa Jowell, was found guilty o f accepting a bribe o f £400,000 as a rew ard for giving ‘distorted evidence’ at two previous trials where the Prim e M inister o f Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, was a defendant. Mills, a legal adviser to Berlusconi on off­ shore dealings, was sentenced to four and a h a lf years in jail, and fined heavily. He is to appeal against the sentence. Although Berlusconi was indicted to appear with Mills, in 2008 the Prim e M inister’s governm ent passed a law giving him , along with oth er senior officials, im m unity from prosecution. This im m unity is currently under consideration by the co u n try ’s constitutional court, however: The Italian government recently secured Berlusconi’s position further with a clause inserted in a bill to reform the judiciary. If approved by parliament, it will mean that, even if such immunity were lifted, the judge residing over the case that ended yesterday would not be able to apply its outcome automatically to Berlusconi. She would be obliged to begin proceedings all over again. (Hooper and Stratton, 2009)

THE ROLE O F T H E POLICE

In view o f the fact th at crim inal statistics are derived from inform ation supplied by the various police forces, the ‘gatekeeping’ role o f the police is o f central im portance. The nature o f this role will vary over tim e, as well as betw een one force (and even one officer) and another. This introduces yet m ore variables into the process o f c o n stru ct­ ing crim e statistics. The im portance o f the police can be outlined by distinguishing betw een a reactive and a proactive dim ension. Reactive policing refers to responses to specific incidents by the organisation or individual officers. The incident may come to light because o f inform ation from the public, or through direct experience. The proactive dim ension to the police role is usually associated with general policing policies based upon a mix o f Hom e Office directives, discussions w ithin the police at a national level (for exam ple, via the Association o f C hief Police Officers, ACPO), and policies em anating from a particular force. A proactive dim ension, however, can exist at the level of the

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individual too, such as when an officer develops local contacts, or keeps an eye on cer­ tain establishm ents. All o f these various aspects o f the police role need to be situated w ithin an organi­ sational as well as b roader social structural context. In term s o f the organisation, note would have to be taken of, for instance, m anagem ent styles and resources avail­ able to a particular police force. The b roader social structural context will include the social com position and policing problem s pertaining to that force’s area, political pressures from governm ent, legal pow ers and constraints, m odes o f accountability, and so on. T hus we can see th at a whole range o f factors will be at work shaping the m anner in which offences and offenders are dealt w ith by the police. Obviously, it is absurd to assum e th at these have been constant through history. All o f these factors will, in var­ ious ways and in varying degrees, affect the actual decision-m aking process with respect to am ounts and types o f offences th at are eventually included in the national crim inal statistics. This can be illustrated by taking a few key exam ples. Fundam entally, the police have to decide if an indictable crim e has taken place, and, if so, w ithin which particular category o f offence it should be included (rem em ­ bering th at the counting rules are subject to periodic change by the Hom e Office). For instance, in those cases where no suspect is ap prehended it is by no m eans always unam biguously clear w hat type o f offence is being dealt with. In an assault case, how severe are the victim 's injuries? Did the shopper really have a wallet containing £1,000 picked from their pocket? How serious has the crim inal dam age to be before it is recorded? Furtherm ore, as we shall see, police officers are p a rt o f a com plex interac­ tional and interpretive process w hereby particular understandings o f reality are negotiated (e.g. Bittner, 1967; Cicourel, 1968; M anning, 1977; Tierney, 1987). At a national and local level police forces will set priorities regarding the targeting of particular types of offence. These law enforcem ent priorities will be derived from various sources: the Home Office and central governm ent, perceived public anxieties, local policing plans, and problem s flagged-up by local crim e and disorder audits. At specific m om ents, the result of this may be a sudden statistical increase in the inci­ dence o f a targeted offence, or w hat appear to be startlingly high levels o f illicit drug use and child sexual abuse, or appalling stan d ard s o f driving in certain police force areas. Hence the necessity o f seeing such inform ation as the artefacts o f police organ­ isation and practice, rath er than as a statistical photograph o f objective reality. In this context we can note M aguire’s (1994:249) com m ent that: Prior to 1968, there was little consistency between police forces on how many offences were to be recorded when events of these kinds came to their notice. Following the rec­ ommendations of the Perks Committee in 1967, clearer ‘counting rules’ were estab­ lished . . . which tidied up some of the discrepancies between forces, but at the same time they appear fairly arbitrary and, undoubtedly, understate the relative frequency of some offences.

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O ther factors associated with the police which could increase or decrease am ounts o f crim e th at are recorded, irrespective o f ‘actual’ am ounts taking place, can be listed briefly, as follows: • The n u m b er o f police officers - this has risen from about 110,000 in 1980 to over 140,000 today, the highest n um ber on record (Bullock and M ulchandani, 2009). In addition there are around 30,000 full-time equivalent police com m unity su p p o rt officers and special constables. • The use o f increasingly sophisticated technology, such as com puters. • M ore efficient system s o f adm inistration. • M ore expenditure on policing - in England and Wales, 1992-93, total spending on the police was £5.42bn, an 87 per cent rise in real term s since 1979. Today it is over £12bn, a 77 per cent increase since 1997 when the Labour governm ent was elected to office. In 2006-07, £26bn was spent on crim inal justice in England and Wales, alm ost 40 per cent m ore in real term s th an was spent in 1997-98 (HM Treasury, 2008). A nnual per capita expenditure on the crim inal justice system in England and Wales is higher than th at o f any oth er EU country (and the United States).

W A Y S OF SEEIN G

Having established a broad analytical fram ew ork w ithin which policing operates, we can now exam ine in m ore detail w hat is often referred to as ‘cop culture’ and the b ear­ ing th at this has on the production o f crim inal statistics: An understanding of how police officers see the social world and their role in it - ‘cop culture’- is crucial to an analysis of what they do, and their broad political function. It is a commonplace of the now voluminous sociological literature on police operations and discretion that the rank-and-file officer is the primary determinant of policing where it really counts - on the street. (Reiner, 1992:107) As a result o f the nature of the occupation and the structural pressures to which it is subject, police officers construct sh o rth a n d characterisations pertaining to types o f public, location and event. In particular, the public becom e ‘dram atis personae’: p e r­ sons o f the dram a. This process is predicated on the necessity o f gathering together the elem ents o f w hat could be a chaotic and confusing world in order to m ake sense o f it, as well as control it - and som etim es this involves crude stereotyping. In differ­ ent ways, o f course, we are all caught up in this kind o f process. However, with respect to the police it is a fundam ental occupational requirem ent, and has im p o rta n t

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im plications for the rest o f us. It is well sum m ed up by Cicourel (1968: 67), who says th at the police develop: theories about individuals and groups, morality and immorality, good and bad people, institutions, practices and typifications of community settings, and such theories or conceptions are employed in routine ways . . . the officer’s preconstituted typifications and stock of knowledge at hand lead him to prejudge much of what he encounters . . . particular ecological settings, populated by persons with ‘known’ styles of dress and physical appearance, provide the officer with quick inferences about ‘what is going on’. In this way chaos is transform ed into order. There may be rioting in progress at the tim e, but police typifications allow all events to be understood, m eaningfully in te r­ preted, and thus at least m entally ordered: People are expected to fill categorical niches and fall into line with the commonsense police theory about human nature. The observed facts are assembled under the umbrella of a commonsense theory. The facts are not taken as a means to disconfirm the police theory of human nature. (Manning, 1977:237) Broadly speaking, m em bers o f the public tend to get assigned to one o f two categories: ‘respectable’ or ‘non-respectable’. According to the Policy Studies Institute (PSI) report on the M etropolitan Police: ‘In this scale the “respectable” working class and the suburban m iddle class stand highest, while the “underclass” o f the poor and the rootless, together with groups regarded as deviant, such as hom osexuals or hippies, stand low est’ (Sm ith and Grey, 1985: 435). Phil Scraton discusses how these u n d er­ standings becom e p art o f police practices: ‘The regular, institutionalized use of these images leads to their incorporation into the general ideology o f police operations and practices. They . . . form a central p a rt o f the political m anagem ent o f com m unities’ (Scraton, 1985: 105). So w hat, from a police point o f view, does the ideal citizen look like? This question is perhaps answered m ost succinctly by the PSI report. Referring to police culture, the rep o rt says: ‘It is a milieu in which people who do not speak with a London or other regional accent and m en who do not dress like football m anagers are definitely m ade to feel out o f place’ (Sm ith and Grey, 1985: 435).

THE IMPLICATIONS FOR CRIM INAL STATISTICS

Taken together, the cirum stances outlined above constitute a complex mix o f factors shaping police policies and practices across the board. The nature and im pact o f these factors, for example political and public pressure, organisational and m anagerial dem ands, and police ideologies and culture, will not, of course, rem ain constant in term s o f th eir contribution to the construction o f recorded crim e. If changes in the

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law, m eth o d s o f classifying offences an d the p ropensity o f the public to re p o rt crim e to the police are also taken into account, then the hazards in h ere n t in using official crim ­ inal statistics from different m o m en ts in history as a m easure o f the m oral health o f a society becom e a p p are n t. A lthough the p rim a ry focus o f this section is on a m o u n ts o f crim e as rep resen ted by these statistics, we m ig h t no te th a t the issues raised in o u r discussion o f policing will have im p o rta n t ram ifications for o th e r aspects o f crim e and crim inality as socially c o n stru cted p h e n o m e n a. The types o f offences th a t end up in the statistics and act as one re p re se n tatio n o f the ‘crim e p ro b le m ’ - for exam ple, co nventional p ro p e rty crim e ra th e r th a n co rp o rate frau d - will be partly a fun ctio n o f the activities o f the police. So too will be the types o f offenders w ho are officially labelled and processed by the crim inal justice system . We will re tu rn to these issues at a later stage. For th e m o m e n t w hat o u r discussion illu strates is th a t th e crim inal statistics are the p ro d u c t o f dynam ic an d com plex processes involving the law, the police, offenders, victim s an d w itnesses.

VICTIM SURVEYS

Essentially, the analysis so far o f c rim inal statistics has taken place w ithin a m ore or less com m on-sensical fram ew ork, em ploying an accepted and fam iliar d efinition o f crim e. T his has m ea n t q u estio n in g the accuracy o f those statistics, though th ere have been som e h in ts o f other, conceptual, agendas. T he analysis, therefore, has been situ ­ ated w ith in the m ore conventional p a ram ete rs associated w ith crim inological p o si­ tivism . B iderm an an d Reiss (1967) describe th is a pproach as ‘realism ’ (n o t to be confused w ith left realism ). From the p o in t o f view o f realism , the pro b lem s w ith crim inal statistics are - to use the term 1 in tro d u c ed earlier - basically technical. T hat is, th ere is an a ssu m p tio n th a t a ‘re al’, objective a m o u n t o f crim e exists in society, b u t only som e o f it is actually recorded. T herefore, th ere is a ‘dark figure’ o f crim e. Looked at from this perspective, the task o f crim inology is to im prove the tools o f research in ord e r to d ete rm in e as accurately as possible th e posited ‘re al’ a m o u n t o f crim e. In sti­ tu tio n a l processes involving in te rp re ta tio n an d neg o tiatio n , w hereby c rim inal sta tis­ tics a n d the ‘crim e p ro b le m ’ are c o n stru cted , are th u s neglected in these analyses. O n occasion, som e researchers have taken this way o f c onsidering crim e a step fu r­ th e r an d have trea te d recorded crim e as if it is a slice o f a large h om ogeneous cake, a representative sam ple o f the w hole. T he sam e so rt o f logic has been applied to co n ­ victed offenders, leading to the conclusion th a t if the p riso n s are m ainly p o p u lated by p o o re r people, th en p o o re r people m u st be m ore involved in crim e th a n the b etteroff. T he pro b lem is neatly su m m ed up by Steven Box (1981:181): It is as though some researchers would have approached the question of how many colours there are in Joseph’s coat by placing one fragment under a microscope and

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declaring, after studying the fragment intensely, that the coat’s multi-colouredness was a myth for only one colour had been revealed after the most elaborate scientific investigation. In recen t years victim surveys have becom e increasingly popular, as, indeed, has th a t field o f study called victim ology, now accepted as one o f th e n o rm al concerns o f crim ­ inology: ‘V ictim s, once on the m arg in s o f crim inological research, are now a central focus o f academ ic research ’ (Z edner, 2002: 429). For realists th ere are obvious a ttra c tio n s in victim surveys in th a t they seem to offer a tech n iq u e for discovering a n d m easuring m ore accurately a m o u n ts o f crim e. At the sam e tim e, victim surveys have a ttra c te d the a tte n tio n o f som e less conven­ tional, m ore radical crim inologists. O ne o f th e a ttra c tio n s for those w ith a m ore scep­ tical m in d th an realists, is th a t victim surveys a p p e a r to bypass the in stitu tio n a l processes a n d allow the researcher to get to the h e art o f the m a tte r directly. F u rth e r­ m ore, victim surveys have been latched on to by crim inologists on the rig h t an d on the left, w ith right-w ing versions ten d in g to m obilise find ings aro u n d a ‘get to u g h ’ law an d o rd e r stance, w hilst left-wing versions have used th em to argue for general im provem ents in th e lives o f opp ressed sections o f society. (An aw kw ard issue is th a t som etim es victim s are also offenders.) W hile th ere are m any im p o rta n t d eb ates an d issues su rro u n d in g the uses and abuses o f victim surveys, in th is section the focus is (again) essentially on th e ir value as ways o f m easu rin g a m o u n ts o f crim e in a society; th a t is, we are still operatin g w ithin a m ore o r less ‘re alist’ fram ew ork.

Victimology Victim ology, th ro u g h the use o f victim surveys, is centrally concerned w ith gath erin g in fo rm a tio n on the experiences o f victim s o f crim e. B roadly speaking, tw'o different tra d itio n s can be discerned. At its incep tio n in th e U nited States d u rin g the 1940s (w ith the w'ork o f Von H entig, 1948, an d W erth am , 1949) the em phasis was on the psychological characteristics an d social circum stances - for exam ple, ‘lifestyles’ - o f those m ost likely to find them selves victim s o f crim e. W hilst this tra d itio n continues today, d u rin g the 1960s, and again in the U nited States, a second trad itio n focusing on m easu rin g the extent o f h id d en crim e developed. Victim p re cip ita tio n is p e rh ap s th e term m ost closely identified w ith the first o f these trad itio n s. T his was in tro d u c ed in to the vocabulary o f crim inology by W olfgang (1958), an d arose from his analysis o f hom icides. For W olfgang, victim p re ­ cipitation had a very precise m eaning, nam ely, th a t in a significant n u m b e r o f cases w hich he looked at, th e hom icide victim was the first to use force. O th e r w riters, how ­ ever, began to use th e term m ore loosely, so th a t it cam e to refer to instances w here victim s actually provoked o r h a sten ed th e ir ow n v ictim isation, for exam ple by the

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way they dressed or the places they visited. The classic study based upon this sort o f reasoning - and for obvious reasons m uch criticised by fem inists - is A m ir’s (1971) investigation o f rape, where he argues that in the cases he exam ined, alm ost one-fifth o f victim s precipitated the assault (for exam ple, gave out the ‘w rong signals’). M ore recent work (e.g. Sparks et al., 1977; Mayhew, 2000) has tried to develop m ore sophisticated m odels o f victim isation. Here, a range o f factors such as agelinked vulnerability, lifestyle m anagem ent, a lack o f pow er to com plain and types o f neighbourhood are analysed. This kind o f research shifts the focus o f attention away from the perceived culpability, or even stupidity, o f the victim tow ards oth er socially structured factors over which the victim may have little control. The second tradition began during the 1960s in the U nited States w ith large-scale national surveys o f victim s’ experiences. T heir prim ary aim was to shed som e light on the dark figure o f crim e, and such surveys are therefore particularly relevant to the them e o f this section.

Surveying victims The first British example o f a victim survey at a national level is, in a m odest way, found in the General Household Survey of 1972, which included a question about being the victim o f a burglary. The first specialised mass survey, though only carried out in London, was by Sparks et al. (1977). In 1982 the first of a series o f large-scale national surveys - the British Crime Survey - specifically designed to cover a wide range o f offences and bring to light hidden crime, was carried out under the auspices of the Home Office (Mayhew and Hough, 1983). Since then a large num ber of British Crime Surveys have been com pleted (Hough and Mayhew, 1985; Mayhew et al., 1989; Mayhew and Maung, 1993; Mirrlees-Black et al., 1996; Mirrlees-Black et al., 1998; Kershaw et al., 2000; Kershaw et al., 2001; Sim mons etal., 2002; Sim m ons and Dodd, 2003; Dodd e ta i, 2004; Nicholas el al., 2005; W alker el al., 2006; Nicholas el al., 2007; Kershaw el al., 2008). Inform ation is gathered by asking household m em bers aged over 15 years a set of standardised questions. In the latest British Crime Survey there were over 40,000 respondents. Up to the 1992 survey, the households used were chosen random ly from electoral registers; however, from 1992 onw ards the Postcode A ddress File was used (for technical discussions o f the British Crime Survey m ethodology, see Bolling et al., 2003 and G rant et al., 2006). This change was m ade because o f earlier criticism s th at a significant m inority of people are in fact absent from electoral registers. The m ain questions in these surveys are concerned w ith people’s experiences as victim s o f crim e, though other, supplem entary questions are included; for instance, questions relating to the fear o f crim e or decisions not to rep o rt an offence to the police. The survey is now conducted on a ‘rolling’ basis and, since 2001, the results are published annually alongside police data on recorded crim e (there are separate surveys for England and Wales, N orthern Ireland and Scotland).

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Supporters o f these surveys have argued th at as well as providing a m ore accurate picture o f crim inal victim isation in general, they also bring to light the experiences of particularly vulnerable groups whose victim isation rates were hith erto grossly u n d er­ estim ated by official data (for exam ple, victim s o f racially m otivated violence). Because victim surveys inevitably discover relatively large am ounts o f previously ‘h id d e n ’ crim e, they can generate increased public fear o f crim e. This perhaps accounts for the general tone o f British Crime Surveys, which has been one o f balanced reassurance. Thus, in the style o f the presenters o f TV’s Crimewatch at the end o f each program m e, efforts are m ade to point out th at as individuals the chances o f being a victim o f a serious crim e are no t especially high; for exam ple, in the w ords o f the 1989 survey, the ‘statistically average’ adult will have th eir hom e burgled only once in every 37 years. Obviously, such statistics, being averages, m ask the inequalities in victim isation rates betw een one neighbourhood and another, one type o f housing and another, and one group o f people and another; council house tenants, for exam ple, are m ore likely to be victim s o f burglary th an owner-occupiers. It was this sort o f critique th at helped to stim ulate an interest in m ore detailed, localised victim surveys in Britain during the 1980s. By focusing on specific neighbourhoods, and using research m ethods th at were thought to be m ore sensitive in nature, the aim was to gain m ore valuable, detailed knowledge of p a tte rn s o f victim isation. In the m ain, these localised studies were carried out by crim inologists sym pathetic to the so-called left realist perspec­ tive, and sponsored by local Labour Party-controlled councils. As such, this research has been incorporated into a left realist call to ‘take crim e seriously’. This links data generated by victim surveys to w hat left realists see as a progressive reform p ro ­ gram m e in areas such as policing and crim e prevention policies.

Findings It is true th at by their nature victim surveys show higher levels o f crim e than do offi­ cial statistics, and so send out a message th at there is even m ore crim e being com m it­ ted th an we thought. However, once a n u m b er o f sim ilar surveys have been conducted, and it is possible to draw out trends over a suitable period o f tim e, then a different picture may em erge. A good exam ple o f this is discussed by Bottom ley and Pease (1986). Between 1971 and 1981 the n u m b er o f dom estic burglaries in the official statistics rose from 204,560 to 349,692, confirm ing w idespread fears th at burglary was grow­ ing significantly in frequency. As Bottom ley and Pease say, this could m ean that the pro p o rtio n o f burglaries reported to, and recorded by, the police rem ained constant, and the increase actually happened. Or, it could m ean th at there was no increase, bu t m ore burglaries were reported and recorded. In this context the data from the 1972 ,1 9 7 3 ,1 9 7 9 and 1980 General Household Surveys m ake interesting

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reading. As m en tio n ed earlier, these surveys asked if households had been the victim s o f a burg lary d u rin g the p a st twelve m o n th s. Surprisingly, these surveys found no increase in the incidence o f burg lary in private househ o ld s over the p erio d from 1971. The first British Crime Survey was c o n d u cted in 1982 an d asked for recollections from 1981. The figure for househ o ld burg laries from th is survey was w ithin 1.3 per cent o f the figure from the 1980 General Household Survey (w hen people w ere in te r­ viewed in 1979, a n d asked to recall the previous twelve m o n th s). T his suggests th at th ere w as no m assive and su d d en increase in b u rg lary m issed by the General House­ hold Survey o f 1980. In conclusion, B ottom ley an d Pease (1986: 23) state: ‘T his surely clinches the view th a t the increase in burglary d u rin g the 1970s was alm ost com ­ pletely illusory’. A lthough th e British Crime Survey (BCS) brings to light a large n u m b e r o f crim e in cid e n ts th a t are n o t p re sen t in police recorded crim e figures, it should be n o ted th a t this only applies to p a rticu la r offence categories, ra th e r th an crim e in general. Fur­ th erm o re, co m p arin g BCS figures w ith recorded crim e figures for each o f these cate­ gories show s wide variation in the n u m b e r o f offences picked up. T hus, as M aguire (2002: 352) says: ‘T he BCS . . . provides an alternative, rather than directly comparable, overall picture o f crime to that offered by police statistics' (em phasis in original). It is often said th a t the BCS b rings to light four tim es as m uch crim e as show n in recorded crim e figures. T his results from a m isleading in te rp re ta tio n o f an analysis of th e first survey. T his (averaged) ratio only applies to those offences directly c o m p a ra ­ ble w ith those com piled by the police; one-th ird o f BCS offence groups are in fact not directly com parable. As a result, the survey does n o t p u rp o rt to offer a m ore accurate p ictu re o f victim isation rates for all offences. T he latest survey estim ates th a t there w ere 10.5 m illion crim es against a d u lts in 2 0 0 7 -0 8 , com pared w ith 4.8 m illion crim es recorded by the police, the latter including victim s o f all ages, n o t ju st those aged 16 a n d over.

Local victim surveys A lthough sym pathetic to the basic p rinciple o f focusing on victim s o f crim e, som e crim inologists argue th a t because o f the large sw eeps involved, m ass surveys are u nable to draw out deeper, m ore detailed in fo rm a tio n on the n a tu re a n d d istrib u tio n o f crim e: Inevitably, therefore, national crime surveys obscure the way in which victimization is concentrated in different communities and among particular groups within those com­ munities . . . By drawing samples from small neighbourhoods, these (local crime) sur­ veys have described much more accurately the experiences of different sections of the population. (Anderson etal., 1991:5)

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As a consequence, since the m id-1980s there has been a parallel grow th in localised crim e surveys (Kinsey, 1984 (M erseyside); Jones et al., 1986 (Islington, London); Crawford et al., 1990 (Islington); A nderson et al., 1990 (Edinburgh); A nderson et al., 1991 (Edinburgh); H artless et al., 1995 (Glasgow)). However, following the intro d u c­ tion o f the 1998 Crime and D isorder Act which, as m entioned previously, obliged local Crime and D isorder Reduction P artnerships to conduct three-yearly audits of crim e and disorder (now annual strategic assessm ents), we have seen a huge increase in local victim surveys, though the quality o f these surveys does vary enorm ously. One o f the earlier surveys will be exam ined in order to illustrate the sort of inform a­ tion these local surveys generate. Thefirst Islington survey A ccording to Jones et al. (1986: 5) The Islington Crime Survey is m uch m ore focused than the national surveys and ‘em braces a m uch greater p a rt of the whole process of crim inalization’: the pattern of victimization, the impact of crime, the actual police response to both vic­ tim and offender, the public’s requirements as to an ideal police response and the pub­ lic’s notions of appropriate penalties for various offences. The survey certainly provides a great deal o f detailed inform ation on victim isation p attern s in Islington. It found, for instance, th at victim s o f burglary were m ore likely to be young rather th an old, m en rath er th an w om en, and black rath er th an white. W ith theft or robbery it was the oth er way round, ap art from black people, who were m ore at risk th an w hite people. As far as assault was concerned, the survey says: ‘Black people on average are alm ost twice as likely as oth er people to be victim s of assault and wom en h a lf as likely again as m en to be assaulted’ (ibid.: 65). This contrasts sharply with the BCS, 1982, which reported th at young m en were m ore likely to be the victim s of assault than any oth er group, though this survey did p in p o in t young m en who regularly w ent out drinking a few nights per week; they were also the m ost likely assailants. The reason w om en were at greater risk o f assault than m en in the Islington survey is th at the researchers uncovered relatively large am ounts o f dom estic violence against w om en. The Islington survey also discovered a m uch higher incidence o f sexual assault th an the British Crime Surveys. In fact, only one case o f u n reported attem pted rape came to light in the first two British Crime Sur­ veys, and 17 and 18 cases o f sexual assault in each year o f the sweep, w hilst the Isling­ ton survey estim ated th at there were 1,200 sexual assaults in the area covered by the study. A ccording to the authors, this discrepancy arises from the greater sensitivity of the researchers, as well as the way in which questions were phrased. The u n d e rre p o rt­ ing by w om en o f rape, attem p ted rape and oth er form s o f sexual assault has been highlighted by a large n u m b er o f victim surveys. A ccording to Hall (1985), for instance, only 8 per cent o f rape victim s inform ed the police.

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The greater assault rate in Islington for black people when com pared with white people was congruent with the national findings of the 1992 BCS. However, in terest­ ingly, the second Islington survey found very little difference in assault rate betw een white people and people o f Afro-Caribbean background. Z edner (1994: 1215) gives some possible explanations for this disparity: It may be that Afro-Caribbeans in Islington are so exposed to violence that they tend to underreport assaults against them. Alternatively, it may be that the high concentration of ethnic minority populations in this inner London borough levels out disparities in the victimization of whites and blacks. It should be appreciated that local crime surveys carried out by ‘left realists’ - such as the Islington survey - are not simply attem pts to gather better knowledge about crimes and victims. They constitute the basis of a much broader criminological project involving the developm ent of crime control policies, and theoretical models seeking to explain crimi­ nal behaviour. Thus left realism attem pts to engage in a direct, practical way with issues of law and order. At root this m eans entering a terrain traditionally colonised by the political right, and in the process developing a critique o f other radical left positions characterised by the left realists as ‘left idealism ’. This project has coalesced around the slogan ‘take crime seriously’, an injunction based upon the left realist view that: 1 N ot only do poorer people have to cope with all the usual problem s associated with social and econom ic deprivation, they also have to cope with being m ore at risk from crim e: and 2 following on from this, the fear o f crim e is not an irrational m oral panic generated by the m ass m edia, bu t a realistic assessm ent o f the situation. According to the left realists, data from local crim e surveys can then be used as a basis for developing crim e control policies at a local level.

Victim surveys: limitations and problems A whole range o f crim inal offences are no t picked up by victim surveys (victims aged u nder 16 years are no t p a rt o f the British Crime Surveys, for instance). In addition, these tend to be underrecorded in official statistics, the com bined effect o f which is to give a m isleading picture o f the ‘crim e pro b lem ’. By questioning people as individual m em bers o f households there are certain offences that, although often creating vic­ tim s, cannot be identified. The following exam ples will illustrate this. Corporate crime and organised crime The amount of illegal profit made from multinational and national corporation crimes, as well as the illicit gains from ‘organised crime’ (or crimes of the ‘mafia’ or ‘cosa nostra’

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or some other official mystifying synonym), is enormous, and, beside it, the value of goods stolen or otherwise illegally acquired by ‘conventional, ordinary’ criminals drops into insignificance. (Box, 1981:235) Clearly, the responses of households in victim surveys will give no inkling o f the m ag­ nitude o f corporate and organised crim e. Leaving aside, for now, a m ore detailed dis­ cussion of these aspects, it can be noted th a t there is a large and im p o rta n t literature of ‘expose’ crim inology which analyses the illegal activities o f big business (e.g. Pearce, 1976; C ham bliss, 1978; Henry, 1978; Levi, 1987; Yeager, 1991) and organised and professional crim e (e.g. Taylor, 1984; Hobbs, 1988; Block, 1991). Occupational crime This can involve persons o f high or low status w ithin an organisation. W hite-collar occupational crim e can be carried out against the com pany (for exam ple, fiddling expenses), or fo r the com pany, when it enters the realm s o f corporate crim e (the clas­ sic study is Sutherland, 1983, originally published 1949; for a recent overview o f this area, see N elken, 2002). D itto n ’s (1977) study o f fiddling am ong bread salesm en p ro ­ vides an exam ple o f the crim inal activities o f those fu rth er down the hierarchy. O ther exam ples o f offences hidden from victim surveys are: • • •

• •

Theft from businesses. This will involve such things as shoplifting and insurance fraud. Criminal damage. Vandalising public or non-household p roperty will not, o f course, be registered in victim surveys. ‘Crimes without victim s’. This term is used to describe offences such as illicit drug use, certain illegal sexual activities, or offences connected with the Obscene Publi­ cations Act. Taxation and social securityfraud. Clearly, victim surveys cannot m easure offending rates in these areas. Non-household crime. Hom eless people, and those living in a hostel or in stitutional setting are not surveyed.

In addition, there are likely to be instances where respondents in victim surveys have been victim s o f crim e but, because o f circum stances, or the design or conduct o f the interview, th eir victim isation will no t come to light; for example: • W here respondents are too frightened, em barrassed or asham ed to adm it th at they are victim s (e.g. having p roperty stolen w hilst visiting a prostitute, or experi­ encing a sexual assault). • W here they are sim ply unaw are th at they are victim s (e.g. believing th at a purse has been lost when it has been stolen).

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W alklate (1989) offers a perceptive discussion o f the need for research to be sensitive to the in d iv id u a l’s u n d e rsta n d in g o f his o r her own v ictim isation, an d th a t ready­ m ade categories used by the police or researchers m ay n o t be a p p ro p ria te . In this co n ­ text she qu o tes Kelly w ho, w ith reference to sexual violence against w om en, argues th a t the victim s’ experiences should be seen as form ing a continuum : Using the concept of a continuum highlights the fact that all women experience sexual violence at some point in their lives. It enables the linking of more common, everyday abuses women experience with the less common experiences labelled as crimes. It is through this connection that women are able to locate their own particular experiences as being examples of sexual violence. (Ibid.: 33)

T his dim ension is im p o rta n t, too, in a general sense, for different people will have dif­ ferent und erstan d in g s and thresholds regarding the seriousness an d harm fulness o f w hat has h appened to them . The victim ’s own perception o f events will have im plica­ tio ns for how he o r she responds to questions in victim surveys. F urtherm ore, how elab­ orated a victim ’s account is will be linked to their articulacy w hen answ ering questions. Finally, the in fo rm a tio n from victim surveys is, o f course, d e p e n d e n t on people being h o n e st an d accurately rem em b erin g w hat has h a p p en e d to them . T hus, alth o u g h victim surveys, n atio n al and local, do provide valuable alternative sources o f in fo rm a tio n a b o u t the extent o f crim e and p a tte rn s o f v ictim isation, th eir lim ita tio n s have to be acknow ledged.

THE U S E FU L N E S S OF C RIM IN A L STATISTICS

T he discussion so far o f statistics, especially official statistics, has been qu ite critical. M any crim inologists, th o u g h , w hilst generally accepting these criticism s, w ould argue th a t this does n o t m ean th a t they are th erefo re o f no value. O ne exam ple o f this is associated w ith th e class conflict ap p ro ach to statistics. From th is perspective, the fact th a t c rim inal statistics, as well as statistical in fo rm a tio n relating to the o p eratio n o f th e c rim inal justice system in general, reflect the activities o f th e various o rganisa­ tio n s a n d individuals involved, is precisely w hy they can be usefully em ployed. As the label ap plied to this perspective suggests, the m ain em p h asis is on exploitative class relations in a capitalist society: Only by understanding that statistics are produced as part of the administration and control of a society organised around exploitative class relations can we grasp their full meaning; and only with the aid of this understanding can we determine their uses, and usefulness, in critical social research. (Miles and Irvine, 1981:127)

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T hus in a sense c rim inal statistics are ‘re h a b ilita te d ’, b u t only if they are read as p ro d u c ts o f conflictual class relations. The statistics m ay n o t, in term s o f com m on sense, reflect the reality o f crim e, b u t for class conflict th eo rists they do provide an insig h t into the class-based n a tu re o f the c rim inal justice system . From this p o in t o f view, crim e-related statistics, though m an ip u lated to suit the in te rests o f the pow er­ ful, do n o n e the less provide useful in d ic a to rs o f the inequalities an d biases in h ere n t in the system itself, an d indeed in capitalist society in general. T he o v errep resen ta­ tio n o f w orking-class, as opposed to bourgeois, crim e in the statistics, and the over­ re p re se n tatio n o f black and p o o re r people in the priso n p o p u latio n s o f cap italist societies, are n o t seen as sim ply the result o f th eir g reater crim inality. In an u nequal society, it is argued, only the naive believe th a t a fair an d equal system o f justice can be delivered. T hus, crim e-related statistics can be used as the basis for developing critical exp lan atio n s o f these inequalities. From a different perspective, B ottom ley and Pease (1986: 159) recognise that ‘c rim inal statistics provide few, if any, significant answ ers to m any o f the im p o rta n t trad itio n a l q u estio n s o f ev alu atio n ’ (such as, is crim e u n d e r control?), b u t add: ‘On the o th e r han d , crim inal justice statistics are inform ative in a variety o f ways, and should n o t be discarded as m eaningless, as has som etim es been th e ir fate’. Indeed, they call for an increase in ro u tin e statistical in fo rm a tio n p e rta in in g to the w orkings o f the crim inal justice system , an d see such descriptive m aterial as form ing the basis for m ore inform ed discussion. As an exam ple, they p o in t o u t how th is kind o f in fo r­ m ation can act as an a n tid o te to the often lu rid a n d m isleading stereotypes o f crim e an d crim inals fo u n d in the m ass m edia a n d p u b conversations:

Simple descriptive studies can sometimes have a powerful influence that their lack of technical or theoretical complexity may at first belie - consider, for instance, the impor­ tant effect upon public attitudes towards capital punishm ent of basic information about the ‘typical’ m urderer as someone caught up in a stressful domestic situation to which no other solution is seen but a tragic m urder-suicide attempt, or the important message from research that most house burglaries involve only quite modest financial losses and no violence by the burglar, and happen during the day. (Ibid.: 169)

Som e o f the o th e r areas identified by the a u th o rs w here statistical in fo rm a tio n will be useful are as follows: • T he crim e m ix o f p a rtic u la r neig h b o u rh o o d s. • M echanism s at w ork w hereby crim es com e to the a tte n tio n o f the police. • T he ways in w hich different b ran ch es o f the police service are used. • T he rates o f cautio n in g betw een one force a n d a nother.

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• Links betw een crim inal activity, police clear-up rates and various com m unitybased initiatives. • D isparities in sentencing betw een one p a rt o f the country and another. Today the police in this country are expected to base their work on targeted problem solving, which necessarily requires the su p p o rt o f statistical data. A 1994 re p o rt by the N ational Board for Crime Prevention argued in favour o f the police prioritising their work in this way. The report pointed out that 44 per cent o f all reported crim e is suffered by ju st 4 per cent o f victim s o f crim e, and th at large increases in recorded crim e during the 1980s was m ainly due to these victim s being victim ised m ore often. The re p o rt concluded th at the police should therefore concentrate on those m aking up the 4 per cent. Obviously data of this kind require careful scrutiny, although in the context o f this discussion it is the nature of the recom m endations th a t is o f relevance. Statistical inform ation from oth er areas o f the crim inal justice system may also be draw n on. A m ong its European neighbours, only Spain and Luxem bourg have higher rates of im prisonm ent th an England and Wales. Based on the n um ber o f prisoners per 100,000 in the population, the following gives im prisonm ent rates for these and a sam ple o f oth er European countries (by way o f com parison, the figure for the United States is 756): Spain - 1 6 0 Luxem bourg - 155 England and Wales - 152 Scotland - 145 Greece - 109 Portugal - 103 N etherlands - 100 F rance- 9 6 Ita ly - 9 2 G erm any - 89 N orthern Ireland - 78 Sweden - 74 N o rw ay - 6 9 Finland - 64 At the tim e o f w riting, the prison population in England and Wales stands at 82,240, which is about 8,000 m ore th an the official capacity; in 1991 it was 42,000. M ost are m ale (94.7 p er cent) and from unem ployed/w orking-class backgrounds, and over 20 per cent are m em bers o f m inority ethnic groups. The im prisonm ent rate for black people is around eight tim es th at for w hite people (if w hite people were im prisoned at the sam e rate the prison population would increase to approxim ately h a lf a m illion).

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The average annual cost o f keeping a prisoner inside is now £41,000. A recent rep o rt by the charity B arnardo’s (2008), based upon governm ent data, found th at there are m ore children (10-14 years) in custody in E ngland and Wales than in any oth er neigh­ bouring European country. According to the report, betw een 1996 and 2006 the use o f custody for this age group rose by 550 per cent (to a total o f 572 in 2006). This increase has resulted from various legal changes th at have m ade it m uch easier for children to be sentenced to custody for relatively m inor offences, such as sum m ary offences and breach o f com m unity orders. A further exam ple w orth noting is th at each year in England and Wales, about 30 parents are im prisoned because their chil­ dren have tru an ted from school. Clearly, this kind o f statistical inform ation provides a useful backdrop to debates about the value o f im prisonm ent. Likewise, the relative costs and m erits o f caution­ ing, non-custodial sentences and im prisonm ent can only be seriously considered in the light o f relevant statistical inform ation.

LO C A L CRIME SURVEYS AND LEFT REALISM

Local crime surveys carried out by left realists, such as the Islington surveys, have two central aims. They seek to show, first, th at those people living in the area being studied see crime as a significant problem and, second, th at this is a rational assessm ent on their part; th at is, that crim e really is a problem , and the fear o f crim e is therefore understandable. The corollary o f this is that current official definitions o f crime p ro ­ vide suitable anchor points, especially as they are seen to reflect a consensus, at least as far as ‘conventional’ crim e (burglary, street robbery, for exam ple) is concerned. This approach is at variance with a radical tradition in crim inology th at questions the requirem ent to be constrained by a particular state’s definition o f crime at a particular m om ent in history. It is also at variance with those critical crim inologists, charac­ terised by left realists as left idealists, who are purp o rted to play down the harm fulness of conventional crime, to see the fear o f crime as a m oral panic generated by the mass m edia, and to em phasise corporate and white-collar crime as the real problem . Those carrying out local surveys are aware th at official/police categories are not able to accom m odate the m yriad experiences th at various victim s have. Som etim es these experiences do no t at face value involve a crim inal offence, bu t are, none the less, harm ful or frightening. However, although left realist crim e surveys may som e­ tim es spread the net beyond w hat are nom inally crim inal offences, and include oth er activities, these still tend to be referenced against official definitions o f crim e. A nder­ son etal. (1991: 37), for exam ple, do this: In terms of the law, the incidents so far described are all criminal offences. In terms of young people’s lives, however, there are many other examples of general harassment, abuse and frightening and stressful events which may fall outside the law, but which contribute to general levels of anxiety and fear of crime.

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Relevant activities are therefore those th at either, as above, contribute to ‘anxiety and fear o f crim e’, or represent a sort o f m ild version o f a crim inal offence, for example various threats. A part from anything else, this does raise the issue o f w hat it is that crim inologists should study: where is the line to be draw n? There are other activities th at are also harm ful, distressing and frightening, and yet, nom inally, no law break­ ing is involved. On the oth er hand, there will be crim inal offences com m itted th at do not have harm ful repercussions. Furtherm ore, there will be m any crim inal activities th at are harm ful, and yet victim s will be unaw are th a t they are victim s o f th at activity, for instance the adulteration o f foodstuffs. Victim surveys are always d ependent upon people having knowledge o f their victim isation. This indicates one o f the central difficulties with the local surveys o f left realism . W hile m uch useful inform ation may be forthcom ing, they do tend to be rooted in a concrete, ‘essentialist’ fram ew ork, with positivist overtones. By concentrating on the experiences o f a specific neighbourhood at a specific m om ent in tim e, and relying on a taken-for-granted set o f crim e-related concepts, such studies inevitably foreclose the project o f developing a non-parochial theoretical crim inology. In this hardheaded, ‘non-idealist’ w orld of realism there is no requirem ent for esoteric debates about w hat the crim inologist should properly study: w hether the capitalist state’s current definition o f crim e is too narrow or too wide, or w hether ‘problem atic situa­ tio n s’ rath er than crim e should be the intellectual currency. T hus the Islington sur­ veys are content to take official definitions as w orking categories, and to accept as satisfactory the victim ’s interp retatio n of events as ‘crim inal’. If the victim ’s account appears to m atch official discourse, then the reality o f the crim e is assum ed. In this way, ‘real’ fears and ‘real’ crim es are brought blinking into the light. This is no t to say, o f course, th at left realism is w rong; clearly, victim s o f crim e are dam aged by their experiences, and they need protecting. R ather it is th at a crim ino­ logical project based on questionnaires about crim inal victim isation is partial - the data produced are elem ents o f a w ider jigsaw.

RECENT CRIM ETRENDS

A nnual recorded crim e figures and the result o f the British Crime Survey are now p u b ­ lished at the sam e tim e. Following yearly increases during the 1980s and early 1990s, from 1993 to 1997 there was a sustained fall in total am ounts o f recorded crim e in England and Wales (from 5,526,000 to 4,545,000). Since then, give or take some slight fluctuations, am ounts o f recorded crim e gradually increased to a figure of 5,934,000 for 20 0 3 -0 4 , followed by a gradual decrease to 4,836,900 for the twelve­ m onth period up to Septem ber 2008. However, according to the Hom e Office, when the figures are adjusted to take changes to the ‘counting rules’ into account, the trend has been dow nw ards since 1993. Changes introduced in 1998 m ainly affected violent crim e, and led to som e previously less serious, non-notifiable assaults being

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categorised as notifiable. In 2002 a n a tio n a l crim e recording sta n d a rd was in tro ­ duced for all police forces. T his m ea n t th a t since th en the police have to take a vic­ tim ’s account at face value, un til proven otherw ise. Clearly, this will inflate the n u m b e r o f offences recorded, a n d is a fu rth er illu stratio n o f the socially c o n stru cted n a tu re o f crim in al statistics. A fu rth e r dim ension to this is th a t changes in recording practices are designed to provide a m ore com prehensive an d realistic p ictu re o f crim e by being victim -led. T his m eans th a t, for instance, if a n u m b e r o f cars are vandalised at the sam e tim e in a street, each is recorded as a se p arate offence. M ore recent changes have m ade the busin ess o f u n tan g lin g tre n d s in recorded crim e (to p u t it m ildly) even m ore com plicated, as illu strated by this piece o f info rm atio n : With the introduction of Public Service Agreement (PSA) Delivery Agreement 23, grievous bodily harm (GBH) without intent has been moved into the ‘most serious vio­ lence against the person’ offence category (annual counting comparisons are not yet available). There was a clarification in the counting rules (around circumstances that may indicate intent) covering offences of GBH with intent and thus when it is appro­ priate to record a crime as attem pted GBH with intent. This had the effect of increasing figures in some forces, GBH with intent being a major component of ‘most serious violence’. (Home Office, 2009:3) The police them selves are n o t im m u n e to confusion over the c o u n tin g rules. In O cto­ ber 2008, for instance, reco rd ed crim e figures show ed an a p p a re n t 22 p e r cent increase in the m ost violent crim e category over the previous twelve m o n th s. A ccord­ ing to H om e Office officials, this was because up to seventeen police forces h a d ‘m is­ in te rp re te d ’ the c o u n tin g rules (Travis, 2008). T he 10.5 m illion crim es against ad u lts living in private househ o ld s e stim ated by the latest British Crime Survey, re p re se n ts a decrease o f 1 p e r cent over the previous year (w hich is n o t statistically significant). D ata from th e survey show th a t crim e overall has m ore or less halved since it peaked in 1995, and the risk o f being a victim o f crim e has fallen from 40 per cent to 23 per cent, the low est figure since the first su r­ vey. V iolent crim e is estim ated to have nearly halved since 1995, a figure at variance w ith th a t based upo n recorded violent crim e figures, w hich indicate a significant increase. From the p o in t o f view o f the H om e Office, th is has resulted from changes in the c o u n tin g rules (as discussed above) a n d o th er ‘e xtraneous facto rs’, an d does n o t reflect a real increase. However, as M aguire (2 0 0 7 :2 7 3 -4 ) says: This may well be the case with relatively m inor incidents, but it is perhaps less plausible with the most serious offences of violence (principally serious w'oundings), which were relatively unaffected by the changes in counting rules and continued to increase each year even before the introduction of the NCRS (National Crime Recording Standard).

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C R IM IN A L IT Y

T h e la te s t (a t th e tim e o f w ritin g ) q u a r te r ly re c o rd e d c rim e fig u re s c o v erin g J u ly - S e p te m b e r 2 0 0 8 sh o w a 4 p e r c e n t in c re a s e in d o m e s tic b u rg la ry a n d a n 18 p e r c e n t in c re a s e in s tre e t r o b b e rie s c o m m itte d a t k n ife p o in t, o v e r th e sa m e p e rio d in 2 007, c a u s in g c o n c e rn s a m o n g H o m e O ffice m in is te r s t h a t th e im p a c t o f th e re c e s­ s io n m ay re v erse th e lo n g e r-te rm h is to ric a l tre n d . A fin al p o in t to m a k e h e re is t h a t re g a rd le s s o f th e a cc u ra c y o f th e a b o v e fig u res, B ritish Crime Surveys c o n tin u e to sh o w th a t, o n th e w h o le , th e p u b lic (a n d e sp ecially ta b lo id re a d e rs ) believ e t h a t c rim e is o n th e in c re a se .

S e le c t e d f u r t h e r r e a d in g A lthough p u b lish ed som e tim e ago, Bottom ley, A. K. and Pease, K. (1 9 8 6 ) Crime and Punishment: Interpreting the data, M ilton Keynes: O pen University Press p rovides a use­ ful th eo re tic al perspective on crim e statistics. For an exam ple o f a local victim survey, see Jones, T., M aclean, B. and Young, J. (1 9 8 6 )

The Islington Crime Survey, Aldershot: Gower. O verview s o fv ictim s an d the field ofvictim ology are pro v id ed by W alklate, S. (ed) (2 0 0 7 ) Handbook o f Victims and Victimology, Cullom pton: W illan. O ne o f th e best discussions o f th e ‘fear o f c rim e ’ is Lee, M. (2 0 0 7 )

Inventing Fear o f Crime: Criminology and the politics o f anxiety, Cullom pton: W illan. In th eir ed ited collection, Jupp, V., Davies, P. and Francis, P. (e ds) (2000) Doing Crimino­ logical Research, London: Sage, a d d ress various d im e n sio n s to th e research process, as does W estm arland, L. (2 0 0 9 ) ResearchingCrime and Justice, Cullom pton: W illan. A w ell-inform ed in sig h t in to q u a n tita tiv e research will be fo u n d in Hirschfield, A. and Bowers, K. (eds) (2 0 0 1 ) M apping and Analysing Crime Data: Lessons from research and

practice, London: Taylor & Francis. For an in te restin g discussion o f the n o tio n o f ‘crim e w aves', see Sacco, V. F. (2 0 0 5 ) When Crime Waves, London: Sage, a n d on the th em e o f discretio n an d in te rp re ta tio n on the p a rt o f key players in the crim in al justice system : G elsthorpe, L. and Padfield, N. (eds) (2 0 0 3 ) Exercising Discretion: Decision-making in the criminal justice system and

beyond, C ullo m p to n :W illan . Christie, N . (2 0 0 4 ) A Suitable A m ount o f Crime, Abingdon: Routledge exam ines the social c o n stru ctio n o f crim e, as ‘u n w a n te d a c ts’, in various co u n tries. An excellent discussion o f crim e statistics, th e ir sources and m ean in g is provided by M aguire, M . (2 0 0 7 ) ‘Crime data and statistics’, in M. M aguire, R. M organ and R. Reiner (eds) The Oxford Handbook o f Criminology, 4th edn, Oxford: Oxford Univer­ sity Press. U p-to-date in fo rm a tio n on official crim e sta tistics is p rovided by Kershaw, C., N icholas, S. and W alker, A. (eds) (2 0 0 8 ) Crime in England and Wales 2007-2008: Findings from

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the British Crime Survey and police recorded crime, H om e Office Statistical Bulletin 7 /0 8 , London: H om e Office. A full range o f official d a ta on crim e and the crim in al justice system is available from : h ttp ://w v v v v .h o m e o ffic e .g o v .u k /rd s/p u b sin tro l.h tm l. An e n lig h ten in g histo rical discussion o f th e uses a n d abuses o f c rim inal records is p ro ­ vided by Thom as, T. (2 0 0 7 ) Criminal Records: A database for the criminal justice system and beyond, Basingstoke: Palgrave M acmillan.

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CHAPTER

C RIM IN O LO G Y AND

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UP TO W O R L D W A R T W O

/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\ Key th e m e s • Tree of sin, tree of knowledge • The criminological tree of knowledge • Classicism and positivism •

Positivist criminology

• The turn of the century to the 1930s •

Eugenics

---------------------------------------------/

INTRODUCTION

The historical developm ent o f crim inology as an academ ic discipline has been less neat and tidy th an som e accounts w ould suggest. It certainly did no t achieve its pres­ ent form as a result o f a straightforw ard, linear progression, involving the careful assem bly o f an agreed body o f knowledge and understanding. Indeed, even how we m ight recognise the ‘first’ crim inology, or a ‘real’ crim inologist, rem ain contested issues. An interesting question is: when did the first ‘real’ crim inology em erge? Some point to eighteenth-century classicism, others to n ineteenth-century positivism . This chapter outlines the developm ent o f crim inology in Britain from the late nineteenth century up to W orld W ar Two. It was during this period th at crim inology attem pted to establish credibility as an academ ic discipline. A ccording to the British crim inolo­ gist David G arland, modern crim inology em erged during this period, and was the product o f a convergence betw een classicism and positivism .

T R EE OF S IN ,T R EE OF K N O W L E D G E

In volum e 1 of M arx’s (1969) Theories o f Surplus Value, there is a frequently quoted section, only two pages in length, on the them e o f crim e - or rath er it was frequently quoted when crim inologists were, for w hatever reason, less bashful about draw ing on M arx. W ith few direct references in M arx’s work to crim e per se, it is no t surprising

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th at this section should be seized upon as a ‘crim inological’ discussion. U nfortu­ nately, the section - entitled ‘Apologist conception o f the productivity o f all profes­ sions’ - was often read out o f context and consequently m isunderstood. It was w ritten prim arily as an attack on those econom ists who would ascribe the quality of ‘productive’ to an alm ost infinite range o f hum an activities. T hus it cannot be u n d e r­ stood if it is taken out of the context o f his criticism s o f conceptualisations o f pro d u c­ tive labour then found in the field o f political economy. For M arx, it was no t a question o f w hether or not som e activity was ‘useful’ or even w hether the activity created physical objects. Productive labour is labour th at p ro ­ duces surplus value for capitalism . The veracity or usefulness o f M arx’s m odel is not at issue here, bu t it is necessary to m ake the general point. W hat is w orth noting is th at in the process o f criticising w hat to him were specious and im precise notions of productive labour, M arx (1969: 387 -8 ) does provide the reader with a rapid sequence o f observations o f interest when exam ining the place of crim e and crim inology in society: The criminal produces not only crimes but criminal law, and with this also the professor who gives lectures on criminal law and in addition to this the inevitable compendium in which this same professor throws his lectures onto the general market as ‘commodities’. This brings with it augmentation of national wealth . . . The criminal moreover pro­ duces the whole of the police and of criminal justice, constables, judges, hangmen, juries etc.; and all these different lines of business, which form equally many categories of the social division of labour, develop different capacities of the human spirit, create new needs and new ways of satisfying them. Torture alone has given rise to the most ingenious mechanical inventions, and employed many honourable craftsmen in the production of its instruments . . . The criminal produces . . . also art, belles-lettres, novels. . . The effects of the criminal on the development of productive pow'er can be shown in detail. Would locks have reached their present state of excellence had there been no thieves? . . . Doesn’t practical chemistry owe just as much to adulteration of commodities and the efforts to show it up as to the honest zeal for production? Crude readings have seen in this passage a version o f functionalism , where crim e is conceived o f as being functionally useful for society, and hence necessary and inevitable. In a sim ilar vein som e w riters have concentrated on references fu rth er on in the text to the crim inal ‘arousing the m oral and aesthetic feelings o f the public’, and breaking the ‘m onotony . . . o f bourgeois life’, thereby keeping it from ‘stagna­ tio n ’. Such attem pts to draw out an early ‘functions of crim e’ argum ent m isconstrue w hat M arx was saying, though we m ight note th at some of his observations do repre­ sent a rem arkable precurser to w hat D urkheim was fam ously to debate a few years later. Having said this, it is equally m isleading to dism iss the functionalist overtones in favour o f the view th at this section is n o thing m ore th an an am using digression, an excuse for som e tongue-in-cheek m ockery o f ‘bourgeois apologists’. M arx is m aking som e im p o rta n t p oints regarding the connections betw een crim inals and their

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crim es, an d the econom ic, social an d cultural developm ent o f capitalism . He h a p p en s to do this by em ploying the device o f irony. T his use o f irony by M arx has been stressed by som e w riters, notab ly Taylor et al. (1973) an d H irst (1975a), though the irony goes beyond the situ atio n w here, in H irst’s w ords, ‘T he m ost u p rig h t citizens d e p en d for th eir livelihood on the crim inal classes’ (ibid.: 212). In fact the irony o p erates on tw o levels. First, it is used in a Socratic sense, th a t is, w ith a preten ce o f ignorance. H ere M arx takes on the p a rt o f a bourgeois apologist and, in the m a n n e r o f a devil’s advocate, argues th a t the activities o f the despised low-life c rim inal are som ehow ‘p ro d u c tiv e ’. In th is way he ho p ed to hold up for ridicule u n d e rsta n d in g s o f productive lab o u r c u rre n t in bourgeois p o lit­ ical econom y. Second, he uses irony in the sense o f a perverse c onjunction betw een th e desirable a n d the u n desirable: specifically, betw een crim e an d such th in g s as job o p p o rtu n ities, increased n atio n al w ealth, inventions, novels an d , significantly, know ledge. T his is succinctly su m m ed up by M arx (1969: 388): ‘A nd h a sn ’t the Tree o f Sin been at the sam e tim e the Tree o f Know ledge ever since the tim e o f A dam ?’ T hus for the entire h isto ry o f the w orld, crim inals an d th eir crim es have stim u lated th e p ro d u c tio n o f know ledge on a n u m b e r o f fronts, including m ore recently a crim i­ nological one. A nd in the c o n te m p o ra ry w orld w h at is called the ‘fight against crim e’ is very big business indeed. Across the globe, gov ern m en ts and private org an isatio n s spend vast a m o u n ts o f m oney on efforts to prev en t crim e, to a p p reh e n d and deal w ith crim inals, an d so on. F urtherm ore, an d in tan d e m w ith this, a global m edia devotes m uch o f its tim e to fictional a n d factual accounts o f crim e a n d the cu lp rits involved.

THE C R IM IN O L O G IC A L T R E E OF K N O W L E D G E : SEPARATING THETREE FROMTHEWOOD

At the tim e M arx w as m aking th e above observations, no d istin c t discipline called crim inology existed, an d no one described them selves as crim inologists. In fact, we had to w ait u n til the last decade o f the n in ete en th cen tu ry before the term crim in o l­ ogy cam e in to general use. O f course, the fact th a t no discipline was a ro u n d w ith the nam e ‘crim inology’, a n d no individuals were identified as crim inologists, does n o t necessarily m ean th a t crim inology in som e form or o th e r did n o t exist. Obviously, w h at is recognised today as crim inology did n o t a p p e a r overnight as a fully grow n ‘tree o f know ledge’. The pro b lem th a t h isto ria n s have had is in identifying a recognis­ able early crim inology and th en tracing its su b seq u e n t d evelopm ent. For h u n d re d s of years various th in k e rs an d w riters have sp e n t a great deal o f tim e discussing p h e n o m ­ ena o f in te rest to crim inologists. A fter all, issues o f defined ‘b a d ’ behaviour, im m o ra l­ ity, social control, p u n ish m e n t an d o rd e r have been central to religious, political and social th o u g h t dow n th ro u g h the ages. W h at, th o u g h , m akes such a discussion specif­ ically criminological? A c o n te m p o ra ry crim inologist w ho has trie d to answ er this q uestio n is David G arland. He proceeds by establishing initially a basic d efinition o f

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m odern crim inology: ‘M odern crim inology, like oth er academ ic specialism s, consists of a body o f accredited and system atically tran sm itte d form s o f knowledge, approved procedures and techniques o f investigation, and a cluster of questions which make up the subject’s recognized agendas’ (G arland, 1994: 25). Accepting this definition of m odern crim inology, we m ight ask if there was som e­ thing in the past that, although lacking som e or even all of these attributes, could none the less be classified as crim inology, albeit ‘old ’ or ‘pre-m o d ern ’, or whatever. G arlan d ’s answ er to this is a qualified ‘yes’, and he offers a convincing argum ent to su p p o rt the view that: Discourse about crime and punishment has existed, in one form or another, since ancient times, but it is only during the last 120 years that there has been a distinctive ‘science of criminology’, and only in the last fifty or sixty years has there been in Britain an established, independent discipline organized around that intellectual endeavour. (Ibid.: 27) O thers have been less restrained in discovering a ‘real’ crim inology deep in past his­ tory. D rapkin (1983), for instance, has traw led the w ritings o f ancient scholars, latch­ ing on to any references to crim e and punishm ent. As G arland says, though, not only do these historians operate with a notion o f ‘crim inology’ stretched beyond reason­ able boundaries, they also fail to see these early discourses w ithin th eir contem porary contexts, th at is, situate them w ithin particular in stitutional structures, involving particular assum ptions and agendas. CLASSICISM AND POSITIVISM

Over the past th irty years or so a m ore or less consensual reading of crim inology’s his­ tory grew up am ong British w riters (e.g. Taylor et al., 1973; Roshier, 1989). In these accounts the beginning o f crim inology lies in the classical crim inology o f the eight­ eenth century. However, it was not until the latter p art of the nineteenth century that attem p ts were m ade to develop an explicit, recognisable ‘science’ o f crim inology. This is norm ally given the general label of positivist crim inology. Positivism represented a quite different agenda to th at o f the earlier classical school. A lthough it would be w rong to give the im pression th at classicism incorpo­ rated a unified body o f knowledge, with internal unanim ity regarding philosophical assum ptions and ideas, it did have one, fundam entally im p o rta n t thread running through it. Classical crim inology was centrally concerned with the establishm ent of a reform ed, equitable and efficient system o f justice (the two m ost influential w riters were Beccaria and B entham ). Classical w riters concerned them selves with the cre­ ation of, they believed, a fairer, b etter regulated social order. Drawing on utilitarian philosophy, and in particular the pleasu re-p ain principle, the aim was to create a system where p unishm ent prop o rtio n al to the crim e would act to deter would-be

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offenders. This would take place w ithin a rational, codified legal order. The focus was therefore on the crim inal act, rather than the crim inal actor. Indeed, no differen­ tiation in term s o f special attrib u tes was m ade betw een the crim inal and the non-crim inal. G arland’s m ain argum ent is th a t m odern crim inology grew out o f a convergence betw een the ‘governm ental project’ o f classicism, covering a period from the late eighteenth century to the last q u a rte r o f the nineteenth century, and the ‘L om brosian p roject’ associated with late n ineteenth-century positivism . The term governm ental project is used because classicism was oriented tow ards crim inal justice adm inistra­ tion. In contrast, the L om brosian project of positivism is so called because of the influence o f Cesare Lom broso, a crim inological positivist par excellence. It was he who popularised the notion o f genetically determ ined, distinct crim inal types. Via a crude physiognom y, he argued th at crim inals were atavistic beings, th at is, throw backs to an earlier stage of hum an evolution, who were physically different from non-crim inals. This is a fascinating, though totally discredited, idea. The late nineteenth century saw the publication of a n um ber o f works pu rp o rtin g to represent ‘scientific’ crim inology. The repercussions were felt across Europe, and the touchstone for this crim inology was the positivist crim inology o f key w riters such as Lom broso (1876), Ferri (1895) and Garofalo (1914) - the Italian school. Lom­ brosian anthropology, however, was less influential in Britain than in other p a rts of Europe. Likewise, the positivism o f the French sociologist Auguste Com te did no t find particularly fertile ground am ong British crim inologists. However, as G arland (1994: 79) says: ‘the project o f positivism (in a m ore m odest version), and its corresponding m ethods, form ed the broad intellectual basis for the crim inological program m e’. W ith the strongest influence com ing from psychiatric m edicine, and research locked into penal imperatives, this was the beginning of scientific crim inology in Britain. Using the prisons as ready-m ade laboratories, crim inals were classified into psy­ chological types, with the prom ise o f finding both the causes o f crim e and the m ost efficacious ways o f dealing with them . Above all, the project was to be scientific; research would proceed by em pirical investigation and according to scientific p rin ­ ciples, principles borrow ed from earlier studies o f anim als and the m aterial w orld. It was believed th a t only through science could tru th be found. T hus was born a causal-corrective tradition in British crim inology th a t was to continue largely unchallenged until the 1960s. This was the ultim ate prom ise held out by crim inology: to establish the causes o f crim e and then suggest ways in which society could correct the problem . N ot surprisingly, from the late nineteenth century until the 1960s a consensus was sustained which viewed the earlier classical crim inology as not ‘real’ crim inology at all. Void (1958), for exam ple, saw classical crim inology as m ere pre-scientific ‘A dm in­ istrative and Legal C rim inology’. By the late 1960s there had been a n o th e r fu ndam ental shift in crim inologi­ cal thinking, and with it a reassessm ent o f classical crim inology. Now it came to be

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rehabilitated as the first ‘real’ crim inology. This reflected a move away from an increasingly derided positivist crim inology, w ith its determ inistic views on crim inal behaviour. Now there was to be an em phasis on ‘v oluntarism ’, on people creating their own social w orlds, and this was seen as being in accord with the ‘free will’ m odel of classical crim inology.

POSITIVIST CRIM INO LO GY

There is always a danger o f oversim plification when trying to p ain t in som e historical background, o f ending up with such broad brushstrokes th at the past becom es a cari­ cature o f itself, sm oothed out and shed of all those irksom e details th at confound an a p p aren t coherence and elegant simplicity. Part o f the problem concerns the selec­ tion o f supposedly representative and influential w riters in order to draw out some posited ‘m ain stream ’ or ‘d o m in a n t’ ideas. Do we, for instance, study only those ideas th at received official recognition and becam e incorporated into policy? Or do we judge the im portance o f a text according to the m anner in which it was received by contem porary academ ic peers? Obviously there was no precise date, no m agic m om ent, when m odern crim inol­ ogy suddenly appeared. The developm ent o f crim inology into a distinct academ ic discipline was a gradual process, and this process was linked in various ways (depend­ ing on one’s reading o f history) to 200 years or m ore o f crim e-related intellectual dis­ course. It was also linked to sw eeping econom ic, social and political transform ations th at took place, as British society m oved from feudalism to agrarian capitalism to m ature capitalism . M ore recently, in the post-w ar period, the progress o f crim inology has been connected to such things as an increasingly interventionist central state, the growth of the welfare state, and the expansion of higher education. Certainly, by the beginning o f the 1960s crim inology was established as a m odern academ ic discipline, with all th a t th at m eant: full-tim e specialists working in university dep artm en ts or in specialised institutions; an agenda o f research questions and approved m etho­ dologies; its own learned journals; postgraduate program m es; and various forum s for the exchange o f ideas. W hen discussing the history of crim inological thought, it is no t controversial to point to the late nineteenth century as the tim e when ‘scientific’ crim inology first appeared on the scene. N or is it controversial to describe this as positivist crim inol­ ogy. W hat is controversial, at least nowadays, is then to go on to label indiscrim i­ nately as ‘positivist’ the bulk o f British crim inology th at developed since the late nineteenth century up to the 1960s, though the application o f this label has not always been seen as problem atic. From the late 1960s, there grew w ithin sociology a sustained critique of positivism am ong those influenced by the ideas of interpretive sociology. Specifically, this cri­ tique was aim ed at functionalism , and, because functionalism was, not unreasonably,

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viewed as a conservative social theory, the critique was also em braced by m ore radi­ cal, left-oriented sociologists. The success o f this onslaught in term s o f the subse­ quent developm ent o f sociology is well known. The critique was generally successful am ong students too, even early on in their crim inological studies. This is well illus­ trated by my own experiences as an A-level sociology exam iner during the late 1970s and early 1980s. M ost o f the candidates were ‘anti-positivism ’ and ‘pro-phenom enology’, even those w ho clearly had no idea w hat phenom enology was. Indeed, it was not uncom m on to read quite m alignant, no holds barred, tirades against alleged func­ tionalist m iscreants such as Talcott Parsons. The critique o f positivism w ithin sociology in general was paralleled with a cri­ tique o f positivist crim inology, for by the beginning o f the 1970s sociology had becom e the d o m inant discipline w ithin academ ic crim inology. G arland (1994) has argued th at it is m isleading to characterise the period from the late nineteenth cen­ tury to the 1960s as a period o f positivist hegem ony, with the new deviancy o f the 1960s arriving on the scene to rescue the discipline from its clutches. This overgener­ alised and dem onising view of history has had two im p o rta n t results: 1 As Jock Young (1988: 168) puts i t , ‘the long lineage o f radical positivism in Britain was fo rg o tten ’. 2 There was a failure to appreciate the various strands o f crim inological thought developing from the tu rn o f the century, and th at som e o f the m ost influential work, especially in the first two decades o f the tw entieth century, did no t easily fall into the category o f positivism . In order to assess these debates it is necessary to be rem inded o f w hat is m eant by sociological positivism . Cuff and Payne (1979:159) offer the following stan d ard defi­ nition based upon two propositions: 1 The kinds o f explanation sociology should produce about the social w orld should be the sam e as those produced in the natural sciences, i.e. law-like statem ents which have the form , ‘A causes B’ . . . 2 Sociology should as far as possible m ake use of the sam e sorts o f m ethod as are used in the n atural sciences for constructing and testing th eir explanations. An essential im plication is th at sociologists need to m odel th eir approach on the logic of th at exem plary tool o f the n atural sciences - the experim ental m ethod. W hat are the im plications o f this for a specifically crim inological positivism ? Three central questions are associated with this type of crim inology, if and w hen such a creature can be identified: W hy do som e individuals break the law? How can crim i­ nals be reform ed? W hat can be done to prevent them w anting to break the law in the first place? According to Jeffery (1960) and M atza (1964), attem p ts to answ er these

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questions proceed w ithin a characteristic fram ew ork derived from three fundam ental assum ptions: determ inism , differentiation and pathology. Determinism m eans th at factors outside o f the individual’s control - be they biolog­ ical, psychological, sociological, or som e com bination - push th at individual into crim inal behaviour. From this perspective, crim e does not result from choice, or rational decision m aking, but rath er from force o f circum stance. This m odel o f crim e contrasts sharply w ith th at associated w ith classical crim inology, which em phasises the ability o f m em bers o f society to m ake rational choices about w hether or not to com m it crim e, sim ilar to a co st-b en efit analysis. In this form ulation, the ‘cost’ of crim e equates w ith p unishm ent pro p o rtio n al to the crim e, and ideally this acts as a deterrent. As we shall see, different sorts o f causal theories developed w ithin crim i­ nology through the tw entieth century, each stressing different, m ore or less d eter­ m inistic, factors. There is an intriguing contradiction betw een positivist conceptions and concep­ tions built into the legal system . The courts, o f course, are willing to take such things as age and m ental state into consideration when judging a p erso n ’s guilt. The d eter­ m inism of positivism , however, removes personal culpability, by m aking the w rong­ doer into a victim o f behaviour-determ ining factors. This certainly does no t square with notions o f justice based upon ju st deserts or retribution, and indicates why posi­ tivism leads naturally to a ‘tre a tm e n t’ model; th at is, to attem pting to ‘cure’ the offender. In practice, this uneasy tension has been m anaged by w hat is usually referred to as the neoclassical principle o f m itigation; for exam ple, by allowing the psychologist or social w orker into the court to plead for the defendant. It is an im p o r­ tan t issue th at continues to generate m uch debate w ithin crim inology, namely, to w hat extent, and in w hat ways, is the offender to blam e? The second assum ption m ade by positivist crim inology, according to Jeffery and M atza, is differentiation. W hat this m eans is th at crim inals are differentiated in kind from non-crim inals. D epending on the type of crim inology involved, crim inals have been viewed as different because o f th eir biological constitutions, because they pos­ sess certain abnorm al or negative psychological traits, or, from a sociological direc­ tion, because they have learned attitudes and values which lend them selves to law breaking. The third assum ption, pathology, follows on from differentiation, in th at crim inals are seen as being different to non-crim inals because o f som ething going ‘w rong’ at a biological, psychological or sociological level. Before turn in g to developm ents in the first p art o f the tw entieth century, it will be useful to note two im p o rtan t issues th at are usually seen as featuring prom inently in positivist crim inology: the problem atic n ature o f the concept o f crim e, and the ten ­ sion betw een heredity and environm ent. The raison d ’être o f positivism has been its prom ise to enlist the services o f science. D iscarding the deadw eight of pre-scientific knowledge as m ere prejudice and dilet­ tantism , positivist crim inology would apply the m ethods and principles o f scientific

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thought. However, such a crim inology had to resolve a crucial problem concerning the concept o f crim e itself. Because it was appreciated th at w hat was defined as crime changed over tim e, and from one society to another, it was clear th at this central con­ cept, as legally defined, did not offer a fixed, objective, scientific anchor point. To fall back 011 definitions o f crim e current in a particular society at a particular m om ent in history would seem to subvert the positivist project of producing general theories. Consequently, attem p ts were m ade to arrive at som e objective concept o f ‘n a tu ra l’ or ‘real’ crim e. The m agnitude o f this endeavour can be readily appreciated, and posi­ tivism m et serious problem s on two levels. First, in practice, abstracted conceptions sim ply reflected a w riter’s personal m oral feelings. Moreover, if the solution was to tap into perceived ‘public sen tim en ts’, and em phasise deviance rath er than crim e, the problem o f relativism rem ained unsolved, in th at supposedly consensual attitudes and values in a society (if they can be identified) are them selves shaped by particular cultures. Second, positivist crim inologists eventually tended to surrender to legally defined categories anyway, and even early on in the tw entieth century they used prison inm ates as subjects for research: th at is, they used individuals whose crim inal status was obviously derived from legal definitions. We m ight also add th at one o f the m ain criticism s o f positivism m ade by the ‘new deviancy’ theorists of the 1960s and 1970s was th at they accepted uncritically official crim e statistics. The second issue featuring prom inently in positivist crim inology is th at of heredity versus the environm ent. Some positivists concentrated on w hat they saw as genetically determ ined predispositions to crim inality, w hilst others focused on envi­ ronm ental factors, and the effect o f these on the individual. H ereditarians usually acknowledged, though, th at the social circum stances o f the individual were o f some im portance. Stressing the env iro n m en t’ can, o f course, still m ean subscribing to a determ inistic explanation o f crim inality.

THETURN OFTHE CENTURYTOTHE

1930s

It is a com plex business unravelling the varieties o f positivism , quasi-positivism or non-positivism prevalent in British crim inology during the first three decades o f the tw entieth century. From the available evidence, at the end of the nineteenth century there was strong su p p o rt for the notion o f biological determ inism , though this su p ­ p o rt tended not to follow the L om brosian idea o f linking crim inality to external phys­ ical features. In Britain the m ain stress was on genetically determ ined psychological traits such as ‘feeble-m indedness’ and ‘m oral degeneracy’ and th eir links with crim i­ nality. After this early, crude a tte m p t at ‘scientific’ crim inology, which continued up to W orld W ar One, m apping developm ents during the 1920s and 1930s becom es rather m ore hazardous. In particular we have to be wary o f m aking sw eeping sta te ­ m ents to the effect th at British crim inology sim ply continued along a positivist p a th ­ way. Some w riters, influential during the interw ar years, clearly represented the

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positivist tradition, but others did not. O f course, a problem here, as m entioned earlier, is deciding on which w riters best represent this period. Research carried out under the b an n er o f ‘crim inology’ continued to be dom inated by m edical practitioners employed w ithin the prison service; usually they had received training in psychiatric m edicine. The result was th a t m uch o f this research was locked into the institutional requirem ents of the courts and prisons. Taking the individual’s m ental state as the starting point, crim inological investigations were designed to facilitate the m ore effective organisation o f prison regim es and treatm ent program m es. T hus psychiatry, defined as psychological m edicine, and then psychol­ ogy, were the m ain influences in this period. Any influence from sociology was con­ spicuously lacking (for exam ple, the work done by the Chicago School during the interw ar years). This is no t surprising given th at research was largely driven by the needs o f the system , and was carried out by those with a vested interest in th at sys­ tem . They were also concerned with legitim ising crim inology as an academ ic disci­ pline. T his did not m ean th at social factors were ignored. Such things as ‘in adequate’ family life, poverty, single paren th o o d and illegitimacy were often on the agenda. However, these were invoked w ithin a psychological fram e of reference. For hereditarians, negative social factors were seen as the outcom e o f inborn, abnorm al m ental states - for exam ple, ‘inadequate’ people created ‘inadequate’ fam ilies - w hilst envi­ ronm entalists saw such things as poverty leading to abnorm al m ental states. By the beginning of the 1920s, m ainstream crim inology in Britain had moved away from seeing the crim inal as a distinct type of hum an being, tow ards a m odel based upon a spectrum o f m ental traits and conditions. Fundam entally, these attributes were judged in term s o f diagnosed pathological conditions labelled ‘low intelligence’, ‘feeble-m indedness’, and so on. We can explore this situation further by looking at a num ber o f influential w riters around in the 1920s and 1930s. This will show th at a plurality o f views existed w ithin crim inology, and th at the appellation ‘positivism ’ may no t always apply. G arland sug­ gests th at m ainstream crim inology in the 1920s and 1930s was best represented by the work o f W. N orw ood East, a w riter who, although sharing with positivism a desire to develop objective, em pirically based research, did not su p p o rt a determ inistic approach. N either did he take the view th a t all crim inals were suffering from some psychological disorder. O ther w riters, however, such as H am blin Sm ith and Grace Pailthorpe, did argue th at the a b o rm a l’ m ental state o f the individual led to crim inal behaviour. Those linking heredity to crim inal dispositions took into account w hat they saw as genetically inherited m ental traits. T his is well illustrated by the work o f Charles Goring, a m edical officer in the prison service. Between 1902 and 1908 he carried out a psychiatrically based study of over 1,500 prisoners. In his report, published in 1913, he concluded th at ‘there is no such thing as a physical crim inal type’. A lthough this is a clear refutation of the Lom brosian view, G oring was no t seeking to suggest th at crim inals were ‘m ade’ rath er th an ‘b o rn ’. In 1919, following his death, an abridged

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version of the rep o rt was published, and this contains an in troduction by a collabora­ to r in the research, Karl Pearson, who p oints out th at G oring was ‘m uch su rp rised ’ to find th at there was ‘relatively little influence o f env iro n m en t’ in crim inality. G oring (1919: 211-12) him self wrote: Relatively to its origin in the constitution of the malefactor, and especially in his men­ tally defective constitution, crime in this country is only to a trifling extent (if to any) the product of social inequality, of adverse environment, or of other manifestations of what may be comprehensively termed ‘the force of circumstances’. One o f the m ost influential studies from the 1920s, carried out on delinquent youth by Cyril Burt (1925:29), also argued the case for hereditary factors (B urt’s reputation has suffered since the revelation in the 1970s th at he doctored the figures in various pieces o f research): ‘if our inquiry is to begin at the very beginning, it m ust go back to influences th at were operative long before the child him self was born. We m ust review not only his b irth and early life, bu t his ancestry also’. By the late 1930s, m ainstream crim inology was linking crim inal behaviour to a range o f psychological and social factors, against the backdrop o f a continuing debate about the relative im portance o f genetic endow m ent. This is a tradition that has car­ ried on into the work o f m odern psychologists. As Roshier (1989: 26) says: The quest for identifiable crime-prone personality types has included learning theorists as well as heredity theorists, psychoanalysts (‘anti-social’ or ‘affectionless’ personality theories), and studies not concerning themselves with the question of how such types come about. By the tim e we reach W orld W ar Two psychology was clearly in pole position w ithin crim inological discourses, with different em phases given to ‘heredity’ (inborn psy­ chological dispositions to crim e, or an inborn lack of m ental defences against ‘p ro p e r’ attitu d e form ation), and ‘env iro n m en t’ (‘b a d ’ social conditions detrim en ­ tally affecting psychological growth). Interestingly, the sam e kind o f policy-influencing fram ew ork was reflected in debates about future secondary education taking place in the late 1930s and during the war. A belief in the genetic basis o f intellectual ability, derived in large p a rt from the now discredited research o f Cyril Burt, was built into the 1938 Spens Report and 1943 N orw ood Report, and then enshrined in the trip a rtite system ushered in by the 1944 Education Act. The reform o f education was, o f course, only p a rt o f a massive transform ation in British social policy following W orld W ar Two, and we have to appreciate the strong feelings building up during the w ar around a welfare them e. Here were reflected Fabian ideas p ertaining to the intervention o f the central and local state into the social and econom ic life o f the country in order to im prove th at life. The sam e rationale was a p p aren t in discussions and policy form ulations relating

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to offenders, especially young offenders, during and after the war. T hus there was an increasing presence o f social work, psychotherapy and treatm en t, and reform ative strategies. The m ovem ent tow ards welfarism was, in effect, one way o f resolving the tension betw een ‘heredity’ and ‘env iro n m en t’. Im provem ents in health and housing, and an end to poverty, and so on, in a sense m ade the debate re d u n d an t. Put crudely, w hatever the im portance o f genetic endow m ent m ight be, society is lum bered with it. At least the social environm ents o f ordinary people can be im proved, which, it was reasoned, would m inim ise the unw anted effects o f ‘b a d ’ environm ents, for exam ple crim e. Geoff Pearson refers to a 1946 Conservative Party report, called Youth Astray, which from a contem porary vantage point m akes startling reading: 'The behaviour of boys and girls is m ainly the outcom e o f conditions, social, econom ic, and to some extent hereditary, for which they them selves cannot be blam ed. The blam e - for blam e there is - rests largely upon society’ (Pearson, 1983:14).

EUGENICS

There was during the interw ar years, however, an alternative response to welfarism am ong som e o f those convinced of the im portance o f genetics. The frequent identifi­ cation o f crim inality with low intelligence, feeble-m indedness, m oral degeneracy and the like led som e down a eugenics road and the sad attractions of, am ong other things, sterilisation. The eugenics m ovem ent achieved a significant following in Britain, as well as on the c ontinent and in the U nited States. Essentially it was con­ cerned w ith im proving the perceived genetic stock, which m eant devising ways of preventing those defined as degenerate, o f low intelligence, or otherw ise deviant, from producing offspring. The w ord ‘eugenics’ was coined by Francis G alton in the 1860s by placing the Greek word for 'well' next to the Greek word for ‘b o rn ’. This m is­ sion to purify the genetic pool of w hat was bizarrely referred to by som e as the ‘British race’, or ‘N ordic race’, was rath er sullied by Nazi G erm any taking the argum ents to th eir logical conclusion in the gas cham bers o f Auschwitz. These various strands w ithin crim inology betw een W orld W ar One and W orld W ar Two are brought together in a significant book by Claude M ullins (1945). The book is significant not because it had any particular im pact on policy, or because o f its aca­ demic excellence, bu t rather because o f its nature. The title, to begin with, says it all: Why Crime? Some causes and remedies from the psychological standpoint. In addition, because the author was a self-taught psychologist and a m agistrate, he acts as a kind of m elting pot for academ ic, lay and judicial opinion. Interestingly, he begins by refer­ ring to the lack of popular support for genetic explanations o f crim inality: The popular view among those interested in the subject is that criminals are what they are because society has made them so. This view accords with modern political tenden­ cies and is based upon the assumption that if society had provided for all a satisfactory

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social and economic environm ent, there would be few criminals. Those holding this view find that it generates soothing feelings of anger against the scheme of th in g s . . . they believe that the delinquent, rather than his victims or society, is really the aggrieved party. (Ibid.: 2) As th e b o o k pro ceed s, a n d his ow n p e rso n al o p in io n s em erge, it is clear th a t M ullins w as sceptical o f th ese ‘political te n d e n c ie s’, ten d e n cie s asso ciated w ith th e w elfarism d iscu ssed above. W hile p o in tin g o u t th a t ‘N o one w ould m a in ta in th a t th e in h e ri­ tance, w h e th e r biological o r psychological, can be directly a cause o f crim e’ (ibid.: 9), he w ent on to observe th a t ‘D elinquency is closely asso ciated w ith th e low -grade an d th e m en tally d e fic ie n t’ (ibid.: 48). His conclusion w as to th o ro u g h ly c o m m e n d the fin d in g s o f the 1934 g o v e rn m e n t D e p a rtm e n ta l C o m m itte e on S terilizatio n , w hich s ta te d th a t they were: impressed by the dead weight of social inefficiency and individual misery which is entailed by the existence in our m idst of over a quarter of a million m ental defectives and of a far larger num ber of persons who, without being certifiably defective, are m en­ tally subnorm al. (Cited by Mullins, ibid.: 49) T h is C o m m itte e said th a t all w itn esses before th e m ‘reco g n ized h e red ity as an im p o r­ ta n t fa cto r in th e c au satio n o f th ese c o n d itio n s’. M ullins (1945: 49) c o n tin u e s: The Sterilization Com mittee expressed the opinion that many low-grade parents ‘would be glad to be relieved of the dread o f repeated pregnancies and to escape the recurring burden of parenthood, for which they are so manifestly unfitted’ . . . There m ust be few o f those who have had close contacts with such people who would disagree with this statem ent . . . The only practical way of preventing people of low-grade intelligence from being overwhelmed with unw anted children, to the imm ense detrim ent of such children, is by the sterilization of the fathers. It is n o t w o rth d w elling o v e rlong on M u llin s’ tex t, b u t th e re is a se c tio n in a c h a p te r on ‘Illeg itim ate C h ild re n ’ w hich m an a g es to c o m b in e p re ju d ice to w a rd s such chil­ d re n w ith su rre a l psychology a n d a n ti-tra d e u n io n ism : adoption (of illegitimate children) frequently brings severe psychological d a n g e rs. . . many medical psychologists will say that a traum a will also remain in the child’s uncon­ scious which at any time may result in a crisis. Such a traum a may produce throughout life a hostility towards some one or society generally. An excellent illustration of this w a s . . . a well-known m iners’ leader in the decades between the wars. His uncom pro­ mising nature . . . its explanation probably lay in the fact that he was a foundling, adopted into the hom e of a m iner and his wife . . . But all his life his pugnacity and his

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dogged reluctance to meet the other side in any way were in all probability the legacy from his birth, and though his foster-parents’ love and care doubtless had their benefi­ cial effect, they could not eradicate what birth and the earliest reception into the world had produced. (Ibid.: 102) T he eugenics m o vem ent was fo unded on pseudo-science and racism , and w as p a rtic ­ ularly successful in the U nited States d u rin g the first sixty years o f the tw e n tie th cen­ tu ry (for an excellent discussion, see Black, 2003; an d for a discussion o f eugenics w ithin the co ntext o f DNA profiling an d cloning, in p a rticu la r the re-em ergence o f the issue o f race in p re se n t day genetics a n d m edicine, see D uster, 2003). Viewed by the a u th o ritie s as having ‘bad b lood lines’, show ing signs o f ‘feeble-m indedness’, belonging to the w rong ‘race’, being ‘d e v ia n t’, etc., h u n d re d s o f th o u sa n d s o f A m eri­ cans w ere prev en ted from having c hildren. At least 60,000 w ere coercively sterilised; th o u sa n d s m ore w ere erroneously placed in m en tal in stitu tio n s, n o t p e rm itte d to m arry, and in som e cases ‘u n -m a rrie d ’ by state officials. It was n o t u n til the evidence o f N azi e x te rm in a tio n cam ps em erged th a t the eugenics m ovem ent began to lose influence, and w hen th e w ar ended, w hat were form erly know n as eugenics in stitu ­ tio n s were ren am ed genetics in stitu tio n s. In spite o f a tte m p ts d u rin g th e 1920s and 1930s to p e rsu ad e B ritish gov ern m en ts o f the benefits o f the forced sterilisatio n o f the ‘feeb le-m in d ed ’ an d ‘d e g en erate’, the necessary legislation w as never in tro d u c ed . However, in som e A m erican states, laws allow ing sterilisation rem ain on the sta tu te books. Between 1972 a n d 1976, 3,406 N ative A m erican w om en a n d 142 m en were sterilised as a result o f an Indian H ealth (sic) Service pro g ram m e (Black, 2003). T he views o f people such as M ullins were, at the tim e, o u t o f step w ith ‘m o d ern political ten d e n cie s’, ten d en cies th a t led to the creation o f the m o d ern welfare state b u t these views did n o t d isappear. As we shall see w hen discussing the 1980s and 1990s, re p o rts o f the dem ise o f the above type o f crim inology tu rn e d o u t to be greatly exaggerated.

S e le c te d fu rth e r re a d in g Roshier, B. (1989) Controlling Crime, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, offers a well-informed, accessible discussion of the classical perspective in criminology and its enduring influence. An edited collection of the writings of Beccaria - one of the m ajor fig­ ures in classical criminology - is: Bellamy, R. (ed) (1995 ) Beccaria: On crimes and punish­ ments and other writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beirne, P. (1993) Inventing Criminology: Essays on the rise o f ‘homo criminalis’, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, is a sophisticated analysis of classicism and posi­ tivism in early criminology.

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CRIMINOLOGISTS

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WAR TWO

M a n n h e im , H . (1 9 4 0 ) Social Aspects o f Crime in England Between the Wars, L o n d o n : A llen & U n w in , w as w ritte n by so m e o n e w ho w as th e re a t th e tim e. For a su c c in c t, th o u g h c o m p re h e n s iv e , overview , see G a rla n d , D . (2 0 0 2 ) ‘O f c rim e s a n d crim in a ls: T h e d e v e lo p m e n t o f c rim in o lo g y in B rita in ’, in M . M a g u ire, R. M o rg a n a n d R. R einer (eds) The Oxford Handbook o f Criminology, 2 n d e d n , O xford: O x ford U niversity Press. A n im p o r ta n t b o o k on th e h isto ry o f th e e u g en ics m o v e m e n t is Black, E. ( 2 0 0 3 ) War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's campaign to create a m aster race, N ew Y ork: F o u r W alls E ig h t W in d o w s.

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c ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\ Key th e m e s • The emergence of criminology • Sociological criminology • Sociological criminology in Britain from the 1950s to the mid-1960s • Sociological criminology in the United States

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INTRODUCTION

From now on, the focus is largely on sociological criminology, tracing its emergence in the United States in the early p art of the tw entieth century, and in Britain in the 1950s, and its developm ent up to the present day. The chapters that follow are structured around m ajor historical periods. Thus for each historical period there is a chapter outlining the broader social and political context within which the developm ent of crim inology as an academic discipline can be situated. This, in turn, is followed by a com panion chapter(s) th at discusses in detail the theoretical ideas and agendas associ­ ated with the various crim inological perspectives th at have emerged over the years. This begins here in C hapter 4 with a discussion of the social and political contexts within which early versions o f British and American sociological crim inology em erged. The em ergence o f a recognised academ ic discipline called ‘crim inology’ was not p re­ ordained or inevitable; it was not an ology w aiting to happen. Similarly, no m aster plan was guiding the discipline tow ards som e ‘tru e ’ state. D ebates regarding w hat crim inology is, or should be, continue unabated. Indeed, they have increased in intensity as tim e has gone on. The academic terrain of crim inology has been, and still is, colonised by theories and research projects that have their intellectual bases in a range of pre-existing academic disciplines. As we have seen in the last chapter, in Britain during the first p art of the tw entieth century that discipline was psychological m edicine/psychology. Crime and criminality, though, have been studied from the perspective o f biology, anthropology, economics, sociology, and so on. Criminologists, therefore, have either opted for a strat­ egy of broadly based eclecticism, where they synthesise, or at least draw on, a num ber of disciplines, or for an approach rooted in their own academic specialism. 69

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The choice o f an eclectic approach was to a large extent a feature o f the crim inology th at developed during the period u n d er review in this chapter. This raises the in ter­ esting issue o f w hether there is an extant body o f theoretical knowledge with uniquely crim inological characteristics. W hat is the distinction, say, betw een the sociology or psychology o f crim e and crim inology? After all, the specialist area of, for instance, the sociology o f the family did not lead to a separate academ ic discipline called ‘familyology’. In the ebbs and flows o f subject dom inance and changing research agendas, crim i­ nology’ becam e a flag o f convenience, u nder which a m otley crew could sail. Its status as a separate academ ic discipline derived from the institutional trappings accum u­ lated over the years: specialist research centres and departm ents, parking spaces on library shelves, academ ic journals, professorships, conferences and the like. This allowed for a concentration o f scholarship and the potential for cross-fertilisation of ideas; but the work produced has always rem ained rooted in earlier disciplines, either as a prim ary focus, or some sort of synthesis.

T H E E M E R G E N C E OF C R IM IN O L O G Y

By the end o f the 1950s crim inology had, in m any circles, achieved the status o f a recognised academ ic discipline. Indeed, as one m easure o f this, according to Radzinowicz’s (1961) review o f this period, Britain was second only to the United States in term s o f governm ent funding for crim inological research during the 1950s. In the last chapter m ention was m ade o f G arlan d ’s distinction betw een two differ­ ent crim inological projects, first one then the oth er becom ing d o m inant as the disci­ pline developed in history. On the one hand, there is the ‘governm ental project’, where crim inology’s raison d ’etre was its practical usefulness for ad m inistrators, and on the other, the ‘L om brosian project’, where crim inology was oriented tow ards the p ro duction of scientific knowledge. According to G arland, by the end of the 1950s there had been a convergence betw een these two projects: crim inology laid claim to p ro per academ ic/scientific status, and at the sam e tim e offered useful knowledge for those involved in the ad m inistration o f the crim inal justice system . This raises im p o rta n t and com plex philosophical issues relating to the role o f the social sciences in general, and, as we shall see, these becom e particularly p ertin en t w ithin the context o f versions of critical crim inology. For the m om ent, one point to m ake is th a t irrespective o f w hether or no t one believes th at crim inology should be ‘useful’, it is necessary to consider the basic fram ew ork w ithin which crim inological research is carried out. There is a distinction betw een research carried out w ithin the constraints and dem ands im posed by a funding body, according to an agenda they set, and research carried out because it is interesting and will fu rth er academ ic knowledge and understanding. Those involved in each type of research m ight even agree th a t crim inology should, for instance, help in the ‘fight against crim e’, bu t there

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is a huge difference betw een research th a t is locked into some adm inistrative require­ m ents and research th at is no t (though nowadays such freedom is increasingly diffi­ cult to come by). This tension also has implications for the developm ent of theory. Hope (2006: 245) attrib u tes this observation to the Am erican crim inologist Travis Hirschi: ‘There are two kinds o f theory - theory, and grant-theory.’ In G arlan d ’s view, then, research carried out during the 1940s and 1950s satisfied both adm inistrative and academ ic dem ands due to a happy coincidence o f the two projects. On a general level this was undoubtedly the case, though a m ore detailed analysis shows th at there were differences o f opinion w ithin crim inology. W ithout this adm inistrative and academ ic convergence, it is probably true to say th at crim i­ nology’s evolution into a legitim ate and recognised academ ic discipline w ould have been m ore draw n out. W hatever the personal preferences o f the crim inologists involved m ight have been, the prom ise o f a ‘scientific’ und erstan d in g o f crim e and its trea tm e n t was a seductive one for governm ents in the post-w ar period - a period o f optim ism founded on notions o f social planning and social engineering. Before we exam ine the im plications o f this for criminology, it will be useful to step back a little and consider the social and political clim ate in British society at th at tim e. The Fabian-influenced social reform m ovem ent, referred to in the earlier discussion of the 1930s, gathered m om entum as W orld W ar Two ran its course. The idea o f social reform in the shape o f better housing, healthcare and education, and freedom from abject poverty, captured the im agination of large num bers of the population, espe­ cially the working class. D uring the war, cinem a audiences got used to seeing govern­ m ent inform ation films giving glim pses o f a post-war future when the quality o f life would be greatly im proved for everyone. M agazines such as Picture Post began to carry sim ilar messages, with photographs o f m odel council housing estates, where kids had plenty o f green spaces to play in, and a trip to the lavatory was not an expedition through the elem ents to the outer reaches o f a backyard. M any people lived in grossly inadequate housing, and dreaded the onset o f illness because o f the costs involved. M em ories o f the 1930s and the high levels o f unem ploym ent were still fresh in the m inds o f those once unem ployed m en and wom en now fighting for Britain. The sacri­ fices th at people at the front and at hom e were being asked to make dem anded a prom ­ ise o f som ething better than the pre-w ar world th at had gone before. The idea th at w inning the w ar would be rew arded merely by a return to the old days o f glaring class inequality and privilege would not have been m uch o f an incentive. Driven by welfarist principles, Britain after the war was to be a land fit for heroes. In spite o f this, m any people were surprised when C hurchill’s w artim e charism a failed to ensure a Conservative general election victory in 1945. As it tu rn ed out, the Labour Party won by a significant m ajority, and th eir m anifesto com m itted them to a radical program m e o f social and econom ic reform . N ot only was the welfare state to be established, bu t key sectors o f the econom y were to be nationalised. Clearly, the Labour P arty’s victory reflected the fact th at a large n um ber o f voters were in accord with th eir plans for post-w ar reconstruction. An interesting explanation o f their

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victory is a ttrib u te d to my ex-father-in-law, John Tracy. In his view it was because the m en and w om en fighting overseas were rarely able to read the m ainly Conservativesup p o rtin g new spapers. This, then, was the social landscape in which studies o f crim e and delinquency continued to develop in the 1940s and 1950s, and the nature o f these studies becam e p a rt o f the Zeitgeist o f post-w ar Britain. Crim inology was thus infused w ith the ideas of social reform w ithin a political philosophy o f social democracy.

Institutional roots One m easure o f crim inology’s growing im portance during the two decades of the 1940s and 1950s is provided by looking at the institutional roots laid down by the dis­ cipline. The specialised crim inology course which began at the London School o f Eco­ nom ics in 1935 continued to develop under the leadership o f M annheim . A D epartm ent of Crim inal Science was set up at the University o f Cam bridge in 1941, though this was concerned with research and publishing rather then teaching. Eventu­ ally the Home Office-funded Institute o f Criminology grew out o f this departm ent. The governm ent funding of crim inological research, originally sanctioned by the 1948 Crim inal Justice Act, indicates the congruence between governm ental social policy and the directions taken by British crim inology at that tim e. In 1950, the Institute for the Scientific T reatm ent of Delinquency (ISTD), established in 1932, published the British Journal o f Delinquency, Britain’s first specialist crim inological journal. A shift in em phasis from delinquency to the broader concept o f crime is reflected in the decision to alter the title o f this journal to the British Journal o f Criminology’ in 1960. As crim inology was trying to find its feet and establish itself as a legitim ate academic discipline, debates about the types o f behaviour or social problem s crim inology should study were joined by debates about how and why these should be studied: for example, w hether research should be tailored to m eet the needs of the Home Office, and w hether the research should be driven by perspectives derived from psychology, psychoanalysis or sociology. One outcom e o f these debates was the setting up o f the British Society of Criminology by a breakaway group dissatisfied with the lack o f interest in theoretical analysis within the Scientific G roup for the Discussion o f Delinquency Problems, an organisation founded in 1953 by the ISTD, and strongly influenced by psychoanalysis and a ‘social problem s’ approach. Finally, in 1957 the Home Office Research Unit was established, and the Home Office continues to be an im portant centre for crim inologi­ cal research in this country (today there are a num ber o f Home Office Research Units).

Main characteristics In his review o f developm ents in British crim inology during the post-w ar period, Stan Cohen (1981) argued th at the institu tio n s discussed above, w ithin which crim inology

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took root, exhibited four m ain characteristics: pragm atism , the interdisciplinary con­ ception, correctionalism and positivism . In general term s, these describe the charac­ teristics o f crim inology in this country up to the 1960s, though as Cohen concedes, there were a few individuals and pieces o f research that deviated from the m ain­ stream . However, it was not until the second half of the 1960s th at significant breaks occurred, leading eventually to a new orthodoxy. C ohen’s four characteristics can be exam ined in turn. Pragmatism essentially refers to an approach based on em piricism and a strong ori­ en tation tow ards research with direct, practical consequences. In oth er words, a com ­ m itm ent to the provision of w hat is perceived to be useful knowledge, rather th an to the construction o f social scientific theory. As has been com m ented on earlier, p ro m ­ ulgating the view th a t crim inology was ‘useful’ was im p o rta n t in these early days from the point o f view o f gaining official acceptance and legitim ation. The idea also fitted in neatly w ith the social reform ism associated with the post-w ar period. This em phasis on pragm atism is, according to Cohen, well represented in the views o f Radzinowicz, one o f the leading crim inologists at the tim e. Radzinowicz celebrated w hat he him self described as the ‘pragm atic p o sitio n ’, a position th at precludes attem pts to build an all-em bracing theory, or theoretical schools o f thought. In conse­ quence, existing data and ideas, from w hatever source, constituted an intellectual sm orgasbord from which the crim inologist m ight select as required. This again raises the question o f w hat it is th at identifies crim inology as a distinct academ ic discipline. Can the approach recom m ended by Radzinowicz create som ething peculiarly ‘crim i­ nological? Can it fashion a legitim ate, though hybrid, discipline, based as it is on dip ­ ping into the handiw ork o f already established academ ic disciplines? Explaining why crim inology was characterised by this stress on pragm atism , Cohen (1981: 2 2 2 -3 ) points to:

the fact that the whole idea o f‘schools’ of criminal law and criminology in the Continen­ tal sense is quite alien to the British legal tradition . . . The strong American socio-legal tradition was virtually absent in Britain. There was, thus, little opportunity for either a legally or sociologically based theoretical criminology to emerge.

He also refers to the argum ent, originally p u t forw ard by A nderson (1968), th at on a different level, pragm atism has been a traditional feature o f B ritain’s national culture. W ith reference to sociology, A nderson highlights a general d istru st o f theory and a failure to build any classical trad itio n s at the tim e when European c o u n terp arts were doing ju st that. In Britain, sociology is historically associated with charity, social work and Fabian institutions. As Cohen (1981:223) puts it:

In a much wider sense, the pragmatic tradition could be seen as part of the national cul­ ture; the amateur, muddling-along ethos of British life, combined with the Fabian type

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of pragmatism in which disciplines with obvious practical implication like criminology are located. Behind many enterprises in such fields, the attitude is: find out the right facts, then let the well-meaning chaps (for example, in the Home Office) make the obvi­ ous inferences and do the rest. Contrast, for example, the highly professional and research-based collection of information for policy-making in an American official com­ mission with the typical Royal Commission - with its motley collection of peers, bish­ ops, judges, very part-time experts and ‘informed laymen’, and its unbelievably slow rate of productivity.

The second characteristic o f post-w ar British crim inology identified by Cohen is interdisciplinary conception. By this he m eans th at the em piricism and pragm atism which perm eated crim inology lent itself to the utilisation o f a broadly based mix of disciplines. This suggests th at the eclectic approach was pursued not only because it apparently produced ‘useful’, practical knowledge, bu t also because it corresponded with the d o m in an t view th at it was in the nature o f crim inology to be an eclectic disci­ pline. The work carried out by the big institu tio n s o f crim inological research during the 1940s and 1950s, and which, as a totality, constituted ‘British crim inology’, was based on a range o f perspectives such as psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, forensic science, m edicine and sociology. However, an exam ination o f these in stitu ­ tions individually does show th at there were differences in the em phasis given to these various disciplines. W hile the d o m inant view seems to have been th at no one discipline had cornered (or should corner) the m arket as a ‘m aster discipline’, research in specific institu tio n s did tend to be skewed tow ards one or oth er o f them . In fact, psychology and psychiatry were the m ost prom inent. The m inor role played by sociology is w orthy o f special note, and is retu rn ed to below. G arland (1994) has identified three prim ary strands in the crim inology th at had em erged in the 1950s: adm inistrative, psychoanalytical and sociological. The first of these was originally labelled ‘adm inistrative crim inology’ by George Void (1958), in an effort to disparage a type o f crim inology lacking com m itm ent to the developm ent o f a scientific, theoretically oriented m odel. This critique was m ainly aim ed at the Cam bridge Institute o f Criminology, then u nder the tutelage o f Radzinowicz, and the Research Unit at the Hom e Office. Drawing on an eclectic mix o f academ ic disci­ plines, adm inistrative crim inology describes a crim inology th at is fundam entally geared tow ards doing research which will be o f direct practical use to governm ent agencies concerned with crim inal justice m atters, for exam ple the prisons and the courts. The psychoanalytical strand exem plified the clinical approach to crim inology. Studies set w ithin a psychological and psychiatric fram ew ork attem p ted to fathom the causes o f crim e, to classify different types o f offender, and, in the process, to develop theoretical m odels. Again, although these studies had scientific aspirations, they were ultim ately locked into som e notion o f ‘useful’ knowledge - useful, th at is, to

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the policy process. This kind o f crim inology was associated with the ISTD, the M audsley H ospital, the Tavistock Institute, the British Society o f Crim inology and the British journal o f Criminology. According to Cohen (1981: 224), these in stitutions ‘heavily w eighted the field tow ards psychology and psychiatry’, and ‘This w eighting rem ained despite the later c ontributions by sociologists’. The sociological strand was largely associated with a growing num ber of sociologi­ cal crim inologists working under M annheim at the London School o f Economics in the 1950s. M annheim , who came from a legal background, favoured a m ultidiscipli­ nary approach, but did gradually come to develop a sociological perspective on crime and delinquency (M annheim , 1965). Overall, however, British crim inology contained relatively little w ritten from a specifically sociological direction. C ohen’s th ird characteristic o f post-w ar crim inology - correctionalism - he describes as correction, reform and the problem o f values. Although there were some exceptions, w ith w riters such as W alker (1965) arguing for scientific detachm ent and a com m itm ent to theoretical knowledge, on the whole, says Cohen, British crim i­ nology was strongly tied to governm ent-led dem ands for a m ore efficient, albeit hum anely reform ed, correctional system (though there is no logical necessity for these two am bitions to coincide in practice). T here was, therefore, a great stress on the trea tm e n t o f offenders, and m odes o f intervention in the lives o f predicted offend­ ers. In essence, C ohen’s reasonable com plaint is th at crim inology had developed a largely unreflexive posture, w hereby key assum ptions, th a t should have been criti­ cally interrogated, were m ore or less taken for granted as ‘givens’. The fourth, and final, characteristic for Cohen (1981: 229) is w hat he calls the positivist trap, and he attrib u tes this to the dom inance o f clinical interests: ‘the search for clinical or statistical p ro o f o f causation, the com m itm ent to scientific d eterm in ­ ism, the denial o f authenticity and m eaning to deviance’. This m obilisation o f ‘scientific’ crim inology in the battle against recidivism and the prevention of delinquency am ong those ‘at risk’ was m ore o f a prom ise th an a reality. As David Downes (1978: 490) puts it: ‘no clear idea had em erged o f w hat m ight be inflicted on “p re-delinquents”, should an adequate predictive in stru m en t be devised, a seem ingly rem ote possibility in any case’. The lack of im pact m ade by these correctionalist ideas, due to their inherent inade­ quacies, partly explains, says Downes, why no sustained criticism s, or indeed w or­ ries, developed during the 1950s. Put a n o th e r way, the clinical alchem y feeding the correctionalist’s dream s o f scientific intervention into the lives o f supposed ‘p re­ d elinquents’ was so underdeveloped and hazy th at it was not looked upon as a real threat. However, says Downes, by the early 1960s and the advent o f people such as the psychologist H ans Eysenck, these interventions on the basis of, say, aversion therapy concentrated the m inds o f m ore liberally inclined crim inologists wonderfully. T hus began a shift tow ards a m ore critical crim inology im patient w ith the (dangerous) cor­ rectionalist principles lying at the h eart o f m ainstream crim inology.

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An ‘everything’ of crime C rim inologists working in the post-w ar period obviously felt th at they were engaged on a project th at was distinctively ‘crim inological’. Using an interdisciplinary approach th at entailed dipping into and borrow ing from various already established relevant areas o f study was precisely why crim inology was seen as a distinct academ ic discipline. Somehow, the process o f extracting the various factors - psychological, psychoanalytical, biological or sociological, etc. in nature - viewed as acting in com ­ bination on offenders, or potential offenders, constituted the business o f doing crim ­ inology. An approach anchored in a single discipline - for exam ple, a psychology or sociology o f crim e - would have negated efforts to construct a separate, qualitatively different, way o f studying crim e and crim inality. Thus, crim inology becam e, p o ten ­ tially, an ‘everything’ o f crim e. Interestingly, this view was officially endorsed in 2007 when ‘benchm ark sta te m en ts’ for crim inology as an academ ic discipline were p ro ­ duced by the governm ent’s Q uality A ssurance Agency (benchm ark statem ents provide content guidance for degree program m es in this country). In this context Cyril Burt’s (1925) pre-war study, The Young Delinquent, is a good example. Using a sample o f400 children, Burt sought to identify those factors in a child’s life th at produce individual psychological variations. In particular, he was interested in those factors which in com bination are associated with delinquency and, hence, can be used as predictors o f future delinquency. Burt’s work reflected his background in psy­ cholog)' and his professional role of educational psychologist in so far as he linked the various factors to psychological differences. However, the process of selecting the key fac­ tors was broadly based, relying as he did on all sorts of indices and m easurem ent tech­ niques: for example, psychoanalysis, IQ tests and the investigation o f social and m aterial circumstances. It was this com m itm ent to a multifactorial approach that endeared him to post-war criminologists. So too did his focus on the individual delinquent and, as a corollary, on the need to devise individually tailored treatm ent program m es. One other feature o f Burt’s work, which was to dom inate much o f the British criminology that fol­ lowed, was its pathological frame of reference: some parents had ‘defective’ relationships with their children, some children had ‘b a d ’ tem peram ents, and so on. B urt’s study stands as a direct precursor o f m uch o f the crim inology produced in the 1940s and 1950s. It concentrated on young offenders, and attem pted to predict in a ‘scientific’ m an n er which children would be m ost likely to end up as delinquent. This endeavour to predict delinquency has been described by Stan Cohen as an ‘obsession in British crim inology’. Certainly, as we shall see, British crim inology has been seduced by notions o f ‘pred ictio n ’ and dom inated by studies o f youthful delin­ quency. In the im m ediate post-w ar period this was partly connected to the fact th at official statistics continued to show a p p aren t increases in am ounts o f juvenile crim e. And, predictably, the research pathw ay relating to the trea tm e n t o f young offenders m arked out by Burt was also followed, w ith research explicitly linked to the penal requirem ents o f the Borstal system .

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SOC IO LO G IC A L CRIM INOLOGY

As crim inology began to emerge as a separate discipline during the 1940s and 1950s, where was sociology? The sh o rt answ er is th at sociological crim inology did exist and som e studies were carried out w ithin a loosely defined sociological fram ew ork. How­ ever, as a c o n tributing discipline it played a m inor role over th at period in Britain, and continued to do so until the m iddle o f the 1960s. From then on things changed and the influence o f sociology increased dram atically. In order to understand why this was so we have to take account of the central fea­ tures o f both the em erging crim inology and sociology itself during the period under review. As we have seen, m ainstream crim inology m ade a virtue out o f an interdiscipli­ nary m ultifactorial approach. This, by definition, precluded em bracing a specifically sociological analysis, though it did not preclude the incorporation o f ideas and theo­ ries from sociology, at least in principle. However, in com parison with, notably, psy­ chologically grounded criminology, sociological crim inology was thin on the ground. Furtherm ore, according to Cohen (1981: 227), British crim inology was operating w ithin a fairly crude conceptual fram ework: ‘Curious notions about sociology being concerned with “area” or “environm ental” factors appear, sociology is identified with statistics, and concepts such as anom ie, sub-culture or deprivation are d isto rte d ’. It was also, as far as influences from oth er countries were concerned, som ething of a closed shop. This is particularly striking with respect to potential influences from the U nited States where, by W orld W ar Two, a large and im p o rta n t body of sociologi­ cal crim inology had developed. The way in which m ainstream crim inology coalesced around a com m itm ent to pragm atism is also im p o rta n t. The desire to produce knowledge useful to crim inal justice ad m inistrators, and especially to those working w ithin the penal system, enabled crim inology to achieve recognition as a legitim ate discipline. Unfortunately, sociology failed to convince the pragm atists th at it was able to offer m uch o f value. The prom ise held out by crim inology o f being o f practical use was predicated on a p ri­ m ary concern with the individual delinquent or pre-delinquent, and this clearly lent itself to a strong influence from psychiatry and psychology. In th a t context, even a m ore m ature and sophisticated sociology would, because analyses are pitched at the level of the ‘social’, have had difficulty in gaining m ainstream acceptance. The ‘social problem s’ orientation o f m ainstream crim inology finds a parallel with social work, with its em phasis on casework. Here, too, with knowledge evaluated on the basis o f such things as ‘relevance’, ‘practical ap p lication’ and a prom ise to make problem s ‘m anageable’, sociology has traditionally assum ed a secondary status to psychology. This illustrates the continuing im portance of the ‘governm ental project’ (Garland, 1994) in the post-war years. Under these conditions, for sociology to becom e influen­ tial - and thereby earn centrally adm inistered funds, respectable status, and a seat at the top table - it needed to prove its worth by producing w hat was seen as useful knowl­ edge, which equates to knowledge th at will help in the ‘fight against crim e’. Eventually,

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some sociology was able to do this, as exemplified by the research carried out at the Home Office. However, a coextensive process was at work from the late 1960s onwards which offered an alternative to this adm inistrative route to discipline status. Some strands o f sociological crim inology opted out of the governm ent project in favour of an academ ic - rather than ‘Lom brosian’ - project. Sociology was able to disengage itself from the governm ent project to a significant degree because its discourse gathered together a large internal audience, irrespective o f any claims to ‘usefulness’. From the late 1960s there was a massive expansion in university, and then polytechnic, courses in sociology, and a concom itant growth in the publication o f sociological texts. One ou t­ come was increasing interest in sociological studies o f crime, though at th at period these were likely to be described as the sociology o f deviance. W hile the them es o f m uch o f this work would have shocked m any o f the crim i­ nologists from the 1940s and 1950s, it was ju st as m uch a product o f th at tim e in history as theirs was a product o f the im m ediate post-w ar period. By the beginning o f the 1970s there had been a spectacular expansion o f this sociological area of study, characterised by a kaleidoscopic outpouring of bold, brash, unsettling and som etim es wild virtuosity. As a consequence, sociological crim inology (or w hatever it was labelled) could to a large extent be sustained by its own internal resources, with a grow ing audience for the books and papers th a t were produced am ong undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers and teachers. In this way m arket forces began to play a part, as publishing houses becam e aware o f the trend. Furtherm ore, the work produced could be as theoretical as the au th o r w anted: it did no t have to gain acceptance on the basis o f som e perceived usefulness to the Borstal system . Indeed, th a t so rt o f adm inistrative crim inology becam e the focus o f criticism : disen­ gagem ent from the E stablishm ent was celebrated. O f course, one result o f this dis­ paraging attitu d e tow ards the pragm atic approach was a corresponding lack o f direct political influence, a point th at raises an interesting debate th at surfaced m ore recently w ithin the context o f the grow th in influence o f ‘left realism ’. This is dis­ cussed later on.

S O C I O L O G I C A L C R I M I N O L O G Y IN B R I T A I N F R O M T H E l 9 5 0 s T O T H E MI D-1960S

W inning the W orld Cup m ade 1966 an auspicious year for English soccer: it was also an auspicious year for sociological crim inology. In his short, though now classic, account of crim inology over this period, Stan Cohen (1981: 227) tells us: ‘there was virtually nothing before the post-1965 wave following D ow nes’s book The Delinquent Solution . A part from being the m ost theoretically sophisticated British sociological study o f youth crim e then available, D ow nes’s research on delinquency in the East End of London arrived at a tim e when sociological crim inology was poised to develop very significantly in Britain. The study is also im p o rta n t in th at it was p a rt o f a lineage

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th at over a decade or so had started (albeit spasm odically) to draw on Am erican sources. It is ironic, though, th at soon after D ow nes’s book appeared, British crim i­ nology, u nder the influence o f other, fresh ideas from the United States, shifted direc­ tion tow ards the so-called new deviancy. In a short period o f tim e an alternative to m ainstream crim inology was developed by a n um ber o f young, and soon to be very influential, British crim inologists. Looking back from the vantage point o f today to the tim e when D ow nes’s book was published, the lack o f sociological research on crim e seem s rem arkable. Downes (1966:100) described the situation as follows: What aspects of American Theorisation are substantiated by post-war findings on juve­ nile delinquency in England? Any attempt to answer this question involves a revelation of the paucity of English work on the sociology of crime . . . Concentration on penology, the psychology of crime, and legal and statistical studies of delinquency. .. has involved the almost complete neglect of the very questions with which American sociologists pre-occupy themselves. Soberingly, he suggested th at sociological work, w hen it did begin to take off in this country in the 1950s, did so from a position established by the V ictorian researcher H enry Mayhew. It was as if British painting had lain d o rm an t since the tim e o f the Pre-Raphaelites: ‘D espite the alm ost single-handed efforts o f M annheim , the socio­ logical study o f crim e and delinquency slowly revived only during the 1950s, alm ost a century after the publication in 1862 o f M ayhew’s m assive docum entation o f the London “u n d erw o rld ” and slum s’ (ibid.: 100-1). Given that there was only a handful of British sociologically based studies of crime in existence by 1966, it is quite easy to list the key exam ples: H. D. W illcock (1949); T. Ferguson (1952); T. Ferguson and J. Cunnison (1951, 1956); J. B. Mays (1954, 1959); M. P. Carter and P. Jephcott (1954); T. M orris (1957); H. Jones (1958); D. Lowson (1960); T. R. Fyvel (1961); J. L. Spencer et al. (1961). In addition to these, there were also studies essentially concerned with the statistical distrib u tio n o f young offending: J. H. Bagot (1941); A. M. Carr-Saunders et al. (1942); W. R. Little and V. R. N tsekhe (1959); J. W. B. Douglas (1964). Studies by P. Sainsbury (1955) and P. Scott (1956), although often referred to in this context (the form er, for exam ple, being reproduced in a set o f readings on the sociology o f crim e by Carson and W iles, 1971), were carried out by psychiatrists. This m eagre list, then, m ore or less constituted the sociology o f crim e and delin­ quency in Britain up to the m id-1960s, thus reinforcing the point m ade earlier: th at crim inology during this period was not m uch interested in sociology, preferring instead the pragm atic, interdisciplinary approach, with strong leanings tow ards clin­ ical positivism . Clearly, sociological crim inology was m arginal to the concerns o f the m ainstream . One result was th at until picked up by som e o f the w riters listed above, the large am o u n t o f sociological crim inology produced in the U nited States since the

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early 1920s was virtually ignored in this country. Cohen suggests th at this was not always because o f m ere ignorance, or a perception o f it as irrelevant. Even M annheim , who did m ost in the late 1930s and the 1940s to introduce sociological perspectives into crim inology, is accused by Cohen (1981: 227) o f a ‘certain parochialism . . . with his apparent policy o f selecting for his textbook Am erican work only when British or European work could no t be fo u n d ’. This situation was slowly rem edied during the 1950s as two of the m ost influential early sociological studies o f crim e (Mays, 1954; M orris, 1957) introduced Am erican ideas and research. A lthough British crim inology was no t m uch interested in sociology, the reverse is also true: British sociology was not m uch interested in crim inology. Yet in the light of w hat has already been said about the nature o f crim inology this detachm ent can perhaps be easily forgiven. Crim inology as it was constituted provided few attrac­ tions for the dedicated sociologist. However, a failure to appreciate the continuities betw een the general concerns o f sociology (for exam ple, social order) and the con­ cerns o f crim inology is less easily explained. According to Cohen, som e of the reasons for this resistance to crim inology derived from features internal to the discipline of sociology itself in Britain, such as a view th at studying crim inals or deviants was peripheral to core sociological projects. O ther reasons, he says, derived from the ‘oth er side’, from the traditional fram ew ork w ithin which crim e was studied. This fram ew ork was guaranteed to p u t sociologists off: ‘the m oralistic, non-abstract ways in which deviance was studied and the early identification o f this field with social work, reform ative or correctional concerns’ (1981: 231). On a m ore personal level, Cohen has painted an unflattering picture o f sociology dep artm en ts during m ost of the 1960s, w ith antagonism tow ards issues o f crim e and deviance being encountered am ong all political and theoretical persuasions. The sociological studies o f crim e developing in the 1950s represented a move away from an interdisciplinary, clinically based m ainstream crim inology. Instead of juggling w ith a m ultiplicity o f biological, psychological and social factors which, in one way or another, were seen as creating individual crim inals, sociology explicitly focused on the social context o f crim e. This social context was the n e ighbour­ hood, thus sociological crim inology developed w ithin the strong British tradition of area-co m m u n ity studies, a tradition th at has endured (e.g. W illm ott (1966); Parker (1974); Baldwin and B ottom s (1976); Gill (1977); Bottom s et al. (1987); Evans et al. (1992)). The ‘social’ dim ension had been acknow ledged in pre-w ar crim inology, even though it had tended to be lost due to the preoccupation with clinical psychology. M ainstream crim inological research at th at tim e was littered with concepts such as ‘inadequacy’, ‘m alad ju stm en t’ and ‘low intelligence’, and these ‘conditions’ were often associated with poverty and the slum neighbourhood. On a political level, as we have seen, one im p o rta n t feature o f post-w ar Britain was an increasingly interven­ tionist state, and this included an expanding social welfare program m e. T hus an em phasis was placed on the social bases o f various defined social problem s, am ong

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which was crim e. This was clearly congruent with the concerns o f a Fabian-influenced sociological crim inology. One striking characteristic o f the sociological studies o f crim e carried out during the 1950s and first h a lf o f the 1960s, and listed above, is th at they all concentrated on young people and their delinquencies. This is not surprising, perhaps, given growing panics about juvenile crim e, and the message from official statistics th at the peak age o f offending was 14. This was also the period th at saw the em ergence o f distinctive youth subcultures, beginning in 1953 with the Teddy Boys, as well as the social cate­ gory o f ‘teenager’. These developm ents helped to accentuate the w ell-docum ented tendency to associate adolescence w ith unruly or troublesom e behaviour (Pearson, 1983; M uncie, 1984). D uring the decade preceding the publication o f D ow nes’s book, then, a sociologi­ cal alternative to m ainstream crim inology began to emerge in Britain. As we shall see when this work is exam ined in m ore detail, British crim inologists were at last acknowledging, and draw ing on, Am erican research, and shifting the spotlight away from individualism tow ards the socio-cultural context o f delinquency, tow ards the neighbourhoods in which delinquent youth lived. However, this type of research started m uch later in Britain th an in the United States, and this, com bined with the facts th at few sociologists were interested in the field and th at there was m uch less m oney available to fund research, m eant th at by the mid-1960s, relatively few studies aim ed at testing the explanatory m odels had been carried out. W hile the late 1960s saw a rapid grow th in the num ber o f sociologists in Britain who did have an interest in crim e and deviance, this interest was by then being sus­ tained in the m ain by the prom ise held out by a different kind o f sociological crim i­ nology. The em phasis now was on the sociology o f deviance, and the em erging paradigm was referred to as new deviancy theory. Inevitably, this shift had occurred originally in the U nited States and the work produced there provided a fecund source o f ideas for British crim inologists. Very quickly, and in spite o f being only relatively short-lived, the earlier sociological crim inology was itself labelled, disparagingly, as ‘m ain stre am ’, or ‘orth o d o x ’, and becam e the target for intense criticism . Obviously, these criticism s can only be fully appreciated after we have exam ined the respective m odels. However, the discussion so far, aim ed at p lotting briefly the direction taken by sociological studies o f crim e, does perhaps give a hint o f the nature o f som e of these criticism s. Fundam entally, the earlier work had m ade no attem p t to grapple with the defini­ tional issues surrounding the use o f term s such as ‘crim e’ and ‘delinquency’; state defi­ nitions were taken as given. On a less abstract level, these studies were content to rely on official statistics regarding the distribution o f crime, and this helped to concentrate research not just on youthful delinquency, but also specifically on lower-working-class males; m iddle-class deviance was m ore or less ignored, as was corporate crim e. This situation links up with an assum ption of a consensus over norm s and values: although some studies pointed to delinquency being norm al in certain areas, these areas tended

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to be conceived o f as enclaves o f crim inality w ithin a larger society founded upon a m onolithic law-abiding citizenry. There was too, in these studies from the 1950s, a strong social work ethos, and a positivist orientation tow ards seeking out the causes of delinquency, or identifying ‘at risk’, ‘pre-delinquent’ children, with a view to devising appropriate treatm en t regimes. Above all else, though, earlier sociological crim inol­ ogy was accused o f ignoring the p a rt played by the various control agencies in the actual construction o f deviance. Before turn in g to these developm ents in British crim inology from the late 1960s, it will be useful to cross the A tlantic and have a look at sociological crim inology in the United States from the early p a rt o f the century up to the im pact o f new deviancy theory.

S O C I O L O G I C A L C R I M I N O L O G Y IN T H E U N I T E D S T A T ES

W hen sociological perspectives on crim e started to appear, the discipline o f crim inol­ ogy in the U nited States and in Britain was dom inated by analyses pitched at the level of the individual. In extrem e exam ples, attem p ts were m ade to trace the source of crim inal behaviour directly to biological or psychological factors w ithin the individ­ ual. The assum ption was th at som ething was w rong with the individual, rath er than with society. The sociological challenge to this type o f theorising developed m uch earlier in the United States th an it did in this country. A lthough biologically and psy­ chologically based versions o f positivism by no m eans disappeared, a shift tow ards seeing crim e as the outcom e o f social circum stances began as early as the tu rn o f the tw entieth century in the U nited States. It was during the 1920s and 1930s, though, th at two particularly im p o rtan t and influential traditions in the sociology o f crim e and delinquency em erged, one based on the work o f the Chicago ecologists, the oth er on Robert M e rto n ’s ‘strain th eo ry ’. Until the 1950s, however, this work was ‘wilfully excluded’ (Cohen, 1981) by crim i­ nologists in Britain. The situation began to change when Mays (1954) acknowledged the c o n tribution m ade by som e o f this A m erican research, bu t M orris (1957) was the first British crim inologist to seriously tap into, and give a voice to, A m erican socio­ logical crim inology. From then on Am erican research becam e increasingly influen­ tial, and by the late 1960s the floodgates had opened.

The Chicago School Some of the reasons sociology began to influence crim inological thought in the United States m uch earlier than it did in Britain can be briefly noted. To begin with, as an academ ic discipline, sociology had established an in stitutional foothold by the end o f the nineteenth century. The first university sociology d ep artm e n t was set up in

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1892 at, significantly, the University o f Chicago. As a consequence, by the beginning o f the tw entieth century sociology had already achieved a degree o f legitimacy, and a pow er base, including resources for research, from which to develop. For those aca­ dem ics connected with the sociology d ep artm en t in Chicago, the city itself stood before them like a vast social laboratory. Even by Am erican stan d ard s the city had grown rapidly. Only 4,100 people lived there in 1833 when the city incorporated; by the late 1890s the n u m b er had risen to 1 m illion. This spectacular grow th continued into this century, so th at by 1910 the population had doubled to 2 m illion. As well as indigenous A m ericans, such as black people m oving up from the southern states, the population was swelled by im m igrants from all over the world. Chicago was therefore characterised by a hugely diverse range o f social groups, and for m any o f these the move to the city was a move into u rban deprivation. Small w onder th at crim inolo­ gists were fascinated by the social life o f the city in which they lived. W orking w ithin an urban sociology tradition, the Chicago School sought to illum inate the socio­ cultural dynam ics o f crim e and delinquency in Chicago’s m ean streets. Drawing on the fam iliar im agery of the ‘urban jungle’, and equating city life with crim e and oth er social problem s, m any A m ericans viewed the rapidly expanding cities with som e apprehension. The city becam e an ‘issue’. In this context we m ight note the grow th o f the ‘progressive m ovem ent’ during the first p a rt o f the century. This m ovem ent, based on liberal principles, concerned itself w ith the hum an costs o f capitalist grow th in America: the city slum s, poor w orking conditions, the lack of healthcare provision, and so on. By the 1920s the m ovem ent had gathered a great deal o f su p p o rt, not ju st am ong the urban poor, bu t also am ong m ore powerful groups in society, who saw in its reform ism an acceptable alternative to m ore radical groups, such as the A m erican C om m unist Party. A general clim ate o f opinion was therefore developing th at was sym pathetic to the work o f the Chicago School: in other words, to research th at stressed the social contexts o f crim e. In m any ways this is sim ilar to the influence exerted by Fabianism in Britain in the post-w ar period. At each respective tim e in history, reform ist ideas helped to create conditions conducive to the em ergence o f a crim inology curious about the social contexts o f crim e. In Am erica the fram ew ork w ithin which this crim inology was n u rtu red was u rban soci­ ology; in Britain it was com m unity studies. In each case there was a prom ise o f gath­ ering data and constructing explanations th a t would prove useful for social policy m akers. As we shall see, m uch o f the research carried out by the Chicago School (also known as the Chicago ecologists) concerned itself with juvenile delinquency, just like the socio­ logical crim inology in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. In general term s this m eant relat­ ing delinquency (the distribution o f which was derived from official statistics) to the nature of the social processes associated with the areas in which it occurred. For the Chicago ecologists, social disorganisation was identified as the key explanatory concept (Shaw and McKay, 1942). They were also interested in talking to people, and in this vein carried out a great deal o f pioneering work based on in-depth interviews (referred to

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as the ‘life history’ approach (Shaw, 1930)). Often there was a social policy dim ension to this research. Shaw and McKay, for example, two of the m ost fam ous researchers from this period, were attached to a child guidance clinic, although they had close con­ nections with the University of Chicago sociology departm ent, and as such were com ­ m itted to discovering ways o f preventing delinquency. Indeed, Shaw established the ‘Chicago Area Project’ in the early 1930s, which was a com m unity-based set o f initia­ tives aim ed at, for instance, creating better-organised neighbourhoods and providing facilities th at would divert youngsters away from delinquent activities. In an assess­ m ent of the Project fifty years on, Schlossm an et al. (1984) credit it with achieving some success in reducing am ounts o f recorded delinquency in the areas concerned. One im p o rta n t figure who did depart from this typical concentration on juveniles was Sutherland, who was a professor in the sociology d ep artm e n t at Chicago from 1930 to 1935. In the 1940s Sutherland (1940, 1949) tu rn ed the spotlight on to whitecollar crim e (a term he coined), th at is, crim e com m itted by persons o f high status. This was well in advance of any crim inological research on this them e in Britain.

Early‘strain theory’ An alternative approach to explaining crim e was pu t forw ard by Robert M erton (1993) in 1938. A lthough M erton was no t a crim inologist, bu t a notable figure in sociology, and though his original form ulation covered only a few pages, his basic ideas have endured in crim inological thought. Unlike the Chicago ecologists, who located the source o f crim inal behaviour in the socio-cultural characteristics o f the neighbourhoods in which they lived, M erton located the source w ithin the social structure o f Am erican society itself. For him , crim e did not result from the deviant values o f the slum neighbourhoods, bu t rather from m ainstream , conventional values into which all A m ericans were socialised. He argued th at the core values stressed m aterial success, but th at the problem was th at not everyone was equally placed to achieve this success. Hence the existence o f ‘stra in ’ in som e people’s lives. In essence, then, p roperty crim e resulted from a lack o f equality o f opportunity, and was there­ fore a product of social structure. The - to m any - startling conclusion was th at Am erican society was crim inogenic. Given th a t crim e, for M erton, was a function o f relative deprivation, the obvious way to ease the crim e problem was to create m ore oppo rtu n ities for the poor, so th at they had better chances of legitim ately achieving m aterial success. As it happens, M erton was him self brought up in a slum neighbourhood, and was well aware o f the routine disadvantages experienced by those around him . M e rto n ’s in troduction o f strain theory into crim inology was to have a long-term and profound influence on the shape o f sociological studies o f crim e and delin­ quency. In the United States, the general principles were picked up and elaborated by, for exam ple, Cohen (1955) and Cloward and Ohlin (1960).

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Strain theory and crime policy The beginning o f the 1960s saw a change in the political clim ate o f the U nited States. The ideas o f the strain theorists found fertile ground in a Kennedy ad m inistration th at had openly em braced a policy of equal o pportunities. W hile the country had achieved m assive econom ic grow th in the post-w ar period, the ideology o f the A m eri­ can D ream was subverted by the persistence o f poverty, the endem ic racial discrim i­ nation and disadvantage faced by black and H ispanic people, and rising levels of recorded crim e. In term s o f social policy, the em phasis shifted from purely com m unity-based schem es th at attem p ted to divert youngsters away from crim e, to broader, federally funded initiatives directed at increasing the oppo rtu n ities available to the disadvantaged. There were direct links here w ith M e rto n ’s version o f strain theory. If crim e resulted from a lack o f legitim ate o pportunities to achieve the goal of m aterial success, then increasing those oppo rtu n ities should lead to less crime. The need to establish equality o f opp o rtu n ity w ithin the education system was cen­ tre stage; im proving the educational qualifications o f the disadvantaged would im prove their chances in the job m arket. Consequently, with the opening up o f legiti­ m ate avenues to success, there would be less pressure to opt for the illegitim ate avenues provided by crim e. The aim , o f course, was no t the creation o f a classless soci­ ety; som ehow, equality o f opp o rtu n ity was to be fashioned out o f a society where the class structure rem ained intact. It was a profoundly liberal philosophy th at aim ed to create a capitalist system w ith a hum an face. C rim inologists who belonged to the strain theory cam p had found som e pow erful political allies. O f course, the n otion o f the Am erican D ream still resonates strongly thro u g h o u t th at society. In his first speech as presid en t elect in N ovem ber 2008, Barack O bam a (2008) said: If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. There was an o th er dim ension to M e rto n ’s work th at helped it to becom e influential at this tim e. By using the concept o f relative deprivation, he stressed that it was not deprivation perse that was im p o rtan t, bu t rather the ways in which individuals su b ­ jectively experienced deprivation. Specifically, the im pact o f blocked o pportunities was d ependent upon the aspirations th at people had; from this perspective, problem s arise when available oppo rtu n ities cannot m eet these aspirations. M erton, therefore, seem ed to offer a plausible explanation o f why during periods o f affluence recorded crim e rates, puzzlingly, continued to rise. The state-sponsored ‘war against poverty’ intensified when Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, took office. Under the direction of the Office of Economic O pportunity - a title that sum m ed up the prevailing ethos - large sum s were spent on ‘Operation Head S tart’ and other big initiatives, and these continued into the 1970s. W hile analyses

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vary in their explanations, the consensus appears to be that in spite of billions o f dollars being expended, the program m es were not significantly successful. As far as recorded crime rates are concerned, these climbed inexorably throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The link betw een theory and practice was even m ore explicit, and finely tuned to delinquent youth, in the case o f tw o other strain theorists, Cloward and O hlin. As Lilly el al. (2007: 74) describe it: their opportunity theory ‘resonated well with the liberal domestic politics of John F. Kennedy,’ and particularly with the president’s call for equal opportunity. Indeed, the fit between strain theory and the prevailing political context was so close that Lloyd Ohlin was invited to Washington, D.C. to assume a Health, Education and Welfare post and to assist in formulating delinquency policy. One outcom e o f this was the 'M obilization for Youth’ (MFY) delinquency prevention program m e; Cloward was appointed director o f research. MFY eventually became m ore radical in its dem ands than m any powerful groups could tolerate: ‘MFY p ro ­ m oted boycotts against schools, protests against welfare policies, ren t strikes against “slum lan d lo rd s”, law suits to ensure poor people’s rights, and voter registration’ (ibid., 75). And there were claims ‘by the New York Daily News th at the staff was infested with “C om m ies and Com mie Sym pathizers’” (ibid., 75). In the end this sort of radicalism led to such program m es being allowed to die. There is a parallel here with the C om m unity D evelopm ent Projects set up in the 1970s in Britain: once they strayed from fairly narrow p aram eters - say, helping establish playgroups - com ­ plaints o f ‘going too fa r’ started to appear.

Se le c te d fu rth e r read in g Radzinowicz, L. (1961) Jn Search o f Criminology, London: Heinemann, is a review of this period written by one of its leading figures. A retrospective account is provided by a later leading figure in British criminology: Cohen, S. (1981) ‘Footprints in the sand: A further report on criminology and the sociol­ ogy of deviance in Britain’, in M. Fitzgerald, G. McLennan and J. Pawson (eds) Crime and Society: Readings in history and theory, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul/Open University Press.

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r Key th e m e s • The sociology and criminology of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) • The Chicago School •

Mertonian strain theory

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In this chapter we exam ine the im p o rta n t and highly influential early Am erican sociological crim inology associated with, first, the Chicago School and, second, Robert K. M erton. The Chicago School was concerned to develop u nderstandings and explanations o f crim e and the city, while M erton achieved lasting im portance w ithin crim inology for his version o f w hat came to be known as ‘strain th eo ry ’. How­ ever, because o f his enorm ous influence on the theories of both the Chicago School and M erton (as well as oth er crim inologists), the chapter begins with a discussion o f the work o f the French sociologist Emile D urkheim , paying particular atten tio n to concepts o f social disorganisation and anom ie.

T H E S O C I O L O G Y A N D C R I M I N O L O G Y O F E M I L E D U R K H E I M ( 1858-1917)

It is p latitudinous to say th at D urkheim ’s influence on sociology, including sociologi­ cal crim inology, has been im m ense. Unlike M arx and W eber, the oth er two giants of sociological theory, D urkheim devoted a significant am ount o f space to the p h en o m ­ ena o f crim e and deviance. The m ain links betw een D urkheim and subsequent devel­ opm ents in the field of crim inology can be sum m arised as follows: • His work was influential in shifting analyses o f crim inality away from sources rooted in the individual tow ards sources th at were socio-cultural in nature. • He was a p ro p o n e n t o f the positivist school o f thought, especially with reference to m ethodology: th at is, he attem p ted to develop an objective, scientific u n d e rstan d ­ ing o f society.

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• He characterised societies as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’/ ‘pathological’, assessed in term s o f degrees o f organisation or disorganisation, and by em ploying the concept o f ‘anom ie’. These ideas were to have a considerable influence on the Chicago School and R. K. M erton in the period up to W orld W ar Two. • His evolutionary view o f social developm ent and the application o f social D arw in­ ian principles also influenced the Chicago ecologists, who conceived o f the social life o f the city in term s o f dynam ic social processes involving interactions betw een the in h ab itan ts and their environm ents. • He influenced functionalist w riters through his discussion o f the im portance o f a consensus regarding norm s and values, and the socialisation processes through which this was achieved. • Later w riters were to utilise his argum ent th at crim e was both norm al and func­ tionally useful. • His work also represents an interesting early precursor o f labelling theory. He argued th at the quality o f ‘crim e’ or ‘deviance’ is ‘not the intrinsic quality o f a given act bu t th at definition which the collective conscience lends th em ’ (D urkheim , 1982:101). • Finally, his analysis o f the social bonds th at secure a cohesive, integrated society, pointed the way to the em ergence o f control theory m uch later on in the tw entieth century.

Durkheim’s sociology There is no t the space to present a detailed discussion o f the sociology of D urkheim , and in any case such discussions are widely available (e.g. Lukes, 1973; G iddens, 1978; Fenton, 1984). The intention here is to exam ine those aspects o f his work th at are particularly p e rtin en t to issues o f crim e and deviance, and influenced the ideas of subsequent w riters. A key c o n trib u to r to functionalist sociology, and strongly com m itted to positivist principles based on scientific m ethod, D urkheim sought to study hum an beings and their societies from a fundam entally sociological perspective. By so doing he wished to repudiate those who reduced hum an behaviour to individual psychological or bio­ logical im pulses. This is not to say th a t he rejected the psychological dim ension, but ra th e r th a t he saw psychological states o f m ind as deriving from the nature o f society itself. Indeed, he was centrally concerned with the effects th at social forces had on the individual m em ber o f society, though som etim es the distinction betw een the two dim ensions is no t always clear-cut. His desire to show the im portance o f the social dim ension is exem plified in his fam ous study of suicide (D urkheim , 1970). Taking w hat appears to be one o f the m ost personal, individualised actions, and hence ostensibly m ore am enable to psychologi­ cal th an sociological m odes o f analysis, D urkheim in fact located the sources of

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suicide no t in the psyche o f the individual, but in a social reality external to the indi­ vidual. In this way he w ished to illustrate how a society was not ju st a collection of individuals; th at it was som ething m ore than the sum o f its parts. On the basis o f a com parative study of different countries, D urkheim noticed th at suicide rates had, over tim e, assum ed a definite p attern . They rem ained fixed at a certain level w ithin the sam e society, the variation betw een one society and a n o th e r also rem ained fixed, as did the suicide rates pertaining to different groups w ithin the sam e society (for exam ple, Jews and Catholics). In view of the fact th at over these tim e periods the actual individuals living in the various societies obviously changed, he concluded th at the prim ary source o f differential suicide rates lay in an external social realm; there were, in other words, suicidogenic forces at work th at were external to the individual. We will retu rn to this below.

Achieving social order D urkheim was fundam entally concerned with the ‘problem of o rd e r’ and, indeed, this is often referred to as the central ‘p roblem ’ o f sociology. This concern with order and regulation led him to consider issues o f crim e, deviance and difference. At the tim e D urkheim was w riting, European society was attem p tin g to come to term s with m odernity. Industrialisation and urbanisation had profoundly altered the nature of European societies. Rapid, and som etim es a b ru p t social upheavals had occurred, especially in his own country, France. N ot surprisingly, m any social thinkers directed th eir energies at trying to m ake sense o f these changes and their im pact on social life. They often looked back to an earlier, pre-industrial golden age o f ‘com m unity’ and, in the process, m aking unfavourable com parisons with m odern life, for exam ple Tonnies (originally 1887, see Loomis, 1957). O thers, for exam ple Simmel (1903), directed their w orries specifically at the city, which was seen to exemplify m odernity and all its ills. D urkheim also counterposed the past - in the shape o f traditional, ‘prim itive’ societies - with the present, though he took the view th at w hilst there was a real d a n ­ ger of sliding into irretrievable disorganisation, those with pow er could actively in te r­ vene to prevent this happening. Sociology, he believed, would provide the knowledge base for such interventions, and in fact he eventually worked with the French govern­ m ent on the design o f the state education system .

Mechanical and organic solidarity In com m on w ith oth er em inent sociological theorists such as Com te and Spencer, D urkheim viewed social change from an evolutionary perspective and, applying D ar­ w inian logic, saw societies as analogous to biological organism s. Just as anim als and plants adapt to suit changing circum stances over periods o f tim e, so hum an societies,

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as they evolve, have the potential to a d ap t by developing a p propriate social in stitu ­ tions. Societies th at did adapt in this way to social change would, from this perspec­ tive, be ‘healthy’; those th at did not, ‘pathological’. However, his belief in the need for governm ental intervention, guided by scientific knowledge, suggests a departure from the notion o f n atural selection in the social sphere, and also raises questions about the relative im portance o f hum an agency in m anaging social change. D urkheim argued th at in pre-industrial, traditional societies, social order was based upon a certain kind o f social solidarity th at he called ‘m echanical solidarity’. These societies lacked the com plex web o f m utually d ependent institu tio n s character­ ising m odern societies. Instead they were com posed o f fragm ented, sm all, tribal or clan-based segm ents. Solidarity was achieved through an all-encom passing set of norm s and values referred to as the ‘collective conscience’. A lthough this constraining m oral force was external to the individual - in the form of ‘social facts’ - through a process o f socialisation it becam e internalised by society’s m em bers: A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an influence, or an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations. (Durkheim, 1982: 59) In this type o f society social order was fundam entally rooted in m oral regulation. Unlike the situation in m odern societies, there was no place for individualism : the individual was, in effect, subsum ed or ‘lo st’ w ithin the tribe or clan. Reactions to n o n ­ conform ity would be harsh and retributive in character. On the oth er hand, and according to D urkheim , a central feature o f m odern soci­ eties was individuation. Here individual m em bers are freed from the tyranny of ‘sam eness’, and this illustrates how D urkheim rejected a com m onplace late-nineteenth-century sentim ent th at bem oaned the loss o f ‘real com m unity’. He did recog­ nise, however, th at freeing the individual from the constraints o f m echanical solidarity bro u g h t with it its own dangers in term s of social order. In his view hum an nature was com posed o f two selves: the social self (socialised and integrated), and the egoistic self (unsocialised and unintegrated). The egoistic self, freed from constrain­ ing social forces and left to its own devices, naturally possessed desires th at knew no bounds. If m odern societies were to stress individualism - th a t is, to have as a central value the right o f individuals to realise their own potential - then, D urkheim argued, som e restraining m echanism had to operate, otherw ise disorder would reign - for exam ple in the form o f crim e and deviance. For D urkheim , order in m odern societies was predicated on the social integration deriving from functionally in terdependent institutions, and the division of labour was to play a central role. M odern industrial society is based upon a diverse range of work tasks, tasks th at continue to becom e increasingly specialised. He saw a ‘n a tu ra l’ division o f labour - th at is, one where

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the individual’s work task m atched their talents and abilities - as the source of functional interdependency. A lthough treated as individuals, and perceiving o f th em ­ selves as individuals, society’s m em bers would appreciate the necessity o f working together for their m utual benefit. The division o f labour is ‘the sole process which enables the necessities o f social cohesion to be reconciled with the principle o f indi­ v iduation’ (D urkheim in Lukes, 1973:147). He called this type o f solidarity ‘organic solidarity’, though his discussion o f a ‘forced’ division o f labour indicates th a t D urkheim was aware th at m odern European societies had som e way to go before this happy state o f social integration could be said to have arrived. In essence, a forced division o f labour is one where people’s jobs do no t m atch th eir abilities, hence his argum ent th at selection processes based upon equality o f o p p ortunity were a necessary pre-condition. The increasing m odernisation o f society, then, represented a move away from social order based upon m echanical solidarity to one based upon organic solidarity. This entailed a process o f individuation, w hereby the all-consum ing m oral regulation o f the collective conscience associated with traditional societies, and encom passing all aspects o f hum an behaviour, receded, and social integration deriving from func­ tional interdependency em erged. This did not m ean, however, th at D urkheim saw no need for m oral regulation via a collective conscience; quite the contrary. He believed th at a lack o f m oral force, and with it adherence to a norm ative system , was an ever­ p resent danger, and in extremis would produce a condition o f ‘anom ie’. In an anom ic society there are no m oral constraints on the individual’s lim itless desires. Even a society with a division o f labour based upon equal oppo rtu n ities still needed a con­ sensual m oral force. The difference w ould be th a t in m odern societies the collective conscience, w hilst having a central m oral core, would be flexible enough to allow a high degree of individualism . For D urkheim a m odern collective conscience should be constituted by a cluster o f values regarding individual dignity, equal o p p o rtu n i­ ties, the work ethic and social justice. Legal rules and rules based on custom would still be required if organic solidarity was to be m aintained. W ith the decline in influ­ ence o f religious beliefs, D urkheim saw it as im perative th at governm ents intervened in econom ic and social life in order to establish suitable institutional arrangem ents and processes o f socialisation conducive to the creation o f social cohesion. As Sum ­ ner (1994: 12) has p ointed out in an illum inating discussion o f the relevance o f D urkheim ’s th o u g h t to contem porary Britain: By arguing that the urgent duty and task of the state was to bring the anomic condition of society to an end, Durkheim’s position is rounded off and he can clearly be seen as an early theorist of what we would now call social democracy. The two concepts egoism and anom ie (together with ‘altru ism ’ and ‘fatalism ’) also crop up in D urkheim ’s study o f suicide m entioned earlier. Taking a specific exam ple o f ‘deviant’ behaviour, he links certain types of ‘pathological’ society, as

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external entities, to the state o f m ind o f individuals living in those societies. His con­ clusion was that: ‘Suicide varies with the degree o f integration o f the social group of which the individual form s a p a rt’ (D urkheim , 1970:209). Four different types o f suicide were said to result: egoistic, altruistic, anom ic and fatalistic (the last type, in fact, is only treated as a footnote, since D urkheim felt th at it could be ignored because o f its rarity in m odern societies). Egoistic suicide was the product of ‘excessive individualism ’, w hereby individuals are cast adrift from other m em bers o f society and are isolated from the shared norm s and expectations. At tim es o f trouble such individuals lack the ‘m utual m oral su p p o rt’ o f work, family or com m unity netw orks. There is a strong link betw een these ideas and a later develop­ m ent in crim inological theory know n as control theory. Altruistic suicide, on the oth er hand, occurs when the individual is overintegrated into the group, so th at they cease to have a separate, personal identity, thereby denigrating their own w orth. This type o f suicide includes, for instance, those who take their own lives out o f a sense of duty. Anomic suicide results from tim es o f upheaval, when the force o f m oral regula­ tion is weakened - for exam ple, during tim es o f econom ic slum ps or boom s - and norm ative constraints on behaviour cease to be effective. This is som etim es referred to as a state o f ‘norm lessness’. In this situation there is an absence of a m oral force in society through which the individual is able to accept their place in the world and the rew ards they receive. Lacking this m oral restraint an insatiable, though futile, desire for ‘m ore’ is released. As Box (1981: 98) puts it: Durkheim viewed human aspirations as naturally boundless, and, as he saw it, the trick of social control was not to give people what they want - that would be impossible - but to persuade them that what they have is about all they morally deserve. Crime as inevitable and necessary D urkheim is also associated w ith the argum ent th at crim e is both inevitable and nec­ essary. For him crim e is a social fact, just as a stable suicide rate is a social fact. If such things are found in an ‘average’ society, then they are norm al; hence crim e is norm al. In order to appreciate the reasoning behind this, it is im p o rta n t to consider w hat has already been said regarding D urkheim ’s views on m odernity and individualism . W hile he endorsed the high m oral prem ium placed on individualism in m odern soci­ eties, he also recognised th at the existence o f a flexible, less draconian collective con­ science, which provided the breathing space for the individual, would inevitably lead to degrees o f nonconform ity, and som e o f this nonconform ity would be crim inalised. Even in a society com posed entirely o f saints, he hypothesised, there would still be crim e. Extraordinarily high m oral stan d ard s would be enshrined in the collective conscience, giving an extrem ely low tolerance threshold, so th at w hat to us are negli­ gible exam ples o f rule breaking becom e for the saintly breth ren terrible acts. This suggests th at in the real world it is futile to a tte m p t to eradicate crim e by introducing

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m ore repression. By closing down areas o f freedom through increasingly repressive legislation, previously trivial acts o f nonconform ity becom e serious transgressions. In response, the net o f legal sanctions is spread even wider, forever crim inalising m ore and m ore acts. In order for no crim e to exist there would, from D urkheim ’s perspective, have to be total agreem ent regarding norm s and values am ong all m em bers o f society, b u t for him ‘a uniform ity so universal and absolute is utterly im possible’ (D urkheim , 1982: 100). An opposite situation arises when there is a weak collective conscience, bring­ ing with it a state o f anom ie. Here the lim itless desires o f the individual would be subject to no m oral constraint. However, as Bob Roshier (1977) has p ointed out, fol­ lowing D urkheim ian logic a crime-free society is theoretically possible not only where the collective conscience is all-consum ing (albeit in reality an im possible situation for D urkheim ), bu t also where the collective conscience ceased to exist - a society of devils. In this situation there would be no basis for defining any act as crim inal, and although such a society is no t one th at m ost people would consider em igrating to, it would none the less be crime-free. An im p o rta n t dim ension to this discussion o f the inevitability o f crim e has been highlighted by Sum ner. The fram ew ork th at D urkheim developed opened up a th eo ­ retical space for the concept o f ‘deviance’, and therefore a specialism called the sociol­ ogy o f deviance. By illustrating how m odernity, by definition, frees the individual from the conform ity o f a traditional society, bringing w ith it an inevitable diversity of behaviour, D urkheim acknow ledged th a t som e o f this diversity will, again inevitably, be socially sanctioned (or censured) as crim e or deviance, or in some cases left alone as m ere difference. This raises the question o f how these various categories are arrived at in practice. O f course m any people would agree with D urkheim th at crim e is inevitable; the view th at it is also necessary, though, has struck som e people as very odd. Roshier has pointed out th at accidents at work are inevitable, bu t th at does no t m ean th at they are necessary. According to D urkheim , apparently, crim e is necessary because it is func­ tionally useful: it helps to m aintain a healthy society. Crime does this, he believed, by fulfilling an ‘adaptive’ function and a ‘boundary m aintenance’ function. The adaptive function o f crime is to introduce new ideas into society, thereby pre­ venting th at society from stagnating. The crim inals concerned are, therefore, innova­ tors who help society to adapt to changing circum stances - unfortunately for the crim inals their ideas are ahead of their tim e. From this view point too much conform ity - that is, too little crim e - would put the brakes on a society’s developm ent. Durkheim gives as an example Socrates, who although condem ned in his own tim e as a crim inal, eventually had a beneficent and progressive influence on society through his (crim i­ nal) ideas. In the second case, the boundary maintenance function, crim e is seen as operating rath er like a m edieval m orality play. Through such things as public hangings, m edia reporting and conversations betw een people, the crim inal event is inserted into

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people’s lives and functions to reaffirm the boundary betw een ‘good’ and ‘b a d ’ behav­ iour. The collective nature of these responses, according to D urkheim , prom otes social solidarity. In com m on w ith m ost su p p o rters o f the functions-of-crim e argu­ m ent, Kai Erikson (1966) draws on the boundary m aintenance function discussed by D urkheim rath er than the adaptive function. Using a dispute am ong m em bers o f an early Puritan group in the United States as a case study, Erikson argues th at the public trial and then b anishm ent o f the dissident m inority w ho refused to follow the elders was functionally necessary in term s o f the social solidarity o f the whole group. The response o f the m ajority is seen as draw ing the new m oral boundaries in th at society. An im p o rta n t critique o f w hat he calls the functions-of-crim e m yth is provided by Roshier (1977). As far as the adaptive function o f crim e is concerned, Roshier accepts th at this is w hat D urkheim argued, but m aintains th at he was wrong. In the case of the boundary m aintenance function, on the oth er hand, he argues th at this in fact was no t w hat D urkheim was saying, and th at Erikson, therefore, has m isinterpreted his original source. W ith respect to D urkheim ’s view th at crim e involves innovation and allows society to adapt and progress, Roshier says th at to illustrate the validity of this proposition we would have to take specific exam ples o f activities th at were previ­ ously crim inal and show how they eventually co ntributed to a healthy society, as well as d em onstrate th at the fact th at they were originally crim inal was a necessary charac­ teristic of these activities. Roshier concludes th at it is the functional value of the ideas associated with such activities th a t is im p o rtan t, no t their crim inal status. Thus, in the case o f Socrates, crim inalising his ideas was no t required in order to m ake them subsequently useful. Roshier also p oints out th at while certain activities such as pornography or p ro stitution m ight be functionally useful for society, it is not their status as crim es (if they were crim inalised) th at endow s them with this usefulness. In his view society could sim ply allow a diversity o f behaviour, and this would throw up innovative ideas. D urkheim , o f course, would argue th at this is precisely w hat m od­ ern, individualistic societies do, with the inevitable consequence th at som e o f this diversity is crim inalised. Ilis position seem s to be th a t given the likelihood th at those behaviours and ideas seen as m ost threatening to society will be crim inalised, then, with the passage o f tim e, there will be an inevitable tendency for diversity o f a crim i­ nal nature to fulfil this adaptive function. However, this still leaves the question: Does the behaviour by necessity have to be crim inal? D urkheim appears to be arguing th at crim e will fulfil this adaptive function inevitably rath er th an necessarily. Turning to the boundary m aintenance function o f crim e, Roshier argues th at D urkheim ’s views have been m isinterpreted by Erikson and others, and offers this as a key passage: If then, when (a crime) is committed, the consciences which it offends do not unite themselves to give mutual evidence of their communion, and recognize that the case is anomolous, they would be permanently unsettled. They must re-enforce themselves

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by mutual assurances that they are always agreed. The only means for this is action in common. In short it is the common conscience which is attacked, it must be that which resists, and accordingly the resistance must be collective. (Durkheim quoted in Roshier, 1977: 5) According to Roshier, D urkheim is not saying that crim e, as such, m aintains the m oral boundaries betw een right and w rong in a particular society, bu t th at a collec­ tive response to crim e - th at is, social control - fulfils this function. If there is no crim e or deviance, then by definition social solidarity exists, because there is com ­ plete consensus over norm s and values. For D urkheim , though, this situation is not only im possible to achieve, but the very idea is no t congruent with the values placed on individualism in a m odern society. Thus, again, D urkheim is saying th a t the exis­ tence o f crim e is inevitable, and as Roshier points out, responses to it m ust be collec­ tive. In the specific case discussed by Erikson, it could be argued th at the deviance o f the dissenting group was not a necessary pre-condition for the acceptance o f the new m oral boundaries. If no split had occurred, then arguably the m oral boundaries would have been universally agreed upon anyway.

THE CHICAGO SCHOOL

D urkheim once com m ented th at the platform o f the railway station in Paris on to which France’s rural w orkers alighted, and m ade their first contact with a new life in the city, seem ed to possess m agical qualities. As soon as their feet touched the p lat­ form , all religious beliefs disappeared. T hroughout the nineteenth century social thinkers in Europe had been variously appalled, excited or fascinated by the consequences of urbanisation, and one of the m ain consequences was judged to be an increase in crime. As the nineteenth century developed, studies of urban life and crim inality were increasingly influenced by the ideas of positivism , though explanations o f crime tended to em phasise social rather than individual factors. A positivist com m itm ent to scientific m ethod is well repre­ sented in the statistical work o f the Belgium m athem atician Quetelet, and the French lawyer Guerry. Referring to their endeavours as ‘social physics’ and ‘m oral statistics’ respectively, they analysed official records relating to the am ount and distribution of crime in the city. The published statistical results were seen as scientific m easures of the m oral life o f the city. This sort of social scientific research eventually began to influence research in Britain. M otivated by a strong sense of a philanthropic, reform ing mission, figures such as Fletcher, Mayhew and Booth am assed a wealth o f highly detailed infor­ m ation on the dark side of city life. By the late nineteenth century, however, and espe­ cially because of the influence of Lombroso, attem pts to locate the social bases o f crime began to be superseded by positivistic studies oriented tow ards the individual.

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The early social researchers produced graphic descriptions o f life am ong the urban poor, and in the process introduced the notion o f the crim inal area. Cities were associated with crim e, but it was in certain p arts o f the city th at crim e and deviance were seen to be concentrated. Then, and now, there are p o ten t images o f dark and ‘dangerous places’. N ineteenth-century accounts m ade reference to the undeserving poor, debauchery, disorder and insanity; nowadays it is the underclass, the in n er city and deprived council estates, social disorganisation and ‘yob culture’. From Mayhew ’s w ritings on the rookeries o f Victorian London to contem porary accounts o f life in the deprived inner cities and outer council estates o f Britain, there stretches a deep seam o f crim inological research. W hilst the late-nineteenth-century shift to positivist explanations th at sought to locate the sources o f crim inality w ithin the individual set in m otion a con tin u ­ ing tradition o f this type o f crim inology, the stress on the social aspect was to reemerge powerfully soon afterw ards in the United States in the shape o f the Chicago School. Some o f the organisational features o f the d ep artm e n t o f sociology at the University o f Chicago have already been discussed. So too has the way in which the city of Chicago provided a social laboratory for these sociologists during the 1920s and 1930s; Chicago seemed to encapsulate all of the salient characteristics of the m odern city. The m em bers o f the Chicago School were clearly acquainted with, and influenced by, the work o f D urkheim . This m anifested itself on a n u m b er o f fronts: • Crime and crim e rates were viewed as social phenom ena, and were no t to be explained in term s o f the individual’s biology or psychology. • Crime was linked to social disorganisation, w hereby family and com m unity-based bonds were weakened. Low levels o f social integration were associated w ith high levels o f crim e. • It was the social life o f certain neighbourhoods th at was seen as ‘pathological’, and not the people living in them . C rim inal behaviour was regarded as a norm al response to an abnorm al situation; in a spirit o f optim ism it was viewed as a tem ­ porary phenom enon arising out o f periods o f rapid social change. • Drawing on social D arw inism , crim e was seen as p a rt o f an evolutionary process of adaptation. • A certain am o u n t o f crim e in society was accepted as inevitable and of no th reat to th at society. • There should be governm ent intervention to im prove the sources o f social organi­ sation in the crim inal areas o f the city. The key figure behind the work o f the Chicago School was Robert Park, an ex-journal­ ist who had studied sociology in G erm any, and who had apparently dabbled in delin­ quency him self in his younger days. Park established the basic fram ew ork for research by arguing th at the city was best viewed as an ecological system , com parable

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to the ecological system s associated with plants and anim als. He also argued th at in order to carry out p roper research, researchers should go into the city and discover at first hand w hat was going on. T his led to a large n um ber o f ethnographic studies being conducted by sociology d ep artm e n t m em bers, and indicates an a tte m p t to integrate two research m ethodologies: a quantitative one oriented tow ards posi­ tivism and a qualitative one oriented tow ards interpretive sociology. As the nam e suggests, a social ecological perspective sees the city in term s o f a web o f in terd ep en d en t relationships created by people as they a d ap t to a changing envi­ ronm ent. A ccording to this perspective, these ad aptations follow an evolutionary p a tte rn and are com parable to the m odes o f adaptation found am ong species of plants and anim als as they adjust to changes in their environm ents. T hus cities such as Chicago had no t developed on a random basis, bu t rather this developm ent was p a tte rn e d according to ‘n a tu ra l’ social processes. The outcom e is th at cities evolve their own particular types o f neighbourhood, each with their own type o f social life. Some o f these are stable, well-organised neighbourhoods, but others are m ore socially disorganised, and it is here th at social problem s, including crim e, are concen­ trated. P roponents o f a social ecological m odel argued th at neighbourhoods have periodically to cope with an influx o f outsiders (e.g., new im m igrants or business organisations), leading to conflict and a ‘struggle over space’. Eventually, equilibrium is restored, bu t no t w ithout w inners and losers according to the D arw inian principle o f the survival o f the fittest. From this perspective the city is in a state o f flux, as m ar­ ket forces and evolutionary processes lead to the the m igration o f people from one neighbourhood to another; those who leave then conform to the values and norm s of th eir new neighbourhood. In the m ost deprived areas, characterised by tran sien t populations who are unable to put down roots, will be found those values and norm s m ost conducive to crim inal behaviour. T hus the Chicago ecologists rejected explana­ tions o f crim inality th at focused on particular individuals. For them , the fact that neighbourhoods with high crim e rates continued to have high crim e rates even when the original in h ab itan ts had moved out, show ed th at it was no t the people b u t rather the social characteristics o f the neighbourhood th at led to crim e - som e areas were crim inogenic. In a book published in 1925 one o f Park’s colleagues, Ernest Burgess, attem pted to m ap out the results o f these processes in Chicago. His ‘social m ap’ o f the city consisted o f five zones form ing concentric circles. In the m iddle stood the C entral Business Dis­ trict, where banks, insurance com panies and the like had th eir offices. Four residen­ tial zones then radiated out from this central area, with each zone containing various subsections. O f particular im portance was the Zone o f Transition, which skirted the Central Business D istrict. It was here th at m ost o f Chicago’s poorest citizens lived: new im m igrants and various groups lacking access to urban survival kits. Housing was o f low quality and largely com prised cheap lodging houses nestling in the shadows of decaying factories. According to Burgess, this was the zone in which crime was likely to be concentrated. The next zone contained the houses of the m ore respectable working

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class and was the escape route from the ghetto. The assum ption seemed to be th at in general, and given tim e, m ost people would be successful in their escape attem pts. Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay (1942), two researchers from a local child guidance clinic with close ties w ith the sociology d ep artm en t at Chicago, attem pted to test Burgess’s m odel by looking at the distribution o f juvenile delinquency in the city. Their findings supported the ecological thesis th at even when individuals living in a particular neighbourhood moved on to greener pastures, crim e rates rem ained the sam e in the neighbourhood they had left behind. The high rates o f juvenile crim e found in the Zone o f Transition were said to be linked to the social disorganisation in those areas. In the absence o f strong norm ative controls from the family and the com m unity, juveniles were likely to engage in delin­ quent activities. This was an idea th at was eventually to influence the developm ent of control theory. Although Shaw and McKay had, through th eir analysis o f crim e statis­ tics, satisfied them selves th at crim inal areas existed and could be identified, they agreed with Park th at in order to establish precisely w hat processes were at work, it was necessary to talk to and observe at first hand those involved. T hus were born two im p o rta n t research m ethods associated with the Chicago School: first, the construc­ tion o f ‘life h istories’ via in-depth interviews, and second, the use of particip an t observation as the basis for w hat M atza (1969) calls the ‘appreciative’ study o f delin­ quency. This indicates the acknowledged debt th at the Chicago School owed to w riters in the sym bolic in teractionist tradition, such as T hom as, Cooley and M ead. A research strategy th a t sought to p resent the social w orld from the p o in t o f view of those being studied, and to ‘tell it like it is’, lay at the core o f sym bolic interactionist m ethodology. The result was th a t the Chicago School generated a large n um ber of detailed, appreciative studies during the 1920s and 1930s, som e o f which have now achieved the status o f classics. Some o f the m ore notable exam ples are: The Hobo, A nderson (1975), first published in 1923; The Gang, T hrasher (1963), first published in 1927; The Jack-Roller: A delinquent boy’s own story, Shaw (1930); The Natural History o f a Delinquent Career, Shaw and M oore (1931); The Professional T hief By a professional thief, Sutherland (1937); Brothers in Crime, Shaw, McKay and M acD onald (1938); and in a sim ilar vein, though set in Boston, Street Corner Society, W hyte (1955), w ritten in 1930, and first published in 1943. In th eir studies o f juvenile offenders, Shaw and McKay extended the explanations offered by ecological theory by introducing the concept o f cultural transm ission. D elinquent values, they argued, becam e established in crim inal areas, and were then passed on to a new generation o f youngsters. It is, therefore, an explanation o f delin­ quency deriving from learning theory. Crim inal areas, where those sorts o f values predom inated, were counterposed against a m ainstream , consensual culture into which law -abiding juveniles were socialised. Shaw and McKay’s ideas were picked up by Edwin Sutherland, who spent the first half o f the 1930s at the University o f Chicago. S u th erlan d ’s work, though, m arked an im portant theoretical change o f direction which was to perm eate the Chicago School as

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the 1930s progressed. There had always been an inherent tension at the heart o f social disorganisation theory. The use o f appreciative research m ethods had presented the social w orld o f the delinquent as coherent and m eaningful to the participants. However, by relying on the notion o f social disorganisation as a way o f explaining that delinquency - and with it the assum ption th at there existed a conform ist, consensual m ainstream society th at was by definition socially organised - the social world o f the delinquent was pathologised. S u th erlan d ’s (1939) im p o rta n t co ntribution was to depathologise the crim inal area. He did this by developing a m odel o f crim inality based upon assum ptions o f cultural plurality. Instead o f social disorganisation, he spoke o f differential social organisation, and questioned the ready acceptance o f the existence of consensus. N eighbourhoods, in his view, were not disorganised, but rath er organised in different ways, one outcom e being differential crim e rates. And with his concept o f ‘differential association’ Sutherland analysed crim inality in term s o f a perso n ’s exposure to particular cultural influences, seeing this as the m echanism w hereby som e becam e crim inals and others did not: ‘a person becom es delinquent because o f an excess o f definitions favourable to violation o f law over definitions unfavourable to violation of law ’ (Sutherland quoted in Taylor et al., 1973:126). In this form ulation Sutherland is arguing th at delinquency is learned in the same way th a t any oth er types o f behaviour are learned. T hrough differential association the individual no t only learns how to com m it crim e - for exam ple, how to break into a car - bu t also the m oral outlook and m otivations conducive to crim inal behaviour. Through his refinem ent o f the concept o f differential association Sutherland had, by the 1940s, m ade a significant break with d o m in an t explanations o f crim inality. For Sutherland these were too narrow ly focused on deprived youth, and m ade an unw ar­ ranted assum ption th at crim e was basically a product o f poverty. His 1937 study o f a professional th ie f signalled this change o f em phasis, bu t it was his classic study of w hite-collar crim e, first published in the late 1940s, th at finally left the slum behind. Crime, he argued, was w idespread am ong those with high status in Am erica. U nfortu­ nately, m ost o f this crim e rem ained invisible, so th at official crim e statistics gave a m isleading im pression o f the nature o f crim inal behaviour. Sutherland believed th at differential association was able to explain w hite-collar and corporate crim e as well as the crim e com m itted by the youth living in the Zone o f Transition.

The Chicago School: an assessment There is no d o u b t th at the ideas generated by the Chicago School had a significant influence on subsequent sociological crim inology. In particular, as we have seen, those associated with the sociology d ep artm en t at Chicago locked into a nineteenthcentury tradition of providing accounts o f life am ong the urban poor. By developing m ore sophisticated theoretical explanations and research m ethodologies, they were then in strum ental in influencing an im p o rta n t m odern tradition o f areal studies in

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Britain and the U nited States. The use o f p articip an t observation and a ‘life histories’ approach has continued to influence m any rich ethnographic studies. In addition, elem ents o f w hat becam e known as control theory, and the foundations for the growth o f subcultural approaches should be noted. Looking back over the two decades o f the 1920s and 1930s at the huge am ount of work produced by the Chicago School, however, it is clear th at it does not stan d as a single, agreed body o f knowledge. As H eidensohn (19 8 9 :1 8 -1 9 ) puts it: There is no single definitive view in their work; indeed, as was inevitable in such a productive group, ideas diverged between different writers and even within the w'ork of one man . . . their work was not systematised and did not generate a ‘finished system of sociology’. In m any ways those involved were finding th eir feet. They were caught up in a variety o f theoretical influences and cross-currents. Individuals changed their m ind, and som etim es contradictory ideas coexisted for a while. W ith reference to th eir use o f life histories, M atza (1969) speaks approvingly o f their com m itm ent to ‘appreciative’ sociology, to a sociology concerned w ith letting people tell their own stories. And yet researchers such as Shaw and McKay were also strongly com m itted to pinning down the causes o f crim e, and to social policy-based interventions th at would lead to a reduction in crim inal behaviour. This is an approach th at M atza disparages for being ‘causal-corrective’. Likewise, although m any were influenced by the ideas o f symbolic interactionism , which sees individuals as actively constructing their social w orlds through interactions w ith others, the Chicago School is frequently criticised for its positivism - for exam ple, the determ inistic view th a t environm ents determ ine people’s behaviour. In fact, as we have seen, S u therland’s c ontributions during the 1930s moved the Chicago School away from seeing society as a consensus, and som e localities as enclaves o f disorganisation and crim inal values, tow ards a position o f cul­ tural pluralism . Again, though, this was a tension th at was never fully resolved, and retu rn s us to one o f the central issues in D urkheim ’s work: how can social order be achieved in a m odern society th at places a high prem ium on individualism , and with it the cultural space for pluralism and diversity? A lthough Sutherland w ent on to address the issue o f w hite-collar crim e in the 1940s, one particularly striking feature o f the work o f the Chicago School during the 1920s and 1930s is th at w ith one exception (Landesco, 1968) it ignored organised crim e, as well as the crim es o f the powerful and the ‘respectable’. This, rem em ber, was a period in Chicago’s (and A m erica’s) history th at saw P rohibition, large-scale crim e syndicates, gangland lum inaries such as Al Capone, and significant levels o f corruption am ong city officials and politicians. Hollywood did not m iss the o p p o r­ tunities, bu t it is therefore ironic th a t the Chicago sociologists did. Sum ner (1994: 31-2) provides one o f the few discussions o f the Chicago School th at includes som e

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details relating to these w ider crim inal activities: ‘Two billion dollars’ w orth of business shifted from the old established brew ers and the bar-ow ners to the bootleg­ gers and the “h oo d s”; m oney which they continually reinvested in gam bling, p ro sti­ tution, labour unions, regular business and exto rtio n ’. In an interesting, and telling, footnote, he adds: ‘As H arold Finestone, a doctoral stu d en t there in the 1930s, once told me in conversation, in response to my query about the lack o f studies on the m ob itself: the m ob was the governm ent at th at tim e, and you d o n ’t do fieldwork on the governm ent, do you?’ (ibid.: 51). Finally, we can conclude this section by briefly outlining som e of the m ain criti­ cisms th at have been levelled at the Chicago School:

• There was a reliance on, and faith in, official crim e statistics. • W riters such as Shaw referred to ‘delinquent areas’. W hat was unclear, though, was the distinction betw een an area in which delinquents lived, and areas in which delinquency took place. • The earlier work has often been accused o f being tautological. Crime is seen as a product o f social disorganisation, and yet crim e is an exam ple o f social disor­ ganisation. • The ecological m odels o f the city, w ith their descriptions o f the ‘n atural area’, m issed out o f the equation class conflict and an unequal distrib u tio n o f power for exam ple, the actions o f slum landlords. • On the sam e ecological them e, there tends to be a picture o f crim inals as d eter­ m ined creatures, m oulded by their environm ents. • To w hat extent was an ecological system used m erely as a m etaphor, as opposed to an actual description o f social life in the city? • By concentrating on poor areas, the Chicago School overpredicted the crim es o f the poor; clearly, no t all poor people engaged in crim inal behaviour. T hus it has been said th at th eir work served to perpetuate d o m in an t stereotypes. • W ith reference to the later theory based upon cultural transm ission, the origins of the delinquent culture being tran sm itted were never clearly explained. • The notion o f differential association developed by Sutherland has been criticised for not being am enable to em pirical verification, because o f the enorm ous range of experiences th a t individuals have. • It has been argued th a t close analysis o f the data shows th at crim e rates in particu ­ lar localities were in fact no t stable over periods o f tim e. • There are the usual criticism s o f a life histories approach - for exam ple, the tru th ­ fulness o f those being interview ed. • In com m on w ith m ost crim inological research at th a t tim e, the victim s of crime were ignored, along with the reactions o f control agents and th eir role in the con­ struction o f deviance.

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MERTONIAN STRAIN THEORY

Robert K. M erton was a key figure in the functionalist school o f th o u g h t th at dom i­ nated Am erican sociology during the 1940s and 1950s. Although no t a crim inologi­ cal specialist, functionalism ’s prim ary interest in the nature o f social order inevitably led him to consider issues o f crim e and deviance. The classic, and m uch discussed, article in which M erton (1993) first presented his ideas was originally published in 1938 (and subsequently revised) in his book Social Theory and Social Structure. The title of this article, ‘Social structure and anom ie’, indicates a connection with D urkheim , and it stands as the sem inal work w ithin a crim inological trad itio n known as ‘strain th eo ry ’. In sim ple term s strain theory, as the nam e suggests, is an attem p t to answ er the question th at com m on sense perhaps im presses upon us: w hat sorts o f ‘faulty’ social conditions m ake some people act in deviant ways? (We should note in passing the pre­ supposition in the question th at deviance m ust be a result of som ething going wrong.) At the tim e th at M erton was w riting, and in spite of the contributions of the Chicago School, answers to the question ‘W hat w ent wrong?’ tended to focus on the individual. M erton, on the other hand, was com m itted to a sociological level of analysis, where the sources of deviance are traced to the nature o f the social structure. Rejecting efforts to individualise, or ‘atom ise’ the causes o f deviance, he argued th at deviance arose in certain groups, ‘not because the hum an beings com prising them are com pounded of distinctive biological tendencies but because they are responding norm ally to the social situation in which they find them selves’ (M erton, 1993:250). It is w orth pausing here to consider in m ore detail the concept o f ‘stra in ’ as used by M erton. W hen being interview ed in 1987 (see Cullen and M essner, 2007), th at is h a lf a cen­ tury after Social Theory and Social Structure was first published, he argued against the by then com m onplace view th at his theory should be described as strain theory. How­ ever, it is clear that he had a very specific social-psychological version o f strain theory in m ind, and it is this th at he was keen to distance him self from . W ith this version, the focus is on the individual, and th eir deviant behaviour is seen as a psychological response to ‘stra in s’ in their life (for m ore recent exam ples o f this version o f strain theory, see Kornhauser, 1978 and Agnew, 1987). M erton, on the oth er hand, focused on rates o f deviance in society as a whole, on an aggregate level, seeing these as the result o f anom ie inherent in the social structure o f Am erican society (and for m ore recent exam ples o f this version o f strain theory, see Bernard, 1987 and M essner and Rosenfeld, 2001). This thoroughly sociological approach, an approach reflecting the fundam ental concerns o f structural functionalism (at th at tim e the d o m inant para­ digm w ithin Am erican sociology), therefore, operates on the sam e conceptual level as D urkheim ’s study o f suicide, in th at the sources o f ‘stra in ’ are located in society, rath er th an the individual. Baum er (2007) has recently sought to develop a ‘m ulti­ level’ theoretical analysis th at attem pts to com bine each o f these versions o f strain theory into a single theory.

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For M erton the ‘social situ atio n ’ referred to in the above quote is the product o f a disjunction betw een, on the one hand, culture, and on the other, social structure. Individuals living in Am erican society, as particip an ts in the Am erican D ream , are, he says, socialised into desiring certain cultural goals; chief am ong these is the goal of m aterial success. At the sam e tim e, the social structure provides various legitim ate means through which m aterial success can be achieved - passing exam inations, w ork­ ing hard in business, and so on. However, when there is a lack o f fit betw een the goals and the m eans - th at is, when oppo rtu n ities are blocked for individuals because of their social class position, even though the m essage is th at everyone can succeed if they have the ability - then problem s o f ‘stra in ’ arise: there is a ‘contradiction betw een the cultural em phasis on pecuniary am bition and the social bars to full o p p o rtu n ity ’ (ibid.: 260). M erton describes this type o f society - where there is a lack o f equality o f opportunity, coupled with a strong em phasis on m aterial success - as ‘anom ic’. Deviant behaviour is seen as resulting from reactions to situations o f anom ie. A ccording to M erton, this tendency tow ards deviance is no t sim ply a result o f lim ­ ited oppo rtu n ities for som e people. As he notes, there are societies where very few o pportunities for social advancem ent exist, and the gap betw een rich and poor is enorm ous, and yet relatively little deviant behaviour occurs. The crucial factor for M erton is where socialisation processes strongly em phasise the achievem ent of m ate­ rial success. He saw the United States as ju st such a society. A disjunction betw een this cultural goal and the opportunities, or legitim ate m eans, w ithin the social struc­ ture for achieving it, creates strains which, says M erton, individuals will a d ap t to in different ways. On the basis o f this reasoning, he suggested the following ‘ideal type’ set o f ‘m odes o f a d ap ta tio n ’, where ( + ) signifies ‘acceptance’, ( —) signifies ‘rejection’, and ( ± ) signifies ‘rejection o f prevailing values and su bstitution o f new values’ (see Table 5.1). A part from ‘conform ity’, where individuals accept both cultural goals and the institutionalised m eans, irrespective o f how they are actually perform ing, the cate­ gories represent various sorts o f deviant adaptation. ‘Innovation’ describes a situation Table 5 . 1

A typology o f modes o f individual adaptation

M o d es o f ad ap ta tio n

1

C u ltu ra l goals

In stitu tio n alise d m ean s

Conformity

+

+ -

II

Innovation

-

III

Ritualism

-

+

IV

Retreatism

-

-

V

Rebellion

+

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w here the individual has been socialised n orm ally in to accepting the goal o f m aterial success, b u t, faced w ith a lack o f legitim ate m eans for achieving th e goal, resorts to deviance. In this form u latio n , this c o n stitu tes the source o f p ro p e rty crim e. W ith ‘ritu a lism ’, the individual has given up on the goals an d m erely goes th ro u g h the m otions: ‘T he original p u rp o ses are fo rg o tten a n d close adherence to in stitu tio n ally prescrib ed c onduct becom es a m a tte r o f ritu a l’ (ibid.: 251). A lthough this a d ap tatio n involves conform ity to the m eans, it is, for M erto n , deviant in so far as the individual has jettiso n ed the goal o f m aterial success. ‘R etreatism ’ occurs w hen the individual gives up on b o th the goals and the m eans, and in effect d ro p s o u t o f n o rm al society. H ere M e rto n had in m in d hobos a n d dru g addicts. Finally, ‘re b ellio n ’ applies to those individuals w ho reject the d o m in a n t cultural goals, to g eth e r w ith the legitim ate m eans for achieving them , in favour o f alternative goals an d m eans: political revolu­ tio n a ries w ould occupy this category. Invoking as it does n o tio n s o f w in n in g a n d losing, an d playing o r n o t playing according to the rules, M e rto n ’s version o f strain theory has often induced c o m m e n ­ ta to rs to search for analogies w ith gam es. In fact M erto n him self m en tio n s football, w restling, athletics a n d poker. Usually, th o u g h , a gam e analogy crops up w ith in the co ntext o f a sentence such as ‘in M e rto n ’s th eo ry it is as if society was like a . . . ’ T he best-know n British exam ple is pro b ab ly a ‘fru it m ach in e’, in tro d u c ed by Laurie Tay­ lor (1971). Taylor goes on to explain how th e m achine is rigged (a lack o f o p p o rtu n i­ ties), leading different players to resp o n d in different ways according to M e rto n ’s typology. H eidensohn (1989) prefers to use an analogy w ith a bow ling alley. One im agines crim inology lecturers w orldw ide b rin g in g o u t th eir own p a rticu la r favourites (m ine is poker) w hen they discuss M erto n (readers can choose th e ir own).

Merton’s anomie A lthough M e rto n uses the D urkheim ian concept o f anom ie, and develops a th e o re ti­ cal e xplanation o f deviance as illu strated above, th e m eaning th a t he gives to anom ie is n o t consistent. For m uch o f the article he in fact follow s D urkheim and uses the concept to describe a society w here th ere is a lack o f m oral regulation: contemporary American culture continues to be characterized by a heavy emphasis on wealth as a basic symbol of success, without a corresponding emphasis upon the legiti­ mate avenues on which to march towards this goal. (Merton, 1993:255) A lack o f m oral regulation has unleashed an unrestrained desire for m aterial success; individuals w ant everything, b u t are no longer w illing to play according to the rules. Clearly, u n d e r these circum stances an increase in p ro p e rty crim e is likely. However, as som e c o m m en tato rs have p o in te d out, M erton m oves away from this D urkheim ian

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definition o f anom ie and gives it a rather different m eaning: ‘D urkheim ’s conception o f anom ie raised problem s for M erton because the logical and em pirical im plications o f it ran counter to his beliefs about the social d istribution o f deviant behaviour’ (Box, 1981: 98-9). If Am erican society was anom ic in the sense th at D urkheim used the term , then deviant behaviour would be distrib u ted am ong all social classes. A lthough m en tio n ­ ing problem s w ith official statistics, and referring to w hite-collar crim e, M erton (1993:259) did none the less conclude th at deviance was in general linked to poverty: Of those located in the lower reaches of the social structure, the culture makes incom­ patible demands. On the one hand, they are asked to orient their conduct toward the prospect of large wealth . . . and on the other, they are largely denied effective opportu­ nities to do so institutionally. T hus in order to rem ain true to his belief th at deviance was concentrated am ong the deprived, M erton had to move away from D urkheim ’s definition o f anom ie, for th at would apply to the whole o f Am erican society. In term s o f his u nderstanding o f the d istribution o f deviant behaviour, he logically saw anom ie as the product o f a lack of equality o f opp o rtu n ity w ithin a society that, on the one hand, celebrated supposed o pportunities for all and, on the other, placed enorm ous em phasis on the desirability o f m aterial success. From this perspective, the end result was relative deprivation, th at is, a situation where people feel ‘cheated’, in th at their (to them ) realistic expecta­ tions regarding m aterial success have no t been m et. As discussed earlier, the ideas of strain theory, including M e rto n ’s version, were to influence those political adm inis­ tratio n s th at saw the creation o f equality o f opp o rtu n ity via poverty program m es as the way to solve the problem o f crim e.

Criticisms W hile M e rto n ’s work has been, and continues to be, highly influential w ithin crim i­ nology, it has over the years been subject to a barrage of criticism . Some of the m ain criticism s can be sum m arised as follows: • There is too m uch reliance on official statistics. • As a theory it predicts too m uch lower-class crim e. • The various m odes o f individual adaptation are difficult to classify in reality. T hus value judgem ents are likely to be used when assigning individuals to specific categories. • A lthough the source o f deviance lies in the social structure, responses o f a deviant nature are conceptualised in individual term s. This ignores the im portance o f col­ lective responses.

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• It is unclear why particular individuals op t for one type o f adaptation rather than another. • The theory does not explain non-utilitarian deviance: th at is, deviance such as rape or crim inal dam age th at is not oriented tow ards m aterial success. • The theory cannot accom m odate the wide variety o f deviant m otivations and types o f deviant behaviour (e.g. dom estic violence, rape and m urder). • How and why does addiction, associated with ‘retreatism ’, result from anom ie? Could addiction not lead to anom ie? • There is an assum ption o f a m onolithic culture oriented tow ards m aterial success, and this ignores the plurality o f cultural values. It may be th a t lower-class individu­ als typically set their sights on extremely m odest goals in the full knowledge th at to do otherw ise w ould be unrealistic. • Social control as a factor shaping deviant behaviour is ignored. • The theory fails to address those situations where m eans exceed goals: th at is, where individuals have ‘too m uch’, leading them into deviant behaviour. • Has M erton exhausted the possibilities with respect to m odes o f adaptation? In other words, is it logically possible to continue his table using p erm utations based upon (±) and (+ )/(-)? In an interesting recent discussion, M urphy and Robinson (2008) suggest adding ‘M axim izer’ to M e rto n ’s original typology: ‘som e­ one who sim ultaneously uses and incorporates legitim ate and illegitim ate m eans o f opp o rtu n ity in the pu rsu it of profit a n d /o r m onetary gain (the Am erican D ream )’ (ibid.: 502). • He ignores those situations w here deviant behaviour occurs p rior to a lack of suc­ cess in achieving cultural goals. • He fails to appreciate th at deviant m otivations may be oriented tow ards em otional or sensual pleasure (Katz, 1988; Young, 2003b). Since they were first introduced to the w orld, M erto n ’s ideas have inspired a large vol­ um e o f research on anom ie, crim e and deviance. Some crim inologists have, for instance, draw n on M erto n ’s theory and applied it to analyses o f w hite-collar and cor­ porate crim e (M enard, 1995; Passas and Agnew, 1997), w hilst Paranaby and Sacco (2004) have focused on celebrity and deviance. It should be noted, though, th at w hilst M erton believed th at the strains in Am erican society would have a greater im pact on poorer, rather than richer people, leading to m ore deviance am ong the for­ mer, he did acknowledge th at deviance was in evidence am ong all sections o f society see M erton (1957) for a discussion o f deviance w ithin the scientific com m unity. From a social-psychological perspective, Agnew (1992) has exam ined the strains arising from the ‘removal o f positively valued stim uli’ (for exam ple, due to bereavem ent) and the ‘presentation o f negative stim uli’ (for exam ple, the traum a associated with being a victim o f crim e) and subsequent deviant behaviour. Following M erton, M essner and Rosenfeld (2001) agree th at the excessive stress placed upon m aterial success in the United States perpetuates a condition o f anom ie, and w ith it a high level o f crim e.

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D IS O R G A N IS A T IO N

AND

A N O M IE

However, they disagree with Merton that creating greater equality of opportunity will necessarily lead to a reduction in anomie and attendant criminal behaviour. This, they argue, is because the cultural goal of material success is so deeply embedded within non-economic institutions, such as schools and families, that it is never seri­ ously challenged. Messner and Rosenfeld describe their approach as ‘institutionalanomie theory’.

S e le c t e d f u r t h e r r e a d in g The following two books were w ritten by the leading lights o f the Chicago School during the 1930s: Shaw, C. R. (1 930) The Jack-Roller, Chicago, IL: University o f Chicago Press: Shaw, C. R. and McKay, H. D. (1942) Juvenile Delinquency in Urban Areas, Chicago, IL: University o f Chicago Press. A special issue of the jo u rn al Theoretical Criminology, 11(4), Novem ber 2007, is m ade up o f a series o f contem porary articles on Shaw ’s The Jack-Roller. A classic ethnographic study from the Chicago School is: Thrasher, F. M. (1963; first pub. 1927) The Gang, Chicago, IL: University o f Chicago Press. A large n u m b er of classic texts from the Chicago School are reproduced in Beirne, P. (ed) (2005) The Chicago School o f Criminology, 1914-1945, Abingdon: Routledge. For a general discussion o f D urkheim ’s work, see Lukes, S. (1973) Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work: Historical and critical study, Harmondsworth: Penguin and Fenton, S. (ed) (1984) Durkheim and Modern Sociology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. M e rto n ’s use of strain theory and the concept of anom ie can be found in M erton, R. K. (1993; first pub. 1938) ‘Social structure and anom ie’, in C. Lemert (ed) Social Theory: The multicultural readings, Boulder, CO: W estview Press. The journal Theoretical Crimi­ nology, 11(1), February 2007 is devoted largely to a n u m b er o f articles on M erton, anom ie and relative deprivation. All the general textbooks referred to at the end o f C hapter 1 discuss crim inological theory during this period.

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CHAPTER

6

ST RA IN , S U B C U L T U R E S A N D

D ELIN Q U EN C Y

K ey th e m e s • A. K. Cohen: developments in strain theory •

R. Cloward and L. Ohlin: opportunity knocks

INTRO DUCTIO N

In the U nited States, the 1950s an d 1960s saw the em ergence o f versions o f strain theory linked to the dynam ics o f adolescent d e lin q u e n t su b cu ltu res. T his c h ap ter dis­ cusses the w ork o f A. K. Cohen, an d R. C low ard and L. O hlin, the m ajo r figures associ­ ated w ith su b cu ltu ral stra in theory.

A . K. C O H E N : D E V E L O P M E N T S I N S T R A I N T H E O R Y

In Delinquent Boys, p u b lish ed in 1955, A lbert C ohen offers his own version o f strain theory. As w ith M e rto n before him , C ohen a tte m p ts to explore sociologically those features o f A m erican society th a t create stra in s for som e people, leading eventually to d e lin q u e n t behaviour. His conclusion is sim ilar to M e rto n ’s in th a t he sees c rim in o ­ genic p ressu res as being in h e re n t in the society itself: those values which are at the core of the ‘American way of life’, which help to motivate the behavior which we most esteem as ‘typically American’, are among the major deter­ minants of that which we stigmatize as ‘pathological’ . . . the problems of adjustm ent to which the delinquent subculture is a response are determined, in part, by those very val­ ues which respectable society holds most sacred. (Cohen, 1955:137) He also follow s M erto n by assum ing th a t the bulk o f delinquency is found w ithin the low er w orking class, th o u g h unlike M e rto n , C ohen c o n cen trates specifically on a d o ­ lescence: ‘T he d e lin q u e n t su b cu ltu re is m ostly found in the w orking class’ (ibid.: 73). Having said th a t, C ohen’s w ork is rid d le d w ith caveats th ro u g h w hich he is at p ain s to p o in t out, for instance, th a t n o t all low er-w orking-class boys becom e d elin q u e n t, and

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th at delinquency also exists am ong m iddle-class boys. He also d eparts from M erton by draw ing on psychology and includes the notion o f ‘psychogenic factors’. Here again there are various caveats. He accepts th at there may be different types o f delin­ quency, each resulting from different causal processes, but he is particularly in te r­ ested in w hat he sees as those processes causally linked to m ost delinquent activity: ‘in the m ajority o f cases psychogenic and subcultural factors blend in a single causal process, as pollen and a particular bodily constitution work together to produce hay fever’ (ibid.: 17). From this we can clearly see th a t Cohen believed th at som e individu­ als, w hatever th eir social circum stances, were predisposed to delinquency; he was interested in w hat triggered it. As a result o f these various caveats, Cohen was left with a core o f w hat he described as ‘typical’ adolescent delinquency, and he therefore focused on young, lower-class males com m itted to the delinquent values o f the subculture. There are also links betw een C ohen’s work and S u th erlan d ’s theory o f differential association, and this indicates another departure from M erton’s version o f strain theory. W hereas M erton conceived of deviant ad aptations in individual term s, Cohen fol­ lowed Sutherland and saw delinquency as a collective response; in oth er words, he highlights delinquent subcultures. Furtherm ore, although, like M erton, he invokes the idea o f the Am erican D ream , its saliency derives from differential access to status rather than to m aterial success. C ohen’s basic argum ent is th a t Am erican society is dom inated by w hat he calls m iddle-class, m ainstream norm s and values, and through the m ass m edia and the education system these perm eate the whole o f society. It is against these th at individ­ uals are judged. U nfortunately, lower-class boys, referred to by Cohen as ‘corner boys’ (a term he borrow ed from W illiam Foote W hyte (1955)), are ill-equipped, because of their socialisation, to com pete with m iddle-class boys in the status stakes. The corner boy is pictured as organising his life around working-class values, finding satisfaction in the close-knit com panionship o f his m ates. It is, however, a m ilieu th at inhibits ver­ tical m obility. The outcom e is th at in early adolescence such boys are faced with a ‘problem of ad ju stm en t’, as they are denied the status m ore readily given to their m iddle-class counterparts: In the status game, then, the working-class child starts out with a handicap and, to the extent that he cares what middle-class persons think of him or has internalized the dominant middle-class attitudes toward social class position, he may be expected to feel some ‘shame’. (Cohen, 1955:110) Cohen outlines three ‘ideal type’ responses open to the corner boy, and again he draws on W hyte’s term inology: the ‘stable corner boy’, the ‘college boy’, and the ‘d elinquent boy’. The stable corner boy response involves an am bivalent acceptance of one’s lot in life, with individuals accom m odating them selves to their situation as

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best they can, and this may include som e m ild acts o f delinquency. The college boy response, as the nam e suggests, applies to those lower-working-class boys who, hav­ ing to a significant extent internalised m iddle-class cultural norm s, aspire to im prove them selves through educational success, and hence com pete with the m iddle class on their own term s. The delinquent boy response is the one th at Cohen is particularly interested in. Using the Freudian concept o f ‘reaction fo rm atio n ’, he argues th at some boys, faced w ith a lack o f status by the carriers o f m iddle-class culture who are able to judge them , join together with others in the sam e situation and develop a delinquent subculture. W hile acknow ledging th at M e rto n ’s version o f strain theory can explain crim inal activities carried out for m onetary gain, in C ohen’s view it cannot explain day-to-day, working-class delinquency which, he argues, is m ainly non-utilitarian and negativistic (e.g., fighting and vandalism ). The psychological concept o f reaction form ation describes a situation where the individual who is denied som ething they desire, reacts by disparaging it to excess. In the context o f C ohen’s study the denial o f status leads som e to seek out others who share the sam e ‘problem of ad ju stm e n t’; the resultant subculture develops an exag­ gerated hostility tow ards m iddle-class values. In effect, it is a contra-culture w ithin which m iddle-class norm s and values are inverted; now an activity is ‘rig h t’ because m ainstream culture says it is ‘w rong’. This raises an im p o rta n t issue. For Cohen, a crucial aspect o f this process o f delinquency creation is th at the cor­ ner boys care about th eir lack o f status: most children are sensitive to some degree about the attitudes of any persons with whom they are thrown into more than the most superficial kind of contact. The con­ tempt or indifference of others, particularly of those like schoolmates and teachers, with whom we are constrained to associate for long hours every day, is difficult, we suggest, to shrug off. (Ibid.: 123, original emphasis) The candidate for delinquency cares, according to Cohen, because: To the degree to which he values middle-class status, either because he values the good opinion of middle-class persons or because he has to some degree internalized middleclass standards himself, he faces a problem of adjustment and is in the market for a ‘solution’. (Ibid.: 119) However, as Box (1981) has show n, this suggests th at the delinquent boy can feel either resentm ent or sham e/guilt, or both. The working-class boy may resent the low status th at he is given, sim ply because it is difficult to be indifferent, bu t this does not m ean th at he sees his own culture as inferior and desires m iddle-class status. A feeling o f resentm ent m ight lead to delinquency, but it m ight also lead to an angry resignation. The im p o rta n t elem ent in C ohen’s theory, though, is reaction form ation, and this

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requires m ore th an resentm ent. Reaction form ation requires the sh am e/g u ilt and the rejection o f som ething previously desired, in this case m iddle-class status. Thus C ohen’s theory o f delinquency is based upon the assum ption th at the typical w ork­ ing-class delinquent to som e degree internalises m iddle-class norm s and values prior to the creation o f the subculture. Put an o th er way, the assum ption is th at m iddleclass culture is widely dispersed and accepted th roughout all social classes. This has been picked up by som e o f C ohen’s critics, in particular those who have developed an explanation of delinquency based upon cultural diversity. Proponents o f this approach have questioned the view th a t m iddle-class norm s and values are internalised by lower-working-class boys early on in th eir lives. There has also been m uch criticism of the characterisation o f delinquent working-class boys as vehem ently anti-m iddle-class culture (e.g. Short and Strodtbeck, 1965; Downes, 1966). In fact, Cohen saw the values associated with the delinquent subculture as taking on a life of their own, rather as the Chicago School had done, which would put even greater pressure on some boys to becom e delinquent. If this is true, we m ight query why working-class boys need to have internalised m iddle-class values in the first place in order for them to become delin­ quent. O ther critics have m ade the fam iliar claim th at such studies rely too m uch on official statistics regarding the social class distribution of delinquency, and in so doing underestim ate the extent of m iddle-class delinquency (e.g., Kitsuse and Dietrick, 1959). Finally, a note about the policy im plications of C ohen’s work. As w ith M erton, the m essage is th at crim e results from strains inherent in the structure o f A m erican soci­ ety, and these are basically to do w ith a lack o f equality o f opportunity. According to the logic o f this form ulation the way to tackle crim e is to create equality o f o p p o rtu ­ nity, in oth er words, to m ake the reality o f life in Am erica correspond to the ideology of oppo rtu n ities for all, irrespective o f social class origins. There is, though, a funda­ m ental contradiction at the core o f this type o f reasoning. Although the goal o f equal­ ity o f opp o rtu n ity m ay be desirable, the n otion o f equality o f o p p o rtu n ity to succeed im plies equality o f opp o rtu n ity to fail; they are two sides of the sam e coin. In the work th at we have looked at so far from strain theorists, there is no suggestion th a t class society should be eradicated. On the contrary, each w riter is com m itted to an unequal class society, but people should have an equal chance to win or lose in th a t society. Indeed, the concept o f equality of opp o rtu n ity presupposes the existence o f social class inequality. However, if such a divided society exists, then how are people able to line up equally? Poverty program m es, for exam ple, may be introduced so th at the chances o f those at the ‘b o tto m ’ are im proved, bu t the m odel is predicated on the con­ tinuing existence o f a ‘b o tto m ’ and a ‘top’.

R. C L O W A R D A N D L. O H L I N : O P P O R T U N I T Y K N O C K S

W hen discussing the developm ent o f crim inology during the post-w ar period it was p ointed out th at the explanations of delinquency associated with strain theory fitted

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well w ith the ideas o f the Kennedy ad m inistration o f the early 1960s. This was p artic­ ularly app aren t with respect to the co ntribution m ade by Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin in their study Delinquency and Opportunity, published in 1960. Again, the cen­ tral them es o f strain theory are in evidence. There is a basic assum ption th at delin­ quent behaviour results from som ething going ‘w rong’ and, as a corollary: ‘under norm al circum stances, th at is the absence o f strains and tensions, individuals will not be m otivated to break the law’ (Box, 1981:103). Furtherm ore, and as with Cohen, although individual psychological factors m ay be im plicated in triggering specific types of response, the source of ‘stra in ’ lies in the nature o f society itself. This, o f course, does no t am ount to a critique o f Am erican capitalist society as such. It is, rather, a critique o f the way th at society is actually working. Fundam entally, strain theory lends itself to social policies oriented tow ards m anaging the opp o rtu n ity structure so th at the disadvantaged have a b etter chance to succeed, w hilst at the sam e tim e ensuring th at disincentives to succeed because of reduced incom e and status differentials do not intrude. It is a tall order. Indeed, as we have seen, by the 1970s the perceived failure o f program m es such as O peration Head Start was shifting the em phasis away from ‘equal o p p o rtu n ities’ tow ards a ru d im en ­ tary policy o f control and containm ent. Cloward and Ohlin had the explicit inten tio n o f forging together the ideas o f M er­ ton (‘stra in ’) and Sutherland (‘differential association’), bu t their work also illustrates the continuing influence o f D urkheim on Am erican crim inological theory. Essentially Delinquency and Opportunity addresses two issues: first, how the o p p o rtu n ity struc­ tures o f m ainstream Am erican society lead som e people to fail and becom e involved in delinquency and, second, how the opp o rtu n ity structures w ithin crim inal subcul­ tures create, in turn, th eir own failures. W hen analysing the causal factors associated with delinquency Cloward and O hlin’s (1960: 32) basic research question is: ‘U nder which conditions will persons experience strains and tensions th at lead to d elinquent solutions?’ Clearly, it is the im pact o f these conditions on the individual, conceived o f in term s o f strains and te n ­ sions, and leading to delinquent m otivations, th at they are interested in. In M ertonian fashion they begin by arguing th at in m odern societies such as the United States, people are socialised into believing th a t those with ability will ‘get o n ’. Through qual­ ifications gained in the education system people will be m atched to the job th a t suits them . The actual achievem ent o f this kind o f society - a m eritocracy - would create a system o f functional interdependence, as envisaged by D urkheim . However, in the real w orld, say Cloward and O hlin, som e fail to achieve a social position com m ensu­ rate with their ability; unfortunately, there are not enough higher-status jobs to go round. Faced with queues o f equally able applicants, em ployers fall back on criteria oth er than ability, such as class, religion or style o f dress. For Cloward and O hlin the lower-working-class victim s o f these processes, who feel th at they have been treated unjustly, are those m ost likely to becom e delinquent. This introduces a m oral dim en­ sion and, again, m akes links w ith D urkheim . There are no strains for those who fail

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and yet subjectively believe th a t th eir failure is the result o f a lack o f ability, for they will resign them selves to th eir fate. The angry failures, on the oth er hand, do not, and they are in a situation where they are likely to w ithdraw their su p p o rt for conven­ tional, legitim ate norm s. Although Cloward and O hlin follow Cohen and argue that m ost delinquent youth will come from lower-working-class backgrounds, they point to a different source w ithin th at social class. For them delinquency is m ost likely to occur am ong those who have earlier on com m itted them selves to m iddle-class norm s, given som e evidence o f th eir ability, and have therefore been encouraged in their quest for higher status. In short, it is the ‘college boy’ who is m ost at risk: ‘all available data su p p o rt the contention th at the basic endow m ents o f delinquents, such as intelligence, physical strength and agility, are equal to, or greater than, those of th eir non-delinquent peers’ (ibid.: 42). Cloward and O hlin’s theory represents an application o f the D urkheim ian logic th at social order requires the existence o f a hierarchical system where each person feels th at w hat they have achieved is all th at they are m orally entitled to. This raises a n u m b er o f issues. For instance, they seem to assum e th at those working-class youth who fail to achieve success, but see them selves as being o f low ability, will passively accept th eir failure. The possibility th at they m ight tu rn to delinquency is ignored, as is the possibility of them adopting non-com pliant, non-delinquent political stra t­ egies. In addition, equality o f opp o rtu n ity is conceived o f as a system for separating the w heat from the chaff. The assum ption is th at the ‘c h aff’ really exist - ‘ability’ is regarded as a natural, fixed level o f intelligence, rath er than a product o f educational experiences - and w hat is required is a suitable system for identifying those with low ability. Im portantly, though, such a system m ust at least appear fair to the failures; they m ust be convinced th at their failure is m orally deserved. The m ain concern o f Cloward and Ohlin, however, is with those working-class boys who supposedly possess high ability, bu t who none the less still fail. In the absence o f a sufficient n u m b er of higher-status jobs to satisfy the dem and repre­ sented by the pool o f ability am ong all social classes, it is difficult to see how im prov­ ing oppo rtu n ities would in itself lead to a decrease in the n um ber o f angry failures. W ithout a corresponding expansion in actual job o pportunities, social peace could only be achieved through oth er strategies, such as a m ore pow erful ideology th a t con­ vinced people o f their m orally deserved failure, or, som e m ight say, m ore powerful m odes o f social control. There is one problem atic aspect o f th eir work th at is shared with o th er strain theorists. This is th eir argum ent th at lower-working-class delin­ quent boys have at a p rior stage accepted m iddle-class norm s and values.

Opportunity structures in the world of delinquency Cloward and Ohlin argue that the social world o f the delinquent contains the sam e sort of inequalities as the social world o f the non-crim inal - though we m ight question

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th is neat dichotom y betw een ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’. Drawing on S u th e rla n d ’s them e o f differential association, they discuss the various oppo rtu n ities available for learn­ ing the techniques and absorbing the m otivations necessary for crim inal behaviour. On this basis they suggest three different types o f crim inal subculture: 1 Criminal. This is a subculture oriented tow ards p roperty crim e, and will tend to be found in m ore socially organised lower-class neighbourhoods. Here inform al social control netw orks centred on experienced adult crim inals ensure that delin­ qu en t youth confine them selves to well-planned, utilitarian activities rather than such things as vandalism and gang warfare. 2 Violent. These are also referred to as conflict subcultures, and are associated with the m ore socially disorganised neighbourhoods which approxim ate to the Zone of Transition identified by the Chicago School. D elinquent activity is m uch less restrained than in the crim inal subculture, and tends tow ards violent, gangoriented behaviour. 3 Retreatist. This subculture is prim arily associated with illegal drug use, and arises am ong those boys who have failed in both crim inal and violent subcultures. In effect they represent the lum pen proletariat o f the delinquent world.

Se le c te d fu rth e r read in g The seminal works on subcultural strain theory are: Cohen, A. K. (1955) D elinquent Boys, London: Free Press, and Cloward, R. and Ohlin, L. (1960) D elinquency and Oppor­ tunity, London: Collier Macmillan.

CHAPTER

7

C RIM IN O LO G IC A L THEORY

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"\

Key th e m e s • American influences • Sociological criminology in Britain •

Developing a British perspective

• Cultural diversity theory • Schools and the ‘problem of adjustment’ • Subcultural theory: taking stock V

y

INTRODUCTION

The developm ent o f sociological crim inology in Britain lagged behind its develop­ m ent in the United States. This chapter looks at the influence o f the Chicago School and Am erican subcultural theory on British crim inologists in the 1950s and 1960s. In general, it was the Chicago School and the notion o f the ‘crim inal area’, rath er than subcultural strain theory, th at had the greatest influence. However, im p o rta n t studies based upon subcultures did emerge in Britain, though from the perspective o f cul­ tural diversity theory. The chapter concludes with a critique o f the concept of delin­ quent subcultures by M atza and Sykes.

AMERICAN INFLUENCES

We have seen th at there are im p o rta n t differences betw een the Chicago School and the subcultural strain theorists, such as Cohen, and Cloward and Ohlin, in their analy­ ses o f the processes th at lead to crim inal behaviour. They also differ in the way in which they conceptualise those areas o f the city in which crim e is believed to be con­ centrated. As we shall see, the respective positions raised an issue th at influenced the early British sociologies o f crim e in the 1950s, and has resonated w ithin crim inology up to the present day. On the basis o f a social ecological m odel, the Chicago School saw the city in term s of ‘n atural areas’. These had th eir own ecological system s, and were differentiated

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according to the types o f people living there and the relationship betw een their lifestyles and the physical environm ent. Some o f these were identified as crim inal areas’. These areas were characterised by run-dow n housing, transient populations and high levels o f im m igration and poverty. Crime in these areas was initially linked to social disorganisation, though later on, partly because o f the influence o f Suther­ land, there was a move tow ards the idea o f differential social organisation. This acknow ledged the existence o f a plurality o f norm s and values in the city. Although the subcultural strain theorists developed different understandings of the origins of delinquency, they agreed with the Chicago School th at delinquent subcultures existed in certain lower-working-class areas. However, a central dispute concerned the relationship betw een such areas and the rest of the city, and indeed the rest o f society. For the Chicago School, the crim inal area consisted o f a delinquent culture, and inh ab itan ts absorb the corresponding norm s and values, and these are at variance with those o f a supposed conform ist, m ainstream society. Youngsters becam e delin­ quent out of a ‘n a tu ra l’ process o f cultural transm ission. Cohen, and Cloward and O hlin, on the oth er hand, stress the ways in which the in h ab itan ts are connected to, and influenced by, the w ider m ainstream culture, described as ‘m iddle class’. Lowerclass boys, specifically, are seen as to som e extent internalising the norm s and values o f m iddle-class society: all their lives, through the major media of mass indoctrination - the schools, the movies, the radio, the newspapers and the magazines - the middle-class powers-that-be that manipulate these media have been trying the ‘sell’ them middle-class values and the middle-class standard of living. (Cohen, 1955:124-5) The ‘reaction fo rm atio n ’ suggested by Cohen, and the ‘alienation’ of Cloward and O hlin’s ‘college boys’ presuppose th at this internalisation o f m iddle-class values has occurred. Lower-working-class youth could not be insulated from m ainstream m iddle-class culture, for the internalisation o f this culture, at least to som e extent, is necessary for a d elinquent reaction to take place. The dispute betw een cultural tra n s­ m ission theorists and strain theorists essentially boils down to the issue o f w hether those living in a so-called crim inal area becom e delinquent because they conform to the norm s and values o f the area, or because they have been rejected by a m iddle-class value system which, to a significant degree, they have internalised. The question is: do lower-working-class lads typically desire, then are denied, m iddle-class status? It is an issue th at was to figure in the early British sociologies o f crim e, and for som e tim e afterw ards. However, before exploring th at debate, there is another dim ension to the work of the Chicago School and the subcultural strain theorists that needs com m enting on. In these and subsequent accounts, there is a danger o f con­ structing distorted stereotypes o f w hat life is like am ong the u rban poor. Certainly,

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this is especially app aren t in highly m oralistic contrib u tio n s from the m ass m edia, and th eir references to lone parents, absent husbands, children who are ‘out o f con­ tro l’, ‘no go’ areas, and ‘yob culture’. Drawing on the idea o f an ‘underclass’, it is as if som e urban neighbourhoods have been cut adrift from decent, law -abiding society. In an effort to em phasise the positive, rather than the negative, aspects of coping with the grim reality o f unem ploym ent and social deprivation in m odern Britain, one com ­ m en tato r has w ritten: I am sick and tired of the moral high ground being divided up between the haves and the have-nots. If this is the high ground give me the low ground any day. I am at home in the low ground - it is where 1grew up and where I see women on their own struggling to bring up their children as best they can with little money and support. It is in the moral foothills that 1 see people look after their dying relatives day in and day out. Amongst this misery 1 also see more ingenuity than in a thousand sermons. (Moore, 1995: 5) A problem with the Chicago School’s description o f the working-class crim inal area is th at it autom atically equates non-delinquent values with som e posited ‘m ain stream ’ m iddle-class society. Concom itantly, d elinquent values, and thus such things as im m orality and selfishness, are equated with lower-working-class culture. It is as if this culture is intrinsically delinquent: th at is, the opposite o f respectable, hard-w orking, m ainstream America, and possessing no non- or anti-delinquent resources. The move from delinquency to non-delinquency, therefore, has to be accom plished through factors on the ‘outside’. In the case o f the subcultural strain theorists, it is true th at they do see the lower w orking class as not being cut adrift from the w ider society, and in varying degrees subscribing to values associated with respect for oth er people’s property, courtesy and non-violence. However, these are only absorbed by the lower w orking class because they have a m oral conduit into the wider, m ainstream culture. In fact, these values are presented as m iddle-class values. T hus again the image is one o f the less well off having no intrinsic source o f ‘decent’, non-delinquent values. The im plication is th at left to th eir own devices, and w ithout the benefit o f m iddle-class m orality via schools and the m ass m edia, these working-class neighbourhoods w ould becom e irredeem ably delinquent. As a description o f Am erican society, C ohen’s work in particular offers a highly idealised, one-sided picture o f w hat he calls m iddle-class culture. Obviously, working-class children in 1950s America were, through the education system and the m ass m edia, exposed to a range o f norm s and values from outside their family and neighbourhood. W ith the growth in m ass com m unications, this is even m ore the case today. It would, though, be m isleading to see all o f these influences as being, by definition, ‘m iddle-class’, ‘decent’ and non-delinquent. In Britain the readers o f som e tabloid new spapers, for instance, are likely, in varying degrees, to be exposed to sexism, racism , ethnocentricity and hom ophobia. It would

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perhaps be reckless to judge these as necessarily benign, civilising influences on the lower w orking class.

S O C I O L O G I C A L C R I M I N O L O G Y IN B R IT A I N

It was no t until the 1950s th a t the sociological crim inology produced in the United States since as far back as the 1920s began to influence crim inology in Britain. This delay was related to the fact th at up to the 1960s crim inology was no t m uch in te r­ ested in sociology and, conversely, sociology was no t m uch interested in crim inology. A lthough there were som e internal disputes, the early British sociologies o f crim e did share certain features: they were strongly em pirical, and owed m ore to the Chicago School than to the strain theorists; they concentrated on young offenders; they favoured an areal or com m unity studies approach; they assum ed th at delinquency was in the m ain carried out by lower-working-class males; and they were oriented tow ards Fabian-influenced correctionalist principles. Im portantly, though, they did represent a move away from focusing on the individual offender, via the strong influ­ ence of psychology, tow ards a consideration of the socio-cultural context o f delin­ quency. The strength o f individualised approaches at this tim e is indicated by the am ount o f criticism received by one m ajor writer, Mays, for failing to carry out psy­ chological tests to m easure ‘m alad ju stm en t’. This work created a fram ew ork for the subsequent developm ent of sociological crim inology in Britain. It also provided an opp o rtu n ity to assess the extent to which Am erican ideas and explanations, based upon crim inal areas and delinquent subcultures, could be tra n s­ posed to a British context. Unlike conflict or labelling theory, for instance, these ‘m iddle-range’ theories are, o f course, potentially m ore culture-bound (in Britain, for exam ple, there was an im p o rta n t m unicipal housing m arket, and there seem ed to be an absence o f Am erican-style adolescent gangs). It is w orth noting th at in the early British work the sam e issues discussed above regarding the n ature o f lower-workingclass culture, and its relationship to the rest o f society, bubbled to the surface. The general tendency was to follow the Chicago School, rather than the strain theories o f Cohen, and Cloward and Ohlin. Thus although ‘crim inal areas’ were identi­ fied, where children were socialised into delinquent values, the delinquent subcultures were not seen as resulting from reactions to a denial o f desired m iddle-class status. Conceptualisations o f class structure and class dynam ics were, however, fairly crude, and in this respect were sim ilar to the Am erican analyses. N on-delinquent, and by im plication ‘decent’, values were often equated with som e perceived ‘m iddle-class’ cul­ ture, as if these values were som ehow intrinsic to the culture o f an area where the head of the household had a job nom inally corresponding to the Registrar-General’s u n d er­ standing of social class. Even in those cases where the w riter acknowledged the exis­ tence o f non-delinquent values am ong sections o f the lower working class (e.g., Carter and Jephcott, 1954) the values were still essentially m iddle class; som e people were

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poor, but m iddle class in lifestyle and outlook. As with the Am erican work, it was as if lower-working-class culture was in its natural state delinquent; it only becam e no n ­ delinquent when it borrow ed ideas from the m iddle class. The two figures in British crim inology who were largely responsible for intro d u c­ ing Am erican ideas into this country were John Barron Mays and Terrence M orris. M ays’s (1954) Growing Up in the Cily: A study o f juvenile delinquency in an urban neigh­ bourhood was centred on an inner-city slum area in Liverpool. Mays drew on the ideas of the Chicago School, bu t toned down the concept o f social ecology. He did, though, subscribe to the idea o f the crim inal area in which delinquency was concentrated, and used extensive interview ing as a basis for his research. M ays’s central argum ent was th at delinquency was w idespread, and involved virtually all o f the adolescents living in the area. The source o f this delinquency, said Mays, was not strains or tensions in the boys’ lives, as Cohen had argued, but, rather, it developed ‘naturally’ out o f no r­ mal socialisation. He did, though, utilise the concept o f subculture: T h is to the best o f my knowledge is the first reference, in British literature at least, in which the notion o f subculture is invoked to account for juvenile crim e’, and he argued th at the bulk o f delinquency was ‘not so m uch a sym ptom o f m aladjustm ent as o f adjustm ent to a subculture in conflict w ith the culture o f the city as a w hole’ (Mays, 1975: 63). In spite of using the word ‘conflict’, he was no t arguing th at delinquency was a conscious rebellion against m iddle-class society. He found no ‘reaction fo rm atio n ’ due to a prior internalisation o f m iddle-class values, as Cohen had done. However, he did concur with Cohen to the extent th at the boys in Liverpool, not surprisingly, resented being treated as inferior. Although there was a sm all m inority w ho involved them selves in serious delinquency, on the whole Mays pain ts a picture o f socially and econom ically deprived young people trying to m ake the best o f a bad job. In general, their delin­ quent behaviour represented an a tte m p t to inject som e fun into their lives. Given the overw helm ing pow er o f the delinquent subculture found in accounts such as M ays’s, a question th at is often asked is: why do all o f the boys no t becom e delinquent? The m o rd an t answ er from Mays is th at they all do, bu t only som e are unlucky enough to get caught. After leaving school, however, the boys’ involvem ent in delinquency begins to decline and eventually, a p art from a sm all core, ends by adulthood. He therefore repudiated the com m only held view th a t today’s youthful delinquents are tom orrow ’s adult crim inals. In th eir study of Radby, a m ining tow n in the M idlands, C arter and Jephcott (1954) argued th a t w hilst working-class neighbourhoods m ight appear hom ogeneous, they were in fact socially differentiated. ‘Respectable’, non-delinquent families gravitated tow ards each other, and lived in the sam e streets, referred to as ‘w hite’ streets; ‘rough’, d elinquent fam ilies lived together in the ‘black’ streets (fifty years on their choice o f colours seem s strikingly unfortunate). This division into ‘respectables’ and ‘roughs’ could not, they found, be traced back to the particular jobs th at people had. The general p attern , they argued, was for delinquent youth to be brought up in delin­ quent families; delinquency was thus culturally transm itted, both in the family and

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on the street. For C arter and Jephcott, these values, then, persisted into adulthood, to be passed on to children. They, in fact, criticised Mays for failing to recognise this continuity betw een the values o f adults and the values o f children. Inevitably, the ‘respectables’ are seen as working-class people who have actually adopted supposedly m iddle-class values. So, once again, these values - respect for property and people, for instance - are no t conceived o f as just values, bu t they are specifically identified with the ‘m iddle class’, as if they were one o f the key defining features o f m iddle class­ ness, bu t no t working classness. A lthough he was a psychologist, Sainsbury’s (1955) study o f suicide in London also drew on the work o f the Chicago School. In particular he refers to the ‘ecology o f L ondon’, and identifies w hat he also calls ‘n atural areas’. On the other hand, Sainsbury rejected the view th a t poverty equals social disorganisation equals delinquency. He discovered th at the greatest am ounts o f poverty did no t correspond with the m ost socially disorganised areas. Delinquency, he argued, did correlate with poverty, but not with social disorganisation, though suicide, the m ain focus o f the study, did. The title o f M orris’s (1957) book, The Criminal Area: A study in social ecology, indi­ cates the direct link w ith the Chicago School, though as we have said, in com m on with British w riters at this tim e, the full ram ifications of the ecological m odel were not accepted. He did, however, approve o f the concept o f the crim inal area, and used this as the fram ew ork for his areal study o f delinquency in the London suburb of Croydon. For M orris, though, a deteriorating physical environm ent coupled with the existence o f poverty did no t in them selves explain why som e youngsters came to be involved in d elinquent behaviour. N either did he consider areas associated with high levels o f delinquency to be socially disorganised. M orris, therefore, reconceptualised the notion o f a delinquent area, by seeing it as the product o f two crucial variables: the housing policies o f the local authority, and social class. As a result o f decisions m ade by housing departm ents, and in particular decisions based upon a policy o f placing ‘p ro b lem ’ families together on the sam e estates, certain neighbourhoods had the ‘p o ten tial’ for the developm ent o f delinquent behaviour. This was an idea th at stim ulated a large am ount o f research in Britain on the them e of housing classes, and the struggle for housing space (see, for exam ple, the well-known study by Rex and M oore (1967) o f S parkbrook in B irm ingham ). M orris’s explanation o f delinquency owes m uch to S u th e rla n d ’s theory o f differen­ tial association. The boys living together on ‘problem estates’ form delinquent su b ­ cultures because o f their socialisation into the norm s and values of the area, norm s and values carried by the people living there. Unlike the argum ent from the Chicago School, this suggests th at if such people were relocated they w ould take their culture with them , along with their possessions in the rem oval van - which approxim ates to a ‘p o llu tio n ’ explanation o f delinquency. In fact, in an attem p t to explain why all chil­ dren do not becom e delinquent, and arguing against Mays, M orris uses as an analogy the spread o f diseases such as cholera in the nineteenth century. Some people, he says, were m ore resistant than others to the disease. Using the sam e logic, the resistance to

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delinquency in Croydon was explained in term s o f the ad ju stm en t’ to socio-economic factors m ade by the family. This contagion view of delinquency found in the theory of differential association has often been criticised, essentially because it presents a m echanistic m odel o f becom ing delinquent. The individual is pictured as in a sense soaking up the various ‘b a d ’ (or ‘good’) influences th at they happen to come into con­ tact with, rath er like Pavlov’s dogs.

D EV ELO PIN G A BRITISH PERSPECTIVE

If British sociological crim inology could never hope to m atch the sheer volum e of research carried out by its co u n terp arts in the U nited States, at least by the 1950s British researchers had begun to recognise and draw on this research. Furtherm ore, by the tim e the 1960s arrived, a m ore distinctly British approach to adolescent delin­ quency was building up. One difficulty was th at adolescent gangs - in the sense o f identifiable, distinct groups o f adolescents, whose raison d ’etre was to engage in specifically delinquent activities - proved hard to find in Britain. Research increasingly centred on the notion o f youth culture, and the delinquency w ith which it was som etim es associated. Even in the United States the existence and nature o f so-called gangs continued to generate debate w ithin crim inology. Short and Strodtbeck (1965) in their study in Chicago, for instance, were sceptical th at specialised gangs existed. O ne’s position on this m atter, of course, depends upon one’s definition o f a ‘gang’. As far back as 1927, T hrasher (1963) in The Gang provided a sociological definition, though too often the term has been used very loosely, m ore or less sim ply to describe an ‘u nruly’ group of individuals who spend a certain am ount o f tim e together. In order to achieve concep­ tual integrity, though, a sociological definition has to do b etter th an this. Following Thrasher, therefore, a delinquent gang should m ore properly be seen as a collectivity possessing a n u m b er of key features such as perm anence, face-to-face contact, a sense of identity am ong m em bers, territoriality, usually a nam e, and a central concern with acts o f delinquency. U nfortunately, in m any studies the concept o f subculture is used as if it were synonym ous w ith gang.

C U LTU RA L DIVERSITY THEORY

As the discussion o f the work o f Mays and M orris has indicated, British sociological crim inology in the m ain favoured an approach to delinquent behaviour th at had m ore in com m on with the Chicago School than with the strain theorists, although there were m om ents o f tension. This pedigree continued into the 1960s and came to be referred to as cultural diversity theory (it also had oth er nam es: differential associ­ ation theory, cultural transm ission theory and affiliation theory). Essentially, cultural

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diversity argues th at society is com posed o f a num ber o f different cultures, these usually being linked to social class and neighbourhood. Generally there is an assum ption th at a d o m inant ‘m ainstream ’, conform ist, culture exists, with oth er alternative delinquent cultures described as subcultures. D elinquency, from this perspective, results from norm al socialisation, through which individuals conform to the norm s and values o f these delinquent subcultures. People learn to be delinquent in exactly the sam e way th at they learn to be non-delinquent; no pathological m otivations need explaining. Unlike the subcultures described by Cohen, though, delinquent subcultures are not seen as reactive and anti the d o m in an t m ainstream culture, although they are, by definition, in conflict in a norm ative sense with th a t culture (should it exist). In his study o f delinquent youth in England, the Am erican anthropologist W alter M iller (1958) outlined the central elem ents o f cultural diversity theory. Focusing on lower-working-class culture as the prim e source o f delinquency, M iller argued th at the adolescents involved were conform ists rather than nonconform ists or rebels. Their delinquency reflected th eir conform ity to w hat he term ed the ‘focal concerns’ of the working-class neighbourhood: trouble, toughness, sm artness, excitem ent, fate and autonom y. He also noted th at m any o f the boys in his study lived in lone parent families, with th at p aren t being a m other rath er th an a father. This led him to suggest th at the m achism o associated with delinquency functioned to express and register the boy’s escape from his m o th e r’s apron strings. Peter W illm o tt’s (1966) study o f adolescent boys living in Bethnal Green in the East End o f London contains a section on the them e o f delinquency. The book illustrates som e o f the uncertainties around at the tim e. W illm ott is sym pathetic to C ohen’s status frustration theory, as well as to the cultural diversity theory of Miller. Thus he is able to write: ‘Some . . . argue th at the m otive is above all “status fru stratio n ” - th at is, the boys behave as they do to hit back at the society th at has rejected them and to show their contem pt for its values’ (W illm ott, 1966:161). But he then goes on to say: there is no widespread and continuing sense of resentment, revolt or frustration among the local boys. Many boys are ‘delinquent’, in the sense that they sometimes break the law, and particularly steal. But, since most boys do not feel rejected or frustrated, the theory does not explain their transgressions. It can help to explain only the delinquency of the minority. (Ibid.: 161) One o f the difficulties was th at W illm ott came across only a sm all m inority o f boys who were seriously involved in delinquency. He refers to the typology introduced by W hyte - ‘corner boys’ and ‘college boys’ - though his preferred term s are ‘working class’ and ‘m iddle-class’ (the latter, strangely, m eaning working-class boys who want to be m iddle class). Each represents a particular type o f adjustm ent to a perceived lack o f success in m onetary and status term s. The ‘w orking-class’ boy accepts his

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status and financial situation; the ‘m iddle-class’ boy wishes to su rm o u n t his workingclass status by trying to move into a non-m anual occupation. There is also a third group identified by W illm ott and he refers to m em bers o f this group as ‘rebels’, adding that it is ‘probably from boys like this th at the seriously delinquent are draw n . . . though it cannot be proved from our figures’ (ibid.: 168). In fact, the ‘rebel’, described as actively deviating from both working-class and m iddle-class standards, was in a sm all m inority. In his sam ple o f 246 boys, only ‘a ten th or less’ could be described as ‘rebels’, and he acknowledges th at not all o f these were necessarily delinquent. There is in W illm ott’s study one particularly interesting type o f rebel, and it is a type of w orking-class adolescent rarely com m ented on, or even recognised, in sociological studies o f youth. This is the bohem ian or politicised working-class youth. Given the stereotyping o f working-class culture in m uch o f the literature, it is perhaps u n d er­ standable th a t any serious engagem ent with, say, avant-garde poetry, m usic or p a in t­ ing, or with political struggle, will be overlooked in studies o f this culture. In the exam ple given by W illm ott, the ‘rebel’ is into jazz, the novels of Kerouac and Mailer, and sm okes m arijuana. In short, he is nearer to w hat at th at tim e was a beatnik than a delinquent tearaway or m iddle-class-style conform ist. W illm o tt’s general conclusion is th at serious delinquency is rare in Bethnal Green, though he estim ates th a t one in three o f the boys th at he interview ed will probably end up in court before they are 21. M ost o f the boys in his study had no desire for m iddle-class status and they used th eir in te rm itten t acts o f delinquency as vehicles for a bit o f fun and an expression o f group solidarity. To this extent he sees them as belonging to a d elinquent subculture. Published in the sam e year, David D ow nes’s (1966) The Delinquent Solution had the distinction o f being the m ost theoretically sophisticated British sociological study of delinquency. Not only did he provide a graphic account o f working-class life in Poplar and Stepney in the East End o f London, and evaluate the relevance and validity o f cur­ ren t influential theories, bu t he also developed a theoretical u nderstanding o f delin­ quent subcultures th at addressed th eir deeper social and cultural roots. The study did, however, appear ju st as crim inology in Britain was about to be transform ed because o f the im pact o f the new deviancy, and it therefore soon found itself assigned to a pre-new deviancy category. In line with cultural diversity theory, Downes argues th at delinquency is funda­ m entally conform ist, in the sense th at those involved in the delinquency are conform ­ ing to the values o f the lower-working-class neighbourhood in which they live; he found no evidence that these delinquent subcultures resulted from antagonism s tow ards a perceived m ainstream culture. This is sim ilar to M iller’s form ulation, though M iller uses the n otion o f ‘focal concerns’ rath er th an values. According to Downes, there was no discontent with working-class status. In general the boys w anted to be working class, and certainly had no ‘problem s o f ad ju stm e n t’ o f the so rt discussed by Cohen. T heir speech, dress and dem eanour were in m any ways a celebration o f their working classness. This is no t to suggest th at they felt no dissatisfactions. They saw school as

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basically a waste o f tim e, and left at the earliest opp o rtu n ity w ith few or no academ ic qualifications. W hen they entered the w orld o f work there was no expectation, and rarely any realisation, o f ‘job satisfaction’. However, they did not w ant to cease being working class and becom e m iddle class, though like m ost people they w ould have welcom ed m ore money. Downes describes working-class areas where m en have often been in trouble with the law, where there is drug dealing and prostitu tio n and where fights continue into m iddle age. For the boys th eir social space is the street, and given the norm ative expectations to which they conform , it is difficult for them not to come into conflict with the law or the norm s o f ‘respectable’ working-class and m iddle-class society. This was not rebellion though: the delinquent subcultures were not contra-cultures. Furtherm ore, Downes found no evidence ofdelinquent^a/zg.s. As the title o f the book suggests, Downes argues th a t delinquency provides a solu­ tion, for som e boys, to the central problem s they experience. The delinquent subcul­ ture provides a way o f com ing to term s w ith the profound dissatisfaction experienced in schools and work. W hat they have achieved: is an opting-out of the joint middle- and skilled working-class value-system whereby work is extolled as a central life-issue, and whereby the male adolescent of semi- or unskilled origin is enjoined to either ‘better himself’ or ‘accept his station in life’. To insulate themselves against the harsh implications of this creed, the adolescent in a ‘dead-end’job, in a ‘dead’ neighbourhood, extricates himself from the belief in work as of any importance beyond the simple provision of income. (Downes, 1966: 236-7) W ith n either of these m iddle-class/skilled-w orking-class options striking them as particularly attractive, the non-aspirant and non-com pliant adolescent ‘dissociates’ him self from the two spheres o f school and work, so th at they have no im portance or credibility. W ith no educational aspirations or com m itm ent to seeking out a ‘g o o d ’ job, let alone a career, the adolescent ‘deflects w hat aspirations he has into areas of w hat has been term ed “non-w ork”’ (ibid.: 237), th at is, they pu t th eir energies into the leisure sphere. If education and work cannot provide the basis for a m eaningful life, then it is down to the o pportunities provided by the enticing space represented by leisure. The way in which leisure is used, though, has to be seen against the back­ drop o f the value system in which the boys have been brought up. It is a value system th at stresses adventure, daring, toughness and excitem ent. If these values cannot be lived out in schools or factories, or som e substitute attachm ents found, then they have to be lived out in leisure. Indeed, as Downes puts it, there is an ‘edge o f despera­ tio n ’ about the boys’ reliance on leisure. U nfortunately, because o f their class position and outlook, they have n either the m oney nor the inclination to engage in certain leisure pursuits th at could potentially realise their aspirations. In oth er words, they face blocked oppo rtu n ities in the world o f leisure, oppo rtu n ities th a t are available to

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their better-off, m iddle-class cou n terp arts. W hat is readily available, though, for the lower-working-class adolescent is delinquency: ‘Law-breaking is the only area of excitement to which he has absolutely untrammelled access.’ (Ibid.: 249) An im p o rta n t dim ension to D ow nes’s work is his p artial incorporation o f the ideas of the A m erican crim inologists M atza and Sykes (1961) (their work is looked at in m ore detail later on). M atza and Sykes argue th at so-called delinquent values are not at all peculiar to the lower w orking class, bu t are p resent as leisure values thro u g h o u t soci­ ety. They are critical o f m uch crim inology for, in their view, erroneously polarising the value system s, so th at a posited m iddle-class value system is presented as the n o r­ mal, non-delinquent value system to which m em bers o f society in general conform . Delinquency, they argued, was m ore or less evenly distributed am ong all social classes: m em bers o f the lower working class ju st happened to get caught m ore often. W hile agreeing w ith the general tenor o f this argum ent, and accepting as a ‘crim ino­ logical tru ism ’ the view th at non-delinquency is extrem ely rare, Downes (1966: 247) disagrees th at m iddle-class adolescents are as frequently and as seriously involved in delinquency as are lower-working-class adolescents: ‘M ost evidence su p p o rts the view that group delinquency is m ore frequent, persistent, diversified and less am enable to control am ong male, working class, urban adolescents than in any other sector’. In D ow nes’s view it is necessary to em ploy the notion o f differential access to leisure goals in order to m ake M atza and Sykes’s argum ent plausible. Leaving school at the earliest opportunity, working-class adolescents are, he says, m ore likely to find them selves with ‘free tim e’, as they are not involved in studying for exam inations, or pursuing apprenticeships or a career. However, because o f their dissociation from school and work, they in fact require more from leisure - bu t here they m eet blocked o pportunities. There is no educational p reparation for, and a lack o f interest in, ‘con­ structive’ hobbies, and the local youth clubs and dance halls usually fail to com pen­ sate for w hat is m issing in education and work. In this situation delinquency offers an accessible and attractive way o f achieving leisure goals.

S C H O O L S A N D T H E ‘P R O B L E M O F A D J U S T M E N T ’

The role o f the school in the lives o f working-class boys was explored in m ore detail by David Hargreaves (1967) in Social Relations in a Secondary School. The school in ques­ tion was a secondary m odern school in the no rth of E ngland taking m ainly workingclass 11-plus failures. Hargreaves is strongly influenced by the work o f A lbert Cohen, draw ing on the concepts of status frustration and the problem o f adjustm ent, as well as identifying an oppositional contra-culture.

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By the fourth and final year, two subcultures - one ‘academ ic’, the other ‘delinquescent’ - had developed in the school, with the latter concentrated in the bottom D stream . W hile the values o f the academ ic subculture were ‘oriented to those o f the school and teachers’, the values o f the delinquescent subculture, though not necessarily delinquent, were in opposition to those of the school. In the familiar term inology o f this period, the boys in the top stream were described as conform ing to m iddle-class values, and in H argreaves’s estim ation they tended to come from hom es th at although w ork­ ing class, were them selves oriented to m iddle-class values. Once again it is as if those working-class fam ilies th at respect people and property are honorary m em bers o f the m iddle class, and to th at extent are actually deviant. Conversely, the delinquescent ones are m erely conform ing to som ething th at is presum ed to be intrinsically w ork­ ing class. It is as if only those working-class professional footballers who have in te r­ nalised ‘m iddle-class’ values are capable o f behaving them selves on and off the pitch. In H argreaves’s account the bottom -stream boys lost status because they had failed on two counts: by not passing the 11-plus exam ination, and by ending up in the D stream . On top o f th at they were ‘negatively valuated’ by teachers, m aking them feel inferior; they lacked the privileges enjoyed by the A-stream boys; and when leaving school had only a lim ited range of jobs open to them . The result of all this, no t su r­ prisingly, was th at the bottom -stream boys felt resentm ent because o f status depriva­ tion. Thus, as Hargreaves puts it, this created a problem o f adjustm ent, leading to a collective, subcultural response, with the subculture adopting an oppositional stance tow ards the norm s and values o f the school. W ithin the subculture, anti-school and anti-teacher behaviour becam e a source o f status for the boys, though in practice the opposition was lim ited because o f the pow er held by teachers; m uch of the tim e the boys fell back on ‘sullen com pliance’. The sim ilarities with C ohen’s work are obvious, but there is one im p o rta n t differ­ ence betw een the two studies. Unlike Cohen, Hargreaves does no t argue th at the oppositional subculture was com posed o f boys who had previously internalised m iddle-class values, and were then denied status. He does no t see the boys’ delinques­ cent behaviour and antagonism tow ards the school as an exam ple o f ‘reaction form a­ tio n ’; feeling resentm ent at a perceived lack o f status was sufficient. This detail raises the question o f tim ing in studies such as these. Cohen, presum ably, would argue th at we would need to know if the boys concerned had at som e previous stage internalised, or at least partly internalised, m iddle-class values. Hargreaves assum es th at they have not. The top-stream boys, though, according to Hargreaves, had internalised m iddleclass values, bu t for Cohen these were unlikely candidates for delinquency because they had, in ‘college boy’ style, achieved a degree o f academ ic success and satisfied their aspirations. Alternatively, Cloward and Ohlin would see these college boys as the prim e source o f delinquency, because of the blocked o p p o rtu n ities they would even­ tually face. Even if we accept the argum ent th at lower-working-class delinquent boys typically desire, bu t are then denied, m iddle-class status, the above discussion illus­ trates the lack of clarity and consensus in these sorts o f studies regarding precisely

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when status frustration, leading to delinquency, will surface. Indeed, by 1958 Cohen had m oved away from the idea o f reaction form ation as the crucial basis o f delin­ quency (Cohen and Short, 1958).

SUBCULTURALTH EO RYrTAK IN G STOCK

Subculture has proved to be a seductive concept w ithin crim inology, w hether used in the context o f delinquent behaviour, or as a way o f u nderstanding youth subcultural form ations (see the later discussion o f the work o f the Birm ingham Centre for Con­ tem porary Cultural Studies, for exam ple). At this juncture we can take stock o f the subcultural theory th at grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. Frances H eidensohn (1989) has usefully sum m arised the lim its o f subcultural theory on the basis o f five headings: determ inism , selectivity, gender, conform ity and anom ie. Determinism indicates the strong tendency in subcultural theory, especially under the influence o f functionalism , to present an ‘over-socialised’ view o f the delinquent. Adolescents are seen as passive products o f the cultural forces around them , resp o n d ­ ing rath er like robots program m ed by ‘b a d ’ influences. Q ualities o f reflection, choice and rationality are thus neglected. U nder such determ ining conditions - for exam ple, due to living on a ‘crim inal’ housing estate - it is difficult to explain why all o f the in h ab itan ts do no t becom e delinquent. This overprediction of delinquency arises because o f w hat M atza (1964) calls an ‘em barrassm ent of riches’; in a sense the theory over-explains delinquency. Selectivity refers to the types o f subculture earm arked for attention. These are the m ore flashy, exciting exam ples th at in fact involve only a tiny m inority o f young people. Through such selectivity the m undanity, ordinariness and conform ity of large sections o f British and Am erican youth are neglected. Furtherm ore, the much m ore serious crim es carried out by adults tend to be ignored. Gender was no t seriously addressed w ithin crim inology until the late 1960s: ‘gen­ der was a sociological issue which ticked away, like a tim e bom b in the cellars, for generations’ (H eidensohn, 1989: 54). A lthough issues o f m asculinity and m achism o were on the agenda, and som etim es a few pages were even reserved for a discussion of females, the (m ale) subcultural theorists lacked the conceptual resources to deal ade­ quately with gender. This is not sim ply to do with the exclusion o f girls from their delinquency studies, though. It is to do with the social construction of notions of m asculinity and fem ininity, and the ways in which these are incorporated into the lives o f adolescents, as well as the adults with whom they come into contact. Linked to selectivity, the n otion o f conformity directs us to question critically the inability o f subcultural theory to explore the reasons so m any young people do not, to any significant degree, engage in delinquency. An u nderstanding o f conform ity, for exam ple am ong ‘college boys’, may very well be an im p o rta n t dim ension to an u n d er­ standing of delinquency.

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Finally, we come to the problem atic concept o f anomie. M any subcultural theorists have described the d e lin q u e n t’s w orld in term s o f anom ie, or a lack o f m oral regula­ tion. However, this w orld is often presented as if it was a self-contained, m ore or less in dependent social entity. As H eidensohn says: ‘Presum ably all these children have hom es, parents, siblings, elderly neighbours, churches and clubs. If they d o n ’t, then such inform ation needs to be built into the picture, since it is likely to be significant’ (ibid.: 57).

Matza and Sykes: dissenting voices The work o f the Am erican crim inologists David M atza and G resham Sykes has already been briefly referred to. As far as a critical reading o f subcultural theory is concerned, two of th eir early papers are particularly im p o rtan t. In the first (Sykes and M atza, 1957) they introduce the concept o f ‘techniques n e utralisation’, and in the second (M atza and Sykes, 1961) the concept o f ‘subterranean values’. In these two papers M atza and Sykes raised awkward and provocative questions for conventional crim inology, including subcultural theory. Essentially they set out to challenge the d o m inant view in crim inology th at delinquents were fundam entally different from non-delinquents: th a t they each inhabited separate m oral universes. This form ed the basis for M atza’s later work in which he developed a critique of the sociological determ inism with which m uch crim inological theory was infused (M atza, 1964, 1969). Needless to say, M atza was a m ajor influence on the new deviancy o f the late 1960s and early 1970s. M any o f the w riters we have looked at have stressed th at for som e adolescents, because they live in certain neighbourhoods, delinquency was norm al. Due to their social circum stances they sim ply conform ed (or because o f strains ended up con­ form ing) to a set o f delinquent norm s and values at variance with those of a supposed m ainstream culture. From this perspective, society is com posed o f a non-delinquent m ajority subscribing to non-delinquent values, and a delinquent m inority subscrib­ ing to d elinquent values. It was this sharp differentiation betw een the two th at M atza and Sykes rejected. The ‘d e lin q u e n t’, they argued, had been falsely characterised as a special kind o f person, inhabiting a special deviant world. A lthough this is a view th at satisfies com m on-sense understandings, and is not uncom m on w ithin crim inology, it is highly m isleading. It depicts the delinquent as being totally and consum m ately com m itted to a d elinquent way o f life. It is as if they brush their teeth and make love in a delinquent way, invariably refuse to help anyone in trouble, and harm people and property at every available opportunity. W ithin this fram ew ork every activity appears to be u n dertaken w ithout reference to any of the values supposedly associ­ ated with law -abiding, m ainstream society. For M atza and Sykes this is nonsense. They argue th at delinquents are routinely involved in the non-delinquent w orld, and only occasionally engage in delinquency. Furtherm ore, those who do engage in

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delinquency are not ju st aware o f non-delinquent values but, to the extent th at anyone else does, they actively believe in them . M atza and Sykes’s attem p t to connect the delinquent to law-abiding, non-delinquent society, and thereby stress the sim ilarities rath er than dissim ilarities, can be illustrated by their concept o f ‘techniques o f n eu tralisatio n ’. Basically, their argum ent is th at ju st about everyone breaks the law. However, in order to go ahead with the law breaking, individuals need to convince them selves th at w hat they are doing is not actually w rong. This is different to the excuses th at som eone m ight m ake after they have com m itted an offence. It is a process through which the individual neutralises the ‘b adness’ or ‘im m orality’ of their actions p rior to carrying them out (though the distinction betw een using techniques o f neutralisation before or after som e transgressive behaviour is not always m ade clear by the authors). It thus operates as an im p o rta n t feature o f the m otivation to com m it delinquent acts, or, as M atza puts it, to ‘d rift’ into delinquency. This was p art o f M atza’s project to show how the delin­ quent is not a determ ined creature, but exercises, at least to som e extent, free will. Techniques o f neutralisation indicate how individuals actively m ake decisions to break rules. However, according to M atza and Sykes, the fact th at people have recourse to these techniques beforehand shows th at they are aware of, and subscribe to, non-delinquent values. Some hypothetical exam ples will illustrate the sort o f situ­ ations they are referring to. A lthough they are against theft, som eone fiddles their expenses at work ‘because everybody does it, and it is a perk o f the jo b ’. Som eone is against violence, and yet hits a m an at the b ar in the face because ‘he said som ething to my wife’. Som eone is in favour o f a 30 m ph speed lim it in a built-up area, and yet travels at 40 m ph in th eir car because ‘I was in a h u rry ’. A nd so on. This a tte m p t to illum inate the continuities, rather than discontinuities, betw een the w orld o f the delinquent and th at o f the non-delinquent is also a p p aren t in their p aper on ‘subterranean values’. Here they are strongly critical o f studies o f delin­ quency th a t feel obliged to construct a definitive stan d ard in the shape o f ‘m iddleclass’ values, against which delinquent values can be m easured. For M atza and Sykes, society contains a subculture o f delinquency, rath er th an a n u m b er o f delinquent subcultures. In other words, delinquent values exist thro u g h o u t society, am ong all social classes, and should not be specifically linked to the lower w orking class. Values stressing such things as hedonism , conspicuous consum ption, m achism o, excitem ent and daring are, they say, to be encountered everywhere and are so prevalent th a t to call them ‘deviant’ is absurd. However, the m iddle and u pper classes are in a better position than the w orking class to live out these values in ap propriate settings, or in ways that do not invite the attention o f control agencies. The working-class delinquent often suffers from ‘bad tim ing’. The notion of subterranean values at least acts as an antidote to those theories th at see ‘m iddle-class’ culture as exem plifying an unquali­ fied com m itm ent to such things as hard work, keeping to the rules, politeness, and so forth, and its opposite designated as ‘w orking-class’ culture. As Downes says: ‘far

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from standing as an alien in the body of society, the delinquent may represent instead a dangerous reflection or caricature’ (Downes, 1966:246).

S e le c t e d f u r t h e r r e a d in g British stu d ies by M ays, J. B. (1 9 5 4 ) Growing Up in the City, Liverpool: Liverpool U niver­ sity Press; a n d M orris, T. P. (1 9 5 7 ) The Criminal Area: A study in social ecology, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul b o th drew on th e w ork o f th e C hicago ecologists an d re p re se n t early versions o f cu ltu ral diversity, ra th e r th a n stra in , theory. A n o th e r early exam ple o f an ap p ro ac h based upo n cu ltu ral diversity is M iller, W. B. (1 9 5 8 ) ‘Lower class culture as a generating m ilieu o f gang delinquency’, Journal o f Social

Issues, 14(3). A la n d m a rk stu d y o f a d o lescen t delin q u en cy an d cu ltu ral diversity is D ow nes, D. (1 9 6 6 ) The Delinquent Solution, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. From the p o in t o f view o f su b c u ltu ra l theory, it is w o rth reading tw o articles by the A m er­ ican crim in o lo g ists David M atza a n d G resham Sykes, w here they em p h asise the c o n tin u ­ ities, ra th e r th an d isc o n tin u itie s, betw een so-called ‘d e v ia n t’ an d ‘n o n -d e v ia n t’ w orlds: Sykes, G. and M atza, D. (1 9 5 7 ) ‘T echniques o f neutralization: A theory o f delinquency’,

American Sociological Review, 22; a n d M atza, D. and Sykes, G. (1 9 6 1 ) ‘Juvenile delin­ quency and subterranean values’, American Sociological Review, 26. Cohen, S. (2 0 0 1 ) States o f Denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press exam ines tec h n iq u es o f n e u tra liz atio n used by states as a way o f denying guilt in relation to vio latio n s o f h u m an rights. For accessible an d co m p reh en siv e overview s o f stu d ies o f y outh an d delinquency, see: M uncie, J. (2 0 0 9 ) Youth and Crime: A critical introduction, 3rd edn, London: Sage; and Brown, S. (1 9 9 8 ) Understanding Youth and Crime: Listening to youth? Buckingham: O pen University Press.

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\ K ey th e m e s • The development of sociological criminology in Britain • The break with orthodoxy: the new deviancy • The N e w Left •

Radicals and the new deviancy: the impact on British criminology

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INTRODUCTION

T his ch ap ter explores the social an d political context w ithin w hich a m assive exp an ­ sion in sociological crim inology (or the sociology o f deviance) occurred in Britain from the m id-1960s to th e early 1970s. The driving force for th is expansion was a new ap p ro ach to the study o f crim e and deviance. Developed initially in the U nited States, it was given the nam e new deviancy theory. As we shall see, the grow th o f the New Left, along w ith a so-called coun ter-cu ltu re in B ritain, were im p o rta n t factors acco u n tin g for the p o p u larity o f new deviancy th eo ry am o n g young academ ics at th a t tim e.

T H E D E V E L O P M E N T O F S O C I O L O G I C A L C R I M I N O L O G Y IN B R IT A I N

T he relatively sm all co n trib u tio n m ade by sociological perspectives to crim inology in Britain up to the m id-1960s effectively en su red th e su p p ressio n o f any significant influence from sociological crim inology in the U nited States. D u rin g the second h alf o f th e 1960s, however, this situ atio n changed dram atically, as British crim inology began to draw increasingly on A m erican sources for ideas an d in sp iratio n . From th en on, as D ow nes (1988: 46) p u ts it: ‘For two decades B ritain becam e an off-shore lab o ­ rato ry for the distillation o f ideas ferm en ted in the U.S. A’. This coincided w ith the expansion o f sociology in British universities an d poly­ technics, an d with it a rap id increase in the n u m b er o f young sociologists interested in the field o f crim e and deviance. T he result was th a t by the begin n in g o f the 1970s

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the sociology o f crim e had shed its m arginalised status, though by now the preferred term was the sociology of deviance. The pillaging o f Am erican sources by British sociologists o f deviance was not sim ­ ply because there was so m uch o f it; the innovations associated with new deviancy theory were w hat proved to be overwhelm ingly attractive. Indeed, the apparently sudden interest in this field on the p art o f British academ ics was stim ulated by new deviancy theory, though in som e cases the work had actually been produced som e years previously.

THE BREAK W IT H ORTHO DOXY:THE N E W DEVIANCY

The rush to em brace the ideas o f new deviancy theory was the result o f factors operat­ ing at both the level o f crim inology/the sociology o f deviance, and at a w ider societal level. The new deviancy developing at th at tim e - and variously called labelling theory, social reaction theory, transactionalism and interactionism - was subversive, though w hat was subverted was no t so m uch the w ider society as academ ic crim inology. It did no t provide a critique o f W estern capitalist societies, and generally would not have w anted to, though it did raise questions th at subsequent w riters utilised in the construction o f a m uch m ore radical sociology o f deviance/crim inology. It did, how ­ ever, m ark an im p o rta n t break with earlier crim inology, a crim inology th a t was by then being called orth o d o x ’. W ithin orthodox criminology, debates over the conceptual language o f the disci­ pline were conspicuously lacking. Crime was by definition ‘b a d ’ because it was against the law; deviance was ‘b a d ’ because it was against the norm s. D ebates about the m ean­ ing o f such term s becam e central to the new deviancy. Likewise, the sociological crim i­ nology th at had grown up since the war was criticised for its causal-corrective concerns and positivist m ethodologies: track down the causes o f crime, then decide on the m ost appropriate ways o f dealing with the crim inal. There was frustration with the constraints placed on crim inology by social policy and penal and legal practices. A uthoritarian versions of orthodox crim inology stressed the individual’s personal responsibility and the need for punitive action by the agencies o f social con­ trol. M ore liberal versions em phasised m ore or less determ inistic ‘social factors’, or individual/fam ily ‘problem s’ o f a psychological nature; problem s th at could be cured, or solved, or adjusted to, providing th at help was given by those with the professional expertise. W hen ‘deviance’ was m entioned in these accounts, it was assum ed that it represented a pathological state, and the im p o rtan t questions were: W hat caused it? How can we stam p it out? This was the legacy o f British crim inology th at the new deviancy theorists sought to break away from. This critical stance was p a rt o f a m uch w ider revolt in the social sciences against the set o f assum ptions underlying the, until then, d o m in an t positivist paradigm .

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et al. (1976: 1) very broadly define the debate as being between

positivism and phenomenology: In an oversim plified form the debate can be characterised as a battle betw een the m ore traditional social scientists o f this century, who are grouped together under the general label o f ‘positivists’, and the growing su p p o rters o f the alternative paradigm , who are grouped together under the general label o f ‘phenom enologists’ . . . Now here has this debate been m ore sharply felt than in th at area o f social science . . . which is trad itio n ­ ally referred to as deviance. In fact, the impact of phenomenological sociology on the area of deviance petered out fairly quickly, but Hargreaves et al.’s observation is correct i f ‘phenomenology’ is used in the loosest sense. For new deviancy theorists this basically entailed taking account of the subjective world of the actor, seen as the product of meanings constructed through social interaction. Stan Cohen described the new deviancy theorists as ‘sceptical theorists’, and for him the new deviancy was part of a revolution: This reorientation is p a rt o f w hat m ight be called the sceptical revolution in crim inol­ ogy and the sociology o f deviance. The older tradition was canonical in the sense th a t it saw the concepts it worked w ith as authoritative, stan d ard , accepted, given and u nques­ tionable. (Cohen, 1973:12) M any writers viewed what was happening to criminology as cataclysmic: ‘The 1960s saw a Renaissance in sociological criminology in Britain’ (W iles, 1976b: 14). In an attempt to gather together the various cultural threads which contributed to these changes in the sociology of deviance, Geoff Pearson (1975: 51) described the new perspectives gathering momentum in the 1960s as follows: This area o f scholarship is an odd theoretical cocktail, constructed out o f sociology, psy­ chiatry, crim inology, social adm inistration, m edia studies, law, social w'ork, political science, cultural criticism , social psychology, and even som e strands of p opular culture and m usic. This interdisciplinary m isfit finds its focus in the study of d e v ia n ts . . . the sociology o f labelling is only one o f its elem ents. W ithin the sam e dom ain one finds w hat passes for ‘phenom enology’, and also a sort o f ‘M arxism ’. A nti-psychiatry has left its m ark . . . a theoretical jigsaw which has earned the reputation o f being ‘radical’ . . . I call this space which opened out in social thou g h t in the 1960s, misfit sociology. (Origi­ nal em phasis) This gives a w hiff of the hotchpotch of sometimes frenetic ideas that grew out of the wild possibilities of the new deviancy. Given the lack of interest in, or even antago­ nism towards, the sociology of crime/deviance within the discipline of sociology in

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Britain, we can un d erstan d why crim inologists, or sociologists, who considered them selves as radicals, received the new deviancy as it arrived from across the A tlantic with unrestrained enthusiasm . It was a breath o f fresh air, bringing with it an invigorating sense of new possibilities. There was a prom ise o f a radical alternative to the m orib u n d perspectives o f traditional crim inology. The alternative to positivist crim inology offered by the new deviancy encouraged a critical fram e o f m ind, and allowed a b roader spectrum o f sociological theory and m ethod to enter the arena. Also, by focusing on ‘deviance’ rath er th an ‘crim e’, it opened out the range o f activi­ ties encom passed by research. No longer obsessed w ith juvenile delinquency, the new sociologists of deviance tu rn ed th eir attention to all sorts o f groups supposedly hav­ ing deviant status: nudists, the blind, the m entally ill, the m entally handicapped, poolroom hustlers, Hell’s Angels, drifters, dropouts, illegal drug users, blackm ailers, and so on. By the early 1970s though, som e new deviancy w riters were becom ing w or­ ried th at this shift o f em phasis was actually c o n tributing to the deviantisation o f such groups. One exam ple o f this view is provided by Alexander Liazos (1972), who fam ously used the phrase ‘nuts, sluts and p reverts’. (‘Preverts’, incidentally, is the cor­ rect spelling, although when used by British w riters it is inevitably spelt ‘p e rv ert’. The phrase originally appeared in the 1960s film Doctor Strangelove or: IIow I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It was used by one o f the redneck characters.) After the initial b u rst o f new deviancy activity at the end o f the 1960s, the dust began to settle and m ore careful assessm ents of the im pact could be m ade. Certainly, new deviancy theory represented a move tow ards a m ore sophisticated approach to theory, with deviant m otivations and official reactions to deviant behaviour at the core. In the post-new deviancy period from the early 1970s, a n um ber o f strands in varying degrees critical o f w hat had gone before began to develop, and these are exam ined below. W hat we can note is th at since the late 1960s the area o f crim e and deviance has provided an arena for a discussion o f the m ost fu ndam ental theoretical concerns o f sociology. In this context the issue o f the relationship betw een the ‘deviant’ and the sociolo­ gist is o f particular interest. The 1960s saw a move away from a situation where the crim inologist in effect lined up w ith the rule enforcers, to one where the stance adopted was either am bivalent or even explicitly on the side o f the deviant. Becker, for instance, one of the m ost influential Am erican crim inologists at the tim e, argued th at the researcher should take sides. This idea had im p o rta n t im plications for the way in which new deviancy theory was received in Britain, though there were signifi­ cant differences betw een the m ore liberal sociologists and those on the left, especially w hat was called the ‘New Left’. For the liberal there was, som ew here w ithin new deviancy, the prom ise o f a m ore hum ane welfare state, where the ‘o u tsid er’ was treated with dignity - dignity com m ensurate w ith a fuller appreciation of the au th en ­ ticity o f his or her actions. This stance was w hat ‘law and o rd e r’ letter w riters to the press would characterise, derogatorily, as ‘soft’. For those on the left, the prom ise led in a different direction, and brought to the surface w hat may be described as latent

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m oral am biguities regarding deviants and their actions. In a review o f new deviancy, Jock Young (1975: 63) has w ritten: ‘A ttacking a theoretical position to which one is opposed often tends tow ards the erection o f an alternative position which is m erely an inversion o f one’s o p p o n e n t’s’. The inversion o f traditional crim inology created an interesting situation. If crim e was previously pathological, it was now ‘n o rm al’. If crim inologists had previously sided with official versions o f reality, they now sided w ith the deviant’s. If previous research was aim ed at correction, it was now aim ed at ‘app reciatio n ’. And - w herein lies the crux o f the problem - if crim e was previously ‘w rong’, was it now ‘rig h t’? Was there som ething in crim e/deviance th at the left could positively appreciate, th at is, explicitly approve of? Various new deviancy lum inaries such as Becker (1963), Erikson (1962) and Kitsuse (1962), had replaced the absolutism ’ of earlier crim inology with a new ‘relativism ’. No behaviour, it was argued, was inherently deviant or inherently ‘b a d ’; deviant status depended upon the power to label. This idea was to take some crim inologists on the left down some interesting highways. D uring the 1960s the orthodox left, as opposed to the em erging New Left, in one sense occupied a sim ilar position to th at o f the conservative crim inologist. A lthough m oral am bivalence on a personal level may have existed , publicly crim e was judged to be ‘w rong’, though o f course the respective explanations and solutions would have been different. For the New Left, however, the ideas introduced by new deviancy th e ­ ory led to a fundam ental questioning o f com m on-sense distinctions betw een crime and non-crim e and deviance and non-deviance (‘d econstructionism ’ of this sort is now a staple o f postm o d ern ist perspectives). If nothing was inherently im m oral or evil, why should official, or ruling-class definitions be accepted? Perhaps som e acts labelled deviant are in fact acts th at can, from a socialist point of view, be approved of. This is to move beyond the argum ent th at som e legal activities, such as arm s deals, are m ore harm ful than som e illegal activities, to one where certain deviant acts are to be welcom ed because they are beneficial in socialist term s. Eventually, this was to lead som e radical w riters to argue th at crim e and deviance were form s o f political action. The com m itm ent o f new deviancy theory to ‘siding w ith the deviant’ was in te r­ preted in different ways. For som e it m eant organising research and theory around the deviant’s version o f reality. For others it m eant actually supporting the actions o f at least som e defined deviants, and it is here th at the m oral am bivalence enters, leading to statem ents such as ‘the m ass o f delinquents are literally involved in the practice of redistributing private p ro p e rty ’ (Taylor et al., 1973). It can also lead to a full-blooded rom anticism , where all so-called deviants are viewed as courageous nonconform ists fighting an evil system . If, say, m em bers o f the working class are thought to be frustratingly docile, or at best w rapped up in strategies based on econom ism , then it is perhaps tem pting for radical crim inologists to see in deviance an exam ple o f struggle against the state apparatus o f capitalism . It is this th at raises the im p o rta n t ques­ tion o f w hether a left-wing crim inologist or sociologist o f deviance should, as it were,

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align them selves w ith judges, m agistrates, prison governors and police officers, all of whom are in the business o f m aintaining the status quo, rather than with the deviant who is threatening it. This niggling problem has h aunted various types o f radical crim inology since the 1960s, though it has not always been given explicit attention.

W id e r societal factors: the counter-culture

W hen explaining the friendly reception given to Am erican new deviancy theory by young British sociologists and crim inologists during the second half o f the 1960s, we also need to consider the broader cultural and political developm ents th at took place. On a cultural level the 1960s saw the grow th o f the so-called counter-culture, and on a political level, an increasingly influential challenge to the old, orthodox Left from w hat came to be know n as the ‘New Left’. Sociologists and crim inologists in this country were not im m une to the effects o f these two m ovem ents. Thus, from the mid1960s a clim ate of opinion was being generated th at was to prove highly conducive to the ideas o f the new deviancy. In essence the counter-culture represented a disengagem ent w ith the values of m ainstream , conform ist culture, and an a tte m p t to create a non-m aterialistic, m ore expressive and m eaningful alternative. W ith a subjectivist and hedonistic fram e of reference, the em phasis was on personal liberation from the constraints im posed by w hat was seen as a dehum anised consum er society, where things had becom e m ore im p o rta n t th an people. Hence the resistance to d o m inant ideas regarding such things as sexuality, drug use and a p propriate style o f dress. The prim ary source o f the ‘great refusal’ (as M arcuse pu t it) represented by the counter-culture o f the 1960s was affluent m iddle-class youth, and the greatest w rath was reserved for the stultifying m iddle-class lifestyle associated with affluent su b u r­ bia, the land o f ‘little boxes’ in the song sung by Pete Seeger. In fact, the little boxes from which m any o f them had come: For here were people protesting not against material hardship, but against the emo­ tional containment of affluence, a feeling that affluence was not all that there was to life and that public success in the affluent world might be personally meaningless. (Pearson, 1975: 83) The rejection o f consum erism and conventional m ores, and a corresponding com m it­ m ent to cultural diversity, harm onised w ith the sym pathetic, even celebratory, approach to deviance taken by the new deviancy theorists. This is no t to say, of course, th at British sociologists who latched on to the ideas of the new deviancy were dropouts, who, high on drugs, w rote th eir books and papers in betw een listening to Donovan and Jim i H endrix in a convention-shunning hippy com m une. W hat was im p o rta n t was the way in which elem ents o f the counter-culture perm eated into the

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lives o f a whole range o f people, though their com m itm ent stopped short of, say, dropping out o f society. At the tim e, in fact, m any o f the sociologists concerned were undergraduate or postgraduate students, or in some cases young lecturers, and the desire to acquire qualifications and teaching posts, and to w rite books, indicates a degree o f com m itm ent to staying in the system . However, being a stu d en t did provide rather m ore oppo rtu n ities than did paid em ploym ent for experim enting with ideas and lifestyles associated with the counter-culture. The influence o f the counter-culture on a younger generation in Britain was swift and pervasive. Ironically, the com m ercial interests sustaining a consum er society so vehem ently rejected by the counter-culture were responsible for the dissem ination of m any o f these ideas. W ithin a sh o rt space o f tim e com m ercial interests were eagerly seizing and m arketing in a vulgarised form anything th at would sell. It is a fam iliar process which, in this case, was to find its nad ir when, in the early 1970s, M arks & Spencer finally brought W oodstock to the High Street when they started selling pale blue trouser suits with a p rinted p a tte rn o f fake stitched patches. In the sum m er of 1967, with Scott M cKenzie’s San Franciso (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair) filling the air, holiday-m akers in Blackpool and S outhend would have seen Indian love beads, cardboard h eadbands and plastic daffodils by the score. In a classic review o f post-w ar cultural m ovem ents, Jeff N uttall (1970:200) paints this picture: Nine months after the first gatherings in Haight-Ashbury girls and office workers were wandering down the Brighton and Blackpool seafronts, jangling their souvenir prayerbelts, trailing their Paisley bedspreads, brandishing daffodils and trying to look tripped out. The Beatles had gone 'flower power’ and it was up to the kids to do their best to follow. M any com m entators saw m em bers o f the counter-culture as harbingers o f new, p er­ sonally fulfilling strategies for coping with a future based on leisure. The Am erican sociologist Fred Davis (1967:12), for instance, in a p aper w ith the attention-grabbing title ‘W hy all o f us may be hippies som eday’, celebrated the prophetic nature o f the counter-culture, suggesting th at hippies were ‘rehearsing in vivo possible cultural solutions to central life problem s posed by the em erging society o f the future’. In spite o f these com m endations, though, various contradictions w ithin the counter-culture began to appear, and critics on the left sta rte d to question its radical credentials. Because of its nature, however, the counter-culture was hardly going to deliver a coherent political program m e, let alone a socialist one. In reality, when they did participate in the activities of the counter-culture, it was the left at play rather th an the left at (class) war; the barricades in Paris in 1968 were built by politicos rath er th an hippies. Ultimately, the counter-culture represented a critique of, and reaction to, no t so m uch capitalism as m odern, consum er-oriented society abstracted from its econom ic and political structures. The dissatisfaction show n by those on the political left was

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eventually paralleled by a dissatisfaction with new deviancy theory am ong radical sociologists, and with it a corresponding shift to a m uch ‘h a rd e r’ political stance. The daw ning o f the Age o f A quarius signalled a rom antic celebration o f youth. They would lead people back to the G arden o f Eden, though they could take som e o f the artefacts o f m odern technological society with them , bu t only som e o f them . Because they were identified with m iddle-class suburbia, such things as vacuum cleaners and food processers were frow ned upon, w hilst electric guitars, stereo system s and syn­ thesisers, also products o f an affluent capitalist technology, were acceptable. Youth would change society, but som ehow capitalism would still exist.

THE N E W LEFT

For the New Left too, m odern life was characterised by a soul-destroying consum erism , though here the target was a specifically capitalist society. Day-to-day social order, the argum ent ran, was m aintained not by overt m easures of social control, but by con­ centrating people’s m inds on an overriding concern with consum er goods. Im portant social and political questions were relegated to second place behind questions about the best deodorant or washing m achine to use. In the words of M arcuse, capitalist soci­ eties were ‘one dim ensional’. O f course the left in Europe had for a long time equated capitalism with self-centred consum erism , but from the perspective o f the New Left, older groups, such as the Com m unist Party, had become ossified: their form ulations and strategies had ceased to provide a m eaningful alternative vision. The New Left also shared with the counter-culture a preoccupation with subjec­ tivism and the need for a personal liberation o f thought, out o f which will grow a basis for revolutionary change. In the case o f the New Left, though, this was explicitly linked to the removal o f capitalism . W hile the New Left did confront capitalism as a system , it was in a m an n er th at m any older European socialists found strange. Essen­ tially this was because o f the im portance attached to the relationship betw een the personal and the political. Again we see how the influence o f a m ore broadly based intellectual fram ew ork was im p o rta n t for the subsequent reception given to the ideas of new deviancy theory by radical sociologists. The intellectual roots o f the New Left lay in w hat is called the Frankfurt or critical’ School, whose ideas were developed in pre-w ar G erm any, and during the w ar when its m em bers were in exile in the United States. U ndoubtedly, this school held a form i­ dable array o f intellectual talent: Adorno, H orkheim er, From m , Benjam in, Lowenthal and M arcuse. The Frankfurt School believed th at the view o f h u m an k in d ’s relation­ ship to nature th at grew out of the Enlightenm ent, although it discarded the naive anim ism o f an earlier period, was not fulfilling the prom ise o f real social progress. As hum an beings had m anipulated nature, so those w ith pow er used technology to m anipulate the less powerful. This m anipulation, however, did no t occur sim ply at a

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physical level, for th eir consciousness and senses were also m anipulated, and the Frankfurt School argued th at w hat was needed was a ‘sense’ liberation. M arcuse, one o f the m ost p rom inent p ro p o n en ts o f these ideas in the 1960s, saw in the som etim es serious, yet at oth er tim es silly and childish, behaviour o f the counter-culture the pos­ sible basis for liberation. A later m em ber o f the Frankfurt School, H aberm as, com ­ m ented on the political content o f the counter-culture: I consider the politicisation of private conflicts a singular result of the protest move­ ment . . . Today, difficulties that a mere 2 or 3 years ago would have been passed for pri­ vate matters . . . now claim political significance and ask to be justified in political concepts. Psychology seems to turn into politics - perhaps a reaction to the reality that politics, in so far as it relates to the masses, has long been translated into psychology. (Habermas quoted in Pearson, 1975) T hus in the 1960s there were p oints of fusion betw een the counter-culture and the New Left, and these produced definitions o f ‘political’ notable for th eir extrem e fluid­ ity and flexibility - a them e th at was to be picked up by sociologists o f deviance in the post-new deviancy period. In a range o f publications alm ost anything was likely to be prefixed by the term ‘the politics o f : the politics o f ecstasy, o f m adness, o f sexuality, o f shoplifting, and so on. Those involved in m aking everything ‘political’ did so from a n u m b er o f perspectives, and w ith varying degrees o f sophistication. Poets, jo u rn al­ ists, novelists, psychiatrists, cultural pundits, as well as sociologists o f deviance, car­ ried forw ard this break with traditionalism . M any o f them also began to use the term ‘radical’ to underline opposition to traditional ways o f thinking, and thus there appeared m ovem ents such as radical social work, radical education and radical ph i­ losophy. There was an ironic subtext to all o f this th at has already been alluded to in the dis­ cussion o f the counter-culture. This is th at the ‘radical’, ‘revolutionary’, ‘tran sfo rm ­ ing’ ideas o f the New Left came to be dissem inated and popularised by the very capitalist institu tio n s against which the radicalism was aim ed. A striking exam ple of this is provided by a book published in 1968 and w ritten by a French stu d en t prom i­ nent in the uprisings in Paris in th at year. The author, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, cannot resist pointing out the contradiction: the publishers now come chasing after me, begging me to write about anything I choose, good or bad, exciting or dull; all they want is something they can sell - a revolu­ tionary gadget with marketable qualities. . . publishers are falling over themselves to cash in on the May events. In our commercial world, individual capitalists are perfectly willing to pave the way for their own destruction, to broadcast revolutionary ideas, pro­ vided only that these help to fill their pockets. . . They do not even seem to be bothered by the fact that their cash will be used for the next round of Molotov cocktails. (Cohn-Bendit and Cohn-Bendit, 1968:11)

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RADICALS A N D T H E N E W DEVIANCY: THE IMPACT ON BRITISH C RIM IN O LO G Y

A gainst a backdrop o f counter-cultural and New Left influences, new deviancy theory was absorbed with relish by a generation of British sociologists. Soon, as w ith CohnBendit, publishers were seeking out work from these radical sociologists. This was im p o rta n t in that, coupled w ith a grow th in sociology in general, and the sociology of deviance in particular, it c o ntributed to a situation where radical crim inology broke free o f any significant dependence on funding from institu tio n s such as the Home Office, the police and the prisons. Crim inological work th at was tied to these in stitu ­ tional dem ands, and often referred to as m ainstream adm inistrative’ crim inology, did, it should be noted, continue thro u g h o u t this period u nder review - and still continues. David G arland (1985b) has strongly argued th at since its inception crim inology has always been linked to external’ political and ideological dem ands. In other w ords, the discipline has been tied to the adm inistrative and ideological constraints im posed upon it by its political paym asters; and we have seen som ething o f this when looking at the nature o f crim inology up to the 1960s. To this extent, and in spite of pretensions to scientific status, crim inological research has conform ed with the requirem ents o f the state. However, n otw ithstanding the validity o f G arlan d ’s argu­ m ent, the sociology of deviance/crim inology did, at th at m om ent in the late 1960s, provide, at least for radical practitioners, a space in which to work th at was relatively free from these constraints. As Jock Young (1988:164) has said: The fall-out from the new deviancy explosion has been considerable. Radical criminol­ ogy has its powerbase in those areas of what one might call unsubsidised criminology. That is criminology as it is taught in the schools and polytechnics, the universities and the colleges of education. It has not held sway over those parts of criminology which are paid for directly out of central government funds. Furtherm ore, m any o f the ideas derived from radical crim inology have also had an im pact in areas outside these teaching in stitutions and ‘have entered into the general social perspective o f educated sections o f the population as they have influenced the thinking o f establishm ent crim inology its e lf (ibid.). An im p o rta n t institu tio n al developm ent for the new deviancy in Britain was the creation in 1968 o f the N ational Deviancy Conference (NDC), which acted as a forum for radical crim inologists. C ontinuing well into the 1970s, the conferences organised by the NDC quickly a ttracted large audiences, and played a key role in augm enting and developing alternatives to m ainstream crim inology. As Downes (1988:177) says: The great appeal of the NDC was not only to sociologists of crime in search of a congen­ ial forum, but also to younger sociologists who saw in deviance an escape route from the positivist methods and functionalist orthodoxy of much British sociology.

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T hat m any o f the m ain figures in British crim inology today were closely involved in the NDC is a fu rth er indication of its significant co ntribution to the field o f crim inol­ ogy. Achieving senior positions in universities and research centres, the influence o f these crim inologists on the shape o f the discipline in this country has been far-reaching. In fact, the success o f the assault on m ainstream crim inology m ounted by these figures was such th at their ideas were to becom e the new m ainstream , at least as far as the teaching o f crim inology was concerned. Now in th eir fifties and sixties, they did no t have to w ithstand a com parable onslaught from the next generation o f radical crim inologists, though they may have them selves m odified their views. The extraor­ dinary fecundity, in term s o f quantity and quality, th at characterised the late 1960s and early 1970s was no t to be repeated by the new generation - bu t this was not because o f a decline in ability. By the late 1970s cut-backs in the funding o f university and polytechnic postgraduate program m es reduced the pool of rising crim inologists, and teaching posts in sociology dep artm en ts had becom e thin on the ground in the 1980s. This is an im p o rta n t factor when explaining the lack o f any substantial p a ra ­ digm atic challenge from radical crim inologists on the scale o f th at m ounted against the m ainstream during the 1960s. The ‘unsubsidised crim inology’ associated with the new deviancy period established a particular intellectual framework, deriving from agreem ent - at least in the short term - regarding how crim inology was to be studied, w hat was to be studied and why it was to be studied. At the core o f new deviancy theory lay the theoretical insights o f interactionism , som etim es with bits o f M arxism or phenom enology added. The areas studied reflected a move away from an earlier concentration on juvenile delinquency tow ards a broader concept o f ‘deviance’. Some of the m ore im portant studies from the period illustrate this: soft drug use (Young, 1971); industrial sabotage (Taylor and W alton, 1971); suicide (Atkinson, 1971); white-collar crime (Carson, 1970); surviving long-term im prisonm ent (Cohen and Taylor, 1972); ideological violence (Cohen, 1969); Teddy Boys (Jefferson, 1973). The ‘why’ elem ent coalesced around the notion of ‘apprecia­ tio n ’, and the need to give the deviant an authentic voice. This was a clear departure from the corrective concerns o f the crim inology th at had gone before.

Divisions and disputes

By 1973 various divisions involving the ‘how ’, ‘w h a t’ and ‘w hy’ o f crim inology had begun to surface am ong m em bers o f the NDC. D isputes over how crim inology was to be studied reflected grow ing criticism o f interactionism and the labelling theory asso­ ciated with it. Some wished to develop a m ore radical, explicitly M arxist crim inology; others opted for the prom ises offered by phenom enology; som e attem pted to incor­ porate the insights offered by an o th er theoretical developm ent originating in the United States, control theory, with interactionism ; w hilst others w ished to refine interactionist crim inology.

C R IM IN O LO G Y

D isputes over w hat to study were directed not so m uch at areas o f study perse (e.g., skinheads versus hippies), as at the w ider m oral and political im plications of the choices m ade. E thnographic research, for instance, was accused by som e o f aiding the im position o f deviant statuses on m arginalised groups, exploiting them in the fur­ therance o f an academ ic career and providing data useful to those in power. Sim ilar sentim ents had been expressed in a fam ous (or infam ous, depending on one’s view­ point) address to the Am erican Sociological Association in 1968 by a young sociolo­ gist called M artin Nicolaus. At one p o in t he scandalised his audience by telling them : the professional eyes of the sociologist are on the down people, and the professional palm of the sociologist is stretched toward the up people. .. he is an Uncle Tom not only for this government and ruling class but for any. (Nicolaus quoted in Gouldner, 1971:10) This was to a largely conservative audience. To apply a sim ilar critique to the new deviancy theorists, as som e radicals were doing, was particularly m ordant. Although these divisions began to becom e very public in 1973, they had been a latent feature of the new deviancy from the start; by 1973 the divisions had reached critical m ass. W ithin a short space of tim e the field began to fragm ent, w ith different strands flying off in different directions. In conform ity with an already established p attern , these divisions appeared first in the U nited States, and were then picked up shortly afterw ards by British counterparts. One o f the central unstable elem ents in new deviancy was the concept o f deviance itself: how m uch mileage was left in it? In the next chapter the new deviancy is discussed in detail, and in particular one of its chief com ponents, labelling theory (though supporters came to prefer the term labelling perspective). This will include an exam ination o f a critical assault on labelling theory, building up betw een 1968 and 1973, and pursued on two fronts: first, for treating the deviant as a passive ‘u n d erd o g ’, and second, for concentrating on ‘nuts, sluts and p reverts’ (I’ll retain the original spelling).

Se le c te d fu rth e r re ad in g The cultural transform ations associated with the 1960s are reviewed in Nuttall, J. (1970)

Bomb Culture, St Albans: Paladin. A collection of chapters addressing some of this period is Wiles, P. N. P. (ed) (1976) The Sociology of Crime and Delinquency in Britain, Vol. 2, The New Criminology, Oxford: Martin Robertson. See also: Rock, P. (ed) (1988) A History of British Criminology, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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r K ey th e m e s •

Labelling theory

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Learning to become ‘deviant’

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Primary and secondary deviation

• The amplification of deviance •

Conceptualising deviance

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Criticisms of the new deviancy

V

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T his c h ap ter provides a detailed discussion o f new deviancy th eo ry - an in te rac tio n ist ap p ro ach to the analysis o f crim e and deviance. Key concepts, such as labelling and m oral panic, are explained, to g eth er w ith the w ork o f m ajor B ritish an d A m erican th eo rists. However, the a rg u m e n ts p u t forw ard by new deviancy th eo rists did a ttra c t various criticism s, an d these are also discussed in th is chapter. As we have seen in the last chapter, new deviancy th eo ry an d the in te rac tio n ist ideas on w hich it w as based began to have a stro n g im p act on crim inology, o r the sociology o f deviance as it becam e know n, in B ritain an d th e U nited States d u rin g the m iddle to late 1960s. W ith a shift away from crim e tow ards the b ro a d e r concept o f deviance, in te rac tio n ism con tin u ed to influence crim inological th o u g h t thro u g h the 1970s and, indeed, up to the p re sen t day. Interactionism m arked an im p o rta n t break with the causal-corrective approach of traditional crim inology, where crim e was investigated and explained w ithin the context o f social policy and legal and penal processes. In the orthodox crim inology looked at earlier, crim e and deviance tended to be conceptualised in term s o f pathology, accord­ ing to som e assum ed yardstick o f acceptable behaviour, and the search for causes (of a m ore or less positivistic nature) was linked to the eradication o f the crim inal or deviant behaviour. M any o f these orthodox studies, especially where they had forgotten the lessons to be learnt from the early ethnographic w ork o f the Chicago School, denied authenticity to the d eviant’s account o f w hat they did, and thus rendered invalid subjective m otivations and purposes. Im portantly, this break with a causal-corrective

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orientation, signalled by the arrival of new deviancy theory, brought with it a reconcep­ tualisation of w hat criminology, or rather the sociology of deviance, should be about. The developm ent o f a sceptical approach m eant a disengagem ent from the com m on­ sense agenda obsessed with answering the question, ‘W hy did they do it?’ in favour of analyses o f reactions to perceived deviance, and the subsequent im plications for those so labelled. The new deviancy was in fact often referred to as social reaction theory. The interactionist approach to deviance had its roots in the earlier work of George H erbert M ead (1934) and the sym bolic interactionist school, though it did come in a n um ber o f guises. Following the sym bolic interactionists, atten tio n was on the indi­ vidual social actor and the ways in which he or she develops perceptions o f self and others through social interaction. And it was this subjectivism th at allowed for the assim ilation (albeit som etim es crudely) o f certain ideas from phenom enology. M atza’s work with Sykes was clearly relevant to this reorientation in crim inology, as was the ‘n aturalism ’ o f his phenom enological perspective developed later on. M atza’s concept o f ‘app reciatio n ’ was particularly influential. A ppreciation m eant th at the sociologist should aim for truthfulness and accuracy in their descriptions o f social phenom ena, rath er th an im pose th eir own understandings on them . T hus, instead of carrying out one’s study on the basis o f presuppositions regarding the (im m oral) nature o f deviant behaviour, w ith the hope o f eradicating it, the sociologist should a tte m p t to present the behaviour in its own term s. As M atza (1969:17) puts it: ‘These appreciative sentim ents are easily sum m arized: We do no t for a m om ent wish th at we could rid ourselves of deviant phenom ena. We are intrigued by them . They are an intrinsic, ineradicable, and vital p a rt of hum an society’.

LABELLING THEORY

Above all, interactionism is associated with labelling theory, though many have ques­ tioned its status as a theory and prefer to call it a perspective. As one of the influential m em bers o f this school put it, w riting retrospectively in the 1970s: ‘I have never thought that the original statem ents by m yself and others w arranted being called theo­ ries, at least not theories of the fully articulated kind th at they are now criticized for not being’ (Becker, 1974:41-2). W ith this qualification, we will refer to it here as a theory. Labelling theorists focused on the interactions betw een individuals or groups and those who label or define them as deviant. O ut o f these interactional encounters say, betw een police and ‘d elinquents’ - the p articip an ts will construct m eanings: namely, images and understandings o f both them selves and the others involved. The relationship betw een defm ers and defined is conceived o f as processual; th at is, indi­ viduals are involved in a process w hereby they subjectively construct a sym bolic w orld. U nder certain circum stances these interactions lead to the application o f a ‘deviant’ label. This, in turn, has psychological im plications in th at those so labelled may come to see them selves in term s o f the label. It also has social im plications in

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th at such labelling is likely to have an im pact on the way in which individuals labelled as deviant are treated by others in the future. This link betw een labelling and future behaviour was partly derived from M e rto n ’s idea o f a ‘self-fulfilling prophesy’. From the perspective o f labelling theory the quality o f ‘deviance’ does not reside in the behaviour itself, bu t is, rather, the outcom e o f responses to that behaviour by var­ ious social audiences. Behaviour th at is potentially deviant is said to occur all the tim e, am ong all sections o f society (though, in effect, all behaviour is potentially deviant). W hich behaviour actually gets labelled deviant depends upon how and where it is carried out, and on the nature o f the interactional responses: • In som e instances the individual sim ply does no t get caught. They perhaps possess the resources to cover th eir tracks. • Som etim es the audience lacks the pow er to apply the deviant label. Clearly, rela­ tionships o f power are central to labelling processes. • Som etim es the general circum stances allow the behaviour to be norm alised. In an o th er context the behaviour may easily be defined as deviant, b u t contingent factors, such as being on holiday or inebriated, may allow the behaviour, although it m ight be odd or frightening or whatever, to be kept within the fram e of norm ality. • Som etim es the individual is able to resist the im pact of labelling, perhaps because of others who can protect th eir non-deviant identity. O ut o f these com plex interactional processes the particip an ts in te rp ret and negotiate th eir u nderstandings o f w hat is going on. In short, they construct social reality. The process o f becom ing deviant reaches a key stage when the recipient o f the label begins to accept the label and sees him or herself as deviant. From this b rief outline we can see th at interactio n ism ’s focus on reactions to p er­ ceived deviance m arked a radical d eparture from traditional crim inology’s concen­ tration on the causal factors leading to deviance in the first place. This is not to say, however, th at this dim ension to the study o f deviance had been entirely ignored in the past. The A m erican crim inologist T annenbaum (1938) provided the first serious dis­ cussion o f the effects on the young delinquent of negative judgem ents by the com m u­ nity. One of labelling th eo ry ’s pivotal concepts, ‘prim ary deviation’, was originally introduced by Edwin Lem ert in 1951, and How ard Becker’s article ‘Becoming a m ari­ juana u ser’, one o f the m ost influential and widely quoted texts, was first published in 1953. It was no t until 1963, though, th a t his Outsiders: Studies in the sociology o f deviance, a collection o f essays on m arijuana use and reactions to it, first appeared.

L E A R N I N G T O B E C O M E ‘D E V I A N T ’

Becker’s Outsiders found an enthusiastic audience am ong m ore radical British and Am erican sociologists in the late 1960s. Here was a fundam ental critique o f a

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crim inological orthodoxy that conceptualised the social world in term s of the norm al on one side o f the m oral line, and deviance/crim e on the other. Becker had attem pted to bring to light the continuities, rather than discontinuities, between deviant and non­ deviant worlds. Significantly, instead of the concept o f crime, with its connotations of m oral absolutism , he used the concept of deviance, and he shifted attention away from the supposed intrinsic qualities o f the rule breaker tow ards the reactions of the social audience, and the interactional processes leading to the application o f the deviant label. Becker traced the processes through which an individual learns to becom e a m ari­ juana user. The behaviour is no t seen as resulting from deviant m otivations; these come later because o f the reactions o f control agents and their efforts to deviantise those involved. Put an o th er way, p rior to any deviant label being applied, the individ­ ual chooses no t to be deviant, bu t to use a drug th at happens to be strongly frowned upon, and indeed, illegal. Becker aim ed to show how deviant identities and u n d er­ standings depended upon the labelling process. In this way he sought to infuse the user’s original behaviour with authenticity - to show how choices are m ade. This was a challenge to traditional form ulations th at viewed deviant m otivations as resulting from determ inistic forces operating p rior to any labelling. As M atza (1969:110) says in a com m entary on Becker’s analysis: ‘it becom es a p p aren t th at anyone can becom e a m arijuana user and th at no one has to’ (original em phasis). Two im p o rta n t elem ents o f labelling theory are present in Becker’s account: first, an anti-determ inistic stance, allowing people to m ake choices and exercise th eir wills, and second, following successful labelling by control agents, the notion o f a deviant ‘career’. For labelling theorists, the original causes o f the behaviour, as traditionally understood, are not on the agenda. M odern societies, they say, are com posed o f dif­ ferent groups with different norm s and values, and deviant behaviour - or m ore accu­ rately, behaviour th at could be labelled as deviant - is w idespread. However, only som e o f it becom es officially designated as deviant. M ore people are doing their own thing th an traditional crim inology had seem ed to realise. And, as Edwin Lem ert, an o th er em inent w riter in the labelling tradition, argued, trying to establish the orig­ inal ‘causes’ is pointless. In his view, all th at deviants have in com m on is th at they have been labelled deviant. As the central canon o f labelling theory is th at deviance is ‘caused’ by the reactions of a social audience, then, logically, analyses have to concern them selves with the cre­ ation o f deviance at th at point. The position is well sum m ed up by Becker (1963: 9) in this widely quoted passage: Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as out­ siders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’. The deviant is one to whom that label has been successfully applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label.

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The sam e relativistic view of deviance had also been pu t forw ard by two other labelling theorists: Forms of behavior per se do not differentiate deviants from non-deviants; it is the responses of the conventional and conforming members of society which identify and interpret behavior as deviant which sociologically transforms persons into deviants. (Kitsuse (1962) quoted in Taylor et al., 1973:144) Deviance is not a property inherent in certain forms of behaviour; it is a property con­ ferred upon these forms by the audiences which directly or indirectly witness them. (Erikson (1962) quoted in Taylor et al., 1973:144) We can see from these quotations th at the prim ary focus o f labelling theory is on the application o f already existing rules to particular people. From this perspective who gets selected, and why they get selected, becom e crucial, given the argum ent th at it is not the distinctive quality o f the behaviour itself th at is the determ ining factor; no behaviour is in itself deviant. Thus rule breaking, as such, does no t designate a person as deviant; a response to th at rule breaking is required. According to Becker, particu ­ lar individuals and groups are labelled deviant because o f w hat he calls ‘career c ontin­ gencies’. These are extraneous factors, external to the actual behaviour itself, and include such things as the dress and dem eanour o f the participants, the neighbour­ hood in which they live, and police resources and policies.

PR IM A R Y A N D SECON DARY DEVIATION

The im pact o f labelling on the deviant’s future behaviour was explored by Lem ert (1967), who introduced the concepts o f prim ary and secondary deviation. In his view, trad itio n al crim inology had pu t the cart before the horse by assum ing th at deviant behaviour came first, and then triggered social control responses. At the tim e this seem ed to m any a startling proposition: This is a large turn away from older sociology which tended to rest heavily upon the idea that deviance leads to social control. 1 have come to believe that the reverse idea, i.e., social control leads to deviance, is equally tenable and the potentially richer premise for studying deviance in modern society. (Ibid.: v) He illustrated this link betw een reaction and deviance through his research into stuttering in a n um ber of native Am erican tribes in British C olum bia. In som e o f these tribes he found that the language contained concepts relating to stuttering, and th at som e m em bers o f the tribe did stutter. A m ong neighbouring tribes, however, no such concepts existed, and stuttering seem ed to be absent. Clearly, there was no

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physiological reason why this should be so, and it could no t be connected w ith the contacts th at the tribes had had with white people. Lem ert found th at in the tribes where stu tterin g existed, great em phasis was placed on oratory and storytelling. Chil­ dren were socialised into a set o f norm s and values that placed great stress on not stuttering, and failure to pu t on a ‘good perform ance’ was ridiculed. Lem ert con­ cluded th at the enorm ous pressure placed on people to speak 'pro p erly ’, and the institutionalisation o f the social reaction to those th at d id n ’t (to the ‘deviants’), actu­ ally led to the developm ent o f stuttering: th a t is, the social reaction created the deviance. In tribes where these cultural expectations did no t exist, there was, of course, no negative reaction, and hence no deviance o f this type. Lem ert em phasised the ubiquitous nature o f ‘deviance’. M ost o f the tim e, he argued, individuals ‘get away’ with such behaviour, m eaning th at it rem ains unla­ belled, and they are therefore able to m aintain a non-deviant self-image, and are not treated as deviant by those around them . He describes this as prim ary deviation, and as such it is o f little interest to interactionists. However, u nder certain circum stances, again not d ependent upon the nature o f the behaviour, there is a social reaction and the individuals concerned are labelled as deviant. This is described as secondary devi­ ation, which is seen as: ‘deviant behavior, or social roles based upon it, which becom es a m eans o f defense, attack or adap tatio n to the overt and covert problem s created by the societal reaction to prim ary deviation’ (ibid.: 17). An acceptance o f the label, and the carrying out o f fu rth er deviant acts, may th ere­ fore be m echanism s used by those labelled to cope w ith the problem s posed by the labelling. Obviously, the im position of the label ‘deviant’ involves, at its core, judge­ m ents about a p erso n ’s m oral w orth. The label can easily becom e the new ‘m aster sta ­ tu s’, superseding a range o f other statuses such as m other, teacher and footballer. The early sym bolic interactionists, from whom m any o f these ideas had been draw n, had show n th at how an individual is treated by significant others has profound im plica­ tions for how an individual sees him or herself; the process was encapsulated in Cooley’s (1902) concept, introduced at the beginning of the tw entieth century, o f the ‘looking glass s e lf’. Being treated as a ‘th ie f ’, ‘sexual p e rv ert’, ‘alcoholic’, ‘m ad p er­ so n ’, and so on, m akes it extrem ely difficult for those involved to take p a rt in the rou­ tines o f norm al life, and, as Becker said, they o f necessity develop illegitim ate ro u tin es’. In this situation the individual is likely to seek out others who have been sim ilarly labelled, which then form s the basis for m utually sup p o rtin g subcultural groups.

T H E A M P L IF IC A T IO N OF D E V IA N C E

Leslie T. W ilkins (1964) introduced the concept o f ‘deviancy am plification’ as a way of explaining the process outlined above. It describes those paradoxical situations where the social reaction on the p a rt o f control agents, which is aim ed at stam ping

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out or controlling the deviance, in fact leads to an increase in am ounts and frequency. A m plification in this context does no t sim ply m ean th at publicity given to some deviant behaviour by the m ass m edia leads to ‘copycat’ behaviour on the p art of others. Rather it seeks to identify a process arising from secondary deviation, where those labelled as deviant incorporate the label w ithin their self-image. This has a knock-on effect o f producing m ore reactions from control agents, thereby further consolidating the deviant self-image. In tim e, this creates a deviancy am plification spiral, as others a ttracted by the deviant statu s also becom e involved. Stan C ohen’s (1980) classic study o f the M ods and Rockers phenom enon in the 1960s set out to illustrate how deviancy am plification operated with respect to these specific youth subcultures. The title o f his book, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, contains two further concepts p opular with interactionists. Cohen argued th at the very actions by police, m agistrates and m ass m edia, designed to eradicate the d elinquent activities o f M ods and Rockers, were in reality counterproductive in th at they ultim ately created and sustained a m uch larger ‘pro b lem ’. A lthough interactionists agreed th at none o f the processes discussed above was inevitable, there was less clear-cut agreem ent about the nature o f the relationship betw een the changes in self-image resulting from labelling and changes in subse­ quent behaviour. If secondary deviation involves a change in both thinking and act­ ing, then it would have im p o rta n t im plications for traditional studies th at a tte m p t to discover the causes o f deviance. In such studies, sam ples o f offenders are usually draw n from am ong those officially processed by the crim inal justice system , namely, secondary deviants. However, this research aim s at discovering why people offend in the first place: it is seeking out the causes o f prim ary deviance. T hus it is using sec­ ondary deviants as a basis for explaining prim ary deviance, and is therefore som e­ w hat flawed. If the m ass o f prim ary deviants escape apprehension, then such research may sim ply tell us w hat kind o f offenders are likely to get caught and labelled.

CON CEPTUALISIN G DEVIANCE

As the discussion so far has indicated, interactionism m ade an im p o rta n t c o n trib u ­ tion to the sociology o f deviance by attem p tin g to develop w hat is som etim es called a ‘constitutive’ m odel. From this perspective, ‘deviance’ does not have an in dependent existence, but is socially constructed through processes o f interaction. This approach represented a com m itm ent to a thoroughly sociological u nderstanding of deviance, and m arked a break with the absolutism characterising com m on-sense u n d e rstan d ­ ings. According to the logic o f this argum ent, no deviance can exist unless it has been labelled as such. U nfortunately, labelling theorists them selves did not always consis­ tently adhere to the conceptual im plications o f this, which led to m any criticism s som e o f which will be exam ined below - and to som e spirited defences (e.g. Becker, 1974; Gove, 1975; Plum m er, 1979).

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In C hapter 1 there was a b rief discussion o f Reiner’s (1988) reference to Becker’s statem ent th at ‘deviance is not a quality o f the act’. Reiner’s com m ent th at this was m erely a platitude - th at lawyers had known all along th at in order for c rim e/ deviance to exist there m ust be rules - is highly m isleading. Clearly, as D urkheim had pointed out in the nineteenth century, no behaviour is in itself intrinsically crim inal or deviant, ju st as no painting is intrinsically beautiful. W hat is defined as ‘b a d ’ or ‘im m oral’ in a society changes over tim e, and varies from society to society. Left like this, Becker’s message is, o f course, not at all novel; b u t it was necessary for labelling theorists to reaffirm the point th at when analysing deviance we are no t dealing with m oral absolutes - deviance is a relative concept. However, Becker was saying m ore than this, as the rest o f the sentence quoted by Reiner indicates: ‘. .. bu t rath er a con­ sequence o f the application by others o f rules and sanctions’. If he had sim ply said th at deviance exists because rules exist, then it would have suggested th at deviant behaviour can exist w ithout a social reaction and the application o f the rule, a p ro p o ­ sition th at labelling theorists rejected, at least when they rem ained faithful to their theory. The crucial argum ent from labelling theory was th at deviance does no t exist m erely because a rule is broken: deviance results from the labelling o f specific cases. Although consistency regarding this theoretical form ulation was not always m ain­ tained (see, for exam ple, Becker’s n otion o f a ‘secret deviant’ below) it was, none the less, an insight o f central im portance. It alerted sociologists to the need to consider carefully the ways in which they conceptualised crim e and deviance, and thus pushed them tow ards com plex epistem ological questions p ertaining to the subject-m atter of the sociology o f deviance/crim inology. These questions still stand, though contem ­ porary crim inology does no t always engage with them (the issues they raise are m any miles away from , say, research on how to ‘design o u t’ ram -raiding).

CRITICISMS O F T H E N E W DEVIA N CY

Given the break with orthodoxy represented by the advent o f new deviancy theory, and the nature o f the questions it th ru st on to the agenda of the sociology o f deviance, it was inevitable th at it generated m uch criticism .

A quality of the act? At w hat point can a deviant act be said to exist? Obviously, labelling theory was cor­ rect to draw attention to the im plications for self-image and future behaviour of being labelled, bu t is it correct to say th at a rule-breaking act cannot be deviant (or crim i­ nal) until labelling has occurred, or in oth er words, th at deviance is not a quality of the act? The ‘constitutive’ approach argues th at ‘deviance’ is a social label conferred upon rule breaking. This can be illustrated w ith a sim ple exam ple. In 1986 Diego

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M aradona pushed the ball into the goal w ith his ‘hand o f G od’ during a W orld Cup football m atch betw een England and A rgentina. Clearly (for we can see the video evi­ dence) M aradona broke a rule, bu t the referee did not see w hat happened and he let the goal stand: th at is, the crucial social audience did not label the act as a foul (though England su p p o rters m ight label M aradona a ‘cheat’). The interesting ques­ tion to ask is, was a foul ‘really’ com m itted? Can the quality o f foul be given to the act in the absence o f labelling? There is one fu rth er dim ension to this th at can be com ­ m ented on. Labelling involves both a ‘deviant’ act and a ‘deviant’ person, though the distinction is no t always m ade explicit. T hus, in the case o f M aradona, we have to consider the creation o f a ‘foul’ as well as a ‘fouler’. A ccording to the official records no foul occurred, and M aradona was no t a fouler. Is it possible th at rule breaking can constitute a deviant act (a foul), bu t the absence o f a reaction, o f labelling, m eans th at the social category o f a deviant (a fouler) is no t created? And w hat are the im plica­ tions o f this for perceptions o f self? Criticism o f labelling th eo ry ’s claim th at deviance is not a quality o f the act is built up along two broad fronts: first, a critique o f w hat was seen as a logical inconsistency on the p a rt of som e w riters, and second, a critique of the idea itself. As far as the first o f these was concerned, the m ain criticism s were aim ed at Lem ert and Becker. In the case of Lemert, it was the concept o f ‘prim ary deviation’ th at was at issue. If, as labelling theory contends, deviance results from labelling, then how can prim ary devi­ ation, th a t is, unlabelled deviance, be possible (see Gibbs, 1966)? The sam e criticism has also been levelled at Becker, and arises from his categorisation o f different types o f deviance deriving from two variables: actual behaviour, and perceptions o f th at behaviour by a social audience. Becker (1963:20) thus offered the following typology:

O b e d ie n t b eh avio u r

R ule-breaking b eh avio u r

Perceived as deviant

Falsely accused

Pure deviant

Not perceived as deviant

Conforming

Secret deviant

As G ibbs (1966), for exam ple, has p ointed out, according to the logic o f the labelling perspective a ‘secret deviant’ cannot exist. A lthough a rule has been broken, the indi­ vidual concerned has avoided being labelled, so how can it be deviance? (There is a parallel here with the exam ple o f M aradona, whose ‘deviance’ was not seen by the ref­ eree.) Becker, says Gibbs, is here confusing two different conceptual m odels: one sees deviance as rule breaking, the other views it as the result o f social reaction. The same critical point is discussed by Taylor et al. (1973). From an ethnom ethodological p e r­ spective Pollner (1974) sees Becker’s concept o f secret deviant as arising from a confu­ sion betw een w hat he calls a m u ndane/com m on-sense m odel o f deviance and a constitutive m odel. A lthough we can see w hat Becker m eant by secret deviant, for Pollner he had retreated from a proper, constitutive m odel. In the sam e vein, Pollner

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says th a t the concept o f ‘falsely accused’ is illogical too, for if deviance results from interactional labelling processes, then irrespective o f w hether or not som eone ‘really’ did it, if they have been labelled deviant, they are deviant. From Pollner’s stan d p o in t Becker w anted to have his cake and eat it. However, we should note th at Becker (1974) did review his original position and say th at instead o f secret deviant he should have used the concept o f ‘potential deviant’. W hile Pollner criticises Becker’s concepts, he approves of the logic of labelling the­ ory which sees deviance as socially constructed. O thers, however, have disputed the contention th at labelling need occur in order for deviance to exist. In oth er words, they have insisted th at deviance is a quality o f the act of breaking strongly sanctioned rules. From this stan d p o in t M aradona did com m it a foul. The case for this line o f rea­ soning has been forcefully pu t by Taylor et al. (1973). They agree with Becker, Erikson and Kitsuse th a t deviance is not an absolute quality intrinsic to an activity, and give as an exam ple the taking o f hum an life: in w artim e it can earn a m edal, in peacetim e a life sentence. T heir dispute with w riters such as Becker concerns the view that deviance requires a social reaction and labelling in specific cases. For Taylor et al. it is quite possible for a secret deviant to exist. To illustrate this they distinguish betw een ‘behaviour’ and ‘action’. Following Weber, behaviour is sim ply som e physical activity, such as accidentally falling off a ladder, w hilst action is o f sociological significance because it is behaviour to which m eaning has been attached. Therefore, even a secret deviant is generally aware th a t w hat they are doing is disapproved of, which is why they rem ain secret. Taylor et al. (1973) thus argue th at if the individual (secret) deviant attaches this so rt o f m eaning to their action - m eanings shared with the rest o f society - then at th at m om ent in tim e deviance is, objectively, a quality o f the act, and no specific reaction is required. This concern with the m eanings lying behind deviance had, by the late 1960s, becom e p a rt o f a m ajor critical assault w hereby labelling theory was accused o f treat­ ing the deviant as a passive ‘u n d erd o g ’. At the sam e tim e, a second critical front opened up which hom ed in on labelling th eo ry ’s concentration on ‘nuts, sluts and p reverts’. Each will be exam ined in turn.

Underdogs In a classic paper, Alvin G ouldner (1968) argued th at labelling theorists had conjured up an image o f the deviant as the innocent victim o f the application o f labels by con­ trol agents such as the police: ‘m an-on-his-back’, ra th e r th an ‘m an-fighting-back’. This, he said, m ade deviance entirely contingent on the w him s o f authority. For Gouldner, the labelling theory view o f m arginalised groups was in fact an expression o f the liberal, w elfare-oriented ideology o f the Am erican establishm ent, w hereby all deviants were victim s. They were, however, no t seen as victim s o f the system , so m uch as victim s o f petty-m inded and illiberal agencies and individuals w ithin it.

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This ‘fighting back' view o f the deviant was also in evidence in a p aper published in the following year by Horow itz and Leibowitz (1969). Here they argued th at a false dichotom y was m ade by sociologists (including labelling theorists), law m akers, social w orkers, and so forth. Some form s o f ‘socially’ deviant behaviour, they said, should m ore properly be viewed as ‘politically’ deviant. They developed this by argu­ ing that traditional definitions o f ‘political’ were too narrow and inflexible. T hus the views o f Horow itz and Leibowitz, as well as Gouldner, were clearly in tune with some o f the ideas em anating from the New L eft/counter-culture configuration at th a t tim e. After a decade o f riot and protest in the United States, for Horow itz and Leibowitz (1969: 280) an im p o rta n t convergence had occurred in which deviant groups were increasingly using political tactics to further their cause, w hilst political groups were increasingly using deviant tactics: ‘the result o f this tren d is estim ated to be an increase in the use o f violence as a political tactic, and the developm ent of a revolu­ tionary potential am ong the expanding ranks o f deviant sub-groups’. This a tte m p t to politicise deviance was particularly im p o rta n t as far as the devel­ o pm ent o f the sociology o f deviance/crim e was concerned over the next few years. Criticising Becker, Taylor et al. (1973:142), for instance, drew directly on G ouldner’s (1968) p aper when they wrote: Becker’s confusion stems from his desire to preserve the category deviant for those people who are labelled deviant, but, to do this, is to imply at the outset that rule-breakers, and rule-breakers who are labelled (i.e. deviants), are fundamentally different from each other in their self-perceptions. .. this leads to an over-concentration by Becker and other social reaction theorists on the importance of the application of a label in creating self-conscious commitment to deviant acts. One o f Taylor et al.’s prim ary goals was to p resent deviance not only as m eaningful from the point o f view o f the participants, but also as a form o f political action. It is not surprising, therefore, th at they attack Becker’s proposition th at people do not choose to engage in deviance, bu t rath er choose to carry out certain acts o f rule break­ ing which may subsequently be labelled deviant. Because o f their general theoretical position, it was necessary for Taylor el al. to argue th at the deviant m akes a conscious choice to be deviant, for this was seen as a political action against bourgeois rules. Eventually, a growing n um ber o f w riters were criticising labelling theory for seeing the deviant as a passive victim o f the agents o f social control, and arguing th at as a theory it was ju st as determ inistic as the theories they railed against (e.g. Schervish, 1973; B roadhead, 1974). It was seen as determ inistic because it suggested th at the reaction caused the deviance. However, som etim es this line o f criticism was prone to d isto rt the original claims m ade by labelling theory. As Plum m er (1979: 104) says: ‘no labelling theorist seem s to espouse the “label creates behaviour” view’. An obser­ vation by Akers (1967: 46), for instance, will be fam iliar to m ost o f those who have studied A-level sociology (it certainly cropped up w ith m onotonous regularity in the

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exam ination papers th at I used to m ark): ‘One som etim es gets the im pression from reading this literature th at people go about m inding their own business, and then “w ham ” - bad society comes along and slaps them with a stigm atized label’. Labelling theorists, however, did no t say th a t rule breakers were blissfully unaw are th at they were breaking rules, and suddenly realised th at they were when they were labelled. Becker’s m arijuana users, for exam ple, knew full well th at w hat they did was disap­ proved of, and indeed illegal, and took pains to conceal th eir activities. The relevance of the label is th at it is a public recognition and stigm atisation o f a ‘deviant’ and has im plications for self-perceptions and subsequent treatm en t by others in society. The criticism had, perhaps, m ore substance when it was directed at labelling th e ­ ory’s tendency to exam ine form s o f deviance where sym pathy for the deviant, as a vic­ tim o f labelling, was relatively easily invoked. In particular, th is involved ‘crim es w ithout victim s’ - for exam ple, soft drug users, dropouts, stu tterers and prostitutes. Studies o f serial killers, racist m urderers, rapists and the like were conspicuously lacking. By doing this, the sociologists concerned gave the im pression o f approaching deviance in general in, as G ouldner put it, ‘a spirit o f sentim ental rom anticism ’. As a theory, or perspective, it did m ost strikingly lend itself to a focus on those who seem ed to be treated oppressively by control agents. The m oral am biguity surrounding m uch o f the research by interactionists reached its apotheosis in Becker’s (1967) article ‘W hose side are we on?’ Here he rejected tra ­ ditional crim inology’s condem natory approach to the study o f deviance, and argued instead for an appreciation' o f the deviant as victim. In som e cases this m ight be appropriate, but, as m any com m entators have p ointed out (e.g. H eidensohn, 1989), it ignores those w ho are often the deviant’s victims.

‘N u ts, sluts and p re v e rts ’ A second im p o rta n t critical front developed around Liazos’s (1972) them e o f ‘nuts, sluts and p rev erts’ (the m isspelling has already been explained). By focusing on m ar­ ginalised groups w ith unconventional lifestyles, it was argued th at labelling theorists were them selves helping to create deviant labels, and mystifying the reality of deviance and crim e; for example: The term ‘social deviants’ . . . does not make sufficiently explicit - as the terms ‘scape­ goat’ or ‘victim’ do - that majorities usually categorize persons or groups as ‘deviant’ in order to set them apart as inferior beings and to justify their social control, oppression, persecution, or even complete destruction. (Szasz, 1973: xxv-xxvi) Thus, the argum ent ran, even if one accepted the view from labelling theory that deviant status was ascribed by control agents, and th at when in full swing the labelling process led to an acceptance o f th at status and a com m itm ent to a deviant

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lifestyle by th e individual, they none the less end ed up as deviant. N o m a tte r how they got there, we can all recognise w ho they are. It was th is seem ing com pliance w ith the ideologies o f d o m in a n t groups in society th a t w as now being criticised. L abelling th eo ry had ignored the deviant activities o f the pow erful in A m erican society: in fact, in the absence o f labelling (by the pow erful) these activities were, according to labelling theory, not deviant. C ritics argued th a t m any o f the activities o f th e pow erful an d ‘resp ectab le’ w ere m ore socially harm ful th an w ere the activities o f th o se labelled ‘d e v ia n t’. They p o in te d to the m assive a m o u n ts o f co rp o rate crim e co m m itted in the U nited States, to the violence o f the V ietnam W ar and o th e r im p e ri­ alistic excursions, and to the c o rru p tio n o f political a d m in istratio n s. In a stu d y o f business crim e, Conklin (1 9 7 7 :4 ), for exam ple, concluded: The direct cost of business crime surpasses the cost of such conventional crimes as lar­ ceny, burglary, and auto theft. In 1965, the estimated loss from these four crimes was about $600 million; with inflation and rising crime rates, a better estimate as of 1977 would be about $3 to $4 billion a year. This figure pales in significance when compared with an estimated annual loss of $40 billion from various white collar crimes. Half that amount results from consumer fraud, illegal competition and deceptive practices. Critical voices q u estio n ed the double sta n d a rd s th a t p e rm e ate d the culture o f A m eri­ can society w hereby, for instance, P resident N ixon could say th a t a b o rtio n was a violation o f ‘the sanctity o f h u m an life’, w hilst at the sam e tim e giving approval to the a ctions o f L ieutenant Calley at M y Lai (a V ietnam ese village w here th e civilians were m assacred). L iazos’s p a p er on ‘n u ts, sluts and p re v erts' was an im p o rta n t exam ple o f this type o f critique. He drew a tte n tio n to the harm done to people as a result o f racial d isa d ­ vantage an d d isc rim in atio n , and to the poverty, ill health, an d so on, associated w ith a capitalist society. In the follow ing year, T hio (1973) p ro d u c ed a sim ilar arg u m en t, and castigated the sociology o f deviance for failing to disengage itself from the ideo­ logical re q u ire m e n ts o f pow erful elites. M ore recently, the B ritish crim inologist Colin S um ner (1994: 262) has suggested th a t the ‘nuts, sluts and p re v erts’ critique p re sen te d by these tw o p ap ers in 1972 and 1973 could have had a m o m e n to u s im p a c t on the sociology o f deviance in the U nited States a n d in B ritain, leading to the dem ise o f the concept o f deviance itself: These two essays took American sociology of deviance to the brink of a dissolution of the field of study, but held back from the crucial theoretical steps of superseding the con­ cept of deviance and abandoning the search for a general theory of deviance. (Original emphasis) From this perspective the key to u n d e rsta n d in g deviance lies n o t in the b ehaviour itself, b u t, rather, in the ideologies th a t define and shape w hat is th o u g h t to be

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‘deviant’. According to Sum ner, though, the sociology o f deviance pulled back from the brink because o f the ideas set in m otion by the ‘u n d erdog’ critique: G o uldner’s ‘m an-fighting-back’ im agery gave the concept o f deviance a new lease o f life as the 1970s unfolded, and deviance came to be seen as a form o f political resistance (these developm ents will be looked at in C hapter 11): This was hardly a time for sociologists to declare that deviance was a dead concept. Far from it, it was all too tempting to take the concept and give it a new behavioural mean­ ing as a political rejection of the established social order. In this sense, the late sixties gave the concept o f deviance a whole new lease of life, a second wind. (Ibid.: 258, original emphasis) Two fu rth er criticism s o f labelling theory should also be noted. First, it was argued th a t it had show n a wilful lack o f interest in the original causes o f deviance - prim ary deviation, as Lem ert had called it. A lthough w riters such as Schur (1971) had argued that, by definition, this was not the in tention o f labelling theory, critics saw this neg­ lect o f causes, and a concentration on reaction, as one-sided (Bordua, 1970; M ankoff, 1971; Taylor et al., 1973). For them , deviant m otivations and a com m itm ent to a deviant lifestyle should not be linked exclusively to social reactions. These, they argued, can result from causal factors th at pre-date any reaction by a social audience. In M an k o ff’s (1971: 211) words: ‘one m ight a ttrib u te career deviance and its conse­ quences no t to societal reaction bu t to the continued effects o f social structural strains, psychological stress, or disease states which produce initial rule-breaking’. Second, the interactionist approach was criticised for failing to locate the rules them ­ selves, the causes of rule breaking, and reactions to perceived deviance w ithin the wider structures of power in society. Although labelling theory had pointed to the central im portance o f the power to apply the label, analyses had tended to be confined to the actions o f relatively low-level agents o f social control, such as police officers, teachers, social workers and psychiatrists. This was a critique that, as we shall see, eventually helped to stim ulate the developm ent of the ‘new ’ critical crim inology o f the 1970s, which attem pted to establish a political econom y of crim e/deviance and control.

Se le c te d fu rth e r read in g There is no substitute for reading the now' classic, original American texts: Becker, H. S. (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance, London: Macmillan; Lemert, E. M. (1967) Human Deviance, Social Problems and Social Control, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; Wilkins, L. (1964) Social Deviance: Social policy, action and research, London: Tavistock; Matza, D. (1964) Delinquency and Drift, New York: Wiley; Matza, D. (1969) Becoming Deviant, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, and his ‘appreciative’ approach, were hugely influential. A British classic is Cohen, S. (1980) Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 2nd edn, Oxford: Martin Robertson.

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For a collection o f c h ap ters covering th is p e rio d , see: Rock, P. a n d M . M c In to sh (eds) (1 9 7 4 ) Deviance and Social Control, L ondon: T avistock. A critical A m erican voice w as G o u ld n e r, A. W . (1 9 6 8 ) ‘T he Sociologist as P a rtisan : Soci­ ology a n d th e w elfare s ta te ’, American Sociologist, M ay. T he concept o f m o ral pan ics has been revisited recently in th is collection o f readings: K rinsky, C. (ed) (2 0 0 8 ) Moral Panics Over Contemporary Children and Youth, A bing­ d o n : A shgate.

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P A R T IV

THE I970S

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Key th e m e s •

Deviance and politics

• The sociology of law: making laws, making deviants • Criminology in the 1970s: other directions • Orthodox criminology •

Radical critiques and the growth of the N ew Right

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INTRODUCTION

This chapter looks at various criticism s o f new deviancy theory th a t were already, even am ong sym pathetic w riters, building up by the end o f the 1960s. It thus sets the scene for a discussion in the next chapter of the different theoretical perspectives th at gained influence in the early 1970s. Notably, m ore radical ideas derived from M arx­ ism were em erging and being absorbed by a growing n u m b er o f academ ics working in the field o f crim e and deviance. At the end of the 1970s, though, there was a deci­ sive shift to the right in British (and not long after, in A m erican) politics w ith the elec­ tion o f the T hatcher governm ent. This chapter concludes by discussing som e o f the ways in which the radical left, ironically and unw ittingly, helped prepare the ground for this political transform ation.

DEVIANCE AND POLITICS

As in the United States, various criticism s of labelling theory began to appear am ong radical sociologists o f deviance, and in the first instance it was the ‘u n d erdog’ critique th at stim ulated m ost work. In an underdeveloped form , labelling theory had introduced the notion o f politics into the field o f deviance research. By stressing th at the pow er to im press the deviant label was concentrated in the hands o f the relatively pow erful few, the deviant process was, to this extent, political. Radical sociologists, however, criticised labelling theory for failing to m ake connections betw een processes o f interaction and the structures of pow er in which they were rooted.

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As we have seen, som e w riters in the U nited States began to extend the ideas of labelling theory. In particular, Horow itz and Leibowitz (1969) argued th at some deviant groups were engaging in political action. However, in their enthusiasm to politicise deviance, som e British sociologists were quick to read into these form ula­ tions rath er m ore th an the a u thors originally intended. Horow itz and Leibowitz’s position was that whereas in the past deviant m inorities had carried out their deviances m ore or less privately, they were now entering the public realm, and taking up political m odes o f protest. It was this new activity th at was seen as political, not the original deviance. Engaging in hom osexual acts, for example, was not regarded as political, but the activities o f the Gay Liberation M ovem ent were. Geoff Pearson (1975: 96), for instance, seems to have read m ore into their paper than was actually there: But what emerges in the literature of misfit sociology from the analysis provided by Horowitz and Leibowitz is the imperative that one should understand not only the labelling process as a politically derived judgement, but also that deviant behaviour itself should be accorded political status. Or, more specifically, that deviance should be grasped as a primitive crypto-political action. From hesitan t beginnings, the project of politicising deviance was to becom e an im p o rta n t stran d o f British sociological crim inology. Sim ilar developm ents occurred in oth er disciplines too: for instance, R. D. Laing’s (1967,1968) ‘anti-psychiatry’, and efforts to show how the definition and trea tm e n t o f m ental illness were political p ro ­ cesses. An early response to Horow itz and Leibowitz came in an article from Stan Cohen (1969), w ith a fuller version being published in 1973, and from S tuart Hall (1974). A lthough each o f these essentially reiterated the original argum ents, they did relate them to events in this country, and also had the m erit o f recognising, and endorsing, the lim ited extension o f labelling theory offered by H orow itz and Leib­ owitz. Such restraint, however, was short-lived, as som e radical sociologists moved to a position o f arguing th at som e, or even all, crim e/deviance was itself a political act - in sim ple term s, because it was resistance to bourgeois rules. This entailed delv­ ing into earlier precursors o f this type o f work: for exam ple, G oldm an (1959) on school vandalism and truancy. It also involved w idening the academ ic net by traw ling am ong the work of radical historians who had produced accounts o f revolts from ‘below ’ in B ritain’s past. H obsbaw m ’s (1959) concept o f ‘prim itive rebellion’ soon becam e com m on currency w ithin this genre. Ian Taylor (1971) identified soccer hooliganism as a form o f political protest and, together with Paul W alton and Jock Young, incorporated the politics o f deviance into an am bitious a tte m p t to develop a M arxist theory o f deviance in a book entitled (in contradistinction to the new deviancy) The New Criminology (Taylor et al., 1973). Here, instead o f picking out specific types o f (usually working-class) deviance as can­ didates for the appellation 'political’, they suggested th at ‘m uch deviance is in itself political’. U nfortunately, the a u thors failed to define either ‘deviance’ or ‘political’. This was, though, an im p o rta n t and influential, if m uch criticised, text. However, by

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1975, w ith the publication o f a follow-up collection o f readings (Taylor et al., 1975), Jock Young was already startin g to review his position. W hatever the m erits o f The New Criminology, it stands as a suprem e exam ple o f crim inological work n u rtu red by the twin influences of the New Left and the counter-culture: the New Left in its effort to introduce hum anistic M arxism into the field, and the counter-culture because o f its com m itm ent to social diversity, to a celebration o f ‘difference’. As result of this, a seri­ ous criticism o f the text was that it owed m ore to anarchism than it did to M arxism . Geoff Pearson (1976, 1978) continued to plough the crim e-as-politics furrow, in particular in a study o f so-called Paki-bashing, where he argued th at those involved were engaging in ‘crypto-political’ action. As early as 1973, though, other N ational Deviancy Conference m em bers were pointing to the dangers o f rom anticism which they saw as characterising the counter-culture. Paul Rock (1973: 103), for instance, criticised the ‘rom anticism which views all crim inals as prim itive innocents who are engaged in inarticulate political conflict with institutional a u th o rity ’. The m id-1970s saw the grow th in influence o f the Birm ingham Centre for C ontem ­ porary Cultural Studies, and in m uch of the work we can detect attem p ts to politicise crim e/deviance. U nder the direction o f Stuart I lall, the B irm ingham Centre drew on the work of the Italian M arxist Gram sci, and introduced key concepts, such as hege­ m ony and ideology into the crim inological discourse. The Centre is particularly asso­ ciated with radical youth subcultural theory (see Hall and Jefferson, 1976). The m ain em phasis was on youth subcultural ‘styles’, and the ways in which these operate as m odes o f cultural resistance, and therefore, to th a t extent, represent form s o f po lit­ ical action (Clarke and Jefferson, 1973a, 1973b; Jefferson, 1973; Clarke, 1976). The Centre laid down the foundations for future work th a t exam ined, and attem p ted to refine, concepts such as ‘style’ and ‘cultural sym bolisation’ (e.g., Hebdige, 1979). By the end o f the 1970s the crim e/deviance-as-politics argum ent had m ore or less fizzled out w ithin radical crim inology, but then, like a firework that had not quite gone out, in the early 1980s it b u rst into life again. Instead o f working-class crime, though, it was specifically black crim e th at was characterised as political. It was no coincidence th at A m erican versions o f this argum ent had come in the wake o f m ajor riots; likewise, the British versions em erged following large-scale urban disorder and resistance in 1980 and 1981 in this country (for a critique, see Tierney, 1988). So we see th at into the 1970s, in spite o f the conceptual challenge raised by labelling theory, am ong radical sociologists the concept o f deviance was, albeit in a politicised form , firmly back on the agenda as a quality o f the act. Some things really were deviant, and not only that, they were also political.

THE SO C IO LO G Y OF LAW: MAKING LAWS, MAKING DEVIANTS

As the above discussion shows, the politicisation of deviance in the late 1960s gave the concept o f deviance, as Sum ner puts it, a ‘second w in d ’, and set in m otion a

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research agenda th at placed the actions o f the deviant centre stage. Inevitably, the deviants placed u n d er this spotlight were m arginalised, relatively powerless groups. At the end o f the 1960s, however, a n o th e r stran d o f sociological crim inology em erged, again partly contingent on labelling theory and the theoretical problem s it raised. This second stran d developed along a broad pedigree line th at included Lia­ zos’s ‘nuts, sluts and preverts’ critique, as well as G ouldner’s ‘u n d erdog’ critique, and was essentially based upon two propositions. First, th at definitions of crim e and deviance (and, thus, ultim ately, the nature o f law itself) were linked to the interests of pow erful elites or classes; and second, th at governm ents, corporations and ‘respectable’ m em bers o f society were often involved in, and got away w ith, crim inal activities th at were m uch m ore harm ful th an so-called deviant activities. In short, rath er th an concentrate on the nature o f officially defined deviant behaviour (as hedonistic, crypto-political, prophetic or w hatever), this stra n d of crim inological thought tu rn ed its attention to the powerful in society, either as self-interested rule m akers, or as cynical rule breakers, or as both. Indeed, in Critical Criminology, Jock Young (1975: 89) attacked the ruling class in term s o f both rule m aking and rule breaking: ‘Radical crim inological stra te g y . . . is to show up the law, in its true colours, as the in stru m en t o f the ruling class . . . and th at the rule-m akers are also the greatest rule-breakers’. In com bination w ith the earlier The New Criminolog)' (Taylor et al., 1973) we can see in fact three central elem ents o f w hat becam e known generically as critical crim inol­ ogy: a view o f deviants as political rebels; an ‘in stru m e n talist’ view of law; and a desire to em phasise ruling-class, as opposed to w orking-class, crime. Inevitably, The New Criminology generated a great deal o f debate and criticism w hen it was published, and criticism was only m arginally assuaged following the publication o f Critical Criminology (Taylor et al., 1975). The m ost fundam ental ques­ tion raised was w hether a specifically M arxist theory o f deviance was, from the point of view o f M arxism itself, possible. Fellow M arxist Paul H irst (1975a: 204), one o f the con trib u to rs to the second text, argued th a t M arxists should have nothing to do with deviance: ‘there is no “M arxist theory o f deviance” either in existence, or which can be developed w ithin orthodox M arxism . Crime and deviance vanish into the general theoretical concerns and the specific scientific object o f M arxism ’. H irst’s objection essentially revolved around the concept o f deviance. For him , the theoretical objects of analysis are, in M arxism , laid down and stru ctu red by the concepts th at M arx him ­ self devised: The objects of Marxist theory are specified by their own concepts: the mode of produc­ tion, the class struggle, the state, ideology, etc. Any attempt to apply Marxism to this pre-given field of sociology is therefore a more or less ‘revisionist’ activity in respect of Marxism; it must modify and distort Marxian concepts to suit its own pre-Marxist purposes.

(Ibid.: 204)

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Put into sim pler language, from this stan d p o in t, using the concept o f deviance is a bit like, for instance, using the concept o f ‘bad a r t’. W hy should M arxists acquiesce to (bourgeois) definitions and treat som e art as if it really was ‘b a d ’? Shortly after this exchange betw een H irst and Taylor et al., the M arxist crim inolo­ gist Colin Sum ner (1976) attem pted to provide a solution to the problem posed by H irst. Sum ner argued th at deviance should be seen as a type of ideology - as a social censure - ra th e r than as behaviour. As we shall see, this was to becom e an im p o rtan t theoretical issue for radical crim inology. In his critique, H irst also attacked Taylor et al. for rom anticising crim e - the crim i­ nal as revolutionary - and for their oppositional' stance regarding law: th a t is, for seeing all law as acting in the interests of the ruling class (‘in stru m en talism ’). We can now look briefly at developm ents in radical crim inology based upon the two propositions m entioned earlier.

Self-interested rule makers A ttem pts to develop a political econom y o f crim e - th at is, to develop a theoretical crim inology based upon analyses o f the creation and functions o f the law w ithin a political and econom ic context - encom passed a range o f w riters from the late 1960s onw ards. Some of these were M arxist theorists, som e non-M arxist conflict theorists, with the form er tending to be products o f a European tradition, the latter of an A m er­ ican one. W hat united them all was a rejection o f the conservative view th at the law was a neutral and universally beneficial entity. In various ways, and w ith varying degrees o f sophistication, the political econom y o f crim e perspective attem p ted to show how the law, both in term s o f its substance and its a d m inistration, acted to p ro ­ tect the interests o f those with power. In this context, som e crim inologists during the 1970s began to look afresh at the work o f social historians such as E. P. T hom pson (1975) and Stedm an-Jones (1971), w ho had docum ented how the law had been used in the past to control the labouring poor. This acknow ledgem ent of the c o n tribution th at historians could m ake to the study o f crim e, law and the state was som ething o f a breakthrough in British crim i­ nology. As Pat Carlen (1980:13) says: The peculiar isolationism of criminology’ meant that sociologists of crime could plead for more historical studies of crime without acknowledging that histories of labour and political movements have repeatedly been histories of law'breaking and criminalization. O ther crim inologists decided to explore sim ilar them es by excavating the past th em ­ selves: for exam ple, C ham bliss (1976), with his study o f the vagrancy laws o f m edieval England, and Kolko (1976) with his study o f the m eat-packing industry in the United States at the beginning of this century. G raham (1976) provided a contem porary

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exam ple o f such research with his study o f drugs legislation in the United States. G raham argued th at because o f their power, pharm aceutical com panies were able to have federal laws aim ed at controlling am phetam ine production and use significantly w eakened. Their action, he m aintained, was due to the stake th at these com panies had in the m anufacture o f this class o f drug. In a way this kind o f crim inology takes to its logical conclusion the argum ent derived from labelling theory th at deviance (or crim e) is n o t a quality o f the act, but rath er results from the application o f rules by the relatively powerful. However, unlike labelling theory, radical crim inologists began to trace the creation and applica­ tion o f the law to the structural arrangem ents o f a specifically capitalist society. This was one way out o f the problem o f surrendering to the capitalist state’s definition of crim e and in effect only being allowed to study w hat the state allowed: th at is, legally proscribed behaviour. As a consequence, during the second half of the 1970s there was a shift away from the ‘crim inal’ or ‘deviant’ tow ards issues o f law, state and social control, and to a large extent crim inology becam e the sociology o f law. T heoretical developm ents were also becom ing m ore sophisticated, and there was in particular a rejection o f a sim plistic, in stru m en tal m odel o f the law as a tool o f the ruling class. This entailed a n um ber o f M arxist w riters reassessing the work of M arxist theoreti­ cians from the early tw entieth century such as Renner and Pashukanis. One text, especially, stands as a culm ination o f this project: Capitalism and the Rule o f Law, edited by Bob Fine (1979) for the N ational Deviancy Conference and Conference of Socialist Econom ists. The subtitle, From deviancy theory to M arxism, aptly sum m ed up the journey taken by radical crim inology over th at decade. It was during the second half o f the 1970s th at the work of the French w riter Michel Foucault began to influence British crim inologists. Foucault’s (1977, 1979) w ritings are complex and difficult to classify, b u t his work played a key role in the develop­ m ent o f ‘post-M arxist’ crim inology during the 1980s (Reiner, 1988). Foucault’s book, Discipline and Punish, published in 1977, in which he analyses the phenom enon of p unishm ent in a historical context, was particularly influential, as it seem ed to offer, for som e crim inologists, a m ore satisfying alternative to the m echanistic m odels of the state and system s o f discipline. For Foucault, discipline was literally everywhere, and was no t the exclusive province o f coercive form al state institutions. In a p aper originally published in 1970, and then given a w ider audience when it was reproduced in Taylor et al.’s (1975) Critical Criminology, the Am erican crim inolo­ gists H. and J. Schw endinger attem pted to redraw the m ap o f crim inality in a way th at seem ed to free the radical crim inologist from the param eters set by the capitalist state. They proposed a ‘hum an rig h ts’ definition o f crime: crim inal activities, they argued, should be defined in term s o f certain universal codes o f conduct, rath er than the legal codes o f a particular society: The abrogation of these rights certainly limits the individual’s chance to fulfil himself in many spheres of life. It can be stated that individuals who deny these rights to others are

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crim inal. . . imperialism, racism, sexism and poverty can be called crimes according to the logic of our argument. (Schvvendinger and Schvvendinger, 1975:148) A n o th er lan d m a rk pu b licatio n in the 1970s th a t should be n o ted , an d w hich was also located w ith in th is tra d itio n o f focusing on th e rule m akers, was S tu a rt Hall et a l.’s (1978) Policing the Crisis, a study p ro d u c ed by m em b ers o f th e B irm ingham C entre for C o n tem p o ra ry C ultural Studies. D raw ing on neo-M arxism a n d labelling theory, Hall a n d his colleagues argued th a t in o rd e r to divert a tte n tio n away from th e deep stru c ­ tu ral econom ic an d social pro b lem s afflicting Britain, the state c o n stru cted a m oral panic d u rin g the 1970s regarding so called ‘m uggings’. A ccording to the a u th o rs these crim es o f violence w ere, w ith the help o f the m edia, linked specifically to su p ­ posedly ‘black m uggers’.

Cynical rule breakers We can now tu rn to the o th e r p ro p o sitio n associated w ith this stra n d o f radical crim i­ nology as it developed th ro u g h the 1970s: th a t governm ents, c o rp o ra tio n s and ‘resp ectab le’ m em b ers o f society w ere often involved in, a n d got away w ith, crim inal activities th a t were m uch m ore harm fu l th a n so-called d eviant activities. T hese are som etim es called ‘crim es in th e su ites’ ra th e r th a n ‘crim es in the stre e ts’. T his is the radical end o f a crim inological tra d itio n th a t has concerned itself w ith w hite-collar crim e, a term originally used by the A m erican crim inologist Edwin S u th e rla n d (1940). However, as David N elken (1994) argues, alth o u g h the term has en te red in to general usage, a n d people feel th a t they know w hat it m eans, its use as a descriptive term w ithin crim inology is highly pro b lem atic. In practice, it fu n c tio n s as a catch-all term encom passing a vast array o f crim inal activities, involving offenders o f high as well as relatively low status: If Sutherland merited a Nobel Prize, as Mannheim thought, for pioneering this field of study, he did not deserve it for the clarity or serviceableness of his definition. W hat, if anything, is there in common between the marketing of unsafe pharmaceuticals, the practice of insider trading, long-firm fraud, computer crime, bank embezzlement and fiddling at work? (Ibid.: 361) From the p o in t o f view o f radical crim inology, o f course, the crim es o f th e pow erful (Pearce, 1976) - in the form o f c o rp o ra te crim e - are o f m o st in terest. Som etim es referred to as expose crim inology, research in this field is attractiv e to radical crim i­ nologists because, as well as providing satisfying a m m u n itio n to use against the ‘re al’ crim inals in society, on a theo retical level it provides evidence th a t the capitalist sys­ tem is in itself crim inogenic (Box, 1983). A classic A m erican study in th is vein from

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the 1970s was carried out in Seattle by W. J. C ham bliss (1978), where a crim inal net­ work involving m any o f the great and the good was uncovered. A ccording to C ham b­ liss, significant sections o f the business com m unity, together with politicians and police officers, constituted a large crim e syndicate in the city.

C R IM IN O L O G Y I N T H E l970s:OTHER D IR E C T IO N S

W hilst radical crim inology attem p ted , along the lines discussed above, to construct a political econom y o f crim e and deviance during the 1970s - and, in Britain, te n d ­ ing to draw on a European M arxist tradition rather than Am erican-style conflict theory - this decade also saw British crim inology developing along oth er p a th ­ ways. A lthough som e o f this work com plem ented the radical project, overall it reflected the increasingly wide variety of research them es, m ethodologies, theoretical orientations and political leanings opening up w ithin the discipline of crim inology. These alternative pathw ays will be exam ined briefly, although no t in any particular order o f precedence.

Feminism and criminology The 1970s finally saw the beginning o f serious research in Britain on issues o f gender, crim e and crim inal justice from the perspective o f fem inism . This reflected the grow th o f fem inism in a general sense, in the U nited States during the 1960s, and in Britain during the 1970s. Carol S m art’s (1976) book, Women, Crime and Criminol­ ogy, is identified by m ost com m entators as the first British exam ple of a crim inologi­ cal text w ritten from the stan d p o in t o f fem inism . Since then, a large and influential literature oriented tow ards fem inist concerns has sprung up. However, ju st as there is no one fem inism , so there is no one ‘fem inist crim inology’: different schools of thought have developed out o f different political and theoretical traditions. The cen­ tral com m on elem ent, though, has been a com m itm ent to ending sex-based discrim i­ nation in society tow ards w om en. Nevertheless, as we shall see in a m ore detailed discussion later on, debates over the im plications o f this for crim inology, and even w hether a specifically fem inist crim inology (or crim inologies) is possible, continue to flourish. As w ith other areas o f crim inological research, the early fem inist work in this coun­ try drew heavily on Am erican sources (e.g., Klein, 1973; Chesney-Lind, 1973). As the 1970s came to an end four m ain them es had em erged in Britain. First, the ‘invis­ ibility’ o f wom en in existing crim inological theories. Up to the mid-1970s crim inolog­ ical theory had to a startling degree ignored female offenders. The assum ption seem ed to be th at //w o m en were to be considered, then the particular crim inological theory involved could som ehow accom m odate them w ithout too m uch bother, or, if a

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theory linked crim inality to ‘m achism o’, then the question o f female crim inality could be sim ply dispensed w ith. In fact, some early fem inists sought to incorporate th eir ideas into existing theoretical fram ew orks as a progressive step (e.g., Shacklady Sm ith, 1978), though subsequent w riters have been m ore sceptical. The second them e focused on the relatively few exam ples o f crim inological work - w ritten by m en - th at had addressed the issue o f female crim inality. This work was accused o f ‘d isto rtio n ’, o f offering explanations based on crude, sexist stereotypes (Sm art, 1976). The third them e concerned itself with the w orkings o f the crim inal justice sys­ tem , in so far as th at system was seen to be profoundly sexist (R. Pearson, 1976; Cashburn, 1979). Finally, the fourth them e was th at o f female victim isation, especially sexual assault and violence taking place w ithin the dom estic sphere (H anm er, 1978). T hat the bulk o f crim inological theorising concerned itself with m en rather than w om en was a corollary o f the much higher rates o f offending am ong m en. In Britain and in the United States, statistics have consistently shown th at around 80 per cent of those found guilty of, or cautioned for, indictable offences are m en (self-report stu d ­ ies o f offending behaviour, though, pu t the sex-crim e ratio at around two to one). This was reflected in prison populations in Britain during the 1970s: out o f a total of around 50,000 prisoners, about 1,500 are wom en. Thus, it would appear th at the best single predictor o f future crim inality am ong, say, a group o f schoolchildren is the sex o f the child, rather than, for exam ple, the child’s social class background. This obser­ vation, said fem inist w riters, should logically have placed issues o f gender firm ly at the centre o f the crim inological stage: w hat is it about m asculinity th at leads to such relatively high levels o f crim e, especially with respect to violent crim e?

Interactionism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology As we have seen, A m erican-led interactionist approaches to the study o f deviance, and in particular the em phasis on labelling, had an enorm ous im pact on British crim ­ inology in the late 1960s. The message from labelling theory was th at deviance was created by society, which at first glance seem s a less th an earth shattering revelation. After all, it was com m onplace to link deviant, or crim inal, behaviour to social factors such as poverty, rough neighbourhoods, u rban life, and so forth. However, for the labelling theorists, ‘created by society’ m eant som ething rather different. In fact, it had two m eanings, though the distinction is not always recognised: first, th at society creates the rules against which behaviour is judged, and second, th at in specific cir­ cum stances certain groups are selected and labelled as deviant by those in a position to do so, for exam ple the police or the m ass m edia. It was the first o f these m eanings th at stim ulated radical work which focused on the law m akers later on in the 1970s. The second m eaning was picked up during the late 1960s and early 1970s by a n u m ­ ber o f sociologists o f deviance (by now the preferred term ) and applied to a British context, w ith the addition o f the congruent concept o f deviancy am plification,

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devised originally by Leslie W ilkins (1964). Two notable exam ples o f such research are Jock Young’s (1971) study o f soft drugs use in N otting Hill, London, and Stan C ohen’s (1980) study of the M ods and Rockers phenom enon, the latter introducing the term ‘m oral panic’ into the lexicon o f ‘inform ed debate’ on law and order. By the early 1970s, though, various critiques o f labelling theory, and indeed new deviancy as a whole, were beginning to stack up, first in the United States, and then in Britain. A lthough this eventually led to m ore radical crim inologists breaking with labelling theory in favour of a harder, M arxist-inform ed political econom y o f crim e, a n um ber o f the early m em bers o f the N ational Deviancy Conference, together with later adherents, continued to work w ithin an interactionist fram ew ork. Thus through the 1970s various w riters developed and refined the earlier form s o f interactionist theory: Steven Box (1981, first published 1971), for instance, attem p ted to incorpo­ rate labelling theory into yet an o th er Am erican im port, control theory. One result o f this was the grow th in ethnographic studies of groups defined as deviant. Drawing on the earlier sym bolic interactionism o f G. H. M ead (1934), labelling theory had argued th at it was im p o rta n t to take account o f the ways in which those labelled as deviant respond, at both a behavioural level (w hat they do) and at a m ental level (how they think). U nder certain circum stances, the argum ent ran, labelling processes lead to the successful application o f the label ‘deviant’ to a group, and this has fundam ental im plications for the deviant’s self-image. In other words, under a p propriate circum stances, labelled groups come to accept the label and see them selves as deviant. C riticism s th at this viewed the deviant as m ere passive victim (G ouldner, 1968), and was highly determ inistic (Akers, 1967), led interaction­ ists to develop m ore refined theoretical form ulations as the 1970s progressed, with a stress on labelling as a ‘sensitising’ perspective, rather th an a heavy-duty theoretical school (Plum m er, 1979). Proponents o f interactionism argued th at research should be sensitive to the su b ­ jective w orlds constructed by those labelled as deviant, and indeed, to the subjective w orlds o f any group being studied. In oth er words, one o f the tasks o f the sociologist is to engage in research th at will seek to un d erstan d the social world from the point of view o f the individuals and groups concerned. This was p art o f a critique o f posi­ tivism which, it was said, m erely im posed the researcher’s u nderstandings on to the deviant u n d er the cover o f a spurious claim to be ‘scientific’. Thus, w hilst being sensi­ tive to the subtle changes in m eanings th at occurred via interactions with control agents, the anti-positivists underlined the im portance of providing authentic accounts th at the deviant groups would them selves recognise. In this context, ethnography offered the only viable research m ethod. Originally developed by anthropologists, ethnographic research basically involved the researcher joining a group, either covertly or overtly, and, by spending tim e w ith the m em bers, gradually building up an in-depth understanding. The 1970s produced a n um ber o f im p o rta n t studies of this type, for exam ple, d elinquent youth in Liverpool (Parker, 1974); the construction of hom osexual identities (Plum m er, 1975); and pilferage at work (D itton, 1977).

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These ethnographic studies also reflected the British interest in the p h enom eno­ logical crim inology associated with David M atza. W riting in the 1960s, M atza, whose work came to be known as ‘Am erican natu ralism ’, was a strong influence on British new deviancy theorists. His fam ous injunction to ‘tell it like it is’ indicates the phenom enologist’s com m itm ent to present accounts o f hum an events in their own term s; to ad o p t an ‘appreciative’ stance and to see the deviant’s world as they see it (M atza, 1969). O ther research during the 1970s also continued to develop som e o f the elem ents of interactionist theory, although it did no t opt for an ethnographic m ethodology. Inevitably, where deviant groups were being studied, this involved a rejection o f ‘correctionalism ’, th at is, a refusal to align crim inological research with the practical goal o f stam ping out the deviance. In the ‘sceptical’ spirit o f new deviancy theory such research was im bued with a strong sense o f relativism rather than absolutism (see Taylor and W alton, 1971). O ther research, also expressing som e o f the central ideas of interactionism , tu rn ed the spotlight away from defined deviant groups and tow ards other players in the crim inal justice process, such as police officers (Cain, 1973; Holdaway, 1979) and m agistrates (Carlen, 1976). An interest in the subjective w orlds o f those labelled as deviant, as well as all other p articipants in interactive processes o f m eaning construction, is associated with two other theoretical developm ents in the late 1960s and 1970s, each o f which turned their atten tio n to crim e and deviance: phenom enology and ethnom ethodology. W ithin the context o f this overview o f developm ents in academ ic crim inology, it is no t necessary to em bark on a detailed exposition o f the respective theoretical posi­ tions here; th a t can be left until we return to an exam ination o f crim inological theory. However, some m arkers can be pu t down. From the point o f view o f phenom enology, no objective social reality exists ‘out there’ w aiting to be discovered. W hat we perceive to be reality is, from this perspec­ tive, m erely a version o f reality (phenom enal reality), constituted by the subjective m eanings th at the world has for us. W ithin this theoretical fram ew ork a n um ber o f forays were m ade into the crim inological terrain by phenom enologists, for example Cicourel (1968) on juvenile justice in the United States; Coulter (1973) on insanity; and A tkinson (1971) on definitions o f suicide in coroners’ courts. On a general level, Phillipson (1971) produced a phenom enological critique of the sociology of deviance th at questioned the entire stock o f theoretical knowledge m aking up th a t field. As Bob Roshier (1989: 68) has noted: ‘Phenom enological sociology, with its micro-level focus on hum an m eaning construction, has m ostly ruled out any specific interest in substantive areas of hum an action such as crim e’. Therefore, because p henom enol­ ogy is ultim ately concerned w ith shared m eanings and the nature of knowledge in the m ost fundam ental sense, and adopts a totally relativistic position, as a perspective it drifted away from the specific concerns o f crim inology or the sociology o f deviance. E thnom ethodology drew on m any o f the insights o f phenom enology, and directs attention to day-to-day, taken-for-granted m ethods used by individuals to create a

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m eaningful, ordered social w orld. The relevance o f this to crim inology m anifests itself in detailed exam ination o f the assum ptions used to m ake sense o f w hat appear to be the ‘facts’ o f crim e and deviance. As an exam ple, from an ethnom ethodological stan d p o in t, the notion o f ‘law m aking’ has a quite different m eaning to the one that it norm ally has. Law m aking is not addressed in term s o f the form ulation of the law of the land at som e point in tim e, by, say, Parliam ent. Rather, law m aking is seen as a process th at is acted out each day w ithin the courtroom , as each o f the particip an ts comes to un d erstan d w hat ‘really h a p p en e d ’: ‘In contrast to the “finished” concep­ tion o f crim inal law . . . ethnom ethodology favours a view o f crim inal law as a c ontin­ ually contingent production of the in situ practices of participants in legal proceedings and settings’ (H ester and Eglin, 1992: 75).

ORTHODOX CRIM INOLOGY

W hilst crim inology was shooting off in all these various directions during the 1970s, with ideas and debates tum bling forth at a breathless rate, orthodox crim inology con­ tinued to stalk quietly alongside. Furtherm ore, m uch o f orthodox crim inology was still possessed by new deviancy th eo ry ’s very own folk devil: positivism . It may not have grabbed the headlines, or excited the brain cells o f students (except, perhaps, when they were disparaging it), bu t in term s o f volum e o f work and influence on pol­ icy, positivist crim inology rem ained a pow erful force, both in Britain and in the United States. W riting in the mid-1980s, G ottfredson and H irschi (1987:18) felt able to report: ‘In the light o f the pervasive distaste for positivism expressed by m any m odern crim inologists, it is surprising to discover th at positivistic crim inology may today be healthier than ever’. They saw this situation as resulting from positivist crim inology’s ability to respond to the earlier criticism s and to create ‘w hat is p er­ haps a healthier and m ore self-assured positivistic crim inology th an has heretofore existed’ (ibid.). However, as we shall see when discussing crim inological theory in detail, and as som etim es happens with m edical diagnoses, this confident pronounce­ m ent probably coincided with positivist crim inology taking a turn for the worse, at least in Britain. D uring the 1970s, though, positivist-oriented orthodox crim inological research continued unabated in Britain. To a large extent this was due to its pow erbase in key research institutions, and in particular, the Hom e Office. At the sam e tim e there was an increase in the am ount o f in-house research carried out by crim inal justice agen­ cies, such as the police, the Prison D epartm ent and the probation service. G overn­ m ent-funded social science research w ithin universities, on the other hand, began to be cut back. A lthough the grandiose prom ises o f the nineteenth century had by then been scaled down to m ore m odest dim ensions, crim inological research carried out w ithin the positivist tradition continued to appeal to policy m akers m ore than other approaches did, because it still prom ised to be useful. As always, positivism was

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co m m itted to discovering the causes o f crim e (or at least d e te rm in in g co rrelational factors) an d devising ways o f trea tin g offenders so th a t they cease to be offenders. The d o m in a n t conceptual fram ew ork w ithin w hich th is p roceeded w as n o t seen as p ro b ­ lem atic - clearly m uch less irksom e to a g overnm ent th an the critical stances ad o p ted by o th e r crim inologies at the tim e. A classic exam ple o f this type o f o rth o d o x crim i­ nological research is the m assive lo n g itu d in al study con d u cted by W est a n d Farring­ to n (1973, 1977), w here they a tte m p te d to link delinquency to a range o f salient social factors. In spite o f all the developm ents associated w ith new deviancy and ra d i­ cal crim inology, o rth o d o x crim inology - the ‘crim inological e sta b lish m e n t’ - still m ain tain ed a tenacious h old on pow erful in stitu tio n s. T his is a p o in t m ade by Stan C ohen (1988: 82) in his review o f British crim inology at the s ta rt o f the 1980s: There are more corners and cavities than ten years ago, but for the most part the institu­ tional foundations of British criminology remain intact and unaltered . . . the establish­ ment saw the new' theories as simply a fashion that would eventually pass or as a few' interesting ideas that could be swallowed up without changing the existing paradigms at all. A lthough the ‘in stitu tio n a l fo u n d a tio n s o f B ritish crim inology’ m ay have rem ained intact, the influence o f th e various stra n d s th a t grew o u t o f the new deviancy, and, in p articular, th e im p act m ade by a specifically sociological crim inology, should n o t be u n d e restim ated , at least w ithin the co ntext o f academ ic crim inology. M any o f the concepts from new deviancy th eo ry had, by the end o f the 1970s, p e rm e ate d thro u g h the e ducation system , so th a t m o st O-level sociology stu d e n ts, let alone u n d e rg ra d u ­ ates, w ould have been in tro d u c ed to, for instance, m oral panics a n d the am plification o f deviance. T heoretical d evelopm ents over the p receding decade had resulted in a su b sta n tia l re m a p p in g o f the terra in o f sociological crim inology. Q uestio n s co n cern ­ ing w hy people broke the law, an d how crim inals should be trea te d , w hich at one tim e were taken for g ran ted w ithin crim inology, had been replaced by different questions: W hy are certain types o f b ehaviour desig n ated illegal? In w hose in te rests do the laws o perate? W hy are only som e people selected as d eviant or crim inal? A nd so on. W h a t­ ever else we m ig h t say a b o u t th is change o f em phasis, for stu d e n ts o f crim inology the m ore radical stra n d s did seem to offer so m eth in g far m ore in te restin g th an the p re ­ occu p atio n s o f an earlier o rth o d o x crim inology. Having said this, although in te rac tio n ism an d the various stra n d s o f radical crim i­ nology h ad becom e very in fluential w ith in the academ ic w orld d u rin g the 1970s, the lim its o f this influence have to be recognised. E choing Stan C ohen’s sen tim en ts, Jock Young (1 9 8 8 :1 7 0 ) has p o in te d out: But what radical criminology did not do to any significant degree is challenge the crimi­ nological establishment. For the policy centres in British society were, and remain, remarkably unaffected, both in the Home Office itself and the university institutions which it helps to finance.

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Young is specifically referring to positivist crim inology in all o f its guises (sociologi­ cal, psychological, biological), and it is im p o rta n t to appreciate th at thro u g h o u t the intellectual turm oil o f the 1960s and 1970s, orthodox crim inology, w ith its positivist credentials, lived on, and, significantly, continued to attract official research funding. Its position had, however, been weakened, and, in the next decade, positivism had to contend with a m ore powerful challenge, though this tim e from a less obvious source. At the level of policy, radical crim inology had m ade little im pact. Young does refer to its influence on L abour Party thinking, b u t this occurred ju st as the Labour Party lost office to a Conservative governm ent, a governm ent still in pow er in the m id1990s. However, radical crim inology did influence the Labour Party at local govern­ m ent level in som e p arts o f the country. As far as national crim inal justice policies were concerned, though, by the end o f the 1970s the influence o f radical crim inology had, not surprisingly, been m inim al. Unlike positivism , which, since its inception, had taken an uncritical stance vis-àvis the concepts o f deviance and crim e, and offered the prom ise o f discovering the causes and cures o f crim e, radical crim inology had celebrated its disengagem ent from the requirem ent to be ‘useful’ in this sense. Clearly, radical socialist crim inology’s com m itm ent to the d ism antling of capitalism - and, in Taylor, W alton and Young’s version, a revolutionary call for ‘socialist diversity’ - was unlikely to endear it to the m ain political parties or to the custodians o f the crim inal justice system . A lthough fem inism was interested in an agenda th at confronted official responses to female crim inality, w om en as victims, and the treatm en t o f offenders, its co ntribution to crim inology was still at an underdeveloped stage by the late 1970s. W hen attem pting to assess the im pact o f radical crim inology on the crim inal ju s­ tice system the tendency, o f course, is to expect this im pact to be progressive in nature. This has m eant th at analyses o f the period up to the 1980s have usually ignored the possibility th a t left-liberal thought, inside and outside crim inology, may have unw ittingly played a p art in paving the way for the grow th o f crim inal justice policies w ith a quite different character.

RADICAL CRITIQ U ES AND THE G R O W T H O F T H E N E W RIGHT

The election of a Conservative governm ent in 1979 signalled a decisive shift to the right in British politics and with it the establishm ent o f T hatcherism . A sim ilar po lit­ ical realignm ent occurred in oth er European countries and, with the election o f a Rea­ gan a d m inistration, in the United States too. Soon afterw ards, state socialism began to be dism antled across form er eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and ‘the m arket’ took centre stage, both as an econom ic m echanism and as an ideological sym bol. From 1979 onw ards, those on the liberal-left spectrum in Britain found th em ­ selves having to fight a rearguard action, as they tried to unravel the precise m ean­ ing and im pact o f w hat has been variously described as new rightism , right-w ing

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au thoritarianism and auth o ritarian populism . Obviously, a range o f social, political and econom ic factors would have to be taken into consideration when accounting for the rise o f the New Right, factors beyond the scope o f this book. However, one ironic dim ension to this will be considered: th at over the previous decade left-of-centre (described loosely as ‘radical’) thought unw ittingly helped to prepare the ground for the New Right. This can be illustrated by focusing on two central characteristics o f radical thought as it developed from the late 1960s, on a general level as well as specifically w ithin the context o f crim inology: 1 There was m uch criticism o f in stitu tio n s and processes in capitalist Britain, especially by socialists, though this criticism tended to rem ain truncated; con­ structive and convincing alternatives to contem porary arrangem ents were in short supply. 2 Radical thought came to be riven by internal divisions. Ideological in-fighting cre­ ated various schism s, with the Labour Party in particular having to cope with a n u m b er o f disparate factions; one im p o rta n t outcom e was the split resulting from the form ation o f the Social D em ocrat Party.

Radical criticism on a general level Clearly, criticism o f aspects of life in capitalist Britain is an expected and appropriate response on the p art o f radicals; w hat was perhaps not expected was th at this criti­ cism would play a p art in helping pave the way for the advent o f the New Right. The irony o f the situation is encapsulated in a letter th at appeared in the journal New Statesman and Society in 1988. The w riter castigated the jo u rn al for allowing the phrase ‘chattering classes’ to be used in its colum ns, pointing out th at the phrase was used by Prim e M inister T hatcher as a term o f abuse, as a way o f ridiculing liberalm inded, m iddle-class academ ics and intellectuals. The phrase is, o f course, synony­ m ous with 'Guardian reader’, w ith the so rt o f person who joins CND and Am nesty International, uses ‘chair’ ra th e r than ‘ch airm an ’, and until recently reprim anded superm arket m anagers for stocking South African oranges. If such people are to be treated as a joke, are the causes they su p p o rt w orthy o f ridicule too? The irony is th at during the 1970s those so labelled joined in the fun them selves, or laughed at com edians who did the job for them . Some of these com edians would fill theatres with m em bers o f the ‘chattering classes’, who would then be treated to being the b u tt o f the com edian’s jokes, with inevitable references to vegetarianism , m uesli, stripped-pine furniture and polytechnic angst. Some novels followed the sam e path, M alcolm B radbury’s The History M an (about a ‘tren d y ’, a.k.a. useless, university soci­ ology lecturer) being a classic o f the genre. This was m ade into a television series. If th at was w hat sociologists were like, if th at was how they behaved, why should tax­ payers su p p o rt them with th eir hard-earned m oney? The fact th at the book was

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m eant to be hum orous helped to p rotect it. Any criticism by a sociologist was likely to be w ritten off as sour grapes and confirm ation th at sociologists did indeed lack a sense o f hum our. T hus in the 1970s people began to get accustom ed to apparently right-on com edians and w riters having a go at liberal to left-m inded groups and the causes they supported. W ho were these chattering, ‘m iddle-class’ victims? In the m ain they were not particularly well-paid public employees. They did not run private corporations or sell arm s to right-w ing m ilitary dictatorships, bu t they were fair game for radical hum our. It is likely th a t in subtle ways this process co ntributed to the cre­ ation o f a clim ate in which the value o f these groups, th eir work and the causes they subscribed to, came to be questioned. If this ‘softening up’ process was going on at a cultural level, using hu m o u r as a vehicle, the connections betw een m uch m ore system atic radical social and political criticism and subsequent developm ents associated with the New Right are even m ore rem arkable. A wide range o f critical analyses o f key sectors o f British society had begun to appear by the late 1960s. The validity o f this work is not at issue here; w hat is at issue is the way in which these critical analyses failed to develop constructive alternatives, beyond, for instance, vague socialist phrases. The result was an opening up o f a political space th a t was readily colonised by the New Right in the 1980s. The right, then, hom ed in on the sam e sectors previously criticised by radicals and were able to p u t forw ard concrete solutions (or w hat p u rp o rted to be solutions). A cursory glance at the key sectors o f British society around which radical critical thought flourished, and which subsequently becam e locations for Conservative poli­ cies, quickly exposes, as M atza w ould p u t it, an ‘em barrassm ent o f riches’. Here are som e exam ples: • N ationalised industries were seen as over-bureaucratised exam ples o f pseudo­ socialism . As far as the workers were concerned, they operated m uch as private industries did and, in fact, were necessary for capitalism as they could be used by the state to fine-tune the econom y. They were privatised by the Conservative governm ent. • M anual work, for instance in m anufacturing industry and m ining, was alienating, physically dam aging and dem eaning. Huge p o rtions of m anufacturing were to dis­ appear and m ost o f the coal m ines closed. • The N ational Health Service was over-bureaucratised and to a large extent run for the benefit o f overpaid professionals. The N ational Health Service was to be increasingly under-funded and organised around strict notions of cost efficiency and effectiveness, together with an increasing privatisation o f services. • M ental hospitals, we were told, did m ore harm than good for the patients; decarceration was the clarion call. U nder the guise o f ‘com m unity care’, patients were decanted from these hospitals out on to the streets. • Council estates were bleak, standardised and soulless. Large num bers o f council houses were privatised, heralding in a new G eorgian front door era.

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• W hen it was not co rru p t because of a junket-loving, entrenched political mafia, local governm ent was overstaffed and inefficient. The power o f local governm ent was dram atically reduced. • By dealing with the system ’s casualties, social w orkers were in effect propping up the capitalist society. Social work had to cope with financial stringency and a changed o rientation tow ards the whole welfare process. • Aid program m es to the ‘T hird W orld’ were seen as both counterproductive because they postponed a socialist revolution am ong recipient nations, and futile because the real problem lay in a system of world trade dom inated by the developed nations. As a pro p o rtio n o f GNP, British aid w ent on to be significantly reduced. • C om prehensive schools were great failures because they were sim ply secondary m odern schools and gram m ar schools u nder one roof. The opting out system th at was introduced gradually recreated a tw o-tier system . • The arts were elitist, benefiting only a tiny m inority o f the population. Here too funding was to be significantly reduced.

Radical criticism within criminology T here were sim ilar developm ents w ithin crim inology. W hile a huge am ount of work appeared during the 1970s th at was intensely critical o f orthodox, establishm ent approaches to crim e, crim e control techniques and indeed to the whole crim inal ju s­ tice system , concrete suggestions regarding how things m ight be im proved were rela­ tively th in on the ground. The New Right, however, did at least appear to have strong, confident ideas regarding a supposed better future. A range o f ideas, policies and practices relating to crim e and crim inal justice were, from the late 1960s, routinely criticised by radical crim inologists. Again, w hatever the validity o f these criticism s, the targets were often the sam e ones subsequently selected by the New Right. F urther­ m ore, and to inject m ore irony into this, those features o f the crim inal justice system being criticised by radicals were arguably m ore liberal, m ore hum ane and less dracon­ ian than w hat were to follow in the 1980s and 1990s. The radical criticism th at devel­ oped w ithin crim inology from the late 1960s coalesced around three m ain them es: 1 The reality and fear o f crime. 2 The causes o f crime. 3 Prescriptive policies aim ed at controlling crim e and dealing with the crim inal. The reality andfear o f crime Following labelling theory, it was com m onplace during the 1970s for radical crim i­ nologists to argue th at crim e rises were a function o f labelling by control agents, with the police sim ply recording m ore offences. Reassuring com parisons were som etim es draw n betw een contem porary life and life in B ritain’s cities 100 years earlier. The fear

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of crim e tended to be equated w ith m oral panics and, looked at objectively, people had to contend w ith worse things than crim e. One outcom e o f this type o f reasoning was th at links betw een crim e rises and capitalist developm ent could no t be m ade. If there were no crim e rises, then there was nothing beyond ‘reaction’ to explain. The right, on the oth er hand, did offer explanations, unpalatable as these were to leftliberal thought, and appeared to be sym pathetic to the w orries of the public, who did feel th at crim e was on the increase. However, if necessary, the right could ap propriate radical reasoning and argue th a t official crim e rises reflected the greater willingness of the public to re p o rt crim e to the police, which in tu rn reflected the g overnm ent’s policies in this area. The causes o f crime A ttem pts to fathom the causes of crim e were attacked by m any radical crim inologists as determ inistic positivism , and futile anyway. T hus, for instance, theories linking crim e to poverty, unem ploym ent and deprivation were criticised for being d eterm in ­ istic, especially by those oriented tow ards an interactionist paradigm . Ironically, as we shall see, w ith the rise o f the New Right there was a significant shift away from try­ ing to identify the causes o f crim e. The grow th o f w hat has been called adm inistrative crim inology in the 1980s led to a greater em phasis being placed on control. From the point o f view o f the right, if poverty was irrelevant, why waste m oney on such things as u rban aid program m es, which, it was argued, had so obviously failed in the United States anyway? Prescriptive policies A m ong left crim inologists and liberal ones w ithin the interactionist tradition, it was not th o u g h t p roper for crim inologists to help the capitalist system , or the forces of law and order, by joining in the fight against crim e. There was no desire to line up w ith the repressive a pparatus of the state. The New Right, however, was able to p resent itself as a force in society th at was bothered about crim e. W ithin the context of crim inal justice policies, the ‘softening up’ process was m ost obviously seen in radi­ cal critiques o f w elfare-oriented trea tm e n t m odels of juvenile justice. Again ironi­ cally, those on the right agreed. They attacked w hat they saw as ‘soft’, ‘kid-gloved’ approaches, and argued th at people should take full responsibility for th eir actions and be punished accordingly. M any on the left argued th at juveniles should be dealt with on the basis o f a ‘due process’ m odel o f justice, linked to the idea o f ‘ju st deserts’, rath er than the welfare m odel supposedly enshrined in the 1969 Children and Young Persons Act (e.g., Taylor, Lacey and Bracken, 1980). Interestingly, a sim ilar conver­ gence betw een left and right occurred in the United States, where rehabilitation through treatm en t was also criticised: ‘The subsequent turn against rehabilitation cannot be explained prim arily as a conservative reaction to rising crim e rates. It was m ade possible only by a discrediting o f rehabilitation from the Left’ (Plattner, quoted by Cullen and W ozniak, 1982:24).

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Divisions within radical thought T he ideological in-fighting w ithin radical th o u g h t in general w as paralleled by increasing disu n ity w ithin radical crim inology d u rin g the 1970s. T he m ajor divisions th a t opened up en com passed labelling theory, critical crim inology and recent debates betw een ‘left re alism ’ and ‘left id ealism ’. No concerted challenge to New Right th in k in g on crim e arose; rather, w hat we saw w as a great deal o f som etim es v it­ riolic d isp u tes w ithin radical crim inology.

S e le c te d fu r t h e r re a d in g The flavour of these theoretical developm ents is well captured by Pearson, G. (1975) The

Deviant Imagination, London: Macmillan. The shift from new deviancy theory to a M arxist inform ed crim inology is explored in Fine, B. (ed) (1979) Capitalism and the Rule of Law: From deviancy theory to Marxism, London: Hutchinson. For a recent and clearly w ritten introduction to Foucault’s w'ork, see: Han-Pile, B. (2008)

Foucault, Abingdon: Routledge.

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K ey th e m e s • Deviance and power • American conflict theory • Politicising deviance • Critical criminology • Marx and Engels on crime • Taylor, W alto n and Young and the politicisation of deviance •

Politicising deviance: nuts, sluts, preverts . . . and revolutionaries?

• Youth subcultures and politics • Critical criminology: deviance,

crime and power

• Phenomenology and criminology • Ethnomethodology • Control theory •

Feminist perspectives and criminology

INTRODUCTION

T his ch ap ter exam ines a tte m p ts to develop a M arxist ap p ro ach to the stu d y o f crim e a n d deviance - the ‘new ’, or critical, crim inology - a n d includes a discussion o f M arx a n d Engels’s w ritings on crim e. For critical crim inologists, crim e a n d responses to it should be stu d ied w ithin the context o f a specifically capitalist society. In such a society, it was argued, the law a n d law en forcem ent p ro tec t the in te rests o f the ruling class. Som e w riters argued th a t crim inal or deviant b ehaviour re p resen ted a form o f political action, in th a t it w as a way o f resisting those w ith pow er in society. T his perio d also saw the em ergence o f radical stu d ies o f youth subcultures. T he 1970s w itnessed o th e r im p o rta n t theo retical developm ents w ithin crim inology, notably, fem inist perspectives on crim e an d crim inal justice, co n tro l theory and w ork influenced by p henom enology an d ethno m eth o d o lo g y ; these too are exam ined in th is chapter.

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Interactionism had the rare distinction o f having to cope w ith criticism s from all political directions. Looking back on these criticism s, Becker (1974: 53) com m ented: Moral problems arise in all sociological research but are especially provocatively posed by interactionist theories of deviance. Moral criticism has come from the political centre and beyond, from the political Left, and from the left field. Interactionist theories have been accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, be the enemy those who would upset the stability of the existing order or the Establishment. They have been accused of openly espousing unconventional norms, of refusing to support anti-Establishment positions, and (the left field position) of appearing to support anti-Establishment causes while subtly favouring the status quo. Irrespective o f interactio n ism ’s ‘tru e ’ nature, it did play an im p o rta n t role in generat­ ing key crim inological debates during the 1970s. The strongest criticism s of interac­ tionism , and in particular o f labelling theory, probably came from the left. By the beginning o f the 1970s labelling theory was already being attacked for its lack o f politically radical credentials; the British left came to see it as an o th er version o f Am erican liberalism . In response, there em erged a m uch m ore radical and politically com m itted crim inology based upon varieties o f conflict theory. In the United States this was conflict theory o f a pluralistic, non-M arxist type - though later on som e of it did becom e infused with M arxist concepts - w hilst in Britain there was a m ore explicit com m itm ent to neo-M arxist form ulations in the shape o f critical crim inol­ ogy. The enduring influence o f labelling theory, though, should no t be overlooked. Conflict theorists picked up on the argum ent from w riters such as Becker and Lem ert th at deviance had to be seen in relative term s, and th at the designation o f certain acts as deviant was a function o f the distrib u tio n o f pow er in society. Furtherm ore, Lem ert had stressed th at pow erful elites were able to influence how deviant behaviour would be dealt with: w hether to ‘control or d e-control’. However, labelling theory had fallen sh o rt o f an analysis o f the deeper sources o f the pow er to label, and conflict theorists, through their attem p ts to construct a political econom y o f crim e, were concerned to analyse the structural bases o f rule creation and rule enforcem ent. Two im p o rtan t theoretical them es em erged in the im m ediate post-new deviancy period and helped pave the way for conflict theory, and each developed out of a cri­ tique o f labelling theory: one focused on deviance and power, the oth er on the p oliti­ cisation o f deviance.

DEVIANCE AND

POWER

This them e is associated with those w riters w ho were critical o f labelling theory for concentrating on the least powerful, m arginalised groups in society, groups conventionally defined as deviant (G ouldner, 1968; Liazos, 1972; Thio, 1973). They

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also criticised labelling theory for confining their analyses o f the pow er to label to low-level agents o f social control. Liazos argued th at the sociology o f deviance had only a p artial view o f deviance. It had, he said, neglected the violence perp etrated by the United States governm ent in Vietnam , and the violent, co rru p t and fraudulent activities o f large corporations. Thio took a sim ilar line, bu t also argued th at powerful elites protected their interests by defining certain form s o f behaviour as deviant and, by m aintaining an unequal society, sustained the social and econom ic conditions that caused deviant behaviour am ong the powerless. These were issues taken up by conflict theory in the United States as it developed from the late 1960s and through the 1970s. The them e o f pow erful elites or classes as self-interested rule m akers is particularly a p p aren t in the early work o f the conflict theorists. Later on, they tu rn ed their atten tio n to the pow erful as law breakers, via ‘exposé’ crim inology and a focus on the ‘crim es o f the pow erful’ and, u nder the influ­ ence o f M arxism , to the crim inogenic features o f capitalism itself.

AMERICAN CONFLICT THEORY

Three crim inologists in particular are associated with the early developm ent of con­ flict theory in the United States: Austin Turk, W illiam Cham bliss and Richard Quinney. Although m any o f their ideas overlapped, sum m arising their work is com plicated by the fact th at their ideas (especially in the case o f Quinney) underw ent some m odifi­ cation during the 1970s, this reflecting the theoretical ferm ent w ithin radical crim inol­ ogy at th at tim e. Coincidently, each of these w riters introduced th eir ideas in books published in the sam e year, 1969. In general term s, all three followed labelling theory by orienting their analyses tow ards the crim inalisation o f behaviour, rath er than tow ards the crim inal and the sources of crim inal behaviour. T hus they adopted a relativistic stance, and rejected the view th at deviance/crim e was a quality o f the act. However, unlike labelling theory, they attem p ted to explain processes o f crim inalisation from the point o f view o f the deeper structures o f power in Am erican society. Powerful interest groups were seen as im posing their own definitions o f crim e on to society. Fundam entally, the law was seen as a coercive in stru m en t used selectively by these sectional interests to preserve their power. Turk (1969) developed a particular form o f conflict theory, largely derived from Ralph D ah ren d o rf (1959,1968), in which he em phasised the conflict arising from the unequal d istribution of authority, rather than from class relationships rooted in the econom ic system . The m odel o f authority used owed m uch to W eber’s m odel of power, where authority is equated with legitim ised power. For Turk, relationships based upon authority and subordination would always exist - in socialist as well as capitalist societies - though the sources of authority may alter. At a given m om ent, therefore, there will always be a d o m inant group able to im pose th eir own norm ative

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system on to society in general. R ather th an class, Turk saw subordinate status as deriving from sex, ‘race’/eth n icity and age. Those occupying subordinate positions were m ore likely to find their behaviour crim inalised, no t because it was inherently crim inal or ‘b a d ’, but because their norm ative system s were in conflict with the n o r­ m ative system o f the d o m inant group. As a corollary o f this, those m ost likely to expe­ rience crim inalisation in Am erican society were m ale, black and young. Cham bliss carried out his own em pirical research in order to substan tiate the th eo ­ retical claim th at the law operated in favour of the pow erful in society. I lis first study (1964) was o f the English vagrancy laws initially introduced in the fo urteenth cen­ tury, where he show ed how they directly operated in the interests of the ruling class. He argued th at feudal landow ners used these laws as a m echanism to com pel people to work on their land. From the point o f view of the landow ners the laws were neces­ sary because o f the shortages o f labour brought about by the Black D eath. The vagrancy laws m ade it illegal for people to give food or shelter to those defined as vagrants. In addition, vagrants were threatened w ith im prisonm ent if they refused work offered by a landow ner. As Cham bliss (1964: 69) concluded: There is little question that these statutes were designed for one express purpose: to force laborers. . . to accept employment at a low wage in order to insure the landowner an adequate supply of labor at a price he could afford to pay. Later on C ham bliss did a study o f the in troduction o f a Poll Tax law by British colonis­ ers in th eir East African colonies. Again, he m ade the point th at the law was used to further the interests o f the class in power. The in troduction o f the Poll Tax law m eant th at African m igrant w orkers were forced to work on the colonisers’ plantations so as to earn enough m oney to pay the tax. The establishm ent o f a low-wage econom y ensured th at the workers stayed on the plantation until the season ended, and p re­ vented them from earning sufficient to pay their taxes m id-season. By the m iddle o f the 1970s Cham bliss had m oved tow ards a m ore overtly M arxist position, draw ing now on key concepts such as ruling class (rather than elite) and class conflict. In his article ‘Towards a political econom y o f crim e’ (Cham bliss, 1975), he was arguing th at as capitalism develops, so the gaps betw een p roletariat and b o u r­ geoisie will widen, bringing w ith it increased social conflict. U nder these circum ­ stances he saw it as inevitable th at the ruling class w ould gradually im pose a m ore coercive penal law on the w orking class in the hope o f m aintaining social order through their subm ission. As a consequence, he argued, m odern capitalist societies are characterised by increasingly oppressive crim inal justice system s as social condi­ tions deteriorate, and the corresponding deprivation suffered by large sections o f the working class contributes to rising levels o f crim e. Thus by the m iddle o f the 1970s C ham bliss was giving atten tio n to explanations o f crim inality, rather than concen­ trating on processes of crim inalisation. This engagem ent with causal questions was also found in the work o f an o th er A m erican conflict theorist, David G ordon, at the

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beginning o f the 1970s. G ordon (1971) argued (as C ham bliss was to do) th at given the selfishness, individualism and com petitiveness o f a capitalist system , crim e repre­ sents a perfectly rational response. C ham bliss also took up an o th er them e in his research, a them e th at was to be developed fu rth er by radical crim inologists: namely, the pow erful as rule breakers (Cham bliss, 1978). For m any years he carried out a study of crim e and the legal sys­ tem in Seattle in the U nited States. His conclusion was th at all classes were involved in crim inal activities, w ith the m ajor crim e syndicate consisting o f both professional crim inals and ‘respectable’, pow erful m em bers o f the com m unity. In addition, he identified w hat he called a ‘sym biotic’ relationship, based upon m utual in te rd ep e n d ­ ency, betw een organised crim e and the bureaucratic legal system . Rather th an cope with the organisational disequilibrium th at would result from bringing those involved in organised crim e to justice, pow erful players in the legal system preferred to devote m ost o f their resources to the apprehension and p unishm ent o f the least powerful crim inals, such as drug users and prostitutes. In effect, the crim inal justice system and organised crim e in the city oiled each o th e r’s wheels. Like Cham bliss, Q uinney gradually moved tow ards an explicitly M arxist position, though his own intellectual journey was especially rem arkable in that, earlier on, it encom passed some ideas from phenom enology and, later on, theological considera­ tions. The latter stage o f this journey found Q uinney editing a collection o f readings entitled Criminology as Peacemaking (Pepinsky and Quinney, 1991). His own c o n trib u ­ tion to this volum e is an eclectic mix o f radical social science, hum anism and a wide range o f religious sources. As the title suggests, the book was aim ed at m obilising crim inologists no t for the traditional ‘w ar against crim e’, bu t for a process o f reconcil­ iation and healing. M acho cynics are likely to scoff at this enterprise, though there is no evidence th at declarations o f war on crim e in Europe and the United States have been particularly successful. In his first im p o rta n t c ontribution, Q uinney’s (1969) argum ents were sim ilar to those found in Turk and Cham bliss, in th at they stressed the powerful as in stru m en ­ tal law m akers. In two books published the following year, though, he introduced a phenom enological dim ension (Q uinney 1970a, 1970b). Here he addressed the social reality of crim e: the ways in which those w ith pow er were able to construct subjective u nderstandings o f crim e and crim inality th at suited th eir own interests. On this basis he argued th at the perception o f crim e - th at is, the subjectively understood ‘reality’ o f crim e (and, indeed, anything else) - was a ‘state o f m in d ’; nothing th at constituted ‘social reality’ existed as an objective entity. Thus the ‘problem o f crim e’ is shaped by pow erful interests in society. However, by 1974 Q uinney was criticising the perspective o f phenom enology, and had em braced an explicitly M arxist position (Quinney, 1974). This work was strongly influenced by the Frankfurt School, with its em phasis on the m anipulation of consciousness by bourgeois ideological form ations, such as the mass m edia. Quinney (1977) described his M arxian crim inology as ‘critical crim inology’,

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and argued th at because o f its inherent contradictions, the capitalist system created large num bers of unem ployed people - surplus populations. The capitalist state, he said, attem pts to m anage these surplus populations by welfare and crim inal justice policies, in an effort to stave off social disruption. In Q uinney’s view, these attem pts were doom ed to failure, being unable to prevent increases in crime. The crim e associ­ ated with surplus populations is described by him as ‘survival crim e’; it is crime that arises from living in or at the edges o f poverty. However, it was also seen as a form of im m ature political action - the poor fighting back. In Q uinney’s work, then, we can see a move away from an earlier, purely in strum ental view o f the law and legal system , with the suggestion of ruling-class conspiracies, tow ards a m ore structuralist position, where law and the crim inal justice system are locked into the structural im peratives of capitalism as a whole. The conceptualisation o f crim e as the m eans by which the poor and m arginalised fought back th at Q uinney subscribed to later on in the 1970s, leads directly to the sec­ ond them e th at em erged in the late 1960s w ithin an em bryonic radical crim inology: the politicisation of deviance.

POLITICISING

DEVIANCE

This them e is associated with the ‘m an-fighting-back’ image o f the deviant in tro ­ duced by G ouldner (1968) as a critique o f w hat he saw as labelling th eo ry ’s defeated, ‘m an-on-his-back’ image, and also with the work of Horow itz and Leibowitz (1969). These w riters pointed the way tow ards theoretical m odels th at placed the actions of the deviant centre stage. R ather th an a pathetic victim o f labelling by control agents, the individual was now seen as choosing a specifically deviant path as an expression o f resistance. Deviance here becam e linked to political action. Horow itz and Leibowitz’s influential article considerably extended the argum ent pu t forw ard by labelling theorists. N ot only was the labelling of certain acts as deviant a political process, they argued, bu t also som e ‘socially’ deviant acts should m ore p ro p ­ erly be viewed as ‘politically’ deviant acts. Their charge th at traditional definitions of ‘political’ were too narrow and inflexible was obviously in tune with some of the ideas em anating from the New L eft/counter-cultural configuration in America and Europe at th at tim e. The labels ‘social’ and ‘political’ deviance were, they said, becom ing increasingly redu n d an t in m odern America. Developm ents in the 1960s - and in p a r­ ticular, protest based upon the experience o f the ghetto - had produced a convergence between the deviant and the political. T hus political m inorities were increasingly step­ ping outside the repertoire of acceptable tactics to further their causes, and adopting m ethods and lifestyles norm ally associated with deviant groups. On the other side, in an effort to m ake their voices heard, deviant groups were increasingly adopting tactics th at were norm ally thought of as political tactics. In Horowitz and Leibowitz’s view, this convergence had occurred because the ‘right to dissent’, traditionally enjoyed by

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powerful m inorities, had come to be questioned by the elites as these m inorities had begun to use deviant tactics. From the other direction, deviant m inorities had become less willing to confine their problem s to the private sphere, and were using m odes of protest traditionally thought o f as political. However, powerful interests tended to deny political status to their protests, since they had, so to speak, already been w ritten off as ‘social problem s’. If, therefore, the actions o f political m inorities are defined in ways traditionally reserved for deviants, so they will be responded to in sim ilar ways. A classic example of this would be the Stalinist ploy o f labelling political dissension in the form er Soviet Union as m ental illness. In Britain this them e was taken up by Cohen (1969,1974) and by Hall (1974). Fol­ lowing Horow itz and Leibowitz, they discussed the tendency o f those with pow er to assign certain kinds o f political activity to the ‘deviant’ category, thereby negating any social criticism inform ing th at activity. It is im p o rta n t to recognise (as Cohen and Hall did) precisely w hat Horow itz and Leibowitz were saying about deviance and poli­ tics. They did not argue th at deviant acts are, by definition, political, but rather that som e deviant groups - the Gay Liberation M ovem ent, for exam ple - were now a d o p t­ ing political m odes of protest to further th eir cause. The original deviance was never seen as political in itself. U nfortunately, on this side o f the A tlantic som e sociologists (e.g., G. Pearson, 1976) saw in Horow itz and Leibowitz’s article an argum ent th at deviance in general was political.

CRITICAL CRIM INOLOGY

I have already described the eagerness with which a generation o f young, radical British crim inologists seized upon the ideas o f new deviancy theory in the late 1960s. This was the beginning o f an intensely fertile period, when the foundations for the subsequent developm ent o f crim inology in Britain were laid. W hile interactionism had em erged out o f a strongly liberal tradition in the United States, in Britain it a ttracted the attention o f academ ics with m ore radical aspira­ tions, reflecting the influence o f a European M arxist trad itio n . From the very begin­ ning there was a tension betw een interactionism , pulled by a ‘do your own th in g ’ counter-culture, and neo-M arxism , whose sym pathisers kept one eye on the b a rri­ cades and the possibility o f socialist revolution. In the early British interactionism inspired research, though, this political radicalism was still underdeveloped, and only hinted at by the use o f phrases such as ruling class or bourgeoisie instead of elites, class conflict instead o f culture conflict, and capitalism instead o f industrial society. By the beginning o f the 1970s the tensions and inevitable splits were surfac­ ing w ithin the N ational Deviancy Conference, new deviancy’s forum in Britain. Eventually this led to attem p ts to develop an explicitly M arxist crim inology, given the title o f critical crim inology. A lthough m uch criticised - in tim e by the authors them selves - Taylor, W alton and Young’s (1973) The New Criminology announced

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this shift in Britain tow ards a M arxist-inform ed political econom y o f crim e and deviance. From the title we can see th at the sociology o f deviance had been eclipsed by a return to crim inology, though the book was subtitled For a social theory o f deviance and was largely devoted to the phenom enon o f deviance, which indicated a lingering am bivalence. T heir follow-up book, Critical Criminology (Taylor et al., 1975), which they edited, drew on a range of contributors, and tried to answ er som e o f the criti­ cism m et by the first book. These early versions o f critical crim inology were to a large extent based upon a mix­ ture o f radical labelling theory and neo-M arxism , a potent brew th at ended up with m ore than a w hiff of anarchism . The two them es (discussed above) o f deviance and power, and the politicisation o f deviance, th at em erged in the im m ediate post-new deviancy period in the United States, and was to som e extent incorporated into the work of Am erican conflict theorists (especially Quinney), strongly influenced Taylor, W alton and Young’s ideas. The two elem ents contained in the deviance and power them e were clearly in evidence: ‘radical crim inological strategy . . . is to show up the law, in its true colours, as the instrum ent of the ruling class . . . and th at the rule-makers are also the greatest rule-breakers’ (Taylor et al., 1975: 89). The second them e, the politicisation o f deviance, was also a key com ponent o f their work. Seeing deviants as political rebels, ‘m uch deviance’, they said, ‘is in itself political’ (ibid.: 221). A lthough a few w riters in Britain and the United States had produced work on crim e and deviance th at was influenced by M arxism , until the advent o f The New Criminology attem p ts to construct a M arxist theory o f crim e and deviance had been rare. In response to Paul H irst, one o f th eir critics, Taylor et al. (1975:283) wrote: We can think of no theorist of crime and deviancy in this country, and only two in the USA (John Horton and Tony Platt) who could be accused of the ‘Marxism’ in deviancy theory he (Hirst) sees to be prevalent. None of the other ‘conflict’ theorists of crime . . . borrow in any significant fashion from Marxism. Indeed, the dearth o f M arxist crim inology was such th at until the early 1970s the p re­ war work o f the D utch M arxist crim inologist W illem Bonger was seen by m any as definitive (and was m uch criticised by Taylor, W alton and Young). Taylor, W alton and Young’s am bitious aim was to help construct a M arxist-inform ed theoretical understanding o f both the processes o f crim inalisation/ deviantisation, and the aetiology of crim inal/deviant activities, by opening up ‘the crim inological debate by pointing to certain form al and substantive requirem ents of a fully social theory of deviance, a theory th at can explain the form s assum ed by social control and deviant action in “developed” (capitalist) societies’ (Taylor et al., 1973: 269, original emphasis). The m ain features o f their work can be sum m arised as follows: 1 There was a com m itm ent to a ‘norm ative’ crim inology. By this they m eant a socialist crim inology th at insisted on the need to eradicate social and econom ic

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2

3

4

5

inequalities inherent in capitalist society. This w ould be congruent with M arx’s view th a t ‘m a n ’s true nature could only be realised in a classless society based upon a spirit o f co m m un ity’. The creation of a socialist society would usher in a celebration o f ‘diversity’, though w ithout the need for any activities to be crim inalised. T hus they envisaged a future ‘crim e free’ society. They attem p ted to find a route to und erstan d in g hum an action th at avoided the determ inism found in positivism , as well as the relativism found in p h enom eno­ logical accounts o f deviance. This was reflected in their endorsem ent o f G ouldner’s ‘m an-fighting-back’ image of the deviant, and they advanced the view th at deviance had to be seen as the way in which individuals ‘actively m ade’ the external w orld. From this perspective deviance is chosen, and ‘m uch’ o f it is in fact political. In this context they were critical o f Bonger, and o f the m ore recent work o f the Am erican conflict theorists for holding on to a determ inistic and pathologised view o f deviance. A lthough they stressed voluntarism and choice, they did none the less recognise the structural contexts in which people m ade decisions, ultim ately class society. However, following M arx, they saw the developm ent o f class consciousness as the basis for eventual liberation. They spent m uch tim e discussing the role o f the powerful, via the state and its agencies, in the creation o f rules and th eir enforcem ent, thereby leaning tow ards an in stru m en talist view o f the law. This included those professionals and in stitu ­ tions in advanced capitalist societies concerned with the control of, as they saw it, increasing num bers o f people.

Critical responses Inevitably, The New Criminology generated a great deal o f criticism and debate including criticism from oth er M arxists. The m ost fundam ental issue throw n up by these debates was w hether, w hilst still retaining M arxist credentials, a M arxist theory of deviance was possible at all. Taylor, W alton and Young’s strongest M arxist critic at the tim e was Paul H irst (whose critique appeared in Critical Criminology). H irst (1975b) argued th at M arxists should have no truck w ith bourgeois concepts such as crim e and deviance; to do so would lead only to revisionism . For H irst, crim e and deviance were no t ‘real’ objects o f study; M arxist social theory was already specified by its own conceptual language. Using a concept such as deviance was to assum e th at deviant behaviour was special, and essentially different to non-deviant behaviour. How, then, can deviance be separated out for study? U nfortunately, in The New Crimi­ nology the a u thors did no t provide a precise definition o f deviance. They seem ed to be saying that deviance is different to conform ity in so m uch as it is purposive infrac­ tion o f (ideological) rules. D eviants were thus seen as being com m itted to m odes of

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behaviour th at they know are frow ned upon by the w ider society. The difficulty here is the im plication th at there is a consensus in society, a notion th at they had th o r­ oughly disapproved o f when criticising orthodox crim inology. In fact, as the 1970s progressed, the focus sw itched to crim e and law, and the con­ cept of deviance was used less often. Colin Sum ner (1976) was one M arxist who felt th at it could be retained, providing th at it was reconceptualised so as to m ake it com ­ patible with M arxism . He suggested th at deviance was best seen as an ideological ‘social censure’, o r adverse judgem ent. From this sta n d p o in t, ‘deviance’ does no t exist because people decide to break rules, or because they have a deviant label im pressed upon them . It exists as an objective phenom enon located w ithin the ideological superstructure o f capitalism , irrespective o f actual behaviour, or the extent o f a con­ sensus. In a later discussion, Sum ner (1990: 27) pointed out th at social censures ‘m ark off the deviant, the pathological, the dangerous and the crim inal from the n o r­ mal and the good. They say “stop”, and are tied to a desire to control, prevent or p u n ­ ish’. From this perspective, the sociology of deviance should becom e the sociology of social censures. The focus would therefore be on ‘the negative categories o f m oral ideology’, the social censures, rath er th an on the ‘offenders’ th at they produce. D uring the rest o f the 1970s a large am o u n t o f theoretical work was produced in Britain in varying degrees inform ed by M arxist ideas. Before we exam ine th a t work, it will be useful to re tu rn to original sources and see w hat M arx himself, and his collab­ o rato r Engels, had to say about crime.

M A R X A N D E N G E L S ON CRIM E

M arxists w ho retu rn to source to look for detailed analyses o f the phenom enon o f crim e are likely to be disappointed. M arx had little m ore than a passing interest in crim e, and when he did address the subject it was usually treated as p art o f a w ider concern with the political econom y o f law and right (especially in The German Ideology (M arx and Engels, 1965)). Engels sp en t rather m ore tim e specifically on the subject o f crim e, especially in The Condition o f the Working Class in England (Engels, 1969). By m odern standards, M arx’s w ritings on crim e as such are, arguably, less th an adequate. His faith in crim inal statistics, his lack o f interest in crim inal m otiva­ tions, and his identification o f crim e with the lum penproletariat are good exam ples o f this. Taylor et al. (1973: 221) argued th a t crim inology should recognise ‘in deviance the acts o f m en in the process o f actively m aking, rath er than passively taking, the external w orld’. This form ulation, although it was inten d ed to be ‘M arxist’, did appear to be at variance with M arx’s own w ritings on crim e. In general, he seem ed to view the crim inal as ‘passively taking’, rath er th an ‘actively m aking’, the world. They attem pted to resolve this problem by arguing th at M arx’s work on crim e was

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m isleading, a n d th a t we sh o u ld utilise his general body o f th eo ry ra th e r th a n rely on th o se instances w here he specifically takes up em pirical challenges. O ne o f the m ain difficulties to be overcom e by Taylor et al., a n d indeed by all M arx­ ists, was th a t M arx saw crim e as being c o n ce n tra ted in the lu m p e n p ro letaria t, and this provided H irst w ith one o f his m ain criticism s o f ‘M a rx ist’ crim inology. From H irst’s p o in t o f view, M arxists sh o u ld follow M arx and trea t the lu m p e n p ro letaria t w ith the c o n te m p t they deserve. Lying outside the relations o f p ro d u c tio n - th a t is, as ‘n o n -p ro d u ctiv e’ lab o u r - and living a parasitic m ode o f life, they were o f no in terest as far as rev o lu tio n ary socialist struggle was concerned. M arx and Engels (1970a: 44) said o f the lu m p e n p ro letaria t: The ‘dangerous class’, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may here and there be swept into the movement by the proletar­ ian revolution, its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue. T his was n o t a reflection o f som e gru m p y V ictorian m orality; it w as based upon a view o f this stra tu m as being m ore likely to in h ib it th an fu rth e r a revolutionary cause. It was in th e co ntext o f a discussion o f ‘p ro d u c tiv e ’ a n d ‘u n p ro d u c tiv e ’ lab o u r th a t M arx referred ironically to the ‘p ro d u c tiv ity ’ o f crim e (see C h a p te r 3, p. 52). Engels’s (1969) The Condition o f the Working Class in England sta n d s as a d e n u n ­ ciation o f the life c o n d itio n s th a t the w orking class was subject to at th a t tim e (1 8 4 4 -4 5 ), an d a d e n u n ciatio n o f the capitalist m ode o f p ro d u c tio n w hich he saw as p ro d u c in g an d su sta in in g th o se co n d itio n s. He discussed crim e w ithin th e context o f a b ru ta l wage lab o u r system . O u t o f th is system arose econom ic d eprivation and the dem o ralisatio n o f increasing n u m b ers o f the w orking class. Engels c o n ten d ed th a t crim e w as an inevitable response, as su m m ed up in th is ra th e r determ inistic passage: If the influences demoralizing to the working man act more powerfully, more concentratedly than usual, he becomes an offender as certainly as water abandons the fluid for the vaporous state at 80 degrees, Reaumur. Under the brutal and brutalizing treatm ent of the bourgeoisie, the working man becomes precisely as much a thing without volition as water, and is subject to the laws of Nature with precisely the same necessity; at a cer­ tain point all freedom ceases. (Ibid.: 159) T here are, however, m ore ‘v o lu n ta ristic ’ elem ents to be found in Engels’s discussion. Faced w ith econom ic dep riv atio n , he argued, th e w orker e ith e r ‘m erely strives to m ake life e n d u rab le while a b an d o n in g the effort to break th e yoke’ (ibid.: 145), or he in som e way revolts. Using th is reasoning, Engels goes on to outline a n u m b e r o f possible, crim inal, responses. These ‘conflictual’ crim es m ay som etim es be com m itted

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by the w orking class against the w orking class, and are seen as representing a carica­ ture o f capitalism itself: T h is w ar o f all against a l l . . . it is only the logical sequel of the principle involved in free com petition’ (ibid.: 162). In som e cases, though, crim e was directed at the rich: The working man lived in poverty and want, and saw' that others were better off than he. It w'as not clear to his mind why he, who did more for society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under these conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the sacredness of property, and he stole. (Ibid.: 240) Engels stresses the inevitability o f this conflict, and its potential for developm ent into a m ore m ature, class-based econom ic, then political, struggle against the bourgeoisie: ‘The revolt of the w orkers began soon after the first industrial developm ent, and has passed through several phases .. . The earliest, crudest and least fruitful form o f this rebellion was th at o f crim e’ (ibid.: 240). Engels associated different types o f crim inal activity with different types o f con­ sciousness. However, class consciousness is not present in any o f the three types described above: crim e determ ined by conditions of brutality, crim e reflecting capi­ talist values, and crim e based on taking from the rich. Class consciousness involves particip an ts having collective class interests: ‘As a class, they first m anifest opposi­ tion to the bourgeoisie when they resisted the in troduction o f m achinery at the very beginning o f the industrial period . . . factories were dem olished and m achinery destroyed’ (ibid.: 241). The fifth possibility for Engels was when the w orking class used crim e in the struggle for socialism . M arx too saw crim e as an inevitable response to the conditions o f life created by capitalism . Crime arose as a sym ptom o f the contradictions w ithin capitalism , and as capitalism progressed he believed th at the total am ount o f crim e would increase. He did not, however, see crim e perse as revolutionary. Crime was: ‘the struggle o f the iso­ lated individual against the prevailing conditions’ (M arx and Engels, 1965: 367). He was aware th at crim e covered a spectrum o f behaviours, though in each case his over­ riding concern was with the efficacy o f the behaviour in term s of the w orkers’ struggle for socialism . T hus the fact th at crim e is ‘against’ the capitalist’s law was irrelevant. However, certain types o f crim e, such as m achine sm ashing, have a special signifi­ cance for M arx and Engels: they represented form s o f crim inal activity which p re­ saged a m ore m ature political struggle. This is an im p o rta n t point when we come to consider attem p ts by m ore recent M arxists to politicise crim inal behaviour. W hilst M arx was aware o f the ways in which law functioned in the interests o f capital, he was never led into the position o f rom anticising crim e. Engels, too, in no way ro m an ti­ cised crim e. Even crim e th at involved stealing from the ‘rich idler’ was described as the ‘crudest, least fruitful form o f rebellion’.

C R IM IN O L O G Y

TAYLOR, W ALTO N AND YO U N G AND THE

PO LITICISATIO N

OF DEVIANCE

A c en tra l th re a d ru n n in g th ro u g h The New Criminology, a n d latc h ed on to by a n u m ­ b e r o f critical c rim in o lo g ists in th e 1970s, w as th a t th e d e v ia n t w as actively c o m m it­ ted to b re ak in g b o u rg e o is rules, h en ce ‘m u ch ' d eviance w as in itse lf political. ‘D eviance’ a n d ‘p o litic a l’ w ere th ere fo re seen as q u a litie s o f th e act. H irst (1975a: 218) w as n o t alo n e in his re to rt th a t: The rom anticisation of crime, the recognition in the crim inal of a rebel ‘alienated’ from society, is, for M arxism, a dangerous political ideology. It leads inevitably. . . to the esti­ m ation o f the lum penproletariat as a revolutionary force. O bviously, if we a d h e re to a stric t M arx -d eriv e d line, a n d e q u ate c rim in a lity w ith the lu m p e n p ro le ta ria t, th is does follow. How ever, th is is to a ssu m e th a t all crim e h as essen tially th e sam e q u a litie s, b ased u p o n lu m p e n -ty p e c o n scio u sn ess, w hich w ould c o n tra d ic t H irs t’s a rg u m e n t th a t we sh o u ld n o t a ccep t b o u rg e o is categories. A nd, in fact, he re fe rre d to crim es such as m o b a g ita tio n , m ac h in e sm a sh in g a n d in d u stria l sa b o tag e as ‘h aving a m o re obviously “p o litic a l” q u a lity ’ (ibid.: 219). T he q u e stio n re m a in s, th o u g h , on w h a t basis do we se p a ra te p o litical from n o n -p o litica l crim e? M a rx ’s view o f th e lu m p e n p ro le ta ria t as th e so u rce o f m o st crim e, a view th a t H irst e n d o rse d , is p ro b le m a tic in th a t it ig n o res th e vast a m o u n t o f law b re a k in g carried o u t by o th e r se c tio n s o f society, a n d H irs t’s c ritiq u e o f Taylor, W alton a n d Young to som e e x te n t rests o n th is u n d e rs ta n d in g o f th e lu m p e n p ro le ta ria t, o r som e su p p o se d m o d ern -d a y e q u iv alen t.

PO LITICISIN G

DEVIANCE: NUTS, SLUTS,

PREVERTS . . .AND

REVO LU TIO N A RIES?

D u rin g the 1970s a n u m b e r o f left, critical c rim in o lo g ists focused o n w h at they saw as th e p o litica l c o n te n t o f d e v ia n t/c rim in a l activities. S om e saw v irtu a lly all such activi­ ties, if c arried o u t by th e w o rk in g class, as fo rm s o f p o litica l actio n ; o th e rs c o n ce n ­ tra te d on specific in stan c es. In his review o f M a rx ist crim in o lo g y d u rin g th a t p e rio d , R onald H in ch (1983: 69) h a s w ritte n : The exact m eaning given to crime as a political act, of course, varied. For some . . . the act itself constituted a political statem ent, while for others . . . the act had to be accom­ panied by a conscious intent to rebel. In m ost instances the result was a blurring of the relation between the act, the intent of the act, and the class struggle. Indeed, it appeared that for some . . . the class struggle and crime were inseparable. Basically, th e a rg u m e n t w as th a t som e (o r all) so-called c o n v e n tio n a l crim e, as w ell as m o re o bvious fo rm s o f w orking-class re sistan c e, such as u rb a n p ro te s t, re p re se n te d a

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th reat to capitalist society, a society whose structural arrangem ents had shaped the crim inality in the first place. D eviance/crim e was characterised as proto-revolutionary activity. One o f the strongest advocates o f this view, Geoff Pearson (1975: 9 6 -7) argued th at since the late 1960s various sociologists had attem pted to show how deviant behaviour was in itself political: ‘Or, m ore specifically, th at deviance should be grasped as a prim itive crypto-political action, in the sam e way th at social b andits in peasant societies, or the m achine sm ashing o f the Luddites, represented a p rim i­ tive political force’. These two term s ‘crypto-political’ and ‘prim itive rebellion’, derived from H aber­ m as and Hobsbaw m respectively, were widely used at this tim e. Pearson supported his argum ent by giving exam ples o f research th at had broken with traditional approaches and looked at rule breaking in political term s: G oldm an (1959) on school vandalism and truancy (an early p recursor o f this type o f work), 1. Taylor (1971) on soccer hooliganism , and his own study o f ‘Paki-bashing’ (Pearson, 1976). Often those engaging in these deviant activities were cast in the role o f Robin Hood figures strik­ ing out against an unjust society. T hus som e vandals, tru an ts, soccer hooligans and Paki-bashers were lum ped together w ithin the sam e analytical schem e as representa­ tives o f crypto-political action and, som etim es, as ‘folk heroes’. The problem s associated with this kind of reasoning are exemplified by Pearson’s Paki-bashing study set in a north-east Lancashire cotton tow n (for a detailed critique o f this study see Tierney, 1980). A lthough carried out in the mid-1970s, the research was based on incidents th at occurred in the sum m er o f 1964, when, according to Pearson, a ‘flood’ o f Paki-bashing hit the town. It was, he argued, ‘a prim itive form o f political and econom ic struggle . . . a rudim entary form o f political actio n ’ (Pearson, 1976: 69). He also m ade the unsu b stan tiated claim th at those involved were viewed as ‘folk heroes’: ‘the m isdirected heroism o f the Paki-basher’ (ibid.: 80). This, in effect, got uncom fortably near to accusing the tow n’s residents o f racist complicity. Pearson com pared the actions o f the Paki-bashers to the political actions o f the m achine-sm ashing handloom weavers from an earlier period in L ancashire’s history. It is a complex study which is, unfortunately, consistently m isunderstood: so that a myth has grown up that he was suggesting that high unemployment during the period referred to in the study led to racist attacks on Pakistanis. Given that unemploy­ ment in the tow'n was at that time less than 1%, his argument has to be more sophisti­ cated than that. (Tierney, 1988:145) On the basis o f Pearson’s own sources, the so-called Paki-bashing th a t occurred hardly constituted a ‘flood’, and on the evidence available it would be stretching credulity to characterise those involved as latter-day Luddites, folk heroes, or crypto­ political revolutionaries. M ost o f those involved seem to have been m otivated by the very u nrom antic desire for revenge.

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YOUTH SUBCULTURES AND

POLITICS

As we have seen, m ost orthodox studies o f adolescent delinquency had reflected the m essage given by official statistics and assum ed th at in the m ain delinquency was a feature o f working-class life. On the oth er hand, orthodox studies o f youth culture had m inim ised or ignored the im portance of class, seeing youth culture as a largely classless phenom enon, sim ply stru ctu red around the fact o f belonging to a certain age group. By the 1970s, studies o f youth were concerned to rectify this. On a different level, we m ight question the extent to which orthodox studies of youth culture were able to understand those they were studying. Consider this curious exam ple from Cyril Sm ith’s (1970:28) book on adolescence republished (with correc­ tions) in 1970, and conjuring up an image o f Cliff Richard being ‘discovered’ in the Two I ’s coffee bar, circa 1958: ‘Teenage culture in Britain was generated, and is still largely sustained by m ale entertain ers perform ing in coffee bars in city centres’. And, in a rush o f elitism: The conformity of the young in Britain is in line with the conformity of the adult popu­ lation . . . for they are the successful products of a stable family life. They have, most of them, belonged to youth organisations managed by adults permeated with the values of the Establishment and breeding respect in them for the churches, monarchy, and their aristocracy . . . They have accepted without protest the weight on their young shoulders of tradition in the public schools and grammar schools, and they become charmed by their privileges. (Ibid.: 95) By the 1970s, work explicitly linking youth subcultural form ations to class was em erging. Partly because researchers were unable to find stru ctu red delinquent gangs in Britain o f the sort discovered by Am erican researchers, subcultural theory in this country tended to concern itself with youth subcultures and leisure m ore than delinquency as such. O f particular im portance in this respect was the work produced by the Birm ingham Centre for C ontem porary C ultural Studies. John M uncie (1984: 97) points to the central elem ents o f this research: On the one hand the meaning of subcultural style was examined through various ethnogaphic and semiological analyses: on the other, the political implications of deviancy were explored through investigations of the structural and class position of various subcultures. This work, then, provided a further exam ple o f th at strand of radical thought that sought to politicise deviant activities. The B irm ingham Centre research pu t class and class conflict at centre stage, w hilst exam ining the im pact o f social and econom ic change in the post-w ar period on

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working-class youth. This involved research on a range o f subcultural styles, for exam ple, Teddy Boys, M ods and skinheads. To som e extent the researchers agreed with Downes (1966) and saw these styles as products o f a parent working-class cul­ ture, though they represented an ‘intense articu latio n ’ o f th at culture. Clarke et al. (1976) argued th at ruling-class culture is the d o m in an t culture in society, and is therefore a d o m in an t ideology. This class will endeavour to shape other, subordinate cultures, so th at they conform with the d o m inant ideology. W orking-class youth su b ­ cultures, they argued, arose as threats to this ideology, because they developed alter­ native ideas about w hat a ‘teenager’ should be like, w hat leisure should be used for, w hat is an a p propriate dress style, and so on. Clarke and his colleagues at the Bir­ m ingham Centre thus p u t forw ard the view th a t youth subcultures were, at a sym ­ bolic level, oppositional. Phil C ohen’s (1972) article on the them e o f youth subcultures as solutions to stresses and contradictions existing w ithin working-class com m unities in the East End o f London was being described as ‘sem inal’ by the m iddle o f the 1970s. Redevel­ o pm ent and rationalisation in the East End o f London during the post-w ar period had destroyed traditional neighbourhoods, led to a decline in local job opportunities, and created increasingly privatised families. These changes produced d isruptions and dislocations in working-class culture, and Cohen saw the various youth subcul­ tures as providing no t ‘real’ solutions to these problem s, but, rather, w hat he called ‘m agical’ solutions. Young people, he argued, used their subculture as an expression o f an ‘im aginary relatio n ’ (a term he borrow ed from the French M arxist Althusser), th at is, a relation expressed in term s o f sym bols (styles o f dress, haircuts, etc.) and feelings. Paul W illis (1978) m ade a sim ilar point in his study o f the ‘cultural politics’ o f bike boys and hippies. The view o f youth subcultures as attem p ts to recap­ ture som e o f the socially cohesive elem ents o f working-class culture destroyed by post-w ar social change provided an im p o rta n t backdrop to m uch o f the work at the B irm ingham Centre. It is w orth pausing to exam ine the place o f consciousness in C ohen’s analysis: how did the Teddy Boys, skinheads, and others, un d erstan d their actions? This is an im p o rta n t consideration when assessing all attem p ts to m ake ‘deviant’ activities into som ething political. C ohen’s statem ent th at ‘The latent function of subculture is . . . to express and resolve . . . co n tradictions’ (1972: 23), im plies th at those involved did not have as a conscious aim the resolution o f contradictions, bu t rather th at their actions fulfilled this function. This use o f a form o f functionalism seem ed to get round the problem o f consciousness, yet at the sam e tim e created its own problem s. Clearly, skinheads, for instance, did not consciously devise a program m e aim ed at recapturing lost working-class com m unity, bu t the sort of consciousness involved is im p o rta n t. As a subcultural theorist, Cohen took consequences and w orked back­ w ards. T hus skinheads presented an already existing representation o f an ‘im aginary solu tio n ’, which focused the analysis on subcultural consequences, b u t ignored the subjective in ten t as an elem ent in the original form ation of the subculture.

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Also at the Birm ingham Centre, John Clarke and Tony Jefferson (1976) drew up a typology o f form s o f consciousness am ong working-class youth. This ‘ideal type’ classificatory scheme was designed to indicate a range o f possible conscious responses to their social w orlds. In two o f the categories a political dim ension was suggested: ‘traditional delinquency’, where opposition to established authority is lim ited to ille­ gal activities, and ‘deviant youth culture’, which was seen as expressing a m om ent of originality, a creative assertion of deviant consciousness: ‘These styles offer a sym ­ bolic critique o f the established order and, in so doing, represent a latent form of “non-ideological” politics’ (ibid.: 148). For the authors, this was the nearest th at working-class youth got to opposing a d o m in an t ideology, for in their analysis they dispensed entirely with a m ore m ature political consciousness situated in w hat they classified as the ‘oppositional category’. Now, while working-class adolescents tend not to get involved in large num bers with political m ovem ents on the left, they do join and actively participate in such m ovem ents, and to an extent th at does not justify w riting them off completely. The m ethods o f research employed in these kinds of studies will, in fact, generally lead to such exam ples being excluded from considera­ tion, sim ply because they begin with a ‘deviant’ subculture and work backw ards. The title of C orrigan and F rith’s (1976: 237) article, T h e politics o f youth culture’, prom ised to confront head on the question o f just how political youth cultures are: ‘We are thinking, for exam ple, o f the ways in which kids can use the sym bols o f pop culture as a source o f collective pow er in th eir struggle with schools or police’. It was working-class culture at its m om ent o f creation th a t was seen as representing the m ost p o ten t m ode o f resistance: youth cultures were described as the ‘crystallisation’ o f rebellion at the sym bolic level. From this vantage point, they are a m anifestation of working-class pow er to redefine and rework m eaning system s. A round this general fram ew ork C orrigan and Frith attem p ted to m ap out the guidelines for a political reading o f working-class youth cultures, but the analysis fizzled out w ith the com ­ m ent th at ‘at p resent we ju st d o n ’t have the sort o f knowledge on which clear answers to these questions can be b ased ’ (ibid.: 236). I am no t sure th at th at knowledge was ever forthcom ing. Again, a basic problem w ith the m aterial th at came from the Birm­ ingham Centre was a failure to come to term s with a clear u nderstanding o f ‘political’, and it is this in particular th at dogged subsequent attem p ts to construct a convincing theoretical fram ew ork in this area. The political content of youth subcultures was predicated on their existence as ‘struggles’ against alternative, dom inant, m eaning system s, but o f interest here are the types o f m eaning involved, the extent to which the diffusion o f youth subcultures w eakens this resistance, and the relationship betw een resistance at a sym bolic level and resistance at a concrete m aterial level. D uring the 1970s, research continued to be carried out on the them e o f youth sub­ cultures and ‘style’ and ‘cultural sym bolisation’ (e.g., Hebdige, 1979; and see M uncie, 1984, for a review). These studies em phasised th at the construction o f style was an act o f creation and a form o f resistance. In particular, atten tio n was focused on the ways in which youth subcultures took over and reshaped or redefined the

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original cultural m eaning attached to an object. Item s o f clothing, signs such as the sw astika, safety pins, hairstyle, and so on, are infused with new sym bolic m eanings. To this extent, it was argued, som e young people are involved in cultural resistance. The task for sociologists was to ‘read' the signs, to decode the new m eanings (see Hall and Jefferson, 1976). Clarke introduced the concept o f ‘bricolage’ (which he borrow ed from Lévi-Strauss) to describe the process o f transform ing the sym bolic m eaning of objects. One of the difficulties with the ‘reading the signs’ approach to subcultural theory, as Stan Cohen (1980) has pointed out, is th at it often seems to distance the perceived m eanings o f cultural sym bols from the subjective intent of the participants. The w ear­ ing of a swastika m ight be decoded as a subversive shock tactic directed at m ainstream society, and in the sam e symbolic universe, therefore, as an unconventional hairstyle. It m ight, though, sim ply m ean th at the w earer is a su pporter of fascist m ovem ents. A fu rth er point also needs to be m ade. Given that, according to the Birm ingham Centre, youth subcultures do no t offer ‘real’ solutions to contradictions or problem s, an im p o rta n t question to ask is: to w hat extent do they provide even an ‘im aginary’ solution? The political dim ension to subcultures was seen as being located in the subculture’s control o f m eaning. The problem with the concept o f ‘im aginary solu tio n ’ was th at it im plied th at from the individual’s point o f view, life actually did becom e (via his or her ‘im aginary relations’) exciting, interesting, full o f action, or whatever. Thus, although the real problem s o f life were not altered, it appeared to the p artici­ p an ts that, in a sense, they were. Subcultures becam e a sort o f sociological Valium. However, as w ith Valium, the effects are only tem porary, and ‘real relations’ can break through even in leisure tim e. The bleaker realities o f life are not sw ept away totally in leisure tim e, even at the ‘im aginary level’ and, indeed, are likely to have a strong determ ining influence on w hat leisure can offer. To im ply th at working-class youth subcultures provide a total sym bolically constituted resolution o f problem s is to endow those concerned w ith unrealistic am ounts o f power. Efforts to politicise deviance or the subcultural affiliations o f working-class youth did not, at the tim e, escape criticism . C om m enting on his influential study o f work­ ing-class youth in ‘R oundhouse’, a neighbourhood o f tenem ents in Liverpool, p u b ­ lished in 1974, How ard Parker pu t a different slant on ‘o p positional’ subcultures: parents, kids and adolescents basically share so many of the basic structural constraints and social inequalities forced upon them that their world views are consistent and in harmony much more than they are in opposition . . . [this] can be seen to be to a large extent an accommodation to a particular structural situation rather than a perpetuating rejection of dominant values and life styles. (Parker, 1976:47) There was, too, an im p o rta n t theoretical debate betw een Geoff Pearson and Paul Rock. For Rock (1973: 103), the political status o f an activity derived from the

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m eaning th at it had for the participants, in oth er w ords the type o f consciousness involved was crucial: ‘Politicized deviancy may be defined as th at activity which is regarded as expressly political by its p a rticip a n ts’. Pearson, though, objected to this form ulation because, as he put it, ‘it reduces pol­ itics to a “m eaning” ’. This criticism o f Rock im plied a rejection of schools o f thought which stressed the prim acy o f subjective in ten t or ‘m eaning’. In Rock’s view, deviance only becom es political when those classed as deviants actively w orked to change the attitu d es and responses o f the social audience by redraw ing the boundaries betw een ‘m o ral’ and ‘im m oral’. T hus consciousness and action were inextricably linked, and he refused to m ake all deviants into political figures, a position he saw as m isplaced rom anticism . Rock’s dourly anti-rom antic stance clearly did not accord with Pear­ so n ’s approach which m ade the 1964 Paki-bashers into political activists. In effect, Rock’s solution to the problem of deciding w hat was m eant by political deviance was to bracket off w hat are relatively m ore obvious form s o f political deviance - the protests o f the poor in the ghetto, Black Power, and so on - and to this extent he dealt with the sam e groups as Horow itz and Leibowitz, Hall and Stan Cohen. However, both Pearson and Rock ultim ately m et the sam e problem : where does the boundary betw een political and non-political deviance come?

C R IT IC A L C R IM IN O L O G Y : D E V IA N C E , CRIM E A N D

POWER

The second them e em erging out o f the post-new deviancy period - deviance and pow er - was also in evidence in The New Criminology, along w ith the them e of p oliti­ cising deviance, as discussed above. The them e o f deviance and pow er encom passed two elem ents: the pow erful as in stru m en tal rule m akers, and the pow erful as cynical rule breakers. It was the first o f these th at assum ed particular im portance am ong a growing n um ber o f critical/radical crim inologists in the 1970s, with the concept of ‘crim e’ being preferred to th at o f ‘deviance’. W ith the qualification th at this describes the discipline-based, intellectual m om entum leading to these developm ents, rath er th an the sources o f the theoretical concepts, G alliher (1978: 2 5 3 -4 ) has sum m ed up radical crim inology’s journey from the 1960s as follows: the popularity of the labeling perspective with its emphasis on societal reaction and created deviance seems to have provided the conditions in the discipline for the swift reemergence of the conflict orientation once it was triggered by the political milieu . . . The conflict perspective stressing powerful interest groups’ control of the law, police, and courts, in turn created the intellectual basis for the emergence of Marxism in crimi­ nology in the 1970’s. In passing it can be noted that plotting the developm ents in critical/radical crim inology from the m iddle o f the 1970s is accom panied by certain difficulties.

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T heoretical discussions were often com plicated, som etim es obscure, and occasion­ ally turgid and, in addition, given th a t this was still a tim e o f intellectual ferm ent, som e w riters were adding to the confusion by vacating theoretical positions with which they had been closely associated in favour o f different schools o f thought. D uring the first p a rt o f the 1970s, conflict theory and early versions o f M arxist crim inology had taken an in strum entalist approach to analyses o f rule m aking. How­ ever, by the m iddle o f the decade critical academ ic w ork was increasingly concerned with developing a m ore sophisticated u nderstanding of the nature o f law, one that transcended the fairly crude in stru m en talist approaches. This indicates another im p o rta n t feature o f these developm ents in critical crim inology, namely, th at a tte n ­ tion sw itched from the actions of the crim inal to the legal order and reactions to the crim inal, bringing with it an em phasis on the sociology o f law.

The powerful as law makers In the ensuing debate am ong M arxist w riters, a n u m b er o f key questions emerged: • In w hat ways, and to w hat extent, does law protect the interests of the ruling class? • Is law, by definition, ‘b a d ’ because it is a product of, or is present in, a capitalist society? • Is it possible to achieve progressive, socialist-oriented, reform o f law w ithin the context o f capitalism ? • Is law necessary in a socialist society, or can regulation and order be accom plished w ithout a legal order and the crim inalisation o f som e behaviour? Broadly speaking, critical crim inologists saw law as bourgeois law, and therefore the legal order in a capitalist society existed to further the interests o f capital by creating ap propriate conditions for the pursuit o f profit. This required: • The creation and enforcem ent o f laws, and hence definitions o f ‘crim e’, aim ed at regulating the workforce and surplus populations. • The creation o f laws p ertaining to notions o f private property, thereby u n d e rp in ­ ning the capitalist’s right to own the m eans of production. • The use o f law as an educative device whereby relations betw een labour and capital are ideologically sanctioned and justified. • The use o f law and penal sanctions against the least pow erful who constitute a threat to the system . However, it was recognised th at such form ulations raised complex and difficult issues when trying to construct theoretical explanations. The precise n ature o f the relation­ ship betw een the state, the ruling class and the legal order was, in particular, an issue

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th a t stim ulated intense and highly complex debates. O ther im p o rta n t issues had to be addressed, and incorporated into theoretical form ulations. Some laws, such as those relating to welfare, consum er protection, unfair dism issal and health and safety at work, seem ed to act prim arily in the interests of the w orking, rather than ruling, class. Similarly, legislation relating to, for instance, hom osexuality and abortion seem ed not to be acting directly in the interests of capitalists (see G reenberg, 1976). An in stru m en tal M arxist approach to law owed m uch to a well-known statem ent by M arx and Engels (1970b: 37) in the Manifesto o f the Communist Party, w here, refer­ ring to political leadership, they wrote: ‘The executive o f the m odern state is bu t a com m ittee for m anaging the com m on affairs o f the whole bourgeoisie’. It was an approach based upon an in stru m en talist school o f though t in political theory which argued th at pow erful m em bers o f the state a pparatus were either them selves capital­ ists, or they strongly identified, at a subjective level, with the goals and interests of the capitalist class (M iliband, 1969; Dom hoff, 1970). The study o f law, therefore, was based on the prem ise th at law reflects the interests of the ruling class. This was a sim ­ ilar position to th at taken by Am erican conflict theorists, except th at conflict th eo ­ rists tended to use the concept o f elites, rath er th an ruling class, and to reduce the relationship betw een these elites and the legal order to a so rt o f conspiracy theory. From this perspective, those w ith econom ic power are able to exert direct influence on the state and the legal system . At the sam e tim e, they will use w hatever ideological m eans are available in order to p resent an image o f law as neutral and even-handed both ‘in the book’ and ‘in actio n ’ - and in the process construct notions such as the ‘rule o f law’. From a radical in stru m en talist sta n d p o in t this m erely m asks the p a rtial­ ity o f law. As Bankowski and M ungham (1975: 29) grim ly p u t it, law is a ‘m eans of dom ination, oppression and desolation’. For other exam ples, see Takagi (1974); Q uinney (1975); M ichalowski and Bohlander (1976); H epburn (1977).

Structural Marxist approaches By the second h a lf o f the 1970s a n u m b er o f M arxist-influenced w riters were criticis­ ing instrum entalist accounts o f the legal order. These came to be seen as altogether too neat and tidy and, in the style o f conspiracy theory, suggesting th a t som ehow the state and the ruling class form a m onolithic whole, working together harm oniously for their own benefit. T hus w hen dealing w ith, for instance, the issue o f som e law appearing to be disadvantageous to the ruling class, instrum entalists argued th at it m ust in som e way be advantageous, otherw ise it would no t have been created (see T hom pson, 1975, for a defence o f the concept o f ‘rule o f law’, and the argum ent that law is not always oppressive, and is som etim es the result of working-class struggle). In stru m en talist critiques entailed searching for the ‘real’, nefarious m otives lying behind even apparently benign law. Wolfe (1971: 19), for exam ple, has said: ‘there

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are tim es when sections o f the ruling class becom e sponsors o f reform in order to rationalize the system and m ake it work b e tte r’. And, on disputes w ithin the class holding power: ‘Superficially, groups w ithin the d o m in an t class may differ on some issues. But they share m any interests, and they can entirely exclude m em bers o f the oth er classes from the political process’ (Quinney, 1975: 288). This is a view th at has perm eated into som e radical analyses o f policing, and is sardonically sum m ed up by Young (1986:19): It is a strange world, bourgeois economists may argue about the logic of capital - as do Marxist economists - but seemingly a local police chief has no problem in under­ standing what capital requires of him nor does the lone school teacher facing a disrup­ tive class. S tructuralism detaches the w orkings o f the state, the econom y and the legal order from the actual individuals concerned. The nature o f law, therefore, does not result from the im position o f the will of the powerful as a conscious act, bu t rath er develops as p a rt o f the functioning o f a total system having reality at a structural level. Put sim ­ ply, whichever party is in governm ent, capitalism is always in pow er (Althusser, 1971; Poulantzas, 1973). Furtherm ore, structuralism sees the in stitu tio n s o f the state as having ‘relative auto n o m y ’ (Althusser, 1971), although in the final analysis the econ­ omy is the determ ining force. On the basis o f this form ulation, it logically follows th at the state will som etim es introduce laws th at do no t represent the interests o f the rul­ ing class, or th at disadvantage certain sections o f the ruling class, because o f the structural requirem ent for an ordered, com pliant society overall. T his is necessary because capitalism is always in a state o f tension due to its internal contradictions. It is the capitalist system as a total social form ation th at is ultim ately at stake (W erkentin et al., 1974; Beirne, 1979). For a critique of analyses th at reduced the nature of law to the dem ands o f the econom y see Cain and H unt, 1979. By the end o f the 1970s a large body o f work, with c ontributions from a wide range o f academ ic disciplines - though usually built around the sociology of law - had been produced. The inten tio n o f this work was to develop a theoretical, M arxist-inform ed explanation o f law, and a b etter und erstan d in g o f its practical significance. In this context Fine’s (1979) Capitalism and the Rule o f Law was particularly significant. This was a collection o f articles by scholars explicitly com m itted to a m ultidisciplinary project o f constructing a M arxist theoretical fram ew ork for the study o f the legal order. Drawing on the work o f Gram sci, Althusser, Foucault and the Bolshevik jurist Pashukanis, whose work appeared in the 1920s, the book was seen as m arking the tri­ um ph o f structuralism over instrum entalism . P ashukanis’s ‘com m odity-exchange’ theory o f law was a m ajor influence, in particular his ideas on the bourgeois form of law in capitalist society. T hus he accepted the need for social regulation and order based upon ‘rules’, b u t developed a critique o f the legal rules specific to capitalism ;

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for these, he argued, functioned to produce bourgeois social order. In a socialist society, he said, the form o f law would disappear, so th at regulation was no longer based on state-sponsored legal rules, bu t on inform ally generated codes o f conduct derived from working-class ‘social defence’, in line w ith the needs o f socialist con­ struction. This had echoes o f Taylor, W alton and Young’s argum ents for ‘socialist diversity’ in a crim e-free society, which adds a touch o f irony, for one o f the c o n trib u ­ tors to this book was Jock Young, who by then was distancing him self from m any of the ideas contained in The New Criminology, ideas he was labelling as ‘left idealism ’. Pat Carlen and Mike C ollison’s (1980) Radical Issues in Criminology, also a collec­ tion of articles, directed itself tow ards a M arxist-inform ed engagem ent with practical issues of regulation w ithin capitalist societies, with a view to providing a ‘counterbal­ ance to recent libertarian, anarchistic and utopian trends in crim inology’. Although the con trib u to rs did no t share the sam e ‘radical political space’, this too reflected the growing criticism o f the type o f crim inology associated with The New Criminology’, and indicates the direction taken by radical crim inology in the 1980s, when a serious debate opened up betw een so-called left-realists and so-called left-idealists. Laurie Taylor’s (1980) article in Radical Issues in Criminology was, he said, no t a defence of ‘legalism ’ - th at is, blind faith in the rule o f law - bu t a defence o f ‘civil liberties’ and the use o f law to bring pow er to heel. This was a com m on thread run n in g through the book: th at socialist theory and practice can be applied to bourgeois law in progressive ways. Clearly, this is an issue th a t is central to socialist action (or inaction) on the p art of crim inologists. The book supports the idea o f intervening and challenging law, as a springboard to, as the a u thors saw it, greater things, though there was a clear tension betw een this and ‘m ere reform ism ’. On a general level the book was critical’ in the sense o f attem p tin g to em phasise problem s and contradictions in bourgeois law, crim inalisation and penal practices, and problem s w ithin current socialist crim inology. The critique o f the latter centred on those who seem ingly did no t wish to sully th eir hands with intervention aim ed at changing ‘u n ju st’ laws, or ensuring th a t law m akers and law enforcers them selves kept w ithin the law. Paul H irst’s article in Radical Issues in Criminology (H irst, 1980) stands as a critique o f those who would, in his term s, look anarchically tow ards a crime-free and law-free socialist future. He was, therefore, critical o f w riters such as Pashukanis and his old adversaries Taylor, W alton and Young.

Policing the crisis Drawing on the language o f warfare, Colin Sum ner (1981) has described the onslaught by M arxist theoreticians on the ideas associated with The New Criminol­ ogy during the 1970s. H irst’s various critiques had w orked like a ‘defoliant’ on the concepts o f crim e and deviance; ‘Parisian B-52s’ in the shape o f A lthusserian structuralism had ‘devastated the te rra in ’. According to Sum ner (1981: 2 7 7-8),

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though, by the end o f the 1970s there was a silver lining for M arxist studies o f crime indicated by: 1 the retu rn to reading Marx; 2 the epistem ological dilution o f structuralist M arxism through its confrontation with the nasty business of em pirical reality in the boom ing area o f cultural studies; 3 the stim ulation o f ‘quality’ M arxist studies o f crim e and law from outside the soci­ ology o f deviance; and 4 the deconstruction o f the welfare state and an increased significance o f crim inal law in a period o f heightening social tension. All o f these factors, in S um ner’s view, were expressed in Hall et al.’s (1978) Policing the Crisis. Subtitled Mugging, the state and law and order, the book addressed w hat were seen as m oral panics over so-called m ugging in the early p art o f the 1970s, and drew on the cultural studies work o f the B irm ingham Centre for C ontem porary Cultural Studies (where Hall was the director), and G ram sci’s w ritings on hegem ony and ide­ ology. The argum ent was th at exaggerated claim s were m ade by control agencies and the m ass m edia regarding an outbreak of m ugging. N ot only was the am ount o f m ug­ ging inflated, bu t street robbery was itself incorrectly linked directly to young black m ales. In a sophisticated analysis the authors argue th at the British state was having to cope with considerable social and econom ic problem s, thus creating a ‘crisis in hegem ony’: in oth er words, the authority of the state was u nder threat. The response by the state was to deflect atten tio n away from the ‘real’ bases o f the crisis by generat­ ing a m oral panic over m ugging. A lthough Hall et al. never suggested th at no m ug­ gings occurred, w hat they did argue was th at the state overreacted to w hat was actually going on: special police anti-m ugging squads were set up, m uch space was devoted to ‘black m uggers’ by the m ass m edia, and stiff prison sentences were h anded out by the courts. Arguing th at the key to su p p o rt for the established order lies in the creation o f ‘consent’ rath er th an coercion, Hall et al. saw the state tapping into already existing p opular stereotypes regarding black youth, and p opular expla­ nations o f crim inality based upon ‘perm issiveness’ and a ‘soft’ crim inal justice sys­ tem . The ‘black m ugger’ was, therefore, created as a scapegoat for the social anxieties arising from social and econom ic dislocations.

Powerful law breakers This is the second strand arising out of the them e o f power and deviance, and, as well as featuring in The New Criminology, it proved attractive to oth er w riters on the left in the 1970s especially in the U nited States. This them e is p a rt o f a tradition o f ‘exposé’ crim inology th at can be traced back to Sutherland during the 1940s; the conflict th e ­ orist Cham bliss, and his study o f law breaking am ong powerful elites in Seattle, has already been exam ined.

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Studies of w hite-collar and corporate crim e were im p o rta n t in th at they directed attention away from the powerless and m arginalised, and tow ards oth er m ore pow er­ ful groups in society, thereby illustrating how conceptualisations o f crim e derived from official sources lead to a m ystification o f reality. In an im p o rta n t study o f crim i­ nal activities am ong Am erican business corporations, Frank Pearce (1976) showed th at the estim ated am ount o f m oney involved was far in excess o f the m onetary value o f conventional crim e. In spite of this, culprits were rarely brought before the courts. On the basis of a n um ber o f case studies, Pearce concluded th a t the m ain exam ples of organised crim e were to be found am ong the large business corporations in the United States. Pearce developed his argum ent by attem p tin g to explain why there were so few prosecutions. In his view, prosecutions were rare because to do otherw ise would subvert the ideology th at the bulk o f crim e is carried out by the poor, which would create a crisis o f legitim acy for the capitalist system . He also included an analysis of the links betw een big business and organised (as norm ally understood) crim e, in which he paints a picture o f a history o f collusion, graft and complicity: for exam ple, Ford and General M otors’ use o f gangsters in the 1930s to th reaten and intim idate striking workers. There is not the space here to exam ine these p oints in detail, bu t a n um ber of w riters focused th eir atten tio n on specific, and som etim es spectacular, exam ples (for excellent reviews, see N elken, 1994, 2002). Dowie (1988) brought to light the now well-known case o f the Pinto car m ade by the Ford M otor C om pany in the 1970s. A ccording to Dowie, Ford w ent ahead with the m anufacture and sale o f the Pinto when they knew th at, because o f a crucial design fault, it was dangerous. He esti­ m ated th a t by so doing, Ford were responsible for betw een 500 and 900 unnecessary deaths on Am erican highways. Caudill (1977) docum ented the case o f the Scotia Coal Com pany in Kentucky, which failed to conform with safety requirem ents, in spite o f a record o f hun d red s of previous violations o f safety requirem ents, and in whose pit twenty-six m iners died in an accident. A study o f w hat he saw as lax attitudes tow ards safety in the N orth Sea oil industry by Carson (1982) offered a sobering backdrop to the subsequent destruction o f the Piper Alpha oil rig in 1988, and w ith it the loss of 168 lives. The nuclear reactor m eltdow n at Chernobyl, and the chem ical explosion at Bhopal, provide fu rth er exam ples where question m arks over safety had arisen. Although this takes us into the 1980s, it is a p propriate to dwell on this them e a little longer at this point. Steven Box (1987) provided one of the few analyses o f links betw een econom ic recession and not ju st conventional crim e, bu t corporate crim e. He referred to an Am erican study by Clinard and Yeager (1981) which did address this dim ension. In th eir estim ation: ‘financial perform ance was found to be associ­ ated with illegal b e h a v io r. . . firm s in depressed industries as well as relatively poorly perform ing firm s in all industries ten d to violate the law to greater degrees’ (quoted in Box, 1987: 99). Box then w ent on to exam ine data from various sources in this country concluding th at corporate and w hite-collar crim e did seem to correlate with econom ic recession.

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Figures from the Health and Safety Executive for the period 1980-84 show ed a drop in the n um ber o f visits to establishm ents by inspectors coupled with an increase in enforcem ent notices (by 16 per cent from 30.9 to 35.9 per 1,000 visits). If local authority enforcem ent notices are added, then betw een 1975 and 1982 Box found an increase o f over 110 per cent. Looking at the incidence o f fatal accidents and serious injuries at work as an indicator o f ‘corporate violations o f regulation’, Box wrote: what has changed markedly during the 1980s is the total number of such incidents. Thus from 1981 when there were 67.9 per 100,000 employees, to 1984 when the figure was 87.0 per 100,000 there was an increase of 28%. . . this is a remarkable increase and it indicates dearly just how far health and safety conditions at work have deteriorated under the impact of recession. (Ibid.: 101) A sim ilar story em erged when figures relating to bankruptcy and underpaym ent o f the W ages Council legal m inim um wage were exam ined. Three other theoretical strands had becom e influential am ong som e crim inolo­ gists by the 1970s - phenom enology, control theory and fem inism - and these will be exam ined here.

PH EN O M EN O LO G Y AND CRIM INOLOGY

The fundam ental m essage from phenom enology is th at those things and activities th at m ake up the social w orld do no t possess absolute, essential m eaning. O ut of practical necessity, m em bers o f society construct shared perceptions o f these things and activities, and thus endow them with m eaning. Phenom enal reality, therefore, is reality as we perceive it - as it appears to be for us. Social order requires th at to a sig­ nificant extent these m eanings are shared. Those aspects o f philosophical p henom e­ nology taken up by sociologists were concerned w ith the p roduction and nature of this practical knowledge shared by m em bers o f society. Clearly, these are deep waters. Q uestion m arks are placed against all notions o f knowledge, for w hat is ‘know able’ is no t an essential ‘real’ social world, bu t the social world as it is perceived: a taken-forgranted, com m on-sensically understood w orld. This is why phenom enological research is oriented tow ards providing accounts o f the social w orld from the p o in t o f view o f participants. C onventional social science is criticised for im posing its own, ready-m ade conceptual reality on to those being studied (w hat Schütz, 1972, calls ‘constructs o f the second degree’). Because phenom enology is concerned with the m ost fundam ental processes involved in the production o f m eaning, it detaches itself from the study o f specific substantive areas as such. T hus although a n um ber of w riters in the 1960s and early 1970s utilised the ideas o f phenom enology when looking at issues o f crim e and

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deviance (e.g. Sudnow, 1965; Bittner, 1967; Douglas, 1967, 1971a; Cicourel, 1968; M atza, 1969; Phillipson, 1971), by the m iddle o f the 1970s phenom enological studies specifically oriented tow ards crim e and deviance had largely petered out. However, w hilst phenom enology did attract a good deal o f criticism from w ithin crim inology, especially from structuralists who were unhappy with w hat they saw as its u tte r subjectivism , it did have som e im p o rta n t influences. This was particularly app aren t with respect to official statistics relating to the am ount and distrib u tio n of crim e, and the social categories routinely used by crim inal justice agencies, and crim ­ inologists, such as ‘th ie f’, ‘alcoholic’, ‘victim ’, and so forth. Jack D ouglas’s (1967) study o f the interpretive processes involved in the construction of suicide rates, for instance, provided a strong challenge to positivist approaches th at followed the lead taken by D urkheim in his study o f suicide. As Douglas argued, suicide was not a ‘real’ thing existing ‘out there’ as an objective event; actual suicide rates were produced by organisations and the individuals w orking in them according to shared m eaning sys­ tem s (see, also, A tkinson, 1979).

ETHNOMETHODOLOGY

E thnom ethodology grew out o f sociological phenom enology during the 1960s, and has shown m ore durability in term s o f a continuing co ntribution specifically to the sociology of crim e and deviance. As a perspective it rests on three assum ptions (Jones, 1993:97): 1 Social life is inherently precarious. A nything could happen in social interaction. However: 2 actors never realise this, because 3 they unw ittingly possess the practical abilities necessary to m ake the w orld appear an ordered place. Literally defined as ‘people’s m eth o d s’, ethnom ethodology concerns itself with the em pirical exploration o f the tacitly understood, everyday m ethods used by society’s m em bers to create order through their interactions (Garfinkel, 1967). As Downes and Rock (1988:199) said: But a number of phenomenologists have become empirical of late. Variously referring to themselves as ethnomethodologists, existential sociologists, and sociologists of everyday life, they rely less obviously upon a search within. They have undertaken meticulous examinations of the conduct of conversation, believing that talk makes a social world. In a m ore recent discussion H ester and Eglin (1992) illustrate how ethn o m eth o d o lo ­ gists see crim e/deviance not as an objective, in dependent entity, but, rather, as a

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product o f subjective interpretation. E thnom ethodologists, therefore, use a constitu­ tive’ m odel, rather than a ‘m u n d an e’ (Pollner, 1974) or com m on-sense model; c rim e/ deviance is constituted by an audience’s perception o f it as crim e/deviance. An exam ple o f m undane reasoning given by H ester and Eglin (1992: 129) concerns the rem arks m ade by a police chief following the trial o f som e strikers. He was unhappy because the judge had ‘throw n o u t’ the charges against them , though in the police c h ie f’s view they had acted ‘unlaw fully’: from the police chief’s point of view, for something to be ‘unlawful’ it is not crucial that a judge finds it so; rather its unlawfulness exists independently of judicial response . . . Judges, in this view, do not constitute crime in their judicial work, rather they merely respond to its already existing criminal character. This is mundane reasoning par excel­ lence: it presumes some independent factual domain of criminality against which human perceptions can either correctly or incorrectly correspond. For ethnom ethodologists, then, Becker’s concept o f the ‘secret deviant’, referred to in the earlier discussion o f labelling theory, is nonsensical; unlabelled deviance cannot exist. Likewise, in my exam ple o f M aradona handling the ball, no foul was com m it­ ted. These insights from ethnom ethodology are im p o rta n t in alerting crim inologists to the deeply textured interactional processes at work in the characterisation o f cer­ tain activities as ‘crim e’ or ‘deviance’, and raise the issue of ju st w hat is m eant by ‘real­ ity’. However, there are people out there shooting cashiers during bank hold-ups, or ‘secretly’ snorting cocaine, or knowingly inflating th eir expenses claims. In e th n o ­ m ethodology’s term s none o f these is a crim e, because th at social category has not been assigned to them . But, something is going on th at m akes such activities in terest­ ing to (som e) crim inologists. Focusing on the processes th at create crim e out o f such events, w hatever its ultim ate value, does leave the question o f why people do it in the first place, and why there are laws p rohibiting such acts, off the agenda.

CONTROL THEORY

C ontrol theory in its m odern form (versions o f it can be traced back to A ristotle, see Downes and Rock, 2007) is prim arily associated with the Am erican crim inologist Travis Hirschi and his book Causes o f Delinquency (1969). To som e extent control th e ­ ory’s th u n d er was, at the tim e, stolen by labelling theory, though m ore recently it has gained in influence (see C hapter 15). Downes and Rock (2003) identify w hat they see as possible explanations for control th eo ry ’s lack o f im pact: • It was ignored by m any sociologists because its explanation o f crim inality was seen as too obvious, m erely serving to confirm com m on-sense opinion. • It gave the appearance o f sup p o rtin g ‘law and o rd e r’-style calls for m ore discipline and punishm ent, which liberal-radical sociologists found unacceptable.

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• In a m odified form Hirschi recycled a n u m b er o f variables linked to delinquency originally introduced by Eleanor and Sheldon Glueck, whose work was heavily crit­ icised for its individualised and pathological approach to crim inality. Unlike traditional crim inology, control theory does no t seek to discover the im pulses th at cause people to break the law. Instead o f asking, ‘W hy do we break the law?’ the theory asks, ‘W hy do we not break the law?’ Following the classical school o f crim inol­ ogy to som e extent, control theory sees hum an beings as rational decision m akers. However, w hereas the classical school assum ed th a t these decisions were based upon free will, control theory m akes no such assum ption; the free will versus determ inism debate is left open-ended. Consequently, the question o f w hat causal factors ‘m ake’ people into law breakers is no t posed by the theory. Therefore, as crim inal m otiva­ tions are not relevant to the theory, the ultim ate source o f those m otivations ceases to be an issue. By asking the question, ‘W hy do we not break the law?’ control theory is suggest­ ing th a t som ething special happens to prevent people acting out w hatever im pulses they may possess. In oth er words, conform ity is explained in term s o f certain con­ trols, which in varying degrees m ake people unfree to break rules. W ithout these con­ trols, and left to our own devices, we would do w hatever was required, as we saw it, to look after our own interests. Again, this draws on classical crim inology’s view o f the individual as essentially self-seeking. Control theory thus paints a picture in which all m em bers o f society are potentially free to behave in ways th at will som etim es entail breaking the law. The task, then, becom es one o f identifying those controls th at oper­ ate to prevent people taking up the option. Hirschi argued that these controls are located in the social and m aterial bonds th at tie individuals to society and to lawabiding behaviour. As rational beings, people m ake decisions according to the costs and benefits of conform ity or nonconform ity, and conform ity is achieved to the extent th at nonconform ity is perceived o f as a social or m aterial cost. This is not seen as fixed for each individual; circum stances and perceptions can change over tim e. In a ‘post-classical’ analysis Bob Roshier (1989: 47) sum m arised the bonds th at Hirschi said tie people to the conventional order: He proposes four bonds: attachment (the extent to which individuals have close emo­ tional ties to other people); commitment (the extent to which they see conventional behaviour, for example at school, as offering immediate or long-term rewards); involve­ ment (the extent to which their time is taken up with conventional activities); belief (the extent to which their beliefs about what is permissible or not coincide with conven­ tional ones). H irschi’s book largely consisted o f em pirical research, based on a self-report study o f over 4,000 12- to 17-year-olds, aim ed at testing the theory, and this triggered a n u m b er o f sim ilar research projects th ro u g h o u t the 1970s. M ost o f the work on

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atta ch m en t' had concentrated on family relationships. A ccording to the theory, those fam ilies where em otional ties betw een children and p arents are weak, so th at children are relatively unconcerned about th eir p a ren ts’ feelings tow ards delin­ quency, are m ore likely to contain delinquent children than are families where the reverse is true. Research has tended to su p p o rt this idea (e.g. Johnson, 1979; Poole and Regoli, 1979; and H irschi him self in the United States; and W ilson and H erbert, 1978; and W ilson, 1980 in this country). W ilson, for instance, in a study o f families living in a deprived inner-city neighbourhood, found th at non-delinquent children ten ded to live in families where m oral upbringing was strict, and where p arents had a protective attitu d e tow ards their children in w hat they defined as a non-threatening environm ent. ‘A ttachm ent’ in this context derives from the children's concern th at delinquency w ould be frow ned upon by parents; it was no t sim ply the result o f living in a ‘hap p y ’ family. ‘C o m m itm ent’ directed attention to the individual’s ability to m ake rational deci­ sions regarding the costs o f law breaking. The degree to which we are com m itted to conform ing behaviour is seen to reflect the degree to which we have a stake in society. Those who subjectively feel th at their jobs, rep u tatio n s and stan d ard s o f living would be placed at an unacceptable risk if they engaged in delinquency, are less free than others who take up this option w hen tem pted. At first glance this reasoning would appear to suggest th at delinquency is m ore likely to occur am ong the working class th an the m iddle class, sim ply because they seem to have less at stake m aterially. How­ ever, Hirschi found th at the d istribution o f delinquency did no t follow this pattern: there were no class differentials. H irschi explained this by arguing th at ‘co m m itm en t’ has to be seen from a subjective sta n d p o in t. W hat is im p o rta n t is how the individual perceives the nature o f their stake in society. In a developm ent o f the ideas o f control theory, Steven Box (1981, though originally published in 1971) incorporated some o f the insights of labelling theory in order to explain why official statistics show delinquency to be largely a working-class activity, w hilst self-report studies, such as Ilirsch i’s, show a m ore even d istribution along class lines. Box argued th at official statistics deal with ‘secondary deviation’ (to use L em ert’s term ), w hilst self-report studies uncover ‘prim ary deviation’. In Box’s view, it is the nature o f the societal reac­ tion which gives the m isleading im pression th a t m iddle-class youngsters are less delinquent. A good deal o f research has been carried out on the relationship betw een com m it­ m ent to education and consequent ‘involvem ent’ in the conform ist behaviour neces­ sary for academ ic success. Research indicates a strong correlation betw een underachievem ent at school and delinquency (e.g. Hargreaves, 1967; T hom as et al., 1977). The fourth ‘b o n d ’ discussed by Hirschi, ‘belief’, referred to the extent to which young people have a com m itm ent to the m oral values o f conventional society. Again, the evidence from research is th at rejection correlates with delinquency (e.g. Cernkovich, 1978). Hirschi found th at religious beliefs had little effect on delinquency.

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Extending the model As Box p ointed out, this approach to delinquency only addresses the circum stances th at m ake delinquency possible; it does no t explain why some actually com m it delin­ quent acts, w hilst others u nder sim ilar circum stances do not. Box developed this fu r­ th er by taking the analysis beyond the situation where an individual is free to engage in deviant behaviour, to situations where they are, first, able to deviate, and second, wanting to deviate. W hether or not an individual is able to deviate depends, said Box, on the following issues: • Secrecy Although free to deviate, individuals may feel th at they cannot conceal what they do. This introduces ‘deterrence theory’ into the equation, which was central to the classical school of criminology, though it was not part of Hirschi’s original form u­ lation. However, as Box points out, proponents of deterrence theory, such as Gibbs (1975), tend to focus on w hat they see as objective deterrents, when, in his view, it is the individual’s subjective understanding of these deterrents that is crucial. • Skills This refers to the need for individuals to possess the necessary abilities for the various deviant possibilities. • Supply Here Box is thinking o f the need for individuals to possess the necessary equipm ent, for exam ple a supply o f drugs, or a weapon. • Social support This directs attention to the social groups o f which the individual is a m em ber, which may or may not provide encouragem ent for deviant behaviour. Again, Box stresses the subjective dim ension, by arguing th at the im portance of the group lies in the m eaning a ttrib u te d to it by the individual. He is critical (as Hirschi was) o f ‘bad com pany’ explanations o f delinquency. • Symbolic support This has been exam ined by a n um ber o f w riters sym pathetic to control theory (e.g. H indelang, 1974; Austin, 1977; Cernkovich, 1978), and recog­ nises the im portance o f the group vis-à-vis the provision o f a fram ew ork o f m oral justification for deviance: for exam ple, ‘the victim deserved it’. Box (1981:144) continued: The analysis cannot stop at this poi nt . . . Why would an adolescent who perceived a delinquent act to be one without many costs (in terms of attachments, commitments, beliefs, sanctions and supports) none the less want to do it? His answ er to this question was derived from M atza and Sykes (1961) and M atza (1964). They outlined four possibilities th at m ight explain w hat m akes delinquency attractive: 1 Individuals get a thrill out o f taking risks, perhaps because an activity is banned, and there may, o f course, be pleasure in the act itself.

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2 D elinquency may provide a m eans for confirm ing and acting out gender roles. 3 Som etim es there is m aterial gain. 4 M atza argued that delinquency offered som e possibility o f acting creatively, o f tak­ ing control o f one’s life, albeit in ways th at often h u rt others. As we have seen in the earlier discussion o f their work, M atza and Sykes did not equate these values with a specifically working-class culture. In their view, they are ‘subterranean values’ found th roughout society.

Control theory in the 1970s D uring the 1970s control theory becam e increasingly influential, especially am ong m ore right-w ing crim inologists (e.g., W ilson, 1975; van den Haag, 1975; Ehrlich, 1975; H agan, 1977; Nettler, 1978; and, specifically on the them e o f gender and crim i­ nality, Hagan et al., 1979). As it tu rn ed out, this work was to constitute the first phase o f an upsurge in right-w ing crim inology in the 1980s, a crim inology draw n in varying degrees to notions o f control, deterrence and retribution. Control theory has also been subjected to critical scrutiny. Control theory contends th at it is only designed to make m odest claims. Instead of seeking out the answers to ‘big’ causal questions, it simply focuses on circumstances that 'm ake delinquency possible’. However, as Downes and Rock (2003: 253-4) say: ‘there is a tendency to overdraw the differences between what are presented as the empirically sound but m odest claims of control theory and the empirically unsound but m ore pretentious alternatives’. These m odest claims are seen by control theorists as having the virtue of being supported by empirical evidence, though Downes and Rock indicate a num ber of problem s here. In Hirschi’s self-report study, for instance, the definition o f ‘serious delinquency’ is described as ‘weak in the extrem e’. In addition, and speaking from an interactionist, anti-positivist position, control theory, they say, neglects the different m otivations lying behind deviant choices: ‘Shorn of any m eaning, for control theory deprives it of such, deviance is presum ably pursued for the sheer gratification o f appetites’ (ibid.: 238). Downes and Rock are also critical o f control theory for assum ing th a t the accept­ ance o f norm s and values is totally d ependent upon ‘a tta ch m en ts’. There are m any different and com plex sources o f norm s and values, and m any com plex reasons, untouched by control theory, why they are, or are not, subscribed to. M any have crit­ icised control theory for ignoring big structural issues such as class, the nature o f law and the role o f the law m akers and law enforcers. ‘C om m itm ent’ to school, for instance, may be im p o rtan t, bu t this needs linking to b roader social structural issues relating to the organisation of schooling in general. Finally, as control theorists adm it, the theory can only explain relatively trivial prim ary form s o f deviance. T here­ fore, it is not relevant to analyses o f professional crim e, or the crim es o f the powerful (recent developm ents in control theory are discussed in C hapter 15).

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FEMINIST PERSPEC TIVES AND CRIM INO LO GY

Although the m aterial in this book has been presented, broadly speaking, within a chronological fram ework of decades, obviously this is not m eant to suggest that para­ digm shifts or key developm ents in criminological thinking conveniently coincide with particular decades. The difficulties involved in this approach are acknowledged, but some organising principle is necessary. These difficulties are plainly dem onstrated in the case of feminism and criminology: obviously there was 110 sea change in this field as Big Ben heralded in the New Year in 1980, and again in 1990. However, during the 1970s, feminist contributions to criminology were in the early stages of developm ent, and the am ount and theoretical sophistication of this work was to increase significantly in the 1980s. Although some American work had preceded it, Carol Sm art’s Women, Crime and Criminology, published in 1976, is generally seen as the first example of British ‘feminist crim inology’, and in com m on with the rest of the early work, was exploratory, and was subjected to extensive review and reorientation later on. This early work tended to focus on females as offenders, or as victims (of crime or of the crim inal justice system). Critical analyses during the 1970s addressed four them es: invisibility, distortion, the crim inal justice system and victim isation.

Invisibility The discussion so far o f the p red o m in an t schools of thought in crim inology testifies to the neglect o f female offenders in the literature. They were not, though, totally absent in crim inological theory m aking - otherw ise ‘invisibility’ would be a m is­ nom er, and the second them e of ‘d isto rtio n ’ would be irrelevant. A com paratively sm all am ount o f work did a tte m p t to explain female crim inality. From a fem inist sta n d p o in t this was over-influential and wholly unacceptable. W riters such as H eidensohn (1968, 1985) and Leonard (1982) argued th at princi­ pal theories such as anom ie, differential association and labelling, were aim ed at an explanation of male, no t female, crim e/deviance. This prom pted som e fem inists to pull crim inology into the tw entieth century by rew orking past theories so th at they took account o f females (e.g., Shacklady Sm ith, 1978). O thers preferred to carry out th eir own studies on female offenders (e.g., M cRobbie and Garber, 1976). The chief co ntribution o f fem inism , however, did not derive from a sim ple desire to achieve som e ‘balance’ by, say, studying m ore wom en and fewer m en. Fundam entally, fem i­ nism m ade gender, as a social construction, a central issue w ithin crim inology, and th at obviously involves m en as m uch as wom en, or, m ore accurately, ‘m asculinity’ as m uch as ‘fem ininity’. It is, at the sam e tim e, com m itted to challenging the genderbased discrim ination and disadvantage th at is characteristic o f patriarchal societies. Various explanations o f why females were neglected in crim inological research were forthcom ing. H eidensohn (1985) pointed to the fact th at the discipline had been

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dom inated by m en, which affected such things as access to m ale gangs, cultural assum ptions about m asculinity and fem ininity, and a fascination with the m acho, working-class deviant. She also noted th at their relatively low crim e rates m ade female offenders m ore difficult to find. In a sense, though, the gender dim ension has always featured in crim inological studies. It has been inherent in notions of m asculinity and the socio-cultural contexts in which (usually working-class) delin­ quency-prone m asculinity is shaped. These have generally proceeded along fairly stereotypical paths, which not only m eant th a t females were excluded, b u t also th at different understandings o f m asculinity were ignored. The lower crim inality rates for females, as indicated by official statistics, self-report studies and victim studies, clearly led some criminologists in the past, guided as they were by the imperative to find the causes’ o f crime, to concentrate on those largely responsible for crime - males. Apart from pushing to one side those cases where females do break the law (see, for example, Campbell’s (1981) study of girl delinquent gang m em ­ bers), this failed to appreciate that an understanding of crim inality involves coming to term s with the question of why some people do not break the law. W hat was missing was a theoretical engagem ent with the observation that females, as well as males, experi­ enced things such as unem ploym ent, poverty, inner-city life, the mass media, unsatisfac­ tory schooling and life as a teenager. Thus one of the m ost glaring om issions was an analysis of the different ways in which factors such as these im pact on females and males. A fem inist agenda, according to Sm art (1976: 89), had to ‘situate the discussion of sex roles within a structural explanation o f the social origins of those roles’. Differences in crim e rates for males and females have for m any years rem ained fairly constant at around five or six to one in Britain; oth er European countries and the United States have sim ilar ratios. Nevertheless, there has been m uch debate over the accuracy o f these figures, hence the use o f self-report studies, which p u rp o rt to give us a b e tte r picture o f crim inality (there is a review o f this research in Box, 1983). These studies tend to p u t the ratio nearer to two to one. As Box observed, though, large am ounts o f unrecorded crim e will be in the categories o f corporate crim e, dom estic violence and sexual assault, and these are either im possible or difficult to pick up in self-report studies. In certain offence categories, o f course, wom en will be overrepresented: for exam ple, prostitu tio n and illegal abortion. A part from the wellrehearsed problem s w ith self-report studies (sam pling, honesty, m em ory, and so on) som e o f them fail adequately to differentiate betw een ‘serious’ and ‘less serious’ offences, or to state the frequency with which offences are com m itted. We will return to this point later.

Distortion On the them e o f ‘d isto rtio n ’, the fem inist critique was sum m ed up by Sm art (1976: xiii) when she argued th at the then current stock o f crim inological explanations o f

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female crim inality ‘shares an entirely uncritical attitu d e tow ards sexual stereotyping of wom en and girls’. Essentially, the fem inist critique em phasised a line o f thinking, still around in m odern crim inology, th at stretched back to the genetic theories of Lom broso and Ferrero in the nineteenth century, and in which the assum ption was th at the norm al hum an being was male, and th at the female was therefore an aberra­ tion. C om bine this w ith the m ore specific cultural ideas about wom en carried around in the heads o f these m ale crim inologists and, said fem inists, the distorted images of wom en pervading th eir work should come as no surprise: ‘the m ajority o f these stu d ­ ies refer to w om en in term s o f their biological im pulses and horm onal balance or in term s o f their dom esticity, m aternal instinct and passivity’ (ibid.: xiv). Even in the post-war period, studies o f female offenders tended to have been cut adrift from the m ain body o f crim inological theorising, which had moved away from the crude biological determ inism of Lom brosian criminology. Poliak (1950), for instance, thought that wom en possess two characteristics that not only determ ined the sorts of olfences they com m itted, but also helped them to cover their tracks m ore effec­ tively than men: they are naturally deceitful (incredibly, Poliak saw the faking of orgasm as evidence for this), and played social roles based upon privacy (evidence for this was seemingly provided by the concealm ent of m enstruation). It will come as no surprise to learn th at fem inist w riters have reserved particular w rath for Poliak. Later on, Cowie, Cowie and Slater (1968) continued to confuse sex with gender. According to them , because o f biologically determ ined factors boys are less able than girls to cope with stressful situations, hence they are m ore crim inal than girls. However, some girls, they argued, are born with ‘masculine traits’, which explained their crim inal behaviour.

Criminal justice The ‘crim inal justice’ and ‘victim isation’ them es were, in this early period, less in evi­ dence w ithin fem inist work th an the two them es discussed above. This situation was to change significantly in the 1980s though. Research on the them e o f crim inal justice looked at the ways in which w om en were dealt with by the various crim inal justice agencies such as the police, the courts and the prisons, though the earlier work tended to concern itself with w om en’s im prisonm ent (W ard and K assebaum , 1966; G iallom bardo, 1966; H eidensohn, 1969). This research drew atten tio n to the disad­ vantages experienced by female prisoners com pared w ith m ale prisoners, due to entering a system th at was essentially designed for m en (for exam ple, w om en had fewer educational and recreational facilities). Some w riters explored the widely accepted view th at w om en were treated m ore leniently by the crim inal justice system , because it was largely adm inistered by m en, who adopted a chivalrous attitu d e tow ards them . This was an idea th at had been around for som e tim e in crim inology (for exam ple, M annheim , 1940), and according to som e crim inologists explained the lower official crim e rates for w om en and, if

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w om en were brought before the courts, the supposedly m ore lenient sentences handed out. A nderson (1976), in a review of this debate, p ointed the way to subse­ quent fem inist repudiations o f the argum ent th at ‘chivalry’ had a significant and beneficent im pact on the treatm ent o f w om en by the crim inal justice system . In an early study o f the British courts, Dell (1971) concluded th at while a greater p ro p o r­ tion o f m en th an w om en were sent to prison (though w om en were only rarely involved in violent crim e), wom en were m ore likely to be held on rem and p rior to trial or sentencing. O ther research carried out in the 1970s found th a t the treatm ent o f female juvenile offenders was influenced by considerations o f ‘m oral p ro tec tio n ’, in addition to the actual offence. W ith males, the tendency was only to see the offence as relevant. This, it was argued, increased the likelihood o f juvenile female offenders being sent to an institu tio n (Chesney-Lind, 1973,1978; Jay and Rose, 1977). Fem inist w riters also argued th at because o f the stereotypical understandings of gender carried by m en, wom en offenders are seen to have offended twice: once from the point o f view o f the offence itself, and twice because they have transgressed cul­ tural u nderstandings o f ‘fem inine’ behaviour. An im p o rta n t com ponent of this char­ acterisation is th at wom en are judged according to particular notions o f ‘m otherly’ or ‘wifely’ roles.

Victimisation Finally, the them e o f victim isation. Research on this them e grew slowly in the 1970s, then m ushroom ed rapidly through the 1980s, in line with a growing interest in w hat is known as victimology. The earlier fem inist work on w om en as victim s concentrated on sexual crim e (Brownmiller, 1975) and dom estic violence (D obash and Dobash, 1979). Studies o f rape, child sexual abuse and violence in the hom e highlighted the low levels o f reporting, and signalled an end to the com placency surrounding these areas. G radually this type o f research had an influence at the level o f practice - for exam ple, the grow th in W om en’s Aid Refuges (Pizzey, 1973) - and, eventually, in police responses to victim s o f rape.

Se le c te d fu rth e r read in g Two key texts oriented towards a political economy of crime and deviance from this period are: Taylor, I., Walton, P. and Young, J. (1973) The New Criminology: For a social theory of deviance, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; and Taylor, I., Walton, P. and Young, J. (eds) (1975) Critical Criminology, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. A major study from the Birmingham Centre for Contem porary Cultural Studies was Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the state and law and order, London: Macmillan.

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S m art, C. (1 9 7 6 ) Women, Crime and Criminology: A feminist critique, L ondon: R outledge & K egan P aul is generally seen as the first B ritish analysis from a fem inist perspective. M u n g h a m , G. a n d P earson, G. (eds) (1 9 7 6 ) Working Class Youth Culture, L ondon: R outledge & K egan P aul provides an ed ited collection o f radical w ork from th is perio d . The sem inal w ork on c o n tro l th eo ry is H irschi, T. (1 9 6 9 ) Causes o f Delinquency, Berkeley, CA: U niversity o f C alifornia Press. P hillip so n , M . (1 9 7 1 ) Sociological Aspects o f Crime and Delinquency, L ondon: R outledge & K egan P au l is an exam ple o f a p h en o m en o lo g ical analysis. From th e p erspective o f eth n o m e th o d o lo g y , see: H ester, S. a n d Eglin, P. (1 9 9 2 ) A Sociol­ ogy o f Crime, L ondon: R outledge, an d for a m ore recent discussion o f th is su b seq u en tly neglected a p p ro ach to doing crim inology: H ester, S. (2 0 0 7 ) Descriptions o f Deviance, A bingdon: R outledge. A so p h istica ted stu d y o f youth su b c u ltu re s in the 1970s is W illis, P. (1 9 7 8 ) Profane Culture, L ondon: R outledge & K egan Paul, a n d on the them e o f ‘style’: H ebdige, D. (1 9 7 9 ) Subculture: The meaning o f style, L ondon: M eth u en . T h eoretical d ev elo p m en ts o ccu rrin g d u rin g th e p e rio d u n d e r review in th is c h a p te r are e xam ined by Box, S. (1 9 8 1 ) Deviance, Reality and Society, 2 n d e d n , E astb o u rn e : H olt, R in eh art & W in sto n .

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CHAPTER

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ITS C O N T E X T

- 4

r K ey th e m e s • The shift to the right in British politics •

Criminology’s external history

•

Social organisation

• The growth of policy-oriented research • The nature and context of research •

Policy-oriented research and the left

•

British criminology in the late twentieth century

V

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INTRO DUCTIO N

T his c h ap ter exam ines th e social an d political context o f d evelopm ents w ithin crim i­ nology th ro u g h the 1980s an d in to the m id-1990s. O f p a rticu la r im p o rta n ce w as a shift to the right in Britain an d the U nited States, a n d the election of, respectively, T h atch e r an d Reagan a d m in istratio n s. T he 1980s saw the grow ing influence o f co n ­ servative ideas w ithin academ ic crim inology. At the sam e tim e, th ere w as an increase in policy-oriented research. As far as critical crim inology w as concerned, by the m iddle o f the 1980s a significant divide betw een ‘left re alism ’ and 'left id ea lism ’ had opened up. On a m ore general level, academ ic crim inology was sta rtin g to becom e increasingly fragm ented. Being b ru tally hon est, one has to say th a t the task o f p lo ttin g the various tw ists and tu rn s, w hilst sketching in som e social a n d political b ackground, now becom es m ore taxing. Relatively clear-cut theo retical shifts gave way to a high degree o f frag m e n ta ­ tio n . In a d d itio n , th ere was a large increase in the a m o u n t o f academ ic w ork su b ­ sum ed u n d e r the title o f crim inology. By the end o f the 1970s d evelopm ents in n o n -m ain strea m crim inology, a n d especially w ithin a specifically radical trad itio n , w ere already becom ing less obvious. For stu d e n ts o f crim inology, the d iscipline’s developm ent since the re o rie n ta tio n s o f th e 1960s had, for a while, helpfully gone th ro u g h relatively easily u n d e rsto o d chronological stages: new deviancy th eo ry had challenged an earlier positivism ; conflict th eo ry had radicalised the liberalism o f

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labelling theory; and critical crim inology had attem p ted to develop a neo-M arxist political econom y o f crim e. There had also been the beginnings o f a fem inist tradition and the first m urm urings o f a victimology. In spite o f their internal com plexities, these could at least be pu t into reasonably neat theoretical packages, and to a large extent be identified with conventional political affiliations. At the risk of being scan­ dalously vulgar, students could for a while think in term s o f theoretical ‘cam ps’. The em bracing o f a sociology o f law, and with it an intense theoretical interrogation by radical scholars of the political econom y o f rule m aking during the second h a lf o f the 1970s, m ade the situation less clear-cut. This did no t im m ediately appear to rep re­ sent an obvious, challenging theoretical ‘cam p’. N ot only was the work highly com ­ plex, bu t it did no t seem to conform to the earlier p a tte rn o f a chronological series of paradigm s - and why should it? Furtherm ore, ‘crim inals’ had disappeared from the scene, together with the concept o f ‘deviance’, though the form er were to reappear shortly afterw ards. Colin Sum ner (1990:15) observed: Students still ask ‘Whatever happened to the theoretical debates about deviance in the early 1970s?’ . . . Perhaps the revulsion for theory and theoretical wrangling, the return of empirical research, the new popularity of historical work and the general air of hardnosed realism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, have all contributed to the demise of theoretical dynamics in this field. This pessim istic reading o f developm ents in sociological crim inology becam e necro­ logical in 1994, when Sum ner published a book on the sociology o f deviance with the subtitle An obituary. W hat had led to this situation? Early theoretical debate seemed to have disappeared. Challenging paradigm s no longer followed one after the other. T heorising seem ed to have been supplanted by em pirical research. And, on a num ber of fronts, there was a rush to em brace ‘realism ’.

T H E S H I F T TO T H E R I G H T IN B R I T I S H P O L I T I C S

1979: a political turning point ‘Law and o rd e r’ was a central elem ent o f the Conservative P arty’s election cam paign in 1979, though it involved m ore th an a narrow ly conceived focus on crim e as such. The rhetoric was resplendent with images o f m ilitant trade unionists on the ram page; of the dead being unburied and dustbins unem ptied; o f British culture being ‘sw am ped’ by black im m igrants; o f classroom s in the grip o f anarchy; and o f a dependency culture, where large sections o f the population had grown lazy and undisciplined on the back o f a too generous welfare state. At the sam e tim e, we were told, the pendulum had sw ung too far tow ards the rights o f crim inals; police officers

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needed m ore powers to secure convictions, and the courts were too ‘soft’. In the hom e, an increasing n um ber o f p arents had abrogated their responsibilities regard­ ing bringing their children up properly. The incom ing governm ent was com m itted to ‘getting tough’ on law and order. For the left in Britain, w hat followed was a drift into an a uthoritarian law and order society (Hall, 1980, 1988) though as N orrie and Adelm an (1989) have pointed out, the sentim ents expressed by the Conservatives were in accord w ith the views o f large sections o f the w orking class. Put an o th er way, certain significant com m on-sense understandings, w idespread thro u g h o u t British society, had found a political voice. However, as various com m entators have suggested, the drift in this direction had, in fact, been gathering m om entum during the 1970s (see, for exam ple, Pitts, 1988; N or­ rie and Adelm an, 1989). This view acts as a necessary antidote to those w ho p ain t a m isleading picture o f British society in the pre-T hatcher era, as if, for over a decade, the population had enjoyed an age o f universal libertinism , where continual sa tu rn a ­ lia enveloped everyone in an orgy o f decency-sapping perm issiveness. The area of juvenile justice provides a particularly good example. John Pitts shows how a Fabian-influenced Labour Party went some way tow ards liberalising the system in the 1960s. However, the 1970s saw a move away from a treatm ent-w elfare m odel of juvenile justice tow ards the m ore punitively oriented justice m odel. The increasing use o f custody - in spite o f the intentions of the 1969 Children and Young Persons Act illustrates this. Thus the 'psychologically im paired’ children of the 1960s were gradually transform ed into the wicked and irresponsible children o f the 1970s: undisciplined products o f a welfare state th at had supposedly m ade them take too much for granted. In Pitts’s view, this trend was to find its culm ination in the T hatcher era of the 1980s. It is im possible to un d erstan d the directions taken by crim inology during the 1980s and 1990s w ithout taking into consideration the cultural changes in that period, as well as the im pact o f the social and econom ic policies o f an entrenched Conservative governm ent: In practical terms, the government of Margaret Thatcher introduced new legislation to curb the power of sectional interests (including the legal profession as well as the unions); competitive market mechanisms to start to break state monopolies (for example, extend­ ing prison privatization); more powers, pay and resources for the police; a major prison rebuilding programme; a ‘short, sharp, shock’ for recalcitrant, ill-disciplined juveniles; and various measures to make families and communities more self-reliant. (Jefferson and Shapland, 1994:266-7) A n u m b er o f oth er developm ents during the 1980s and 1990s should also be noted: rising levels o f unem ploym ent; the decline in m anufacturing industry and the im pact o f this on com m unities; the 1984-85 m iners’ strike; rising levels of recorded crime; serious outbreaks o f u rban rioting; w idening differentials in the distrib u tio n o f wealth and incom e; and pressure on the governm ent to curb public expenditure.

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Good old common sense - again The election o f a T hatcher governm ent m arked the endorsem ent o f com m on-sense am ateurism . In a way this was a reversion to an earlier, traditionally British approach to social adm inistration - an approach based upon the pragm atic all-rounder - of cabinets, com m ittees and civil servants, eschewing the expert’ and the ‘intellectual’ in favour of the generalist, who, above all, laid claim to com m on sense. However, whereas in the past this process had been founded on an explicit elitism, where our ‘betters’ by definition knew best, the 1980s version celebrated the concordance between the com ­ m on sense of the political elites and the com m on sense o f ‘the people’. In the realm of crim inal justice policy, the 1980s offered an opportunity for the views o f all rightthinking m en and wom en, who ‘knew in their hearts’ w hat was wrong, to be put into practice. Well rehearsed during the preceding decade over both lunchtim e gin and tonics at the country pub and pints o f beer at the working m en ’s club, and underscored daily by the tabloid press, it seemed th at the end o f the liberal, the do-gooding expert and the intellectual was at hand - the sam e do-gooding liberals (social workers, teachers, psychologists, and so forth) who, as pointed out earlier, were criticised by radical thought in the 1960s and 1970s. Reviewing Brewer and Lait’s Can Social Work Survive? a book exemplifying the New Right’s thinking, Geoff Pearson writes: Mrs Lait concluded that the whole business of childcare should be taken away from per­ missive educationalists and do-good social workers, and placed instead ‘in the hands of ordinary people who have rejected pretentious, self indulgent and unscientific theoris­ ing in favour of their own good sense’. (Quoted in Pitts, 1988:445) Just as law enforcem ent ideologies have presented the police officer as m erely a citizen in uniform , so the ideologue o f the New Right was m erely a citizen in academ ic dress. This takes us back to the discussion o f com m on sense in the first chapter, and Becker’s distinction between com m on sense as potentially deluding, tribal gut-feelings, and com m on sense as practical no-nonsense tru th . As always, o f course, proponents of the ideas of the New Right saw their com m on sense as representing the latter.

C R I M I N O L O G Y ’S E X T E R N A L H I S T O R Y

In an illum inating analysis o f crim inology’s historical developm ent, David G arland (1985a) refers to the distinction betw een an academ ic discipline’s ‘ex ternal’ and ‘in te rn al’ history, an idea originally pu t forw ard from the perspective o f the philos­ ophy o f science by Im re Lakotos. Briefly, the argum ent is th at all scientific disciplines are established w ithin the context o f appropriate external social, political and cultural

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conditions. Eventually, a discipline becom es internally self-sufficient and continues to develop because o f its own resources. One outcom e o f this is th at it is no longer tied to catering for the needs o f powerful social and political interests: ‘In oth er words, to the extent th at this internal logic asserts itself, the social origins o f the science will tend to fade into its pre-history’ (G arland, 1985a: 2). In G arlan d ’s view crim inology in Britain had been unable to cast off its dependence upon these external dem ands, so th at it continued to exist as an ideological, rath er th an scientific project: ‘Precisely because crim inology’s object is a social problem - defined by policies, ideologies and state practices - its “external” origins will always be internal to it’ (ibid.: 3). This is an im p o rta n t argum ent th at should at least sensitise us to the ongoing connections betw een the nature o f crim inology as an academ ic discipline and the broader social, political and cultural circum stances. The sam e point was m ade by Jock Young (1994: 71) when he said: the interior dialogue is propelled by the exterior world. The dominant ideas of a period, whether establishment or radical; the social problems of a particular society; the gov­ ernment in power and the political possibilities existing in a society - all shape the inte­ rior discourse of the academic. If the shift to the right at an external level n u rtu red the developm ent o f a m uch m ore self-confident and influential right-w ing crim inology, both in Britain and in the United States, it posed fu ndam ental problem s for radical and liberal crim inology. The two characteristics o f radical thought referred to earlier - negative criticism and internal divisions - th at during the 1970s in a sense helped to prepare the ground for the New Right, w ent through rem arkable transform ations during the course o f the 1980s, though no t in all quarters. First, radical th o u g h t pulled back from criticising such things as publicly owned industries, the teaching profession, social welfare program m es, council housing, the Labour Party, and so on. In the clim ate of T hatcherism , previous arrangem ents su d ­ denly looked m ore attractive th an they had at the tim e. For liberal and left thought, the 1980s and 1990s opened up a period o f reclam ation and self-appraisal. W ithin crim inology, left realism em erged as the m ain representative o f this trend, especially w ith its close links with the Labour Party (left realism is discussed later). O utside o f a critical strand, radical crim inology tended to gravitate tow ards a liberal dem ocratic baseline, heralding a m ore explicit com m itm ent to em pirical research and even a dis­ cussion of policy. Left realism in particular represented a move from pitching analy­ ses at the level o f the political econom y o f capitalism with a stress on the need for radical transform atio n, to a m ore m odest engagem ent with concrete reform s. Left realists argued th a t this was necessary in order to challenge the rig h t’s dom ination of issues o f crim e and punishm ent. Im portantly, though, it illustrated how m any on the liberal-left spectrum did a tte m p t to develop constructive ideas regarding how things m ight be im proved in the short term .

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Second, the existence o f an external enem y in the shape o f T hatcherism worked w onders in healing m any of the previous divisions am ong radical factions. Although critical crim inologists continued to develop a neo-M arxist agenda, greater account was taken o f the realities o f street crim e, the victim isation o f w om en and black people, and the dangers of rom anticising working-class crim e. Across a range o f lib­ eral-left thought previous bellicosity gradually disappeared. The overriding tru cu ­ lent debate th at continued through the 1980s and into the 1990s was betw een critical crim inology (described by th eir antagonists as left idealism ) and self-styled left real­ ists. This was particularly a p p aren t in the area of black crim inality, where som e criti­ cal theorists, recycling an earlier ‘working-class crim e as politics’ them e, argued th at black crim e was political. As 1 have said elsewhere: ‘If there was a Richter Scale in the social sciences it would have registered m axim um p oints during these vitriolic exchanges’ (Tierney, 1988:133). As the 1980s progressed, and the New Right celebrated the idea o f com m on sense, am ong m any radicals there was a corresponding rush to ‘realism ’. Pared down to its basics, the notion o f being realistic seem ed to bear a strong resem blance to using com m on sense. The sam e process was at work w ithin the Labour Party, which, after a series o f election defeats, increasingly assessed its policies in term s o f realism - the culm ination was ‘New ’ Labour (see C hapter 14). Realism came to suggest a set of qualities based upon ‘practical views and policy’. This m eant, for exam ple, address­ ing the here and now rather than a utopian future, taking account o f w hat the public says and feels, taking the reality o f crim e seriously, and being practical rath er than hopelessly theoretical or wildly abstract. Clearly, this raises im p o rta n t issues regard­ ing the nature and role o f crim inology, issues th at have always lain awkwardly at the core o f the crim inological project.

SOCIAL ORGANISATION

Paul Rock’s (1994) survey o f ‘all identifiable British crim inologists’ provided the m ost up-to-date inform ation on w hat he called the social organisation o f crim inology in this country: dem ographic p atterns, institutional arrangem ents and social relations. His findings give us a useful starting point for a discussion o f the developm ent of crim inological thought since the end o f the 1970s. The survey underlined the fact th at academ ic crim inology in Britain was then dom inated by a group o f crim inologists, in th eir forties and fifties, who were p ro d ­ ucts o f an expanding higher education system during the late 1960s and early 1970s the ‘fortunate g eneration’. Predictably, the bulk o f them are m en rath er than wom en. The beginning o f their academ ic careers also coincided with the advent of the new deviancy and the break with positivism , and, indeed, m any played pivotal roles in developing the sociology o f deviance in th at period. As well as form ing the largest group - 68 per cent o f crim inologists were aged over 40 - they continued to have a

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pow erful presence in term s o f professorial posts and published work. O f course, from this base th eir influence on academ ic crim inology was w idespread: for instance, speaking at conferences, being involved in the recruitm ent o f staff, acting as external exam iners, helping to establish and validate new courses, and reviewing proposals for books and articles for journals. In short, the influence o f the ‘fortunate genera­ tio n ’ on the shape o f British crim inology was, and continues to be, considerable. Although there has been a growth in the p roportion o f younger crim inologists since the late 1980s, when Rock carried out a sim ilar survey, the overall picture reflected the mixed fortunes o f higher education in general, and the social sciences in particular: In effect, two demographic waves have moved through post-war British criminology: the greater in the 1970s and the lesser in the latter half of the 1980s; and it was the greater that gave definition to the discipline. Criminologists educated and appointed in the late 1960s and early 1970s form a distinct and self-conscious intellectual generation. (Rock, 1994:132) On a note o f pessim ism , Rock pointed out th at although an expansion may be im m i­ nent w ithin dep artm en ts o f law, at the m om ent the lack o f sustained recruitm ent over the years m eant th at ‘Sociological crim inology in particular looks som ew hat em aci­ a te d ’ (ibid.: 132). As I have said previously, one result o f this has been the absence o f decisive theoretical challenges com ing from a younger generation, a generation th at had to struggle for hard-earned research funding during the 1980s, u nder strong pressure to pursue em pirical research. The largest pro p o rtio n o f crim inologists were now to be found in dep artm en ts of law - and they had a variety o f subject backgrounds - followed by d e p artm e n ts of sociology. This reflected m ore recent increases in undergraduate dem and for places on law degrees. Law dep artm en ts had the highest pro p o rtio n o f female crim inolo­ gists. The greatest concentration of crim inologists, however, was to be found in the Hom e Office Research and Planning Unit, an institution th at continued to influence profoundly the type o f research carried out u nder the b anner o f crim inology in Britain. N ot surprisingly, the m ajority o f this research was policy-oriented. Research initiatives com ing from an o th er im p o rtan t funding source, the Economic and Social Research Council, took sim ilar directions. Interestingly, though, Rock’s survey illustrated the enduring influence o f sociologi­ cal crim inology when it comes to theoretical allegiances, with interactionists form ing the largest p ro p o rtio n . This was strongly reflected in the way th at crim inology was taught w ithin universities: Theoretical criminology may no longer seethe and flow but it is what British criminolo­ gists continue to teach. Variously called criminology and the sociology of deviance, it looms over all else. Over half the courses offered were so labelled and, in the main, they survey the accomplishments of the past. (Ibid.: 146)

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Mapping the terrain Having briefly discussed the w ider political, social and cultural context, and, follow­ ing Rock, looked at the social organisation o f crim inology, we can now exam ine how the discipline developed through the 1980s and into the 1990s. In view of the large am ount o f work em erging during this period, and the inevitable disputes over the significance of m ore recent developm ents, analyses becom e a little m ore hazardous. Drawing out w hat appear to be the m ore im p o rta n t and significant exam ples of crim inological work is bound to be an invidious project. Necessarily, the selection is to som e extent arbitrary, and cannot bu t reflect my own in terp retatio n o f events. However, the in tention is to give an indication o f the m ain contours o f developm ents in British crim inology, whilst paying attention to external and internal pressures on the discipline. The selection o f m aterial to illustrate these developm ents has a quali­ tative and quantitative dim ension to it. By definition, m aking qualitative judgem ents involves subjective in terp retatio n s with regard to notions o f ‘im portance’, ‘influence’, ‘academ ic virtuousity’, and so on. Accusations o f bias are less likely to follow when choices rest sim ply on the sheer volum e o f work o f a certain type th at is p ro ­ duced. However, the fact th at a particular topic or them e form s the basis for a large am o u n t o f research over a given period does not guarantee, o f course, th at the work is fundam entally im p o rtan t, o f high quality, will have long-term effects, or is even in te r­ esting from the audience’s p o in t o f view. We have to acknowledge th at fashions and tren d s come and go w ithin crim inology as m uch as they do w ithin oth er disci­ plines and, indeed, w ithin social life in general. W hat perhaps seem ed desperately fascinating and im pressive at one tim e, can seem banal, silly or irrelevant at som e future date. Some o f us need only look at old photographs o f how we used to dress to appreciate this. Some o f the insights of the labelling perspective can be applied to the social p ro duction o f crim inological work. W hether or no t a research proposal is funded, or a book or article gains an audience by being published, is the outcom e o f a range o f social processes. It is not sim ply a question o f the work being ‘good’ or ‘b a d ’. Publishers are well aware o f m arket tren d s in crim inology, and the harsh reality is th at som e books will not be published if they are th o u g h t to be out o f tune with these trends. Furtherm ore, the status o f the au th o r will play a part; like all areas o f publishing, crim inology has its lum inaries. These crim inologists will also wield influence over w hat is published via their role as reviewers o f proposals for books and articles. Likewise, the kind of research th at is successful in the tendering stakes, and attracts funding, will be linked to the dem ands set by research councils and agencies.

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Research topics Unlike the situation in the 1960s, no one could com plain th a t crim inology in the 1980s and 1990s was ‘obsessed’ w ith juvenile offenders. Such research had no t been abandoned, bu t it constituted only a relatively sm all pro p o rtio n o f the total (e.g., W est, 1982; Farrington, 1992b; Fergusson et al., 1992; Robins and Rutter, 1990; Agnew, 1991; Nagin and Farrington, 1992; Riley and Shaw, 1985). Criticism o f this ‘obsession’ is associated with the new deviancy theorists o f the late 1960s who, under the b anner o f the sociology o f deviance, tu rn ed their attention to various groups defined as deviant, and the labelling processes involved in the con­ struction o f deviant identities. This interest in defined deviant groups continued into the 1970s. From the late 1970s onw ards, however, the concept o f deviance tended to fall into disuse, and with it there was a corresponding decline in studies o f specific groups labelled as deviant. W ith the evaporation o f the sociology o f deviance, crim i­ nal, rath er than deviant, activities moved centre stage. T hus during the 1980s and 1990s there was little interest in, for exam ple, youth subcultures, New Age travellers, or the ‘nuts, sluts and p reverts’ of the 1960s. In fact, as the 1980s wore on, and although there were exceptions, the general tren d was to address issues o f social con­ trol and the victim s o f crim e, rath er th an crim inal (let alone deviant) m otivations, lifestyles and experiences. In spite o f this, David Downes (1988) argued th at by the 1980s three key ideas deriving from new deviancy theory had fundam entally changed ‘the nature o f “taken for g ra n te d ” crim inological in q u iry ’. First, th at the crim inal’s (or deviant’s) subjective u nderstanding of the world should be considered. Second, th a t the nature and extent o f crim e (or deviance) are to som e degree a result o f social control responses, rather th an products o f quite separate factors. And third, th at crim e (or deviance) is ubiqui­ tous, especially if we consider corporate, occupational and dom estic crim e. However, Downes did point out th at while these ideas inform ed a great deal o f research in the 1960s and 1970s, and may have been generally accepted w ithin academ ic crim inol­ ogy, their influence on actual research in the 1980s had dim inished. Ethnographic research th at would a tte m p t to tap into the subjectivities o f crim inal groups began to dry up. The grow th o f adm inistrative crim inology and versions o f control theory (see below) set the clock back by separating processes o f social control - seen in term s o f labelling - from crim inal behaviour. A nd, while dom estic violence had figured strongly in fem inist c ontributions to crim inology, oth er kinds o f ‘n orm alised’ crim e th at is, w idespread and m ore or less tolerated crim e and, in particular, w hite-collar crim e - had rem ained relatively underdeveloped areas o f research. (There were, how­ ever, notable exam ples o f such research: e.g., Carson, 1982; Box, 1983; Levi, 1987; Clarke, 1990; Croal, 1992; Nelken, 1994.) O bservations m ade by a n um ber o f co n trib u to rs to the first edition o f the The Oxford Handbook o f Criminology (M aguire et al., 1994) indicated the lack o f recent

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research in a variety o f areas. Nigel South (1994) opened his chapter on illicit drug use by quoting from D ow nes’s (1988) review m entioned above: ‘W ith a few excep­ tions . . . sociologists were not engaged by the drugs issue’. And, although m ore work in this field did come on stream during the 1980s and early 1990s (e.g., D orn and South, 1987; Pearson, 1987; M acGregor, 1989; D orn et al., 1992; Strang and Gossop, 1993), South him self concluded by saying: ‘However, at present, British crim inology and b roader policy and practice are ill served by the lim ited (albeit generally excel­ lent) research upon which we can draw ’ (South, 1994: 425). In M ichael Levi’s (1994: 344) chapter on violent crim e we learned: ‘By contrast with this focus on “the victim ”, the causes o f violence have received com paratively little crim inological atte n tio n '. Even in the area of youth crim e, which had received m uch m edia and legislative attention in the recent past, Geoff Pearson (1994: 1195) m ade the point: ‘We sim ply do not have the evidence - in the form o f governm entsponsored statistics, social surveys, reliable self-report studies, etc. - to state with any confidence the actually existing relationships betw een “youth” and “crim e” ’. Crim inological research in some areas, then, grew m ore slowly th an m ight have been expected. But, while em phases changed and research topics were reshuffled, the overall volum e o f research in Britain continued to grow during the 1980s and 1990s. In term s o f am ount o f research, a n um ber o f previously neglected topics came to dom inate the field. One notable exam ple was research on policing. It is interesting th at at the end of the 1970s, when a n um ber o f polytechnics and colleges were exploring the possibility of m ounting degrees in police studies, or crim inal justice studies, the Council for N ational Academic Awards (the now defunct body th a t in those days validated nonuniversity-sector degree courses) seriously questioned w hether there existed a suffi­ cient academ ic literature on policing in Britain to sustain degree program m es. A decade later, the huge grow th in police-related research had dram atically reversed the situation. This trend continued unabated into the 1990s. The 1980 and 1981 urban riots, and the 1984-85 m iners’ strike, stim ulated research on the topic o f public order, and inevitably this frequently overlapped with research on policing. As did an upsurge in research on the them es o f 'race’, racism and protest, and ‘race’ and crim inality. Echoing the shift in m uch o f this work away from the offender as such, and tow ards responses to crim e and disorder on the p art of crim inal justice agencies, the 1980s and 1990s also saw an increase in research on the them e o f ‘penality’, th a t is, in the w idest sense, prisons, probation and com m unity sanctions, and all situated w ithin a socio-cultural context. In som e cases this was allied to particular pieces of legislation: for instance, the 1984 Police and C rim inal Evidence Act and the 1991 C rim inal Justice Act. Research on victim s o f crim e is a particularly good exam ple o f a previously neg­ lected topic th a t came to the fore in this period. Originally associated w ith a conserva­ tive tradition, this type of research began to a ttract some of the m ore radical

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crim inologists in Britain, notably those belonging to the left realist school. Since the beginning o f the 1980s studies o f victim s o f crim e have grown rapidly in num ber, and developed along a variety o f fronts. An im p o rta n t aspect of this research were the connections betw een the nature, extent and d istribution o f victim isation and issues o f class, gender, age and ‘race’. Raw m aterial relating to the experiences of victim s was generated by the periodic large-scale British Crime Surveys, carried out by the Home Office, and the m ore focused local crim e surveys. Em pirical and theoretical research carried out w ithin a fem inist fram ew ork, and taking in such topics as gender and crim inality, w om en as victim s (for example, dom estic violence and sexual abuse), and wom en and their treatm en t by the crim inal justice system , continued to thrive. We m ight note, though, th a t according to Tony Jefferson and Joanna Shapland (1994: 282), in spite of fem inism being ‘by one reckoning . . . the grow th area in crim inology during the 1980s . . . the experience of w om en rem ained m arginal to the criminological enterprise' (original em phasis). They also pointed to the m arginalisation o f research on N orthern Ireland and the crim es of the pow erful over this period. W ith a pedigree th at goes back to the Chicago ecologists, research based on the neighbourhood, and on the social and physical environm ent, continued to be carried out during the 1980s and 1990s. A lthough studies concentrating specifically on the in n er city were fewer in n um ber th an m ight have been expected, the urban rioting at the beginning o f the 1990s did trigger research on the experiences o f people living in the m ore deprived areas of the city. Analyses had to recognise, however, th a t in m any cases these areas were no t in fact inner-city areas, but rath er council estates situated on the outskirts o f the city - m unicipal suburbia. One offshoot o f areal studies was policy-oriented research built around som e notion o f ‘com m unity’, and concerning itself w ith initiatives th at would encourage residents to take som e responsibility for crim e control. This was particularly associated with the Hom e Office, and involved developm ents such as neighbourhood w atch schem es. The Hom e Office in particular was also in stru m en tal in carrying out and com m is­ sioning research projects organised around the them e of situational crim e control. This encom passed a m ultiplicity o f ideas ranging from better street lighting, to m ore effective house security, to the then Hom e Secretary’s invitation to ‘walk with a p u r­ pose’. On a general level this kind o f research reflected the em ergence o f w hat is usu­ ally referred to as adm inistrative crim inology, itself linked to a rekindling o f interest in control theory.

T H E N A T U R E A N D C O N T E X T OF R E S E A R C H

As it stands, o f course, the above description is o f little m ore than a list of research topics th at becam e popular during th at period. W ith this as a backdrop, the next task is to exam ine the nature o f British crim inology as it developed as an academ ic

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discipline over the sam e period. This will entail a consideration o f com peting crim i­ nological discourses and assum ptions, around which research was built, together with the b roader context in which research was conducted. Later on we will return to this period for a m ore detailed analysis o f crim inological theory.

An expanding academic base As far as the teaching o f undergraduate courses in crim inological theory was con­ cerned, Rock (1994) had show n th at sociological crim inology continued to play a d o m inant role. On the oth er hand, the contraction in teaching, postgraduate and research oppo rtu n ities th at befell sociology during the 1980s, albeit to som e extent offset by a ‘second wave’ surge at the end o f the 1980s, did have an im pact on research activities and the production o f theory. This partly explains why, since the early 1980s, crim inological research in this country was carried out from a w idening aca­ demic base. Increasingly, c ontributions were m ade by crim inologists whose roots lay in disciplines oth er than sociology; for exam ple, political science, law, social history, psychology and econom ics. O ther developm ents also played a part. A variety of research projects opened up oppo rtu n ities for the em ploym ent o f the specialist knowledge offered by these other disciplines. As an exam ple, a central them e of police-related research in the early 1980s was accountability, and given th at this raised complex legal and political issues turn in g on the constitutional position o f the police, it was no t surprising th at lawyers and political scientists quickly became involved. Following the p a tte rn set in the United States, the establishm ent o f degree courses in crim inal justice studies in a n um ber o f higher education in stitutions d u r­ ing the 1980s (Tierney, 1989) provided crim inology-related teaching and research o pportunities for a range o f social scientists. Finally, there was an increase in the am ount o f ‘in-house’ research carried out by p ractitioners w ithin crim inal justice agencies, as well as by various pressure groups such as Liberty (form erly the N ational Council for Civil Liberties) and NACRO (the N ational Association for the Care and Resettlem ent o f Offenders). All o f these developm ents encouraged a broadening of the academ ic base o f crim inology.

The research focus A ccording to Tony Jefferson and Joanna Shapland (1994: 267), crim inological research during the 1980s was characterised by ‘a gradual contraction o f the research focus’. They saw this process as having two dim ensions to it. First, the field of vision was narrow ed so th at research concentrated on elem ents o f the crim inal justice system and the practicalities o f crim e control: the police, prisons, courts, p ro ­ bation and com m unity sanctions, situational crim e control, and com plem entary

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com m unity-based initiatives such as neighbourhood w atch and police-public con­ sultation. Second, analyses tended to lose sight o f the broader picture by treating those elem ents in relative isolation. This contraction in focus was in evidence am ong radical as well as m ainstream crim inologists.

Policy and pragmatism A n u m b er o f com m entators, including Jefferson and Shapland, have pointed to an o th er characteristic o f m uch crim inological research in the 1980s and 1990s: a shift away from theory tow ards a pragm atic, policy-oriented approach. Indeed, this factor and the narrow ing of the research focus noted above can be seen as m utually reinforc­ ing processes and, again, they caught the attention o f radical as well as m ainstream crim inologists. This was in evidence at different levels o f theoretical research. On one level, there was a relative decline in m acro research that endeavoured to develop a theoretical u nderstanding o f issues o f crim e and crim e control w ithin con­ tem porary political, social and econom ic contexts. This m acro research refused to isolate ‘law and o rd e r’ from such things as econom ic change, governm ent policy and changing ideologies o f control. In spite o f a decline, however, this type o f theoretical research continued to appear (e.g., Hall (1988) and Scraton (1987) on the nature o f the auth o ritarian state; D ah ren d o rf (1985) on law and order from a position he describes as ‘institutional liberalism ’; Box (1987) on crim e and econom ic recession; Sum ner (1994) linking this agenda to the rise and fall o f the sociology o f deviance; and Reiner and Cross (1991)). On an o th er level, the 1980s also saw less research concerned with theoretical analyses of particular areas o f crim inal justice-related activity in contem porary Britain. However, again, critical work o f this sort did appear, and, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, seem s to have been on the increase. Some notable exam ples are: Cohen (1985), H udson (1987), Lacey (1988), W alker (1991), G arland (1990), von Ilirsch (1993), and Hay et al. (1994) on the them es o f sentencing, p unishm ent and social control; Brogden (1982) and Reiner (1992,1994) on the police; Pitts (1988) on the politics of juvenile crim e; and H arris (1992) on probation. Im p o rta n t theoretical work th at addressed historical developm ents was also in evidence, notably: G arland (1985a) on pu n ish m en t and social regulation; H arris and W ebb (1987) on the tre a t­ m ent o f juveniles; and Sim (1990) on the prison m edical service.

Some factors influencing the course of research The narrow ing of the research focus, coupled with a shift tow ards policy-oriented research, can be linked to a n um ber o f key factors at work during the 1980s. The gov­ e rn m e n t’s com m itm ent to financial stringency had a m arked im pact oil the funding

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of teaching and research in the social sciences. Increasingly the stress was on ‘value for m oney’, which inevitably m eant th at research had to be seen to be useful in term s of policy. N ot only did this lead to an expansion in the research carried out by crim i­ nologists at the Research and Planning Unit at the Home Office, it also helped to set the p aram eters o f research initiatives funded by the Economic and Social Research Council - the prim ary source o f funds for university social science departm ents. The stress on ‘value for m oney’, though, was essentially directed at crim inal justice agen­ cies, and increasingly the task o f crim inological research was to evaluate the extent to which these agencies were m easuring up to the dem and to be efficient and effective. Hence the tendency of research to deal with elem ents o f the system in an isolated fashion, m easuring their perform ance against som e posited criteria. A nother factor was the grow th in research carried out by the crim inal justice agen­ cies them selves (who som etim es funded university research) and by various pressure groups. Obviously, such research conform ed to agendas set by the agencies or pres­ sure groups, who in general would hardly finance highly abstract, theoretical work. However, even at the policy level there were in-built lim itations. As Roger Hood (1987) has p ointed out, setting the research agendas them selves, agendas already cir­ cum scribed by central governm ent policy, forecloses on the possibility o f radical alternatives. Stan C ohen’s (1988: 236) observation m ade at the beginning o f the 1980s now seem ed prophetic: ‘the content o f this type o f crim inology has sw itched (and is likely to switch even m ore) in the direction o f “crim inal justice”; th a t is to say, an exclusive concern with the operation o f the system ’. The in troduction o f privatisation w ithin the crim inal justice system was also rele­ vant in this context. After a slow sta rt in the 1980s, the m om entum o f privatisation speeded up in the 1990s, especially w ith respect to prisons, and although the overall im pact in term s o f contracts had been sm all, the principles driving privatisation should not be underestim ated: The real legacy of the privatization debate has not so far been in actual contracts, but in changing expectations. In 1980 the criminal justice system was thought of as a series of state-run agencies which attempted to contain, punish, or sometimes rehabilitate offenders. Today these agencies are to be managed, offenders to be processed, through­ put to be controlled, the system to be modelled. The language of industrial production has been adopted. (Jefferson and Shapland, 1994:279) Also w orth noting was the build-up o f pressure on academ ics and their departm ents to carry out and publish research: the ‘publish or perish’ syndrom e. In the 1990s, uni­ versity dep artm en ts found them selves subject to periodic review by external inspec­ tors. On the basis o f certain indicators - one o f which is research o u tp u t - they were given a rating (this process has continued into the new m illennium ). W hile public accountability is no bad thing, o f course, there was a danger th at the pressures placed

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on sta ff to p ublish created an edge o f d e sp eratio n , an d the possibility o f being te m p te d to avoid tim e-consum ing, innovative th eo risa tio n , especially as funding a n d /o r sab b atical leave for such research was in sh o rt supply. As D ow nes (1988: 49) says: ‘w ork from the late 1970s to the p re sen t day, has been con d u cted w ith a lower level o f theo retical inten sity b u t a g reater atten tiv en ess to m eth o d a n d project m a n a g e m e n t’. A n u m b e r o f c o m m e n ta to rs suggested th a t in te rn al theo retical sq u ab b les had largely disap p eared , w ith the bulk o f crim inologists hovering a ro u n d a consensus, w hich m ig h t also partly explain this d im in u tio n in ‘theo retical in te n sity ’. It was acknow ledged, th o u g h , th a t these placid w aters w ere still d istu rb e d by a handful o f ‘com bative’ radicals: The second generation of the 1980s consists chiefly of a smaller and younger group of professional scholars. It is a group that missed the period of major recruitment to teach­ ing posts, having to turn instead to research contracts in applied criminology. Their work has necessarily been empirical and policy-oriented . . . there is apparent agree­ ment that many of the earlier problems of theoretical definition and identity have grown stale or have been resolved for most practical purposes. (Rock, 1988: 63) Or, alternatively, p e rh a p s these theoretical d isp u tes w ere sw ept u n d e r the carpet. These, th en , w ere som e o f the key factors influencing the shape o f crim inological research d u rin g the 1980s a n d first h a lf o f the 1990s. All o f them , o f course, have to be seen w ithin the co ntext o f econom ic recession, consistently high levels o f u n em p lo y ­ m ent, grow ing gaps betw een rich and poor, pressu re on the g overnm ent to cut public expen d itu re, rising levels o f recorded crim e, decreasing police clear-up rates an d th eir seem ing lack o f im pact, beyond a certain p o in t, to co n tro l crim inal behaviour, over­ crow ding an d rio tin g in the priso n system , m ajo r exam ples o f u rb a n disorder, and increasing fears a b o u t crim e.

POLICY-ORIENTED

RESEARCH AND THE LEFT

T he in te re st in q u estio n s o f policy th a t ch aracterised m ain stre am crim inology over th is p eriod was also a p p a re n t w ithin areas o f radical crim inology. As indicated earlier, crim inologists on the left had to com e to term s w ith the im pact o f T hatcherism /M a jo rism , especially in relation to crim inal justice policies. Research associ­ ate d w ith the left realist school in p a rticu la r c oncerned itself w ith practical policies p e rta in in g to ‘law an d o rd e r’. H ere political sights w ere low ered. Relatively m odest, ‘realistic’ asp iratio n s based upo n an explicitly reform ative pro g ram m e replaced a m ore radical c o m m itm e n t to m ajo r social tran sfo rm a tio n s, th o u g h the reform s were seen as progressive a n d aim ed in the d irection o f an (unexplicated) socialist future.

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E m bracing the idea o f reform m anifested itself in developing close links w ith the Labour Party, especially at local governm ent level, and (traditionally anathem a to the left) cooperating with the police in order to develop strategies for reducing levels of crim e. And why not? Because, said critical’ opponents, crim inology should not su r­ render to a conceptual fram ew ork and research agenda determ ined by outside in te r­ ests, and especially those of the capitalist state. A lthough the left realists had advocated the developm ent o f a broadly based crim i­ nology th at will encom pass all relevant m icro and m acro dim ensions, according to Jefferson and Shapland (1994: 269) their work had in the m ain been narrow ly focused, because of the central role given to victim s’ accounts: victim s’ experiences . . . have come to define the new (left) realist project (coupled w ith, alm ost by way o f a postscript, dem ands for a m ore dem ocratically accountable police force . . . ) - a m ore narrow approach’. Jefferson and Shapland argued th at this tendency partly resulted from the ‘crisis of M arxism ’ during the 1980s, and the influence of the French w riter Foucault. W hile one im p o rta n t strand o f Foucault’s work - based on analyses o f the totality and u b iq ­ uity of discipline - had inspired radical research pitched at a societal level, and often of a historical nature, a second strand o f Foucauldian thought exam ined the day-today m an n er in which specific institu tio n s exercised power. It is this strand, they argued, th a t has influenced the left realists. The desire to link crim inological research to the adm inistration o f justice carried echoes o f w hat G arland called the ‘govern­ m ental project' o f classical crim inology. Although rejecting this move tow ards narrow ly focused, policy-oriented research, critical crim inology did, none the less, address concrete issues relating to the opera­ tion o f the crim inal justice system . This was not new, but the im pact o f Thatcherism /M ajorism stim ulated an increase in research o f this type. Arguing th at the 1980s and 1990s had w itnessed the grow th o f an increasingly coercive, auth o ritarian state, and a narrow ing down of areas o f freedom , critical crim inology em phasised w hat were seen as the harm ful effects o f governm ent policy and the injustices perm e­ ating the crim inal justice system . This type o f research was, in fact, a continuation of two traditions already well-established w ithin radical crim inology (and discussed earlier): one based on the them e o f ‘self-interested rule m akers’, the oth er on the them e o f ‘cynical rule breakers’. D uring the 1980s, critical crim inology picked up on the first of these by scrutinising the effects on civil liberties and justice th at the im ple­ m entation o f governm ent policy was having. The second them e was originally associ­ ated with w hite-collar crim e, bu t during the 1980s the spotlight was tu rn ed on such things as m iscarriages o f justice, corruption and abuses o f power. Research by critical crim inologists into substantive crim inal justice issues was seen by them as p a rt o f a w ider critique o f a capitalist society characterised by profound inequalities based on class, gender and ‘race’. For left realists, the critical crim inologists’ insistence th at crim inal justice can only be achieved via a radical transform ation o f society - which leads them to be sceptical o f the value of research aim ed at devising practical

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m easures for reducing crim e - m ea n t th a t they w ere unable to offer a realistic and constructive alternative to the ‘law an d o rd e r’ policies o f the right. However, by c o n ce n tra tin g sim ply on th e questio n o f why research sh o u ld be car­ ried out, there is a d an g er o f reducing the debate betw een these tw o schools o f radical crim inology to a d isp u te betw een ‘re fo rm ’ an d ‘rev o lu tio n ’. As we shall see w hen exam ining crim inological th eo ry in m ore detail, the deb ate betw een left realism and critical crim inology encom passed a range o f th eoretical issues concerning the p ro ­ d uction, m eaning a n d uses o f know ledge. In sh o rt, the debate raised core questio n s regarding the n a tu re o f academ ic crim inology.

BRITISH C R IM IN O LO G Y

IN T H E L A T E T W E N T I E T H

CENTURY

T his exam ination o f the historical developm ent o f crim inology began w ith M arx ’s o bservation th a t ‘h a s n ’t the Tree o f Sin been at the sam e tim e the Tree o f Knowledge ever since the tim e o f A dam ?’ The im agery was m ea n t to cap tu re the ironic fact th at th e livelihoods an d re p u ta tio n s o f b o th ‘go o d ies’ an d ‘b a d d ie s’ (though the d istin c ­ tio n is n o t always clear) were owed to th e existence o f crim e. In the sam e context M arx refers to ‘the inevitable co m p en d iu m in w hich this sam e p rofessor th ro w s his lectures o n to the general m a rk e t’, a n d it is certainly tru e th a t the Tree o f Know ledge th a t c o n stitu tes British crim inology grew enorm ously d u rin g the tw e n tie th century. O ne o f the obvious difficulties w hen p lo ttin g crim inology’s h istorical d evelopm ent is in identifying those m ovem ents an d ideas th a t have been p articu larly significant and influential. T he French h istorian Pierre Vilar (1 9 8 5 :4 7 ) has w ritten: ‘T he history business has one th in g in com m on w ith selling soap pow der: m ere novelty in b oth can easily pass as in n o v atio n ’. T he sam e can be said o f the ‘crim inology b u sin ess’. However, looking at the p a st has one advantage over looking at the present: w ith the passage o f tim e, a n d an o p p o rtu n ity to reflect a n d take stock, certain key p a tte rn s do begin to em erge.

The backdrop As was argued earlier, crim inology has b o th an ‘in te rn a l’ and an e x te rn a l’ his­ tory. O ver the p erio d u n d e r review we have seen how changes in the n a tu re o f crim inology - its discourses, in stitu tio n a l settings an d projects - have been shaped by in tellectual processes at w ork w ith in th e discipline as well as by w ider social, p o lit­ ical, econom ic an d cu ltu ral factors. The developm ent o f crim inology d u rin g the 1980s an d 1990s, therefore, has to be seen against the back d ro p o f a p anoply o f ‘ex ter­ n a l’ events and m ovem ents. The grow ing influence o f the New Right, a n d the policies o f an (at the tim e) e n tre n ch e d C onservative a d m in istra tio n , are p articu larly im p o rta n t. C o ntinuing

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econom ic recession, high levels o f unem ploym ent and deprivation, and changes in the taxation system , had all helped to sharpen social divisions w ithin British society. The 1995 United N ations international audit o f c hildren’s rights in Britain provided one illustration. The report accused the British governm ent o f violating the UN con­ vention on the rights o f children, to which it was a signatory four years previously. A n um ber o f areas were pointed to, including w hat were defined as inadequate benefit allowances, which the re p o rt linked to teenage pregnancies and a high divorce rate, and the large n um ber o f children living in poverty. A ccording to the Child Poverty Action G roup around one-third of B ritain’s children were living in poverty; tw enty years earlier the figure was one in ten. For gypsies and black and Asian people there had been the added burden o f racism in its various form s, including an upsurge in racially m otivated violence. In addition, the 1980s and 1990s saw spectacular ou t­ breaks of urban disorder, such as occurred in Brixton in 1981 and on Tyneside in 1991. It did not escape the notice o f som e com m entators th at serious rioting had taken place during the 1930s and 1880s; these were also periods o f severe econom ic recession. The 1980s and 1990s had also seen large-scale protest relating to specific pieces of legislation, such as the Poll Tax and the 1994 C rim inal Justice and Public O rder Act. The 1984-85 m iners’ strike brought a range o f issues to the surface con­ cerning the role o f the state, and in particular the way in which the strike was policed. Finally, give or take a few year-on-year fluctuations, levels o f recorded crim e had con­ tinued to rise inexorably. One response to this was the greater use o f im prisonm ent; as a pro p o rtio n o f the population, Britain im prisoned m ore people th an m ost other Council o f Europe m em bers (M organ, 1994; M uncie and Sparks, 1991; Vagg, 1994). One consequence of this policy, in spite o f a recent large prison-building program m e, was severe overcrowding. Furtherm ore, over the sam e period there were serious o u t­ breaks of rioting in prisons.

Some of the main features of British criminology in the late twentieth century N ot surprisingly, these developm ents have had a profound im pact on crim inology in this country, irrespective o f the political affiliations o f the various participants. Left realism represented an a tte m p t to construct a radical crim inology th at was prepared to address both the causes o f crim e and practical policies aim ed at reducing the vic­ tim isation o f vulnerable sections o f society. The in tention was to pu t forw ard a radi­ cal alternative to the rhetoric o f the right. W hile rejecting this as m ere reform ism , critical crim inologists still felt the need to engage with substantive crim inal justice issues in the face o f w hat was seen as a closing down o f areas o f freedom by the capitalist state. It can also be noted th at critical crim inology had provided fertile ground for the ideas associated with the abolitionist school o f thought (e.g., Bianchi and van Sw aaningen, 1986). O riginating in its m odern form during the 1960s in some

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o f the Scandinavian countries, abolitionism essentially argued th at prisons and other punitive elem ents o f the crim inal justice system do m ore harm than good, and th at they should therefore be replaced by m ore hum ane and effective system s o f conflict settlem ent. Liberal dem ocratic thought had also to come to term s w ith the increased influence o f the New Right, and the im plem entation o f w hat were seen as illiberal crim inal justice policies, though unlike critical crim inology, solutions were pitched at a m ore m odest, reform ing level. For ‘establishm ent’ crim inology, and especially th at associated w ith the Hom e Office, rising levels of recorded crim e, and the seem ing inability o f various form s o f penality to either d eter or rehabilitate offenders, had led to a disenchantm ent w ith positivism ’s prom ise to (scientifically) discover the causes and cures o f crim e. Thus we saw a grow th in adm inistrative crim inology. This approach incorporated a rational choice m odel o f hum an behaviour and elem ents o f control theory, and the em phasis was sw itched to such things as situational crime prevention, the m obilisation o f the com m unity, and efforts to im prove the efficiency and effectiveness o f policing (Heal and Laycock, 1986). The grow ing influence o f New Right crim inology was particularly significant. This had occurred in both Britain and the United States (though a discussion o f develop­ m ents in Am erican crim inology will be reserved until later) and has to be seen as not one, hom ogeneous school o f thought, so m uch as a n um ber o f strands clustered around certain key them es. T raditional conservatives attacked w hat they saw as the catastrophic failure o f lib­ eral w elfare-oriented crim inal justice policies, and in so doing laid claim to the p racti­ cal no-nonsense com m on sense o f ‘o rd in ary ’ people (Brewer and Lait, 1980; Brewer et al., 1981). They were all Sancho Panzas. The ideas o f the traditional conservatives were based upon supposed fundam ental traditional values. A nother stran d o f New Right crim inology was com posed o f econom ists whose view o f the w orld derived from the free m arket principles o f n ineteenth-century liberalism (Veljanovski, 1990). Drawing to som e extent on classicial crim inology, crim e from this perspective is m uch the sam e as any oth er business activity; crim inals m ake rational choices to break the law, and therefore the aim o f crim inal justice policies should be to make such ‘business’ decisions irrational. Some new (or right) realists rejected the tra d i­ tional punitive law and order policies of the right, though they also rejected the lib­ eral explanations o f crim inality offered by sociological positivism (Colem an, 1988). Biological positivism , however, was introduced, and linked to the notion o f a ‘culture o f poverty’. Finally, there were those who described them selves as right-w ing lib e rtar­ ians. Here there was strong su p p o rt for decentralisation and an unregulated free m ar­ ket, together with an ideological com m itm ent to the privatisation o f public agencies such as the police and the prisons. The libertarians argued th at ‘victim less’ crimes, for exam ple illegal drug use, should be decrim inalised. The source o f social order, they said, should be m oral education and the exercise o f self-discipline (Elliot, 1990). An interesting, and som etim es confusing, aspect of developm ents in academ ic crim inology during this period was th at the various schools o f th o u g h t did not always

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represent neat and tidy expressions o f expected theoretical or political positions. Thus, for instance, crim inologists sym pathetic to interactionism were conjoined with those on the right who stressed voluntarism rath er than determ inism when explain­ ing crim inal m otivations; the treatm en t m odel o f juvenile justice, linked derogatorily by the right to the ‘excuse m aking in d u stry ’, had also been criticised by m any on the left; an interest in the victim s o f crim e had been em braced by representatives o f the left and the right; and argum ents in favour of the legalisation of drugs united som e on the left with the libertarian right. W hile radical and liberal crim inology had to consider how best to respond to the m ovem ent to the right in Britain, and in the process cope with pressure to conduct research according to the dem ands o f the funding agencies, fem inist work relating to crime and crim inal justice had tended to enjoy m ore independence. This had been double-edged in th at although funding for research into specifically fem inist concerns had not been in generous supply, and thus perhaps illustrated the m arginalisation of fem inism in term s o f the crim inological enterprise, it did allow alternative research agendas to be set and, im portantly, allowed space for theoretical developm ent. Clearly, as far as the world o f academ ic crim inology was concerned, fem inism had been very influential, which helped it to build up its own resources and power bases. There were two oth er features o f contem porary British crim inology th at are w orth noting, and each concerns the status o f theory. First, in tandem w ith a strong em pha­ sis on narrow ly focused, policy-oriented research carried out by highly com petent, professional researchers, crim inological work, as Downes (1988: 49) pu t it, ‘has been conducted at a lower level o f theoretical intensity’. This is no t to say th at crim inology in Britain at the tim e ignored theoretical analysis, bu t rath er th at theoretical analysis tended to have a contracted research focus, concerning itself with specific crim e or crim e control issues. T hus com pared to the late 1960s and 1970s, there were rela­ tively few texts th at addressed wider, m ore fundam ental debates. A lthough som e crim inologists undoubtedly felt th at these debates had already been settled, or that they were irrelevant, the chief explanation for this was probably related to the pres­ sures involved in seeking out research funds, and working to agendas set by the fu n d ­ ing agencies. As a consequence, ‘m ajor keynote articles and books have becom e perhaps a rarer, and m ore endangered species’ (Jefferson and Shapland, 1994: 284). The point was well m ade by Sum ner (1990: xi): criminology cannot be limited to policy-oriented studies and must retain its integrity as an area of independent, critical enquiry of interest to scholars from a variety of discipli­ nary backgrounds. A criminology that wants to remain dynamic and worthy of its com­ plex subject matter must therefore constantly renew theoretical debate, explore current issues, and develop new methods of research. To allow itself to be limited by the often narrowly political interests of government departments or the funding agencies’ need for parochial ‘relevance’, especially in an age when ‘realism’ is so often defined by shortrun philosophies, is to promote its own destruction as an intellectual enterprise.

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There are, though, exam ples o f work th at attem p ted to develop a w ider theoretical discourse, especially w ithin the field o f radical crim inology (e.g., Cohen, 1988; Sum ­ ner, 1990, 1994; G arland, 1992; Scraton and Chadwick, 1991; N ew burn, 1992) and, notably, on the p art o f fem inist w riters (e.g., G elsthorpe and M orris, 1990; Sm art, 1989; Cain, 1990; Young, 1990; Carlen, 1992; Cam pbell, 1992). The second feature had been a significant trend tow ards an eclectic, ‘pick and m ix’ approach to the use o f theory, in the sense th at crim inologists had, where they felt it was appropriate, draw n on a variety o f m odels and insights from the past, thereby eschewing a com m itm ent to a single school o f thought. This is often associated with postm odernism . The p ostm odern w orld, it was argued, is one th a t rejects the ‘grand narrative’, th at is, an all-encom passing, all-explaining intellectual source and world outlook. However it is described, it did appear th at w ithin crim inology the certainties th at nourished the bravado and panache o f earlier theoretical work had evaporated som ew hat.

Plus ?o change One final observation regarding crim inology’s historical developm ent is p rom pted by the grow th o f the New Right in the 1980s. New Right thinking had one thing in com m on with m uch o f the British and Am erican crim inology th at had em erged since W orld W'ar Two: it concentrated on the crim es o f the ‘pow erless’ as opposed to the crim es o f the ‘pow erful’. In so doing, New Right crim inology invoked concepts such as the ‘underclass’ an d the ‘culture o f poverty’, and, along the way, had constructed various folk devils such as the ‘yob’, the ‘single m o th e r’ and the ‘tren d y ’ social worker. In m any ways it was rem iniscent o f a school o f th o u g h t th at was around during the 1930s and 1940s, and was well represented by Claude M ullins’s (1945) book, Why Crime? discussed earlier. This alone should m ake us wary o f a ‘m arch o f progress’ view ofhistory. Like the New Right, M ullins concentrated on the crim inality o f the less well-off, singling out w hat he called the ‘low grade’ and the ‘m entally deficient’. His discussion o f rem edies laid before us in stark term s the dichotom y betw een, on the one hand, w elfare/treatm ent, and on the other, social co n tro l/p u n ish m e n t. Lam enting the gen­ eral drift tow ards welfarism , M ullins in effect labelled those who em phasised the social bases o f crim e (and especially deprivation) as ‘excuse m akers’. The parallels with New Right crim inology are obvious. Like M ullins, the New Right came down on the side o f social control. In 1945 it was a pre-em ptive strike against an im m inent social welfare program m e; by the 1980s it was an attack on the supposed failure o f th at program m e. As we have seen, M ullins’s preferred in stru m e n t o f social control was sterilisation; those sections o f society prone to com m it crim e should be p re­ vented from producing a new generation o f crim inals.

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Selected further reading Rock, P. (ed) (1 9 9 4 ) The History o f Criminology, Dartm outh: A ldershot is a collection o f essays on the h isto ric a l d ev elo p m en t o f crim inology up u n til the m id-1990s. A review o f crim inology th a t includes m o st o f th e 1980s is p rovided by D ow nes, D. (1 9 8 8 ) ‘The sociology o f crime and social control in Britain, 1 9 6 0 - 1 9 8 7 ’, British Journal o f Criminology, 29(4); a n d into the 1990s: Jefferson, T. and Shapland, J. (1 9 9 4 ) ‘Crimi­ nal justice and the production o f order and control’, British Journal o f Criminology, 34(3); Rock, P. (1 9 9 4 ) ‘The social organization o f British crim inology’, in M. M aguire, R. M organ and R. Reiner (eds) The Oxford Handbook o f Criminology, 1st edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press. For a less th a n o p tim istic read in g o f th e fo rtu n es o f the sociology o f deviance, see Sumner, C. (1 9 9 4 ) The Sociology o f Deviance: An obituary, Buckingham: O pen University Press. For a review o f fem in ist c o n trib u tio n s, see G elsthorpe, L. and M orris, A. (1 9 8 8 ) ‘Fem i­ nism and crim inology in Britain’, British Journal o f Criminology, 28(2).

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N K ey th e m e s •

Mainstream criminology

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Longitudinal research and criminal careers

• The historical roots •

Feminism and criminology

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Gender and crime

• Administrative criminology •

Right-wing classicism

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Neo-positivism and right realism

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Radical criminology

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Critical criminology and left realism

V______________________________________________________________________ J

INTRODUCTION

W ith C hapter 12 as a backdrop, this ch ap ter discusses the m ajor stra n d s o f academ ic crim inology th rough the decade o f th e 1980s a n d into the m id-1990s. T his includes an e xam ination o f ‘m ain stre am ’ crim inology and so-called ad m inistrative crim inology. W ith a p rim a ry in terest in situ atio n al crim e p revention (rath e r th an , for instance, the causes o f crim e), ad m inistrative crim inology becam e particularly p ro m in e n t w ithin estab lish m en t crim inology du rin g this period. In the context o f critical crim inology, the respective positions taken by left realism an d left idealism - along w ith right realism - are discussed in detail. So too are co n trib u tio n s from fem inist crim inolo­ gists, w hose w ork placed p articu lar em phasis on issues o f gender a n d inequality.

M AINSTREAM

CRIM IN O LO GY

T he nam e ‘m a in stre a m ’ is n o t used to suggest th a t it played a p ro m in e n t role w ithin crim inological theory, b u t ra th e r th a t it c o n tin u ed the em pirically g ro u n d e d , p o si­ tivist tra d itio n associated w ith pre-new deviancy crim inology. However, it should n o t

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be confused w ith th e New Right versions o f positivism discussed later. The principle features o f m ain stream crim inology w ere well su m m arised by B arbara H udson ( 1993 : 3 ): Mainstream criminology may itself now be on the theoretical margins, but it continues. It can be identified primarily by an absence of concern with the role of the state in pro­ ducing crime, an absence of concern with the part played by social reactions in pro­ ducing criminal identities, and absence of any appreciation of crime and criminal justice as contingent outcomes of socio-political configurations. In mainstream crimi­ nology there is no deconstruction of definitions of crime and no fundamental challenge to state punishm ent strategies or practices: its concern is to assist state correctional policies by providing information about criminals which will facilitate fine-tuning of penal practices. T his su m m ary o f the characteristics o f m ain stre am crim inology p o in ts to its u n re ­ co n stru cted n atu re, in the sense th a t it ten d ed to rem ain tru e to a p a rticu la r u n d e r­ sta n d in g o f w h at crim inology should essentially be seeking to achieve. A lthough th eo retical developm ents from the new deviancy perio d onw ards were acknow l­ edged, and som etim es in co rp o ra te d in to research, m ain stre am crim inologists have, in general term s, been c o m m itte d to a core orthodoxy as in d icated above. T his entailed, first, a c o n cen tratio n on the a m o u n t and d istrib u tio n o f so-called conven­ tional crim e, such as burglary, theft, crim inal dam age an d certain sorts o f violence, in o th e r w ords, offences th a t m ake up the bulk o f recorded crim e; they are also the types o f offences th a t m em bers o f th e general public are m ost likely to w orry ab o u t. Sec­ ond, th ere w as a c o n tin u in g in te re st in young offenders, reflecting the m essage from official statistics a n d self-report stu d ies th a t this age group is d isp ro p o rtio n a tely involved in crim e. T h ird , th ere was a stro n g positivist o rien tatio n , expressed in a tte m p ts to identify the factors th a t cause or p re d ic t crim e. A lthough the concerns o f m ain stre am crim inology, in p a rtic u la r the search for causal factors, w ere o u t o f favour w ith go v ern m en t fu n d in g agencies at th a t tim e, these concerns did coalesce a ro u n d q u estio n s th a t co n tin u e d to d o m in ate public debate, notably: w ho com m its crim e a n d w hy do they do it? In view o f th is it will be useful to extend this discussion o f m ain stre am crim inology via an ex am ination o f the concept o f ‘crim inal career’.

L O N G IT U D IN A L RESEARCH AND CRIM IN AL CAREERS

C rim inal career research involves p lo ttin g the am o u n ts and types o f offending o f a sam ple o f individuals as they go thro u g h life; because o f the relatively large tim e p eri­ ods covered they are referred to as longitudinal studies. The variables th at ap p ea r to be associated w ith the offending are then noted. P ro p o n en ts p o in t out th at longitudinal studies are su p erio r to cross-sectional studies (which provide a ‘sn a p sh o t’ o f a n u m b er

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o f individuals at a given m om ent) because changes in behaviour can be linked to changes in relevant variables. As Farrington (1994: 539) said in a com prehensive review o f crim inal careers: Cross-sectional studies make it impossible to distinguish between indicators and causes, since they can merely demonstrate correlations between high levels of one fac­ tor (e.g. unemployment) and high levels of another (e.g. offending). However, longitu­ dinal studies can show that offending is greater (within individuals) during some periods (e.g. of unemployment) than during other periods (e.g. of employment). However, as Farrington acknowledged, longitudinal studies still have to cope w ith the problem o f disentangling d ependent from independent variables, th a t is, causes from sym ptom s. Crim inal career research does not, in itself, produce crim inological theories; rather it is em pirical research which aim s to provide resources for the testing or develop­ m ent of crim inological theories. Historically, such research has concerned itself with conventional, rath er than white-collar, crim e and has often relied on inform ation from official statistics, although self-report studies are used. The following is a b rief discussion o f the kind of data generated by crim inal career research.

Age and criminality Research in Britain and other European countries, and in the United States, had show n th at by the tim e they reach their th irties a large pro p o rtio n o f males have been convicted of a crim inal offence (see Hom e Office, 1985; Farrington and W est, 1990; and Piquero, 2007, in Britain; Stattin et al., 1989, in Sweden; W olfgang et al. 1987 in the U nited States). Farrington and W est, for instance, found th at over one-third of males in London aged up to 32 years had been convicted o f at least one crim inal offence serious enough to be recorded in the Crim inal Records Office. This study is p a rt o f an ongoing longitudinal research project called the C am bridge Study in D elin­ quent D evelopm ent. Using a sam ple o f 400 males bo rn betw een 1951 and 1954, the project was set up at the beginning o f the 1960s by D. J. W est; D. P. Farrington has been the m ajor collaborator. W hen self-report studies were used, over 90 per cent of adult males adm itted to having com m itted at least one crim inal offence (Farrington, 1989). Obviously raw data such as these need to be carefully scrutinised so th at such things as frequency and seriousness are taken into account. The com parable figures for females, it should be noted, were m uch lower (gender and crim e is discussed later). The build-up o f offences as an individual moves through adolescence and adulthood is referred to as the ‘cum ulative prevalence’ of offending. A ccording to official statistics and self-report data, there was (and is) a m uch greater prevalence o f offending am ong teenagers than am ong oth er age groups - the

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peak age for offending, based on cautions and convictions, was 18 years. The Home Affairs C om m ittee (1993) reported th at o f the indictable offences com m itted by juveniles, and for which they were cautioned or convicted in 1990, 60 per cent involved theft or handling stolen goods, 17 per cent burglary, 10 per cent violence and 4 per cent crim inal dam age. Evidence from research, though, indicated th at offenders were not specialised: know n offenders tended to be involved in different types o f offence (Farrington d a l., 1988). There was som e evidence th at specialisation increased with age; sex offenders being the m ost specialised (ibid.). A significant find­ ing was th a t a very large pro p o rtio n o f teenagers com m itted offences, but in the m ain these are relatively trivial and rarely resulted in a caution or court appearance (m ost avoided getting caught). O f those arrested and prosecuted, m ost ceased or signifi­ cantly reduced their offending by the tim e they were into th eir tw enties (Belson, 1975; W est, 1982). Studies from various countries show ed th a t offending usually began at age 13-15 years, and shoplifting and crim inal dam age seem ed to be the typical offences com m itted in the early teenage years. Farrington (1992a) found that the ‘take o ff’ age for an acceleration in offending was 14 years, and for a decrease, 23 years. His self-report study (Farrington, 1989) discovered th at certain types of offences, basically theft, burglary and crim inal dam age, declined as individuals went through th eir teens into th eir tw enties, though the decrease was m uch less for theft from work, assault, drug use and fraud. It was also discovered th at first convictions occurred on average at 17.5 years of age, w ith those convicted during an earlier pre-adolescence stage m ost likely to p e r­ sist in offending (Farrington, 1992a). M any studies p ointed to the link betw een late onset o f offending and early desistance (e.g., Hom e Office, 1987). W h eth er the link betw een early onset and later persistence is a result of the behaviour in itself encour­ aging fu rth er offending, the labelling process, or the unfolding of a ‘crim inal p o ten ­ tial’, is unclear. A Hom e Office (1987) study suggested th at if burglary or theft were the onset offences, then persistent offending could be predicted. Desistance from offending seems to be associated w ith the developm ent of a close relationship w ith a p a rtn e r (unless the p a rtn e r was also an offender), job satisfaction, w orries about get­ ting caught and a sense o f ‘m atu rity ’ (Shover, 1985).

Socio-economic status and criminality The link betw een low socio-econom ic or low social class status and crim inal behav­ iour has been the subject o f m uch research activity w ithin crim inology. As we have seen, m any crim inological m odels take this as given. Although this link is reflected in official statistics, data from self-report studies are less conclusive (see Box, 1981, 1987; R utter and Giller, 1983; Farrington, 1995, for reviews). C ertainly in the case of m ore trivial offences, self-report studies indicate th at offending is w idespread am ong all social classes, although in Britain low social classes are still overrepresented (less

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so in the U nited States). W ith respect to m ore serious offences, studies have tended to point to a correlation betw een rates o f offending and low socio-econom ic status (R utter and Giller, 1983). However, som e w riters (e.g. Box, 1981, and H indelange/tf/., 1981) have disputed this. As m easures of crim inal activity, there are a n um ber o f difficulties with self-report studies, in addition to the obvious ones such as getting respondents to tell the tru th . First, they are usually carried out on youths, and therefore exclude m any serious offences in the white-collar and corporate crim e categories. Second, as Roshier (1989) says, because such studies are generally conducted in school, the serious and frequent offenders are m ore likely to be absent because o f truan tin g . T hird, and again follow­ ing Roshier, w hen m ore detailed indicators than, for instance, being a m anual worker are used, then links betw een social and econom ic disadvantage and crim inality becom e m ore a pparent. Fourth, the crudity o f questionnaires m eans th at they often fail to distinguish betw een fairly and very frequent offending (W ilson and Herrnstein, 1985). The C am bridge Study was one attem p t to deal with detailed indicators. The study found th at juvenile and adult offending - official and self-reported - could be p re­ dicted on the basis o f low family incom e, poor housing and large family size (Farring­ ton, 1992a, 1992b). One o f the benefits o f crim inal career research is th a t the sam e individual can be followed through life. T hus the C am bridge Study found th at an unstable (unskilled) work record on the p a rt o f a boy’s father was a p redictor of offending by the boy when aged 18 years, and an unstable (unskilled) work record at 18 years predicted offending betw een 21 and 25 years. In this study conviction rates were found to increase when individuals were unem ployed (Farrington, 1986).

Anti-social tendencies C rim inal career research has very often tried to identify various ‘anti-social’ ten d e n ­ cies in early life th at are associated with offending later on, or, as W est and Farrington (1977) argued, form a totality o f which delinquency was one elem ent. Clearly, a term such as anti-social will m ean different things to different people, and w ithin crim inal career research the term has encom passed a very wide range o f activities: for exam ple, sm oking, bullying, sexual intercourse, lying, poor concentration and tru ­ anting. Often the focus has been on the escalation o f anti-social/offending behaviour as an individual develops. A large body o f research has pointed to links betw een vari­ ous clusters o f anti-social behaviour and offending: In the Cambridge Study, delinquents tended to be troublesome and dishonest in their primary schools, tended to be aggressive and frequent liars at age 12-14, and tended to be bullies at age 14. By age 18, delinquents tended to be anti-social in a wide variety of respects, including heavy drinking, heavy smoking, using prohibited drugs, and heavy

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gambling. In addition, they tended to be sexually promiscuous, often beginning sexual intercourse under age 15, having several sexual partners by age 18, and usually having unprotected intercourse. (Farrington, 1992b) I sense som e readers o f this book shuffling uncom fortably in their seats. Some have traced so-called anti-social tendencies to an even earlier age. In an Am erican study of 3- and 4-year-olds in kindergarten, Spivack, M arcus and Swift (1986) argued th at m isbehaviour at th at age predicted trouble with the police in later life. An even m ore startling revelation comes from a piece o f research by Bates et al. (1991) which p u r­ po rted to show th a t six-m onth-old baby boys whose m others judged them to be ‘diffi­ cult’ in term s o f tem peram ent, were likely to exhibit anti-social tendencies at age 8. Some studies, for exam ple Eron and H uesm ann (1990) and Farrington (1993), found th at aggression during boyhood was associated w ith assaults on spouses and bullying in adulthood, and such m en were very likely to have sons w ho them selves carried out these behaviours when they are adults. However, longitudinal studies do show th at aro und a h a lf o f the children defined as anti-social are no t so defined by the tim e th at they reach adulthood.

Family context Longitudinal studies have paid particular attention to family factors, with a view to discovering those factors th at predict offending during adolescence. Typically, this research p oints to the following as predictive factors: irregular and harsh discipline, lax supervision, large family size, lack o f p arental interest in, and involvem ent with, the child, parents who exhibit anti-social tendencies, and conflict betw een parents (W est and Farrington, 1973; M cCord, 1979; W ilson, 1980; Loeber and Stoutham erLoeber, 1986). According to M cCord (1979), rejection or lack o f interest on the p a rt o f the m other predicted the child’s later involvem ent in property crim e, w hilst violent crim e was linked to having been brought up in a family where parental conflict and aggression were in evidence. The Cam bridge Study found th at a relatively small n u m b er o f families were responsible for a very large p ro p o rtio n o f crim inal behaviour. Indeed, having a con­ victed p aren t or sibling was an im p o rta n t p redictor o f later offending by a child (W est and Farrington, 1973, 1977). Having a convicted p arent, however, was a p re­ dictor o f persistence in offending in later life, rath er than a predictor of early onset of offending. In the early 1990s, lone-parent families came under the spotlight in debates about juvenile crim e (see, for exam ple, the rem arkable convergence betw een Conservative

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m inisters and self-styled ethical socialism ’ in Dennis, 1993). On a general level, longi­ tudinal studies did tend to show th at children brought up in hom es broken by divorce or separation (but not death) were m ore likely to becom e juvenile and adult offenders than were children brought up in tw o-parent families (W adsw orth, 1979; Farrington, 1992b), though this was no t the case if p arental divorce or separation occurred before the child was 5 years old. However, these research findings did not show th at family structure, and in particular the lone-parent family, was per se crim ­ inogenic. Longitudinal researchers acknowledge th at abstracting ‘lone p a re n t’ as a single causal factor is far too sim plistic, and ignores factors such as econom ic and social deprivation and the nature o f relationships betw een spouses and betw een p a r­ ents and children. M cCord (1982) took a sam ple o f fam ilies where the children’s n a t­ ural father had (because o f death, divorce or separation) left the hom e and, for com parison, a sam ple o f unbroken families. She reported th at the prevalence o f seri­ ous offending on the p art o f the children was as follows: Lone-parentfamilies: 62 per cent where the m other failed to give the child affection 22 per cent where the m other was affectionate Tivo-parentfamilies: 52 p er cent where p arental conflict existed 26 per cent where there was little p arental conflict A Hom e Office study by Riley and Shaw (1985: 45) in the m id-1980s concluded: ‘The notion th a t one-parent families are . . . “crim inogenic” receives no su p p o rt from the results o f the present survey’. For a brief, but useful, overview see Rodger (1995).

Moral panics? In the light o f the issues raised during the above discussion o f m ainstream crim inol­ ogy, and before exam ining crim inological theory, we can com plete this section by dis­ cussing briefly som e high octane debates on the specific them e o f juvenile offending and crim inal justice policies th at em erged. A striking feature o f the juvenile justice legislation introduced betw een the begin­ ning o f the 1980s and the m iddle o f the 1990s is its lack o f consistency. To w hat extent, one m ight ask, was this a reflection o f political expediency or knee-jerk reac­ tions, as opposed to a careful consideration o f w hat m ight actually ‘work’? Im p o r­ tantly, governm ent policy has to be seen against the backdrop o f a desire to present a tough law and order stance, and pressure to cut costs via ‘value for m oney’ (at the tim e over £7 billion per year was spent on the crim inal justice system ).

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At the beginning o f the 1990s Home Office m inisters were congratulating them selves on the app aren t success o f their juvenile justice policies. Official statistics showed th at betw een 1985 and 1991 the n um ber o f offenders aged 17 or under con­ victed or cautioned had m ore than halved - 264,000 in 1985 com pared with 149,000 in 1991. In 1992 the figure decreased fu rth er to 99,000. This contrasted with an increase o f 150 per cent in the n um ber of male juvenile offenders convicted or cau­ tioned in the period 1959-77. The decrease from the mid-1980s was only partly explained by a reduction in the juvenile population. There was, too, during the 1980s a significant decrease in the n um ber o f juveniles being given custodial sentences. In 1979 the n um ber was 7,900, and in 1984 it was 6,700, falling to 1,500 in 1990, and then rising to 2,000 in 1991. An optim istic reading would conclude th at over the period in question there really was a fall in the num ber o f juveniles who offended. On the oth er hand, m ore juveniles may have escaped apprehension; or (which is highly likely) police may have preferred to issue inform al cautions rather th an form al cautions or setting in m otion prosecu­ tion procedures. D uring the 1980s am ounts o f recorded crim e in general continued to increase and, given the dispro p o rtio n ate involvem ent ofjuveniles in offending, the app aren t decreases seem anom alous. A serious difficulty w ith all this, o f course, is th at we cannot know the ages o f those com m itting the m ajority o f recorded offences. As M aguire (1994: 271) points out: not many more than one in ten offences recorded by the police result in a caution or conviction . . . only about one in fifty of the comparable crimes identified by the BCS (British Crime Survey) result in a conviction - a figure which drops to as low as one in 200 where ‘vandalism’ (criminal damage) is concerned. This being the case, it can obviously not simply be assumed that the characteristics o f‘offenders’ as a whole can be inferred from those of adjudicated offenders. In spite o f the optim istic glow induced in som e q u arters by the juvenile crim e figures, the early 1990s w itnessed a significant upsurge o f interest in the youth crim e p ro b ­ lem ’. The Daily Star in N ovem ber 1992 pulled no punches, arguing that: hardcore child super-crooks are bringing fear to Britain’s streets .. . they are our num­ ber one crime problem, tearaways just out of primary school who have learned their les­ sons in motor theft and housebreaking so well they account for 90 per cent of offences. (Quoted in Hagel and Newburn, 1994: 97; emphasis in original) The m ass m edia provided a rich diet o f young thugs ‘laughing at the law’, ‘rat boys’, ‘crim inal to ts’ in balaclavas who terrorised certain neighbourhoods, and ram paging rioters. The Janies Bulger case provided a particularly potent image. For m any m edia com m entators this was no t m erely an isolated, idiosyncratic and tragic event (which was how the M ary Bell case in the 1960s, which contained sim ilar features, seem ed to

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be interpreted). Rather, it tended to be presented as a sym bol of som ething having gone profoundly w rong with B ritain’s children. As public and political debate focused increasingly on youngsters as a generalised threat, a parallel concern was grow ing which stressed the role o f children as victims. In her ongoing study o f 11- to 16-year-olds in Cleveland, Browne (1994), for instance, found th at for m any children the w orld was a frightening and dangerous place. It was not uncom m on for w eapons to be carried for self-defence, bullying in schools was endem ic and a large n um ber o f girls spoke o f sexual harassm ent from m ale teachers (see also A nderson et al., 1991; H artless et al., 1995). At the sam e tim e various child sex abuse scandals appeared in the m edia, and there were num erous references to p arents being increasingly w orried about their younger children playing o utdoors and walking hom e from school alone. M eanwhile, the judiciary and the police argued th at the official statistics were m is­ leading, and th at the 1980s had seen not a decrease, bu t an increase in juvenile crim e. This was the d o m in an t view w ithin the m ass m edia, and it was no t contradicted by the evidence from academ ic research. In July 1995, under the headline T h a tc h e r’s children turn to crim e’, The Observer carried a front page story by Hugill th at drew on the findings from three recent pieces o f research. In particular th at by Jam es who, linking crim e to T hatcherism , argued th at there had been an unprecedented increase in violent crim e by and against young people. He reports a 41 per cent increase since 1987 . . . [He] has found th at since 1987 juvenile crim e figures have risen at a rate o f 12,000 crim es a year, three tim es faster th an the average o f 4,000 for 197 9 -8 6 ’ (Hugill, 1995:1). The governm ent, on the other hand, believed th at their policies were bearing fruit and am ounts o f juvenile crim e were decreasing. One o f their policies had been to divert juveniles from custody, hence the huge decreases in custodial sentences. Subse­ quently, however, the use o f custody increased (for all ages), and the 1994 Crim inal Justice and Public O rder Act introduced, am ong oth er things, secure training centres for 12- to 14-year-olds convicted o f serious offences. This was a significant tu rn ­ around from the philosophy underp in n in g the 1991 Crim inal Justice Act, and sig­ nalled a reversal to a m ore punitive ‘law and o rd e r’ stance th at m ight satisfy those who believed th a t the crim inal justice system was ‘soft’ on crim inals. It did, however, appear to contradict governm ent celebrations of earlier decreases in recorded offend­ ing. The way out o f this quandary was for the Hom e Office to join with judiciary and police and argue th at the real problem lay with a hard core of p ersistent young offend­ ers, and these were now to be targeted. Kenneth Clarke, the Hom e Secretary who fram ed the Act, spoke o f ‘really persistent, nasty little juvenile offenders’, and the Prim e M inister urged th at ‘we should un d erstan d less and condem n m ore’. The size o f this group o f ‘p e rsisten t’ offenders had been the subject of m uch controversy d u r­ ing the 1990s. The Hom e Office identified boys in their m id-teens who had been given m any inform al w arnings by the police and who were responsible for the lion’s share o f juvenile crim e. P ersistent juvenile offending was one o f the issues looked at by the Hom e Affairs Com m ittee (1993) o f the House o f Com m ons. Agencies giving evidence

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to the Com m ittee, such as the Association o f C hief Police Officers (ACPO), the N ational Association o f Probation Officers (NAPO) and C hief Officers o f Probation, all agreed th at a sm all group o f p ersistent offenders did exist, and each offered an esti­ m ate o f the num bers involved (NAPO, for exam ple, thought that there m ight be 12 to 20 in Newcastle upon Tyne; ACPO suggested around 600 for England and Wales). ACPO also argued th at during the decade o f the 1980s, and contrary to w hat official statistics said, juvenile offending had actually increased by 54 per cent. As they saw it, the decrease in the statistics was m isleading, and reflected a decline in the pro p o rtio n of juveniles in the population coupled with a lower police detection rate. Therefore, if these two factors had rem ained constant, during the 1980s there would have been an increase o f 54 per cent in juvenile crime.

Persistent offenders Clearly, given the nature o f the debate, there was plenty o f scope for statistical m anip­ ulation and astonishing conjecture. In the case o f a so-called hard core o f persistent offenders, efforts to define and quantify them are fraught with a range o f difficulties. For instance, offenders ‘know n’ to the police may subsequently experience greater police scrutiny (for exam ple, w hen searching for stolen property), leading to them being continually sucked into the system . A lthough m ultiple offending may come to light am ong these groups, such offending am ong others will go unrecorded. This is particularly im p o rta n t if research is extended into an exam ination o f socio-cultural and oth er factors associated with offending behaviour, for it cannot be assum ed th at know n offenders constitute a representative sam ple o f all offenders. An im p o rtan t British study of so-called p ersistent young offenders was th at carried out by Hagel and N ew burn (1994) and com m issioned by the Hom e Office Research and Planning Unit. This research took a sam ple o f 53110- to 16-year-olds in two geo­ graphical areas - London and the M idlands - who were selected on the basis o f hav­ ing been arrested at least three tim es during 1992. The authors acknowledged the view th at because self-report studies show th at offending by young people is wide­ spread, it is fruitless to search for individual and family characteristics. However, m ost o f this is trivial and infrequent; thus Hagel and N ew burn (1994: 78) argued: ‘The issue o f reoffending refocuses attention on such work, however, for although most young people may engage in crim inal acts at one tim e or another, persistent offenders by any definition are a sm all m inority’. They preferred to label th eir overall sam ple ‘reoffenders’, rather than persistent offenders. Offending profiles In line with oth er studies referred to earlier, the research found th at reoffenders who specialised in one type o f crim e were in a m inority; only one-fifth were, on the basis of known offending, in this category. However, those w ho had com m itted the widest

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range o f offences were also those who had com m itted the m ost offences. Lone offend­ ers were in a m inority: over three-quarters o f offences were com m itted in the com ­ pany o f others, and the indications were th at m any o f the offenders knew each other. A m ajority o f reoffenders - 60 per cent - had com m itted their offences w hilst on police or court bail, a finding th at provides am m unition for those who have com ­ plained about ‘bail b a n d its’. The researchers, though, found th at there was often a long gap betw een offence and final sentence, and the bulk o f offenders had spent m ost o f the year on bail. Violent offences were m ore com m on am ong the sam ple th an am ong juvenile offenders in general: one-third had com m itted a violent crim e. M ore serious violence, in the form o f grievous bodily harm , was rare, and no offences o f rape, m anslaughter or m urder were recorded. The m ajority o f offences involved property, with the largest pro p o rtio n covering the range £10-£100 in value. N ot surprisingly, the self-report elem ent o f the study show ed greater am ounts o f offending than did police records. Illicit drug use, in particular, was underrecorded: ‘drug use am ong the group was very freq u en t’ (ibid.: 70). Offender profiles Hagel and N ew burn’s study included interview s w ith 74 o f the sam ple, and although this was a relatively sm all response rate, as the authors said: ‘the survey still provides a unique source o f illustrative inform ation about a group th at is very hard to in te r­ view’ (ibid.: 78). O f the reoffenders, thirty-tw o o f those interview ed lived w ith their m others only, and five with th eir fathers, while tw enty-tw o lived with both parents. M ost said th a t they got on well or fairly well with th eir m others. W here there was a father figure, expressions o f loyalty were only slightly weaker, though relationships with fathers appeared to becom e less close with the passage o f tim e. Eleven per cent o f the interview ed sam ple were girls, com pared with 14 per cent for the total sam ple o f reoffenders. Closer exam ination o f family circum stances p ointed to som e inconsistencies; for exam ple, half of those interview ed said th at they had run away from hom e at least once. A fu rth er source o f inform ation was social services departm ents. Although gathering together the relevant evidence was quite difficult, the researchers said th at the data suggested th at a high pro p o rtio n had experienced social services care in the past, with the vast m ajority first entering the system because o f welfare problem s, rather than because o f offending behaviour. H alf o f those interview ed had at one tim e been referred for counselling or psychological help. Two out of three o f the group were no longer at school, and m any had left before they officially should have done. Over half had been perm anently excluded. Views on school were generally negative, and tru an tin g was com m onplace. Few o f those interview ed had jobs, and lack o f m oney was clearly an im p o rta n t factor in their lives, especially as they were ineligible for state benefits. W hen asked why they com m itted crim e, m oney was often m entioned, as were boredom and

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the excitem ent experienced from crim e, being influenced by others, and w anting to act tough. H alf o f the group were living in households where the head o f the household was either unem ployed or not w orking. Only a tiny m inority lived in a household where the head was in a non-m anual job. Who are persistent offenders? Obviously, in any given year there will be enorm ous variation in frequency o f offend­ ing w ithin the juvenile population - from never to a great deal. There will also be enorm ous variation in the seriousness o f this offending: some will com m it a lot of very trivial offences, w hilst others will com m it relatively few, yet extrem ely serious, offences. The central them e o f Hagel and N ew burn’s research was how the notion of ‘p ersistent offender’ m ight be defined and the extent to which those so defined pos­ sessed certain com m on characteristics. O f particular im portance was an assessm ent of the n um ber of offenders in their sam ple who would be classified as persistent offenders eligible for w hat at the tim e o f the research was a proposed secure training order. This, together with plans to build secure training centres, becam e p a rt o f the 1994 C rim inal Justice and Public O rder Act. The secure training order was one of three criteria used as a basis for defining ‘p e rsisten t’. The m ain conclusions can be sum m arised as follows: • A lthough Hagel and N ew burn’s (1994) sam ple represented, as they pu t it, the ‘heavy e n d ’ of juvenile offending, it was difficult to identify a distinct group o f very frequent offenders. Frequent reoffending coupled w ith offending over lengthy periods o f tim e was rare. Applying the three different criteria produced three groups o f ‘persistent offenders’. However, in term s of the individuals com prising these groups, little overlap was found. Put a n o th e r way, the different m easures of ‘p e rsisten t’ did not lead to the identification o f one distinct group: ‘Only three chil­ dren ou t o f the full sam ple o f 193 M idlands reoffenders aged 12-14 were defined as “p e rsisten t” by all three sets o f criteria, w hereas a total o f 36 were persistent according to one definition or a n o th e r’ (ibid.: 131). • There were 'no striking differences’ (from the point o f view of, for exam ple, ser­ iousness o f offence) betw een those identified as p ersistent by any o f the sets o f cri­ teria and the rest o f the overall sam ple, a p art from the form er having com m itted three or m ore offences th at year. As Hagel and N ew burn (1994:123) said: not only is the process of attempting to define persistence deeply problematic, but because there is a degree of arbitrariness in the way some offenders rather than others become defined as persistent, creating a custodial sentence for that group raises issues both about equality and about efficient resource use.

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THE H ISTORICAL ROOTS

In the w ords o f Lilly, Cullen and Ball (1989: 194): ‘R ather than being a period o f new theories cut from the whole cloth, the 1980s were prim arily a tim e th at witnessed the revitalization o f old theories’. W ith the exception o f fem inism , each o f the theoretical perspectives or paradigm s looked at in this chapter has a direct link with either eighteenth-century classicial crim inology, nineteenth-century positivism , or interactionism /neo-M arxism from the 1960s and early 1970s. Classical crim inology em phasised ‘free will’, conceiving o f hum an beings as rational creatures able to weigh up the costs and benefits o f crim e. D escribed by Void (1958) as ‘adm inistrative crim i­ nology’, classicism was prim arily concerned w ith establishing effective and efficient deterren ts th at w ould control crim e by m aking the pain of p unishm ent outweigh the pleasure o f the offence. Having said that, a rereading o f early classical texts by Beirne (1993) suggested th at although unrecognised in historical accounts, classi­ cism also contained strong elem ents o f psychological determ inism . Positivism con­ centrated on the offender rather than the offence, and was com m itted to the application o f scientific m ethod. The aim was to discover the causes o f crim inality in the earlier period located in the individual’s genetic/biological m ake-up, bu t later on traced to psychological or social factors. Unlike classical crim inology, positivism drew a sharp distinction betw een crim inals and non-crim inals. Interactionism shifted attention away from the determ inistic search for the causes o f crim e, and focused instead on the nature o f social reactions to behaviour perceived as deviant. Through labelling processes, deviance/crim e was thus socially constructed, and was not seen as an inherent quality o f the act. N eo-M arxist approaches attem p ted to develop a political econom y o f crim e through analyses o f law m aking and control w ithin the context o f a capitalist m ode o f production. The links betw een these approaches and crim inological developm ents in the 1980s and early 1990s can be briefly indicated as follows: • Administrative criminology A direct descendant o f the classical tradition, w ith a prim ary interest in deterring crim e and a lack o f interest in the causes o f crim inal­ ity. There were elem ents o f control theory. • Right-wing classicism This too explored ways o f deterring people from breaking the law, laying stress on ‘rational choice’ and the individual’s personal responsibil­ ity for th eir actions. W ith an explicit com m itm ent to the politics o f the New Right, there was an acceptance o f pu n ish m en t as retribution. There were libertarian and conservative versions o f right-w ing classicism. • Neo-positivism and right realism Neo-positivism was a continuation o f a long­ standing com m itm ent am ong positivists to develop scientific analyses o f crime and crim inal. Some versions o f neo-positivism , though, were strongly associated with the political concerns o f the New Right, and these versions, in com bination with elem ents o f control theory, gave rise to w hat becam e know n as right realism .

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• Radical criminology Broadly speaking, radical crim inology contained two strands. On the one hand, critical crim inologists who saw them selves as the true carriers of the radical tradition, and on the other, self-styled left realists com m itted to ‘taking crim e seriously’. Critical crim inology’s roots lie in interactionism and neo-M arx­ ism, w hilst left realism has a m ore eclectic base, draw ing, for instance, on subcul­ tural theory and anom ie. From the perspective o f critical crim inology, left realism was essentially reform ist liberalism dressed up as radicalism , and had been seduced by the belief th at crim inal justice can be achieved in a fundam entally unjust society. From the other direction, left realism attacked critical crim inology for being woefully utopian and ignoring the real concerns o f working-class people. • Feminist perspectives These were less obviously linked to the m ain crim inological traditions, as fem inist perspectives on crim e and social control arose out of broadly based fem inist concerns. It is fem inism and crim inology th at will be dis­ cussed first.

FEMINISM AND C R IM IN O LO G Y

A lthough ‘fem inism and crim inology’ is, I think, a reasonable signifier o f the th eo ret­ ical field u nder review, choosing a title for this p a rt of the chapter was less straightfor­ ward th an it m ight appear. The early c ontributions from fem inist w riters in the 1970s stim ulated a wave o f intense theoretical work as the 1980s and 1990s unfolded. Given the increasing com plexity of the debates, and the different theoretical and political directions from which w riters were coming, it was inevitable th at a n um ber o f differ­ ent stran d s began to em erge. In the context o f these debates, no t only is the definition o f ‘fem inism ’ problem atic, bu t so too is the definition o f ‘crim inology’. Although on a general level fem inists may have had a com m on com m itm ent to ‘the elim ination of gender inequalities’ (D om inelli, 1992: 85), it was probably m ore correct to speak of fem inism s rath er th an fem inism . A dam son el al. (1988) identified liberal, radical, socialist and black fem inism s; Gregory (1986) referred to radical, socialist and b o u r­ geois versions. Different theoretical and political o rientations had also developed w ithin the field of crim inology. T hus the question o f w hether or no t a fem inist crim inology existed, was desirable, or was possible, rem ained unsettled. In their review o f fem inism and crim inology in Britain up to the late 1980s, G elsthorpe and M orris (1988) m entioned a range o f opinion on this. G reenw ood (1981) and Brown (1986) su p p o rted the idea o f an extant fem inist crim inology, w hilst S m art (1981) was sceptical in view o f the divisions existing at the level o f theory and practice. A ccording to G elsthorpe and M orris (1988: 97): ‘ju st as we had to talk o f “fem i­ nism s”, we have to talk o f fem inist crim inologies, or, b etter still, fem inist perspectives w ithin crim inology’. They did add, however, th at fem inist perspectives shared ‘certain core elem ents’: they were anti-positivist, critical of stereotypes, place wom en centre stage and were

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concerned to develop m ethodologies which were ‘sym pathetic to these concerns’. Different, and often com peting, strands, though, existed w ithin this broad fram ework and there had been complex debates about precisely w hat a fem inist analysis of crime and social control would look like. Some w riters, such as Cousins (1980), Cain (1989, 1990) and Sm art (1990) rejected the idea of linking fem inism to the discipline of crim ­ inology itself. Using the notion o f deconstruction associated with postm odernism , they argued th at by attaching them selves to ‘crim inology’, as a given, fem inists unw it­ tingly fell into a conceptual trap. This was because crim inology is crim e-inology - th at is, the study of w hat is assum ed to be special behaviour, qualitatively different to no n ­ crim inal behaviour, when in fact it has no m eaning beyond ideological and institu­ tional contexts. It is rather like fem inists studying seventeenth-century ‘w itches’, but defining them in exactly the way th at a male w itchfinder from th at century defined them . Put another way, why should fem inists surrender to an already existing ‘essentialist’ conceptualisation o f ‘crim e’, as if the concept itself was not problem atic? This is an aspect o f doing crim inology that has been alluded to in earlier discussions, and does raise im p o rtan t and complex issues. These issues, though, have not been ignored by radical w riters, fem inist or otherw ise (see Sum ner, 1990, 1994; Hester and Eglin, 1992). As Pat Carlen (1992: 62) has pointed out: fear of the ideological and already institutionalized meanings of the empirical referent is not new among social scientists or political theorists attempting radical critique. Yet the very task of theory is to engage in a struggle for power over the ‘meaning of things’ (including all material and ideological constructs). The purpose is to produce new meanings that will empower. Sm art (1990) was also critical of efforts by fem inists to develop a ‘fem inist crim inol­ ogy’ com m itted to ‘useful’, policy-oriented research th at was ostensibly aim ed at, say, im proving the treatm ent o f wom en by the crim inal justice system . Again, this is a fam iliar them e w ithin radical thought, often tu rn in g on the ‘reform ism ’ versus ‘revo­ lu tio n ’ debate (see the later discussion o f left realism ), and was certainly not a view shared by all radical fem inists. M oulds (1980) argued th at fem inist research should be directed tow ards the creation o f a crim inal justice system th at treated m en and w om en equally, w hilst H eidensohn (1986) pointed to cultural differences betw een m ale and female offenders th at necessitate different types of dispositions by the courts. And Carlen (1990) argued for the abolition of im prisonm ent for all bu t a small m inority o f female offenders. H eidensohn (1994: 1029) stated: ‘som ething o f an epistem ological crisis has affected social science and fem inism , and studies o f crim e are im plicated’. Put simply, there were still im p o rta n t questions to be answ ered regarding what was to be studied and how it was to be studied. Should the focus be on female offenders, or on the con­ cept o f gender and its explanatory power with respect to female and m ale offending? To w hat extent should studies o f social control and jurisprudence be a p a rt o f this?

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Should the m ain business o f fem inism be to illum inate the continuing injustices experienced by females in the crim inal justice system ? O r should it concentrate on the various ways in which wom en are victim ised? And, from the point o f view of m ethodology, can only w om en study w om en (see H arding, 1991 and the concept of ‘sta n d p o in tism ’ - which suggested th at only researchers who share the feelings and experiences o f the subject can carry out m eaningful research)? W hich returns us to the central question: w hat m akes a piece o f research distinctively ‘fem inist’? In a useful review o f som e o f these debates, Carlen defended the view th a t fem inists should study ‘w om en and crim e’, bu t at the sam e tim e did no t accept th at ‘a “fem inist crim inology” was either desirable or possible’ (Carlen, 1992: 53). It was no t desirable, she said, because it suggested th at a universal theory th at reduces female (and by im plication, m ale) crim inality to distinctive biologies can be constructed. The biolog­ ical fact o f being female, and the social context o f patriarchy, have, therefore, to be seen in conjunction with a host o f oth er possibilities when explaining crim inality, such as poverty, affluence, unem ploym ent, racism , upbringing, education, and so on. A fem inist crim inology was not possible, said Carlen, because: 1 A part from patriarchy, crim inological knowledge has not developed distinctly ‘fem inist’ explanatory concepts. 2 Those things th at interest fem inists m erge into issues o f class, racism and im peri­ alism. 3 No single theory can explain: (a) why w om en’s crim es are in the m ain crim es o f the powerless; (b) why there is a dispro p o rtio n ate n um ber o f ethnic m inority w om en in prison; and (c) why m ost w om en in prison are poor.

Making females visible As we have seen, early fem inist w riters com plained th at traditional crim inology had to a large extent m ade females invisible. Stanley and Wise (1983) argued th a t in addi­ tion to using non-sexist m ethodologies, and a com m itm ent to the production of prac­ tical knowledge, fem inist research in crim inology should ‘m ake w om en visible’. Fem inist explanations o f ‘invisibility’ highlighted the m ale dom ination o f the disci­ pline. However, the fact th at males appeared to com m it m ost crim e (and certain sorts of m ales at th at) cannot be overlooked as a factor shaping the focus o f research. After all, the crim es o f aristocratic m en were also m ade invisible: It so happens that criminological theory has been crime-led, and that the subjects around whom theorizing has been formed have been predominantly white, urban, lower-class, and usually adolescent males in advanced industrial capitalist societies. (Downes and Rock, 1988:289)

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Since the 1970s there had been a grow th in research th at had attem p ted to m ea­ sure the gaps betw een m ale and female crim e rates. T his was largely triggered by the argum ent in some q uarters (e.g. Adler, 1975; Sim on, 1975) th at as wom en becam e m ore ‘liberated’, we could expect their crim e rates to move nearer to those o f men. Relying on official data is, o f course, fraught with a range o f well-known problem s; for exam ple, the extent to which they reflect organisational practices, rath er than crim i­ nal activities as such and, in the case of females, how sm all increases can appear in an exaggerated form because o f the sm all num bers com prising the original base. Box and Hale (1983) found a pro p o rtio n ate increase in conventional p roperty crim e for females during the 1970s, but no t with respect to burglary or robbery; also, there were no increases for violent offences. According to Home Office figures for England and Wales, the pro p o rtio n o f violent offences attrib u tab le to females rose from 9.0 p er cent to 11.2 per cent betw een 1979 and 1989. For oth er indictable offences p ro ­ p o rtions varied widely. Self-report studies, as m entioned earlier, tended to put males and females closer together, bu t seriousness o f offence and frequency o f offending are not always carefully controlled for. A self-report and victim study o f school-age chil­ dren in E dinburgh (A nderson et al., 1991) attem p ted to be sensitive to one o f these aspects by asking the children them selves to rank various offences in term s o f per­ ceived seriousness. The self-report data show ed th at three to four tim es as m any boys as girls have com m itted serious offences based on dishonesty and violence, w hilst in the case o f drug-related offences, the pro p o rtio n was only slightly higher for boys. W hen it came to offences ranked as ‘less serious’, the ratio again varied according to type o f offence, as follows:

O ffe n ce

R a tio o f boys to girls

Rowdy/rude

1.06 to 1

Fighting

1.96 to 1

Shoplifting

1.33 to 1

Broken into car

2.50 to 1

Vandal car

3.00 to 1

Vandal property

1.36 to 1

Source: Based on Anderson et al., 1991: 107.

This still leaves, though, the problem o f distinguishing betw een different types of van­ dalism , shoplifting, and so forth. In her pioneering book, Sm art (1976) referred to the possible danger o f a m oral panic accom panying fem inist efforts to m ake female crim e visible, and the a tte m p t by som e w riters to equate increased offending with w om en’s liberation w ould seem

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to bear this out (this is retu rn ed to in C hapter 15). M uch fem inist work has been devoted to counteracting this kind o f reasoning. Sm art (1979), for exam ple, argued th at w hat increases there were in female crim e rates in fact pre-dated the im pact of the w om en’s liberation m ovem ent. Carlen (1990) pu t forw ard the view th at any increases in property crim e am ong w om en were m ore likely to be explained by eco­ nom ic recession and deprivation. There was a double edge to the project o f m aking female crim e ‘visible’. Those fem ­ inists who were unhappy at traditional characterisations o f wom en as passive, and resigned to th eir fate, w hilst m en ‘rebel’ through crim e (as ‘proto-revolutionary’ ‘Paki-bashers’ or football hooligans, say), may have been tem pted to p resent female crim e in a positive light. On the oth er hand, those who w ished to underline m asculin­ ity as the prim ary basis for crim inality, could find this approach subverted if large am ounts o f female crim e suddenly m aterialised. Quite a few im p o rta n t studies were carried out, from a fem inist stan d p o in t, which concentrated specifically on female crim inals; for exam ple, C am pbell (1984) on girl m em bers o f delinquent gangs in New York; Cam pbell (1986), a self-report study o f girls and violence; Browne (1987) on female m urderers (of th eir husbands); McLeod (1982) and M iller (1986) on prosti­ tutes; Carlen (1985) on a sm all group o f ‘crim inal w om en’; Parton (1992) on the role of m others in family child sex-abuse cases; M acD onald (1991) on w om en terrorists; Player (1989) on female burglars.

Challenging ‘distortion’ W hen fem inist work on female crim inality began to em erge in the 1960s, one of the m ain argum ents was th at when w om en and girls had been m ade ‘visible’ w ithin crim ­ inology, explanations o f their crim inality were usually based on versions o f biological determ inism or psychological reductionism , and their offences tended to be ‘sexualised’ and presented as ‘irratio n al’. This approach, it was argued, created a clim ate where responses to female offenders tended to be based on assum ptions o f ‘sickness’ or m ental illness (Carlen, 1983). Some fem inist w riters, such as Leonard (1982), pressed for the m odification of im p o rta n t sociologically oriented crim inological theories, where w om en were neg­ lected, so th a t they took account o f gender. O thers, such as Sm art (1990), argued against the idea th at fem inists should sim ply ‘in se rt’ wom en into already existing th e ­ oretical fram ew orks. Clearly, this is a com plex issue, which tu rn s on the question of w hether existing theories contained the potential both to explain female crim e, and draw out the gender dim ension to crim inal behaviour and reactions to it in general. In a vigorous defence o f w hat som e m ight call ‘pre- fem inist’ crim inology, and criticis­ ing the ‘stark term s’ in which gender had been presented by som e fem inists, Downes and Rock (1988) argued th at there was plenty o f m ileage in the work o f m ajor theorists and concepts such as drift, labelling and stigm a. They also pointed to

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subcultural theories and control theories as explicitly providing explanations o f the lower crim e rates for females: Subcultural theories have assumed that females pursue less criminogenic and more attainable goals than men, namely marriage and family life, and are therefore insulated from the social sources of delinquency, the main exception being the strain to sexual deviance. Control theories specify with some precision the far more intensive informal controls that are brought to bear on girls rather than boys, which constitute powerful inhibitors against criminality. (Ibid.: 283) If we look at som e o f the directions taken by fem inist research on female crim inality in this period, certain tensions becom e apparent, indicating th at it was m ore a p p ro ­ priate to speak of fem inist crim inolog/«: 1 Some theorists sought to accentuate the gender-based differences between males and females, and the implications of these differences for criminality. Gilligan (1982), for instance, argued th at women possess a different personality to that of men. 2 Some theorists pointed out th a t female offenders have m ore characteristics in com m on with m ale offenders th an was traditionally thought. Cam pbell (1986) argued th at gangs com posed o f boys and girls do exist, and although less collective in nature, the girls were involved in m ore fighting than is com m only assum ed. A nother exam ple of this was Naffm e’s (1987) critique o f control theories for m ak­ ing females too passive. 3 Some theorists, though, had em phasised th a t the behaviour o f both males and females has to be seen as m ediated by other factors such as class or ‘race’. Carlen (1988), in her ethnographic study o f female offenders, discussed how the wom en were constrained in their choices by both gender and class. Likewise, M iller (1986), in a study o f prostitutes, drew atten tio n to the in terrelationship betw een class and gender. H eidensohn (1994) indicated three them es around which fem inist research had been conducted during the 1980s and 1990s: patriarchy, econom ic and social m arginalisa­ tion, and control. The concept o f patriarchy - defined basically as m ale pow er - is particularly associ­ ated w ith radical fem inism , and has tended to be employed when exam ining the trea tm e n t o f w om en by the crim inal justice system and the issue o f victim isation, rather th an female crim inality. Explanations o f crim e based upon economic marginalisation, and the resultant poverty and deprivation, have, as H eidensohn p oints out, been around in critical M arxist crim inology for som e tim e, although for m uch o f th at tim e issues o f gender were ignored. C hapm an (1980) linked increases in recorded female property crim e to

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econom ic recession and poverty, which she saw as having a greater im pact on wom en th an m en. In particular, she p ointed to the grow th in the n u m b er o f single m others, who as a group were especially vulnerable to econom ic deprivation. Social marginali­ sation arises because o f w om en’s ‘child care role and their dependency on m en or the state for welfare’ (H eidensohn, 1994: 1027). This dim ension was used to explain the types o f offences available to w om en. H eidensohn was critical of the explanatory pow er o f these approaches, seeing them as essentially positivist, and providing only a p artial explanation o f female crim inality. N ot all poor people, for instance, break the law. ‘M arginalisation’ explanations, though, have been p o pular w ith som e fem inists because they offer a way o f challenging the argum ent th at w om en’s liberation leads to m ore crim e (Adler, 1975; Sim on, 1975). Explanations based on control theory becam e increasingly influential am ong fem i­ nists. One reason was th at by asking why people d o n ’t break the law, rath er than why they do, a theoretical space was opened up into which the concept o f gender could be inserted. T hus, as far as female crim inality is concerned, the fundam ental research question becom es: w hat social controls are at work th at can explain the lower crim e rates for females (e.g., Hagan et al., 1979; Stanko, 1993)? Research of this sort p ointed to the significance o f inform al m odes o f control expe­ rienced by w om en, especially in term s o f family and com m unity sanctions and com ­ m itm ents. As a result, m en are ‘allow ed’ m ore freedom to explore deviant routes. A ccording to Hagan et al. (1979), even ‘career’ wom en are locked into traditional roles vis-à-vis the family. Fem inist critics o f the view th a t w om en’s liberation leads to m ore crim e, in addition to stressing the links betw een poverty and crim e, had also questioned the extent to which w om en in Britain are ‘liberated’. However, if the lower crim e rates for females are seen as a function o f greater control, and if those controls were to be lessened, then, according to the logic of control theory, females would have m ore freedom to engage in crim e. The opp o rtu n ity to com m it crim e is an im p o rtan t elem ent of this. In a Hom e Office self-report study of teenage girls, Riley (1986: 38) concluded that: ‘given equal opportunities, sex differences in crim e p articipation by young people - as offenders or victim s - are m inim al’. Fem inists had quite rightly argued th at a fully social explanation o f crime has to include a consideration o f gender issues. This m eant addressing the range o f social processes at work whereby m ale and female understandings o f ‘m asculinity’ and ‘fem ­ ininity’ are constructed, and the ways in which these are linked to specific form s of law breaking. These understandings, however, should also be situated w ithin a broader structural context linking gender to such things as class, ‘race’ and generation.

The criminal justice system From the sta n d p o in t o f radical fem inism , w om en’s experiences o f the crim inal justice system have to be seen w ithin the context of patriarchy. For socialist fem inists, the

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crim inal justice system has to be seen as p a rt o f a capitalist m ode o f production. As G elsthorpe and M orris (1988) argue, though, w hatever the m erits o f these analyses, there is a need to explore in m ore detail precisely how the various elem ents o f the sys­ tem operate, and to appreciate th at a whole range o f m ediating factors have to be taken into consideration: ‘neith er m en nor the capitalist m ode o f production can be singled out as chief conspirators in a plot against wom en. However ideas about wom en have been shaped, there is no one unified m otivational force underlying that shap in g ’ (ibid.: 99). As we have seen, one central issue for fem inists had been the debate about w hether females were treated m ore leniently by the crim inal justice system th an m en were. P roponents o f the view th at they were usually p ointed to w hat they saw as the ‘chivalry’ o f the m ale adm inistrators o f the system . Again, this is a difficult area, where evidence either way is inconclusive. However, a large and grow ing body o f fem ­ inist work has sought to challenge the leniency argum ent through detailed em pirical studies (e.g. W orrall, 1981; Eaton, 1983, 1985, 1986; Carlen, 1983; Edwards, 1984). Research from the 1970s on this them e has already been discussed.

The police According to Gregory (1986: 55): ‘There is som e evidence o f leniency tow ards wom en both in the different cautioning rates for m ale and female offenders and in the differ­ ent incarceration rates o f those found guilty’. She then argued th at 'paternalism ', rath er th an chivalry, was a m ore a p propriate term ; but paternalism , as a form o f sex­ ism, could obviously still operate in one’s favour. Put an o th er way, it was possible th at the police treated w om en m ore favourably than m en, though for the w orst reasons. In fact, M orris (1987) argued th at it is at this point in the crim inal justice process that chivalry was m ost likely to be in evidence. It is im portant to recognise that the nature of street-level interactions between police and public, and the sorts of decisions that result, involve many other factors than gender, and it is not always easy to assess the relative im portance of these various factors. As far as the decision to make an arrest is concerned, research in Britain and the United States shows that the prim e factor is seriousness of offence. In line with other research, Harris (1992) found that an offender’s dem eanour was im portant (for example, showing respect and being apologetic), as was the offender’s previous record. Females, however, were m ore likely to be cautioned than males. In his review o f what is m ainly American research, Box (1983) concluded that am ong those who have com m itted serious offences, older women, especially if they are white, were treated less aggressively than their male counterparts by the police. In her N orth American research, Player (1989) found that black wom en experienced significantly worse treatm ent than did white women. M easuring the extent to which sexist attitudes existed am ong police officers was no t easy, though w hat evidence there was did suggest th at a com bination o f social

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background and occupational culture did tend to produce sexist stereotyping. The Policy Studies Institute re p o rt on the M etropolitan Police (Sm ith and Grey, 1985) found th at policem en would often joke and boast about th eir sexual activities, som e­ tim es in the presence of female officers, and they enjoyed apocryphal tales involving sexist fantasies. The w ord ‘plonk’ was used as a term o f abuse to refer to female offi­ cers. However, none of this is peculiar to policing as ail occupation, and it is im p o r­ tan t to un d erstan d how attitudes reflected in locker-room b a n te r get translated into actual street-level behaviour (see also Young, 1993). Clearly, it is difficult to m ake generalisations about the nature o f (m ale) p olicefemale (or m ale) relationships. There is, for instance, a distinction betw een wom en as victim s and wom en as offenders, though Jones (1987) argued th at negative a tti­ tudes tow ards w om en, based upon th eir supposed inferiority, found am ong officers influenced their treatm ent o f both victim s and offenders. In the case o f dom estic violence, a large am o unt o f fem inist research had been critical of the reluctance of the police to m ake an arrest (Edwards, 1989), and for defining ‘dom estics’ as not real policew ork (Faragher, 1981). (See D unhill, 1989, for a detailed exam ination of this subject.) Prostitutes in particular com plained of unfair treatm en t by the police, though British research indicated a degree o f am bivalence on the p a rt o f the police: ‘H arassm ent and en tra p m e n t were reported, bu t also a degree o f accom m oda­ tion. Evidence given by police representatives them selves to a parliam entary com m it­ tee show ed disparaging views o f w om en who p rostitute them selves’ (H eidensohn, 1994:1008).

Sentencing Evidence regarding the lenient, or otherw ise, trea tm e n t o f females by the courts was, according to Sm ith (1988), in a detailed analysis o f available research, inconclusive. On a general level, a n um ber o f research findings can be noted. Hom e Office figures show ed th at th roughout the 1980s there was a gradual decrease in the use o f fines for w om en offenders, and com pared to m en, a faster grow th in the use o f im prisonm ent. Hom e Office statistics show th at about 5 per cent o f females convicted o f an indictable offence were given a custodial sentence, w hilst the figure for males was 20 per cent. Convicted female offenders were m ore likely th an males to be p u t on p ro ­ bation, though they were less likely to be given a com m unity service order. On the oth er hand, and echoing earlier research in the 1970s, as well as show ing the com ­ plexities involved in in terpreting the evidence, British research continued to point to the higher pro p o rtio n o f w om en than m en held in custody, either aw aiting trial or sentencing (G reenw ood, 1983). In a significant n um ber o f cases, sentencing delays for wom en arose because the court required a m edical report. Edwards (1984) found th at females were m uch m ore likely than males to be subject to ‘m edicalised’ in te r­ ventions by the crim inal justice system . In the case o f young girls especially, decisions

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by the courts were strongly influenced by considerations o f sexual m orality and being ‘at risk’ (Chesney-Lind, 1986). One outcom e was th at a higher pro p o rtio n of girls than boys were taken into care (Eaton, 1986). In an extensive investigation o f ‘chivalry’ w ithin the context o f sentencing, Farrington and M orris (1983) came to the conclu­ sion th at the apparently m ore lenient sentences h anded out to female offenders were explained by their having fewer previous convictions, and com m itting less serious offences. On the oth er hand, Allen (1987) found th at w om en were treated m ore sym ­ pathetically th an m en when they had com m itted m ore serious violent offences. A num ber o f studies had indicated the particular stereotypes involving n o n ­ deviant lifestyles and culturally prescribed family roles th at influenced sentencing decisions. Eaton (1986) argued th at both m en and w om en w ho appeared to conform to conventional stan d ard s o f ‘n o rm ality’ were m ore likely to benefit from a lighter sentence. Research by Daly (1989) in the U nited States su p p o rted this, p ointing in particular to the benefits o f having children and apparently stable family relation­ ships. C arlen’s (1983) study o f Scottish Sheriffs underlined the m ore punitive responses to those wom en defined as ‘failed m o th e rs’. On the them e o f leniency, fem ­ inists who have researched the area o f dom estic violence have argued th at violent m ale pa rtn e rs have traditionally enjoyed a high degree of leniency by the courts (e.g. D obash and D obash, 1979,1992). In a study o f the w om en o f G reenham Com m on peace camp, Young (1990) drew out two particularly relevant issues. First, th a t the police and the courts were here dealing with w om en who were not involved in run-of-the-m ill ‘o rd in ary ’ crim e, and were them selves defined as ‘unconventional’ (with a m edia cam paign o f degrada­ tion). Second, th a t an analysis o f sentencing decisions has to get behind m ere surface appearances. The G reenham wom en w ho found them selves in court could p o ten ­ tially have been charged with a broad range o f offences, and the choices m ade reflected the wide discretionary powers of the police (and later on the Crown Prosecu­ tion Service). As Young says, on the whole the w om en were charged w ith m inor offences carrying light sentences. This ‘chivalrous’ response was seen as resulting from the desire o f the courts to m aintain a good public image, an image th a t would have been threatened if m any prison sentences were handed out. According to Young, though, there were other considerations at work. One was th at the courts were con­ cerned th at if G reenham w om en were im prisoned, they w ould continue their cam ­ paigning w ithin the prison. Furtherm ore, in som e cases the seriousness o f the offence was such th at defendants could have opted for a jury trial. This was seen as providing the w om en with dangerous publicity, and consequently the tendency was to charge them with lesser offences. However, Young (1990:24) does acknowledge th at in some cases very severe sentences were passed by the courts: Thus, the response of the criminal justice agencies has combined trivialisation with severe criminalisation. Despite the attempts of women to retain some control of the situation through disruption of court procedure and through the positive use of the

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law as litigants, it would appear that the legal system has lent itself most profitably to the aims of the 'authorities’. Finally, M atthew s (1981) pointed out that if chivalry was a significant feature of British courtroom justice for w om en, then those w om en who were given custodial sentences m ust have been found guilty o f particularly serious crim es. In fact, the m ajority o f female prisoners were in prison for non-paym ent o f fines or stealing.

Imprisonment As m any w riters have observed, in a society such as ours, males are, in a sense, ‘allow ed’ to behave in ‘deviant’ ways m uch m ore th an females are: th at is, certain activities, such as fighting, have traditionally been associated with m asculine values. Thus female offenders are m ore likely to be viewed as doubly deviant, in th at they have com m itted som e offence and deviated from cultural expectations regarding ‘fem inine’ behaviour. Especially im p o rta n t in this context are d o m inant u n d e rstan d ­ ings o f female roles w ithin the family. It is against this cultural backdrop th a t the im prisonm ent o f w om en has to be understood. D obash, D obash and G utteridge (1986), for exam ple, expressed the view th at the rehabilitative ideal figures much m ore prom inently for wom en th an it does for m en, with rehabilitation strongly shaped by notions o f dom esticity. Z edner (1991) argued th at as a result, w om en tend to experience prison regim es th at are designed to foster dependency status and received understan d in g s o f ‘fem ininity’, w ith less em phasis placed on learning useful skills for use in the world outside. Studies such as those by Carlen (1983) and Dobash et al. (1986) continued to stress the relative lack o f educational and recreational facili­ ties for wom en prisoners. However, m ore recent studies o f w om en in prison, espe­ cially in the U nited States, docum ented certain im provem ents with respect to family visits and styles o f regime. Studies o f the effects o f im p riso n m en t on w om en (e.g., Carlen, 1985) suggested th at it is m ore traum atising and generates m ore resentm ent than is the case with m en. Partly because o f this: ‘A high pro p o rtio n o f w om en are charged with discipli­ nary offences, doses o f tranquillizers prescribed are higher, and there is a significant incidence o f self-m utilation’ (H eidensohn, 1994:1021). In C arlen’s (1990) view, there should be an end to the im prisonm ent o f wom en, except for a sm all n um ber who com m it the m ore serious offences.

Victimisation Fem inist research on w om en and children as victim s o f m ale violence had grown enorm ously since the beginning o f the 1980s. This was paralleled by the grow th of a

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broadly based ‘victim m ovem ent’ and the developm ent o f a field o f research know n as victimology. Studies o f victim s had been around in crim inology for som e tim e - the term ‘victim ology’ was first introduced by an Am erican psychiatrist, W ertham (1949), though the m ost im p o rta n t early work is credited to an o th er A m erican, Von Hentig (1948). (For good reviews o f this field see W alklate, 1989, and Zedner, 1994.) C ontem porary research on the them e o f victimology, though, and especially fem inist research, had been critical o f the narrow social-psychological focus o f the earlier work, and its em phasis on ‘victim p recip itatio n ’, which m any have criticised for blam ing the victim. Interest in crim e victim s during the 1980s and early 1990s, it should be noted, encom passes both academ ic research and cam paigning or pressure group activities such as those associated w ith Victim S upport. Research by fem inists on w om en as victim s o f crim e, already building up in the 1970s, had a particularly strong influence on developm ents in the field. This, m ore than any oth er area perhaps, illustrated the im pact o f fem inist perspectives in crim i­ nology. Left realists, for instance, acknowledged the debt th at they owed to this work, as this com m ent indicates: Women bear the brunt of crime. For a long time it was supposed that they were irra­ tional about crime, having, according to official statistics, a high fear of crime compared to men, but in reality a much lower chance of being victim s. . . women are, in fact, more likely to be victims of crime than men. (Lea et al., 1987:15) The d o m inant m essage from fem inist research was th at very large am ounts o f in te r­ personal violence, where the victim s are w om en, had rem ained hidden from view. T hus official inform ation had distorted actual p attern s o f victim isation, and crim i­ nology had failed to recognise th at the fear o f crim e expressed by w om en was a reflec­ tion o f their real experiences. Furtherm ore, when violence tow ards w om en did come to the atten tio n o f crim inal justice agencies, and in particular the police, responses were less th an satisfactory. One o f the m ain com plaints was th at the police were reluc­ ta n t to treat dom estic violence in the sam e way th at they treated oth er form s of assault, especially assaults by strangers (D obash and D obash, 1979; Stanko, 1985; Edwards, 1986). Up until the second h a lf o f the 1980s, when police attitudes and poli­ cies began to change, research p ointed to a tendency for the police to categorise cases o f dom estic violence as ‘family disputes’. In fact, D obash and D obash (1979) in their study o f dom estic violence in Scotland, found th a t only 2 per cent o f w om en victims reported th eir assaults to the police; the rest w ent to friends or relatives for support. O f the w om en who pursued a prosecution, only a sm all m inority - 6 per cent - subse­ quently dropped the com plaint. This is im p o rta n t in th at police officers very often argued against prosecution on the grounds th a t victim s of dom estic violence usually drop th eir com plaint. In the case o f victim s o f rape and sexual assault, there have been significant changes in police responses since the 1980s, partly as a result o f bad

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publicity and partly as a result o f a body o f research highly critical o f the police. As Brogden, Jefferson and W alklate (1988:121) p u t it: These police attitudes reflect a victim precipitation view of such incidents, one which sees the victim’s behaviour as being responsible for inviting a sexual response. This has been translated in the courts as ‘contributory negligence’. Because o f its nature, it is not surprising that the interpersonal violence experienced by w om en has been largely unrecorded by official crim e statistics. A lthough victim surveys were introduced to bring unrecorded crim e to light, in the case o f female vic­ tim isation they have not always been successful. The large-scale sweeps o f the British Crime Surveys, for instance, have been notably unsuccessful. One reason is th at because British Crime Surveys are householder-based, it is quite possible for victim s of violence to be sitting next to their assailants when answ ering the questionnaire. Smaller, localised surveys appear to have overcom e som e o f these difficulties, though fem inists have preferred m ore intense ethnographic studies. As Z edner (1994: 1215) pointed out with reference to sexual assaults: The first two British Crime Surveys revealed only one (unreported) case of attempted rape and seventeen and eighteen cases of sexual assault respectively in the 1983 and 1985 reports . . . In stunning contrast, the first Islington Crime Survey estimated 1,200 cases of sexual assault in Islington during the period under review. Stanko (1988) was critical o f victim surveys such as these because they usually asked respondents to give details o f their victim isation over the past twelve m onths. She argued th at it is m ore satisfactory to follow the exam ple set by the Am erican research o f Russell (1982), where w om en were no t tied to a sh o rt tim e span, bu t were asked about their experiences over a lifetim e. This, says Stanko, would allow surveys to be sensitive to the long-term effects o f violence, and its im pact on daily routines. In her sam ple o f nearly 1,000 wom en, Russell found th a t 22 per cent had been raped at som e tim e in th eir life, and a fu rth er 22 per cent had experienced an attem pted rape. British fem inist studies had produced quite large variations in the n um ber of w om en adm itting to having been raped or sexually assaulted. Hall (1985) found that one-third of the w om en surveyed had in their lifetim e been raped or sexually assaulted. Asking w om en about th eir experiences over the past twelve m onths, Ilan m er and Saunders (1984) discovered th at 59 per cent o f respondents had been sexually assaulted, w hilst in R adford’s (1987) research the figure was 76 per cent. These variations will partly be explained by researcher’s and re sp o n d en t’s definitions of these term s, and everyday understandings may no t correspond w ith legal defi­ nitions. In fact, one o f the im p o rta n t contrib u tio n s m ade by fem inist w riters has been

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to show how legal categories will probably be incapable o f capturing a w om an’s real experience o f m ale intim idation and aggression; for example: Sexual harassment of women on the street is one form of intimidation. Ranging from leers to physical touching (and in some cases actual assault), sexual harassment reminds women that they are and can be targets for sexual assaults. It creates a climate of unsafety. (Stanko, 1988:45) A nderson et al.’s study o f school-age children in E dinburgh, published in the early 1990s, shed som e light on the extent to which children, and especially girls, experi­ enced harassm ent by adults. A lthough often defined as frightening by the children, m any o f these incidents would not perse be categorised as crim inal: For girls, the most common forms of adult harassment were being stared at (32%), being followed on foot (27%) and being ‘asked things’ (26%). For boys the most common were being asked things (17%) and being threatened (15%). Overall 52% [of] the girls had been harassed in some way during the previous nine months by an adult as had 36% of boys. (Anderson et al., 1991:155) In addition to this, 17 per cent of the girls (com pared with 4 per cent o f the boys) had experienced m en trying to ‘touch th em ’, and 12 per cent (4 per cent boys) had experi­ enced indecent exposure by m en. Large-scale victim surveys tended not to pick up exam ples o f dom estic violence; however, small-scale local surveys were m ore successful. The first Islington Crime Survey, for instance, found th at nearly one-quarter of all assaults took place w ithin the hom e. From research into dom estic violence it is clear th at in the bulk o f cases the vic­ tim s are w om en. O ut o f the nearly 1,000 respondents in D obash and D obash’s study, there were only ten cases where a wife had assaulted her husband; in three-quarters of the cases a husband had assaulted his wife. W orrall and Pease (1986) and Mawby (1987) have show n th at in m ost cases of assaults on wom en th eir assailant is know n to them , and this creates pressure no t to inform the police. Stanko (1985) argued th at fu rth er pressure from friends and neighbours to keep these events private, com bined with the victim ’s apprehension about how the police will respond, helped to create a situation where violence in the hom e rem ained concealed.

G E N D E R A N D CRIM E

As we have seen, during the 1960s and 1970s, attem pts to develop fem inist p er­ spectives w ithin the discipline o f crim inology involved various critiques o f existing

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crim inology. Earlier crim inology was criticised for the ‘d isto rtio n ’ o f w om en in analyses; later crim inology for the ‘neglect’ o f w om en. In an effort to rem edy the situation, this was followed by research th at focused specifically on female crim i­ nals and their experiences o f the crim inal justice system . A further developm ent was to exam ine the issue o f patriarchy and the social control o f wom en, thus giving prom inence to the question, ‘why do wom en not break the law?’ Research carried out in the 1980s and early 1990s, while acknow ledging the im p o rta n t con­ trib u tio n m ade by those fem inist w riters who have helped redress the gender balance by addressing the them e o f wom en, crim e and crim inal justice, had shifted the nature o f the debate by stressing th at the label ‘gender and crim e’ should not be read, as it som etim es was, to m ean wom en and crim e. In oth er words, fem inist work began to look at issues o f crim inality and social control from the point o f view of m en and wom en, in addition to continuing to challenge both the view th at the crim inal justice system is gender neutral and, on a b roader level, the m ale assum ptions u n d erpinning discourses in the social sciences (for a detailed review see W alklate, 1995). Brown (1986) p ointed out th at one o f the dangers associated with equating gender and crim e w ith w om en and crim e is th a t a bifurcated, tw o-tier crim inology was cre­ ated, where (fem inist) w om en are left to study wom en, and (non-fem inist) m en carry on studying m en. In this situation, she argued, fem inist research and ideas would becom e m arginalised because m en would continue to study the ‘real’ crim inals, m ore or less im m une from fem inist critiques. This is likely to perpetuate the assum ption m ade by m ainstream crim inology (som etim es referred to as ‘m alestream ’ - the pen­ chant for puns am ong som e fem inist w riters has been noted by Carlen, 1992) th at although female offenders were neglected, analyses o f m ale crim inality were vera­ cious. This was one o f the reasons why fem inist w riting began to explore the concept of m asculinity, or, m ore accurately, m a s c u lin ity .

Masculinities and crime It is certainly the case th at crim inology has traditionally hom ed in on m ale rath er than female offenders, and in the process often m ade reference to w hat are seen as essential m asculine attributes: for exam ple, toughness, daring and ‘m achism o’. Strong criticism s of this body of work have surfaced in fem inist w riting (as an aside, it should be noted th at fem inist w riting does not necessarily come from the pens, or w ord processors, o f wom en): • Although based on research into m ale offenders, explanations o f m ale crim inal behaviour within m ainstream crim inology had, paradoxically, been pu t forw ard as explanations o f crim inal behaviour in general. T hus m ale crim inality was equated with hum an crim inality.

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• M ainstream crim inology had not problem atised notions o f fem ininity and m as­ culinity. Analyses had tended to view fem ininity and m asculinity as polar o p p o ­ sites, conceptualised around norm ative ideal types. Fem inists argued that analyses should be sensitive to the different u nderstandings and expressions o f ‘fem ininity’ and ‘m asculinity’ found w ithin the sam e society. This is p art o f a critique o f w hat is called essentialism , which is seeing the world in term s o f two fundam entally differ­ ent genders, each the product of universal and irreducible biological a n d /o r socio­ cultural factors. • M ainstream crim inology had failed to explore gender relationships in term s o f stru ctu red relationships based upon both difference and power. • There was insufficient appreciation o f the m ultiplicity o f socio-cultural contexts in which m en and w om en construct their understandings o f w hat it m eans to be a ‘m an ’ and a ‘w om an’. This requires a consideration o f those factors (for example, poverty, a lack o f respect, the m ass m edia) th at im pact on m en and wom en in gender-specific ways, as well as oth er situations where variables such as class, ‘race’ and age may be equally, or m ore, relevant. • Little atten tio n had been given to the actual ways in which groups and individuals via their interactions and interpretations o f the social world come to u nderstand them selves as m en and wom en. A lthough acknow ledging th at m en and w om en are caught up in w ider structures and ideological forces p ertaining to notions of ‘p ro p e r’ m ale and female behaviour, fem inist w riters rejected determ inistic th eo ­ ries in favour o f those th at allow individuals som e freedom to m ake choices. As far as crim e was concerned, this, as Jefferson (1993) argues, allows the idea o f pleasure (derived from , for instance, the risk involved, the approval o f the group, or the behaviour in itself) as well as m ere opportunity, to be introduced into the reckoning. W hat should be obvious from even the above b rief discussion is th at fem inist work on the them e o f gender had stim ulated highly com plex theoretical debates th at are cen­ tral not ju st to sociological crim inology, bu t to sociology in general. Unlike a large am ount of crim inological research which had, during the first h a lf o f the 1990s, con­ centrated on narrow er questions linked to social policy, fem inism had opened up a space w ithin which deeper theoretical questions were addressed. T hus although the im pact on policy and the crim inological project may have been lim ited, resources were available for the developm ent o f a fem inist theoretical discourse.

The causes of crime Much crim inology then (and now) was implicitly or explicitly, concerned with a tte m p t­ ing to fathom the causes o f crim e. However, any attem p t to uncover the salient causal factors associated w ith crim inal behaviour will, to u nderstate the case rather, have

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to grapple with a com plex web o f variables. At the sam e tim e certain variables may appear to operate at the level o f causation, when they in fact can only be understood as correlations. Lom broso, for exam ple, found th at m ale crim inals very often had ta t­ toos; clearly, tattoos do not cause crim e, no m ore than, on a different level, being unem ployed or m ale causes crim e. For fem inism a central issue had been the extent to which gender can be prioritised as a variable when explaining crim inal behaviour, and reactions to th at behaviour on the p art o f the crim inal justice system . Put an o th er way, w hat is the relative im p o r­ tance o f gender com pared to other variables such as class, ‘race’ and age? Before we exam ine this in a little m ore detail it should also be noted th at crim inology, of course, still has to cope w ith the ever-present difficulty th at ‘crim e’ is no t an absolute behav­ ioural category, and ‘crim inals’/'n o n -c rim in a ls’ do not exist as two discrete types of hum an being. It may be reasonable for a crim inologist to take an interest in, say, m ale violence in the street or in a dom estic setting on the grounds th at it causes hum an misery, or, if directed against wom en, on the grounds th at it is an expression o f p a tri­ archy and is therefore o f theoretical interest as well. However, m ale (and female) vio­ lence occurs at m any levels and takes m any form s, and som etim es is no t actually crim inal. This tran sp o rts us back into the realm s o f ideology and the m oral evalua­ tion o f harm fulness, and so forth, and rem inds us th at violence in the form o f oppres­ sion or terro r m ay be carried out on behalf o f big business or the state. As W alklate (1995:161) p ointed out: The literature on masculinity has increased markedly in recent years. However, whilst an increasing number of both academic and media commentators have endeavoured to draw attention to the relationship between maleness and crime, little work . . . has applied these developments systematically to either criminology or victimology. As a result, discussions o f m asculinities and crim e drew on a b roader range o f sources than those th at are, strictly speaking, crim inological in nature. One w riter who specif­ ically discussed the relationship betw een m aleness and crim inal behaviour was Grosz (1987), and she was no t alone in p utting forw ard the view th at the problem o f crim e is fundam entally the problem o f m en. A sim ilar position was taken by Cam pbell (1993: 319), who argued that: ‘Crime and coercion are sustained by m en ’. Huge am ounts of research in Britain and the United States, as well as the picture painted by official sta ­ tistics, did little to contradict this kind o f assertion, especially w ith respect to violent crim e. Victim surveys underlined the fact th at the fear o f crim e am ong wom en was largely the fear o f m ale crim e. In general, w om en did not expect to have th eir hom es burgled by oth er wom en; or to have their cars stolen and raced around an estate by girls; or to be attacked in the hom e or on the street by oth er wom en. Im portantly, and som etim es forgotten in this context, m en too fear crim e carried out by m en. It is this fear th at encourages individuals to join N eighbourhood W atch schemes, buy extra

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bolts for their doors and give considerable attention to how they m anage their lives in term s o f risk avoidance. As an exam ple, residents in any tow n who wish to stay clear o f trouble on a Saturday night usually know which pubs and oth er public spaces to avoid. Conversely, o f course, there will be those who actively seek out such places, and because the police will also have this local knowledge, elem ents o f a self-fulfilling prophesy may be present. Significantly, though, all parties will be aware th at any trouble is likely to involve m en, usually young m en, and th at drinking is heavily im plicated. However, m any m en will avoid these places, and there will be pubs where, in spite o f heavy drinking, trouble rarely occurs. Clearly, there is no sim ple causal connection betw een being m ale and, say, fighting. None the less, the m uch greater likelihood th at it will be m en rath er than w om en who end up fighting has to be taken seriously.

Power Fem inism had stressed th at gender relations are based on pow er rath er th an mere ‘difference’. Thus, gender relations were no t conceptualised sim ply in term s o f social­ isation processes through which m en and w om en learn their respective m asculine/fem inine roles according to the particular culture. N ot only did this ‘role playing’ m odel tend to stereotype and polarise gender divisions, it also ignored the existence o f power, thereby sidestepping issues o f inequality and oppression; m en and wom en were characterised as different but equal. A large am o u n t of research had shown th at ‘w om en’s crim es are the crim es of the pow erless’ (Carlen, 1992: 52; see also M esserschm idt, 1986; W orrall, 1990). In the case o f m en, m uch research, and especially th at o f a radical tradition, had sug­ gested ‘th at the powerful (in both the gender and class spheres) do the m ost crim inal dam age to society’ (M esserschm idt, 1986: 56). In his analyses of m asculinity and crim e, M esserschm idt argued that the power deriving from an integration o f gender and class provided m en with m uch greater oppo rtu n ities th an w om en to engage in corporate and w hite-collar crim e. At the sam e tim e, the o p p o rtu n ity to com m it different sorts o f crim e is distrib u ted unequally am ong m en: ‘Just as the powerful have m ore legitim ate opportunities, they also have m ore illegitim ate o p p o rtu n ities’ (ibid.: 56). An im p o rta n t dim ension to M esserschm idt’s work was his discussion o f the ways in which different m en construct their own u nderstandings of m asculinity according to their ‘access to pow er and resources’ (ibid.: 119). These u nderstandings are expressed in behavioural term s w ithin three prim ary locations: the street, the place o f work and the hom e. This type o f approach, therefore, posited the existence o f a range o f m asculinities, which find expression in various sorts o f som etim es crim inal behav­ iour, the nature of which will depend upon access to pow er and resources. T hus there

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is an a tte m p t to p in p o in t the c o n tin u itie s and d isco n tin u ities in m asculine behaviour w ithin a p a rtic u la r society. T his is well su m m ed up by W alklate (1995:174): All of these accounts are offered as a means of dem onstrating the ways in which men display their manliness to others and to themselves. So whilst the business executive might use his position and power to sexually harass his female secretary in perhaps more subtle ways than the pimp controls his women, the effects are both the same. In this particular example, the women concerned are subjugated and the men concerned are affirmed as normatively heterosexual men. W alklate takes up a sim ilar them e w hen she w rites: Put simply, the following question should be asked: what makes the often rude and bel­ ligerent behaviour of the old boys’ network of the House of Commons any different from the lads who shout, whistle and jostle hanging about on the street corner? The reply has to be very little. As expressions of masculine behaviour, the reply also has to be very little. W hat differs, of course, is their public and political acceptability. (Ibid.: 178) T his drew o u t the con tin u ities in behavioural term s betw een the ‘yob’ on the street an d the ‘yob’ in P arliam ent, yet also acknow ledged the d isco n tin u ities because o f dif­ ferential access to pow er an d resources. For W alklate these tu rn e d on public and political reactions. However, we have to recognise th a t the unw illingness to accept th is b ehaviour w hen carried o u t on the street is often because o f the fear th a t it m ight (as it som etim es does) escalate in to violence: th is is unlikely to occur in the H ouse of C om m ons. The discussion so far indicates th a t analyses o f m asculinity a n d crim e need to co n ­ sider the social contexts w ithin w hich different m en c o n stru ct th eir u n d e rstan d in g s o f m asculinity, to g eth e r w ith the o p p o rtu n itie s available for law breaking. F u rth e r­ m ore, it is im p o rta n t to recognise th a t these social contexts will heighten the likeli­ hood o f certain sorts o f offending and v ictim isation. For instance, young m en living on tough h ousing estates, w ho have to use late-night public tra n s p o rt if they have a n ight out, are m ore likely to e n co u n ter and have to deal w ith th re a ts o f violence th a n those w hose lives are m ore insulated (the victim stu d ies carried o u t by A nderson et al., 1991, an d H artless et al., 1995, give an idea o f the extent to w hich som e young people have to cope w ith th rea ts o f violence). In an influential study, the jo u rn a list C am pbell (1993) addressed the them e o f m asculinity an d crim e am ong the least pow erful m en in o u r society. Focusing on a n u m b e r o f socially deprived h ousing estates th a t experienced o u tb rea k s o f rio tin g in 1991, C am pbell exam ined the social contexts in w hich young m en developed th eir u n d e rsta n d in g s o f m asculinity. She n o ted th a t m o st analyses by the m ass m edia and p oliticians c o n ce n tra ted on th e fam iliar im ages o f the ‘u n d erclass’, lone fem ale p a re n ts an d un d iscip lin ed youngsters, b u t overlooked o th er im p o rta n t aspects. In

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particular, th at the rioting involved young m en, rather than w om en and, she argued, it was the young m en on these estates who were responsible for the day-to-day crime and coercion. On the oth er hand, efforts to develop com m unity-based projects, in the face o f enorm ous difficulties (including a lack o f su p p o rt from central and local gov­ ernm ent and the police), m ainly involved wom en. For Cam pbell, therefore, it was the w om en w ho m ade a positive effort to m aintain a degree o f stability and cohesion. High levels o f unem ploym ent since the end o f the 1970s had m eant th at a genera­ tion o f young m en had been denied the traditional working-class m ale anchor points o f the workplace, the pub and the hom e. For an earlier generation o f m en, she argued, these provided the structures around which particular understandings o f m asculinity were developed. To a large extent traditional understandin gs o f w hat it m eant to be a ‘p roper m an ’, based on the integrated roles o f breadw inner, w orkm ate and settled father, had been lost. These were replaced by new u nderstandings shared by others w ho inhabited the sam e social space o f the street. Rioting, burglary, car theft, and so on, had becom e ways o f expressing this altered definition o f m anliness. From this perspective, their social situation offered few alternative sources o f inspiration and strongly predisposed them to certain sorts of crim inal behaviour. There were echoes here o f M esserschm idt’s argum ent, in th at m asculinity and crim e are linked to the exercise of different types of power. T hus the possibilities regarding crim inal activi­ ties will, for both m en and wom en, be constrained by available o pportunities. As C am pbell pointed out, m any o f the young m en living on B ritain’s run-dow n estates ‘dangerous places’ as she calls them - can create fear. Some o f them look and act tough, and intim idate so th a t witnesses are afraid to come forw ard, and yet, as the title o f her book - Goliath - suggested, this pow er was severely circum scribed. Ulti­ m ately they m et the power of the state, at which point other young m en, in blue uni­ form s, will act out their own u nderstandings o f m asculinity. C am pbell’s work did no t escape criticism , however. Some felt th at it added fuel to a hard-line ‘law and o rd e r’ position which equated B ritain’s crim e problem w ith the problem o f a stereotypical ‘yob culture’ and ‘underclass’ (Coward, 1994; W alklate, 1995). Furtherm ore, a com plete analysis o f life in B ritain’s 'dangerous places’ has to account for the existence o f young m en in a sim ilar situation to those discussed above who do not riot, abandon th eir p a rtn e rs and children, carry out burglaries, or pick fights on a Saturday night. The em phasis on constructing m asculinities im plies some notion o f choice and creativity and a corresponding rejection o f determ inism .

ADMINISTRATIVE CRIM INO LO GY

A dm inistrative crim inology was a product o f research carried out by, or on behalf of, the Hom e Office, and in the 1980s superseded post-w ar liberal positivism and becam e ‘the m ajor paradigm in establishm ent approaches to crim e’ (Young, 1994: 91; for m ore detailed reviews see also Young, 1988; Downes and Rock, 1988; Roshier,

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1989; Jefferson and Shapland, 1994). Clearly, as indicated in C hapter 12, this developm ent has to be seen as p a rt o f m ore general social and political trends, and in particular w ithin the context o f the Conservative governm ent’s ideologies and policies. A dm inistrative crim inology grew out o f a critique o f positivist-inclined attem pts to discover the causes o f crim inality, w hether pitched at the level o f individual p ath o l­ ogy, or at the level o f socio-cultural factors. These approaches were no t criticised for being ‘w rong’, so m uch as for failing to deliver the goods in term s o f m anageable explanations. A dm inistrative crim inology provided an alternative, and w hat is seen as a m ore realistic approach to crim e, by focusing on its prevention rather th an its causes. Thus even if causal connections (or correlations) were established betw een, say, deprivation and certain form s o f crim inality, the m agnitude o f the problem is so great th a t solutions would require sw eeping social transform ations, and the political will to carry them through. A dm inistrative crim inology argued th at it is b etter to con­ centrate on m ore m anageable crim e control activities (for exam ples of this argum ent see Clarke and Mayhew, 1980; Clarke, 1980, 1984, 1992; Cornish and Clarke, 1986a, 1986b). Looked at from this perspective, adm inistrative crim inology clearly was ‘real­ istic’ - bu t it does raise the issue o f w hat crim inology as an academ ic discipline is for. This version was situated w ithin a fairly narrow fram ew ork, where the prim ary con­ cern is w ith the prevention of crim e rather than the construction o f broader crim ino­ logical theory. Debates about, for instance, free will versus determ inism were left off the agenda because they were m ade irrelevant. So too were fundam ental theoretical questions p ertaining to the nature o f law and the role o f the state in defining crim inal behaviour and so on - certainly, w hether or not M aradona did com m it a foul was sin­ gularly irrelevant. A dm inistrative crim inology m odestly addressed issues o f situational crim e con­ trol, th at is, those m easures th at can be taken at a local level; for exam ple, surveil­ lance cam eras, better house and shop security, N eighbourhood W atch, and the like. To som e extent there are links here with the classical school o f crim inology, in th at the aim is to deter people from com m itting offences. There are also links w ith control theory given the central concern with factors th at prevent law breaking. However, in each case there are im p o rta n t dissim ilarities. For classicism, deterrence was seen as a function o f the p unishm ent handed out by the crim inal justice system , w hereas for adm inistrative crim inology deterrence was situationally based w ithin the neighbour­ hood. In the case o f H irschi’s control theory, the focus was on those controls th at p re­ vent individuals from being disposed to break the law, w hilst adm inistrative crim inology focuses on those controls th at prevent individuals breaking the law irre­ spective o f th eir dispositions: This narrowing down of the focus of the original control theory seems to constitute a switch of attention from offenders to situations. Offenders are assumed to make rational choices . . . Consequently, the offenders are not important; what matters is that

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opportunities must be reduced and risks increased and this requires that attention be given to the situations in which offences may occur. (Roshier, 1989:49) Furtherm ore, as Young (1994) pointed out, although adm inistrative crim inology did draw on the notion o f rational choice, as classical crim inology did, there was a recog­ nition th at individuals were subject to various constraints th at lim ited their rational­ ity when m aking decisions. In fact, a m ajor stran d o f adm inistrative crim inology as it developed came to be known as rational choice theory. Here the focus o f atten tio n is on the practical m easures th at can be taken to prevent a crim inal event occurring, in other words, to m ake crim e irrational by em ploying a p propriate situational crime prevention strategies (for a useful overview o f this field, see Crawford, 2007). Over the years rational choice theorists have refined and extended the list o f strategies; m ost recently, Cornish and Clarke (2003) have identified the following (with each ref­ erenced against a potential offender’s perception): • Increasing the effort involved in com m itting crim e (e.g. bars on windows, alarm system s). • Increasing the risk o f apprehension (e.g. CCTV, security personnel). • Reducing the rew ards o f crim e (e.g. system s for disabling electronic goods, polic­ ing d istribution netw orks). • Reducing the provocation to com m it crim e (e.g. polite staff in bars, cleaning up graffiti). • Removing any possible excuses (e.g. publicising rules clearly, lim iting alcohol con­ sum ption). This work led to the in troduction o f a wide range of practical m easures (including, notably, CCTV system s in the UK) aim ed at the prevention, or at least reduction, o f crim e, which in tu rn stim ulated a large n um ber o f ‘does it w ork?’ evaluative studies. One o f the m ajor them es to emerge from these studies concerned the issue o f dis­ placem ent (or deflection, see Pease, 2002). Hakim and Rengert (1981) suggest five different types o f crim e displacem ent: • Spatial displacement, where the crim e still occurs, b u t in an alternative location. • Temporal displacement, where the crim e occurs, bu t at a different tim e. • Tactical displacement, where the crim e occurs, bu t different m ethods are used. • Target displacement, where the crim e occurs in the sam e place, bu t with a different target. • Type o f crime displacement, where the crim e occurs in the sam e place, bu t it involves a different type o f crim e to the one originally planned. The underlying prem ise is th at offenders m ake, or at least seek to m ake, rational choices when deciding w hether or not to com m it an offence. For critics, though, this

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is the ‘fiction o f econom ic m a n ’ (Rock, 2007: 16), th at is, a crude und erstan d in g of behaviour th at ignores an individual’s social and psychological past and present, and views them as sim ply ‘m aking decisions around the issues o f risk, effort and rew ard’ (ibid.: 16). Cultural crim inologists (see the final chapter o f this book) have been espe­ cially critical o f this notion o f coldly calculated decision-m aking, and argue that m uch offending behaviour is m otivated by a desire to take risks, rath er than avoid them . In these cases, the deterrence value of situational crim e prevention m easures becom es problem atic. This raises a fu rth er im p o rta n t issue relating to the notion of rational choice. As rational choice theorists them selves acknowledge, the decision to engage in crim e will be inform ed by the offender’s subjective und erstan d in g o f w hat is ‘ratio n al’ and, therefore, the corollary o f this is th a t som e choices may be defined by an outside observer as utterly irrational. If this is the case, then it begs the question of how, when devising crim e prevention m easures based upon the idea o f m aking crime irrational, is the rational choice theorist to know how potential offenders define w hat is rational? Routine activity theory is an o th er m ajor stran d o f adm inistrative crim inology and the key figure here is the Am erican M arcus Felson (Cohen and Felson, 1979; Felson, 1986, 1987, 2000). In a sim ilar fashion to rational choice theory, routine activity th e ­ ory does n o t concern itself with the original sources o f crim inal m otivations, but focuses instead on practical crim e prevention initiatives. It is also sim ilar to rational choice theory in th at there is an assum ption th a t offenders m ake rational decisions in relation to risks, effort, rew ards and o pportunities. One im p o rta n t difference, how­ ever, is th at unlike rational choice theory, which is oriented tow ards situational crime control, routine activity theory is interested in the relationship betw een crim inal behaviour, seen as m undane and highly opportunistic, and the routines o f everyday social life involving the family, shopping, work, leisure, etc. According to routine activity theory, these activities provide the context w ithin which crim inal o p p o rtu n i­ ties arise. The theory is particularly associated with the argum ent th at these o p p o rtu ­ nities result from the com ing together o f three crucial factors: • A m otivated offender • A suitable target • A lack o f a capable guardian Later on, Felson added a fourth factor to the list: • An intim ate handler (som eone capable o f restraining a m otivated offender) There are significant overlaps betw een this and Ciarofalo’s (1987) work on the correla­ tion betw een particular lifestyles and the chances o f becom ing a victim of crim e. Pro­ ponents o f routine activity theory see crim e rises in the United States and elsewhere from the 1950s onw ards as a function o f increasing affluence com bined with changes

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in the ro u tin e activities o f everyday life. T hus they argue th a t such th in g s as a grow th in p o rtab le co n su m er goods a n d m ore u n a tte n d e d houses (due, for instance, to rises in the n u m b e r o f w om en w orking outside the hom e) led to an increase in crim inal o p p o rtu n itie s. As w ith ratio n al choice theory and, indeed, ad m in istrativ e crim in o l­ ogy in general, ro u tin e activity theory has been criticised for ignoring the causal fac­ to rs leading to certain individuals being disposed, o r m otivated, to co m m it crim e in the first place, except in the sense th at th ere are m ore o p p o rtu n itie s and few er risks. T hese a p p ro ach es have also been criticised for ignoring w hite-collar an d corporate crim e - th o u g h Alvesalo et al. (2006) suggest th a t the w ork o f situ atio n al crim e p re ­ vention th eo rists can be utilised in the co n tro l o f c o rp o ra te crim e. A dm inistrative crim inology is, p a r excellence, a rep resen tativ e o f w h at G arland (1994) called the ‘go v ern m en tal p ro je c t’ w ithin crim inology. T his is a p p a re n t in two im p o rta n t an d in te rrela te d respects: 1 It w as entirely co n g ru en t w ith th e C onservative g o v e rn m e n t’s c o m m itm e n t to w hat was described as efficiency a n d effectiveness and ‘value for m o n ey ’ in the public sector, and also w ith the view o f the public as ‘c o n su m ers’ o f c rim inal justice services: Consumerism has also had a certain pay-off economically. If the costs of controlling a rising crime rate were apparently spiraling out of reach, demonstrating consumer satis­ faction might just prove a more feasible (cheaper) alternative. Similarly, crime preven­ tion initiatives which involved the community - the advent of which paralleled the new victim focus - were cheaper and maybe even more effective than increasing police establishments. (Jefferson and Shapland, 1994:274) 2 It also provided a type o f crim inological th eo risin g th a t could be used to c o u n te r­ act criticism o f the g o v e rn m e n t’s ‘law an d o rd e r’ record as m easured by rises in a m o u n ts o f recorded crim e since 1980. In p articular, the go v ern m en t h ad consis­ tently resisted suggestions th a t rising crim e was c onnected to econom ic recession an d increasing gaps betw een rich an d p o o r (for a review, see Box, 1987; an d for a less acco m m o d atin g exam ple o f H om e Office research on this them e, see Field, 1990). A key elem ent o f this sym biotic relatio n sh ip betw een a d m in istrativ e crim inology and go v ern m en t was the in tro d u c tio n o f n atio n al victim -based studies th ro u g h the Hom e Office British Crime Surveys. G aining the approval o f the go v ern m en t for the first su r­ vey at the begin n in g o f the 1980s req u ired som e cogent a rg u m e n ts from the Hom e Office researchers, illu stratin g th a t all ‘ratio n al decision m ak in g ’ takes place w ithin specific contexts. From the g o v e rn m e n t’s p o in t o f view the difficulty was th a t sim ilar victim -based surveys carried out in the U nited States a n d o th e r cou n tries had,

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because o f the ‘dark figure’ o f crim e, brought to light m uch m ore crim e than was show n in official crim inal statistics. The obvious w orry was th a t this would both reflect badly on the governm ent and lead to increased fears ab o u t crim e. A lthough the research value o f a national victim survey was to m any self-evident because o f the knowledge it would generate, its political utility had to be considered too. As it happened, Hom e Office researchers argued convincingly th at although su r­ veys in oth er countries had exposed large am ounts o f ‘h id d en ’ crim e, all subsequent surveys, carried out at regular intervals and allowing tren d s to be plotted, had show n th a t crim e was increasing at a lower rate than shown by official crim inal statistics. This, indeed, was the case with the British Crime Surveys during the 1980s - however, the predictions were confounded for the period 1991-93 when, for the first tim e, acquisitive crim e as m easured by the British Crime Survey increased at a faster rate th an indicated by official, police-generated figures (though the opposite was true for violent crime). Concerns about the first British Crime Survey increasing the fear of crim e am ong the public was reflected in the extraordinary statistical gym nastics used to allay any fear. A lthough (as predicted) things looked bad, we were told th at they were not really that bad, and helpful com parisons were provided betw een the chances o f being burgled or robbed and the chances (apparently m uch greater) of being certified as insane, or having one’s house burn down. A further point about victim surveys is th a t they focus atten tio n on the range o f conventional crim e, where householders are aware th at they have been victim ised, at the expense o f corporate crim e, and fail to pick up on sexual crim e and dom estic violence where w om en are the chief victims. On a m ore complex level, adm inistrative crim inology had political utility because o f its em phasis on the crime rath er than the criminal. Rising levels o f recorded crim e were largely explained as being a function o f police effectiveness and recording poli­ cies, coupled with the greater willingness of the public to re p o rt crim e (due, for instance, to N eighbourhood W atch schem es). W ith the spotlight on situational crim e control, crim e was characterised as opportunistic, and the requirem ent, therefore, was to reduce oppo rtu n ities for crim e, through b e tte r locks, surveillance cam eras, im proved street lighting, and so forth. The assum ption seem ed to be th at a m ore or less constant pro p o rtio n o f the population is always at the ready to com m it conven­ tio n al’ crim e, though why they should be m otivated to break the law in the first place is irrelevant. For adm inistrative crim inology the trick is to close down o pportunities available for law breaking. Along with oth er crim inologies th at becam e p opular in the 1980s and 1990s, adm inistrative crim inology represented an im patient reaction to earlier social dem ocratic approaches th at saw their central task as one o f illum inat­ ing the socio-cultural or psychological bases o f crim inality. It thus offered a theoreti­ cal fram ew ork that could seem ingly deflect critical analyses o f rising crim e, to som e extent blam e the public for a lack o f com m unity vigilance, and obviate any need to consider the causes o f crim inal behaviour.

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RIGHT-WING CLASSICISM

As with adm inistrative crim inology, right-w ing classicism had a pedigree th a t w ent back to the classical school o f crim inology o f the eighteenth century, and was associ­ ated with the growth o f the New Right in Britain and the United States (although there are som e differences in em phases: for an overview o f New Right crim inology, see Tame, 1991). There was, therefore, an insistence on free will and personal respon­ sibility for one’s actions. A ttem pts to explain crim inal behaviour in term s o f socio­ cultural or psychological factors were rejected if they carried any suggestion th a t the individual was no t to blam e. Thus although the notion of an ‘underclass’ was im p o r­ tan t, with particular disapprobation being reserved for lone-parent families (M urray, 1990), such things as unem ploym ent, poverty and deprivation were seen as products o f the ‘culture o f poverty’. In oth er words, there is a repudiation of liberal dem ocratic approaches linking certain form s o f crim inality to deprivation, and seeing those involved as victim s o f w ider social and political structures. For right-w ing classicists, these form ulations had perm eated social scientific thought and becom e part o f the ‘excuse m aking in d u stry ’. In this respect, social work was seen as being particularly culpable, and notions o f rehabilitation were treated with som e distaste (e.g., M organ, 1978,1981). D iscussions o f corporate, w hite-collar and state-level crim e were left off the agenda. The chief source of crim inal behaviour was seen to be the underclass, along w ith elem ents o f a so-called ‘yob culture’, such as ‘lager lo u ts’ who, like the underclass, had seemingly had their m inds polluted with ‘perm issiveness’ and ‘m oral relativism ’. U nder these circum stances, it was argued, crim e control m ust proceed along two broad fronts. First, there was a need to instil self-discipline into those sec­ tions o f society at fault, and this should involve a program m e o f m oral education. Second, in view o f the perceived failure o f the rehabilitative m odel, the penal system should be used as a deterren t and as the basis for retribution: if individuals are responsible for their actions, then there should be no qualm s about punishing them . This view of crim e and crim e control harm onised well with com m on-sense u n d er­ standings, and was incorporated into the p opularist political ideology o f Prim e M inister Thatcher: The more orthodox conceptions of crime are broadly accepted and prioritized by the criminal justice agencies, mainstream politicians, the news media, Hollywood and other organs of popular culture. These social institutions legitimate each others’ notions of what crime is, and which crimes are most worthy of attention, in mutually reinforcing and self-fulfilling circles. (Stenson, 1991: 9) There were, however, ‘lib e rtarian ’ and ‘conservative’ versions o f right-w ing classi­ cism. As Tame (1991) said, right-w ing libertarianism covered a spectrum o f thought from types o f anarchy to th at associated w ith n ineteenth-century liberalism (when

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‘liberal’ had a different m eaning to the m eaning th a t it has today). Unlike in the United States, right-w ing libertarianism had lacked credibility within academ ic crim ­ inology in Britain (but see Davies, 1987, 1991). One o f its hallm arks was a com m it­ m ent to an unfettered, free-m arket economy, and a non-interventionist, though strong, central state. Not surprisingly, therefore, there was m uch enthusiasm for the privatisation o f crim inal justice agencies. There was also a belief in the idea o f ‘natural rig h ts’, and the freedom o f the individual to pursue any actions providing th at they do no t harm others. This led to right-libertarian su p p o rt for the decrim inalisation of illicit drug use and pornography, and in the United States a vociferous defence of the citizen’s right to own a firearm . Conservative versions o f right-w ing classicism were less indulgent regarding these freedom s, and stressed the need for the state to intervene via the law in order to achieve social tranquillity, even at the expense o f justice (see van den Haag, 1975, 1985). Efforts were m ade to m obilise the com m unity aro u n d posited traditional m oral values. In addition, and in a classical spirit, there was an em phasis on d eter­ rence through punishm ent. This overlapped with the work o f a n um ber o f right-w ing econom ists, who had tu rn ed th eir atten tio n to crim e and crim e control. Essentially, this has m eant applying econom ic m odels based upon rational choice (‘econom etric’ m odels) to crim e. From this perspective, engaging in crim e was the sam e as engaging in business-oriented behaviour and, following the classical school, the prevention of crim e had to proceed on the basis o f deterrence; th at is, choosing crim e had to be m ade irrational. In the United States, P osner’s (1986) econom etric approach to the analysis o f law was particularly influential. All o f these right-w ing classicists were united in the desire to d eter crim inal behav­ iour by having strong p unishm ents available. In a critical discussion, Lilly et al. (1989: 2 0 0 -1 ) m ake the point: For the most part, these commentators have focused on how increased punishment scaring people straight - will reduce crime. It is instructive that these theorists have overlooked how increasing the rewards of conformity (e.g. more lucrative employment) can achieve similar gains in crime control.

NEO-POSITIVISM AND

RIGHT REALISM

Broadly speaking, crim inologies u nder this heading could be placed into two sepa­ rate ‘schools’. They each continued a positivist trad itio n , and also contained elem ents of control theory, but one was associated with the New Right, w hilst the oth er con­ tained a wide range o f academ ic crim inologists com m itted to w hat they saw as the scientific study o f crim inality. New Right neo-positivism was particularly associated w ith Jam es W ilson and Richard H errnstein (1985) (see also W ilson, 1975). T heir approach has also been

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labelled ‘right realism ’, ‘new realism ’ and ‘neo-conservative’ (W ilson was for a spell an adviser to the Reagan ad m inistration) and represented a rejection of the liberal dem ocratic belief th at w elfare-oriented social reform will significantly reduce the crim e rate. Needless to say, radical solutions based upon a total transform ation of Am erican society along socialist lines were also rejected. Interestingly, though, they agreed th at m ajor transform ations would be required if crim e rates were to be reduced to low levels, b u t rejected this scenario on the grounds th at it would also bring with it a loss o f freedom s, which they saw as w orth preserving, even at the cost o f m ore crim e. As they saw it, the liberal policies introduced in the 1960s (poverty program m es, for instance) did no t lead to lower crim e rates; in fact, crim e continued to rise, even though the United States was becom ing m ore affluent. Crime for them did no t result from social inequality. Rather, it was connected to the grow th o f ‘p e r­ m issiveness’, and a ‘dependency culture’ am ong those existing on welfare benefits. W ilson and H errnstein’s ‘realism ’ derived from a view th at governm ents should seek to m ake m odest, m anageable, gains as far as crim e control is concerned. ‘Crim e’, for them , however, m eant street crim e (including burglary): they adm itted th at they were not concerned with oth er types o f offences. W ilson and Ile rrn ste in ’s approach to crim inality involved a com plex interplay betw een social conditions and individualised constitutional factors. T hus they dis­ cussed the im portance o f children being properly socialised in the family so th at they develop a conscience which leads them to reject crim inal behaviour. This stress on social conditioning was com bined with the argum ent th at the d eterren t effect of im prisonm ent will only operate if there is a strong certainty o f being caught. How­ ever, they also introduced a biological dim ension by arguing th at som e individuals are born with ‘character defects’, and this m akes socialisation into law -abiding behav­ iour difficult: ‘Crime cannot be understood w ithout taking into account predisposi­ tions and their biological ro o ts’ (W ilson and H errnstein, 1985:103). They also drew on earlier crim inological work linking crim inality to body shape. It is also worth noting that a decade later, Herrnstein and Murray (1994) argued in their book The Bell Curve that black people and Latinos were, when compared with white people, handicapped by having lower, genetically-determined IQs, hence, according to the authors, their over-representation within the so called underclass and their greater propensity to engage in criminal behaviour. Clearly, these arguments proved, to put it mildly, to be controversial. Needless to say, the authors are neither black nor Latino. (Tierney, 2009) A lthough W ilson’s bio-social theory o f the causes o f crim inality can be placed w ithin a positivist tradition, he also produced work, w ith Kelling, which reflected the con­ cerns o f classicism, in th at it was specifically oriented tow ards the issue o f crime prevention and, in fact, was to have a significant influence on the subsequent devel­ o pm ent o f adm inistrative crim inology. In com bination, these two aspects o f his work

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came to be know n as right realism . W hat, from the point of view o f its supporters, m ade this bundle o f work ‘realistic’ was th at as well as explaining why som e individu­ als com m it crim e, it also p u t forw ard practicable policies aim ed at controlling crim e. W ilson and Kelling (1982, see also 1989) focused th eir attention on those econom i­ cally and socially deprived neighbourhoods caught up in a seem ingly inexorable dow nw ard spiral into serious problem s o f crim e and disorder. In such neighbour­ hoods, a variety o f interrelated factors conspire to create a gradual descent into chaos. A lack of close family and com m unity bonds w eakens inform al processes of social control; respectable residents increasingly keep them selves to them selves, or, where possible, leave the neighbourhood; anti-social behaviour and low-level crime increases; an increasing n um ber o f ‘d isreputable’ people - the hom eless, alcoholics, drug users and, eventually, serious crim inals - move into the area; and alongside all of this, the signs o f physical deterioration becom e m ore and m ore pronounced. According to W ilson and Kelling, unless action is taken to halt this dow nw ard spiral, such neighbourhoods will inevitably becom e high crim e areas. At the core o f their argum ent was, famously, the notion o f ‘broken w indow s’, a m etaphor used to encap­ sulate the gradual, and highly visible, physical deterioration associated with the pro­ cesses described above: boarded up doors, graffiti, litter, abandoned vehicles, run-dow n green areas and, of course, broken w indows. Action should be taken, they said, before a neighbourhood reached the point o f no return, and should be directed at ‘m ending broken w indow s’, in oth er words, eradicating the outw ard signs of crim e, disorder and neglect. The police were seen as having a particularly im p o rta n t role to play. W ilson and Kelling argued for a shift away from crim e fighting to order m aintenance based upon zero-tolerance policing (o f m arginalised ‘disreputable’ people), which they believed would ultim ately strengthen com m unity ties and encourage residents to once again becom e actively involved in m aintaining a wellkept physical environm ent. Three m ain criticism s of W ilson and Kelling’s work can be noted. First, they avoid an analysis o f the structural contexts and processes explaining the existence o f hom e­ less people, drug users, alcoholics and p redatory crim inals. Second, there is no dis­ cussion of w hat will happen to such people in areas where w indow s have been m ended and an area reclaim ed by ‘respectable’ people. T hird, there are im p o rta n t issues regarding how to respond to those neighbourhoods th at have apparently d ete­ riorated beyond the point o f no return. From the perspective o f right realism , there is only one course o f action: hard law enforcem ent and punitive sentencing. In a debate betw een W ilson and the liberal Am erican crim inologist Elliott Currie (reproduced in Stenson and Cowell, 1991) a n u m b er of im p o rta n t critical points were m ade by Currie th at could be applied to a range o f New Right crim inology. In essence, Currie said th at although W ilson’s views, and the views o f others on the right, may appeal to com m on sense, and be widely agreed with am ong the general population (especially as these views are often carried by the popular m edia), this did not m ean th at they were correct. Two elem ents o f this critique will be briefly outlined.

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Leniency and permissiveness In com m on w ith o th er rep resen tativ es o f the New Right, W ilson saw individuals as w eighing up the costs and benefits o f crim e. A freq u e n t co m p la in t w as th a t in the U nited States d u rin g the post-w ar p eriod the co u rts had becom e too lenient, a n d soci­ ety in general had becom e too perm issive. C urrie accepted the view th a t as far as seri­ ous offenders w ere concerned, the police were n o t p articu larly efficient, a n d therefore th e c ertain ty o f p u n ish m e n t w as lacking. However, he argued th a t the accusation of leniency w hen offenders are b ro u g h t to trial did n o t square w ith the fact th a t the U nited States h ad m uch h igher rates o f im p riso n m e n t th an m o st o th e r in d u strialised nations, an d in m o st cases these o th e r n a tio n s had lower crim e rates. F u rth erm o re, as the rate o f im p riso n m e n t rose in the 1980s, so too did the crim e rate. As far as general perm issiveness was concerned, Currie (1991:55) m ade the p o in t th at: in recent y e ars. . . we were, again by comparison with many other advanced industrial countries, extraordinarily punitive in many of our cultural values and institutional practices - as evidenced by such things as our continued support for the death penalty and for corporal punishm ent of the young.

Human nature C urrie also m ade the p o in t th a t by seeing crim inality as being c onnected to som e im m u tab le ‘h u m an n a tu re ’, so th a t a certain p ro p o rtio n o f the p o p u latio n will be re sistan t to ‘p ro p e r’ socialisation, W ilson ignored the links betw een crim inality and general social con d itio n s. T hus W ilson was unable to account for the different crim e rates in different cities in the U nited States (w here th ere will be varying levels o f u n em p lo y m en t, d e privation, racism , and so on). At an in te rn a tio n a l level, th ere were in d u stria lised c ountries w ith relatively low levels o f crim e, for instance D enm ark, Sw itzerland a n d Japan.

Neo-positivism and free will A fter a p erio d o f an ti-positivism resu ltin g from a barrag e o f criticism from in te rac ­ tionism a n d conflict theory, since the 1980s there was a renew al o f in te rest in p o si­ tivist crim inology in the U nited States. Som e exam ples o f positivism a tte m p te d to trace c rim inal b ehaviour to in-born ‘biological p re d isp o sitio n s’ (e.g., W ilson and Ile rrn ste in , 1985), and they su sta in ed a tra d itio n th a t goes back to n in ete en th -ce n ­ tu ry L om brosian crim inology. T hese individualised e x p lan atio n s o f crim inality proved attractive to m any on the right because they offered an alternative to o th er app ro ach es th a t focused on such th in g s as social inequality, class conflict and racism

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(see Lilly et al., 1989 for a discussion o f the political context of these developm ents). O ther exam ples o f neo-positivism , although they celebrated the eclectic approach, were largely based on the disciplines o f sociology and social psychology. The resur­ gence o f this type o f crim inological positivism was well represented by Positive Crimi­ nology, edited by G ottfredson and Hirschi (1987). The book consisted o f a collection of readings th at attem p ted to m ap out the defining features o f a reconstructed posi­ tivist crim inology, which G ottfredson and H irschi confidently described as the ‘dom ­ inant paradigm w ithin crim inology’. One o f the m ain argum ents was th at sta n d ard depictions o f classical and positivist crim inology, in which the differences betw een the two are polarised around ‘free will’ and ‘determ in ism ’, were no longer valid. Indeed, positivism ’s incorporation of H irschi’s control theory indicated a degree o f com patibility betw een the two tra d i­ tions. However, G ottfredson and Hirschi also argued that, for the following reasons, the free w ill-determ inism debate is now defunct: • In the classical m odel, pu n ish m en t should work to deter individuals from break­ ing the law. It was, though, acknow ledged th at not everyone would be deterred, and so the p unishm ent th at was there as a deterren t w ould som etim es actually be inflicted on an individual. There m ust, therefore, be certain variables d eter­ m ining the decision to offend, and a concern with those variables takes us into positivism . • Control th eo ry ’s c o n tribution to positivism focused attention on social d eterrents (for exam ple, losing the respect o f others), w hilst classical crim inology concen­ trated on legal penalties as deterrents. Neo-positivism acknow ledged th at in either case individuals may exercise ‘free will’: they can choose to ignore the feelings of others, and they can ignore the legal penalties. However, there are always d eter­ m inistic factors shaping the choices m ade. Thus, said neo-positivists, whatever their relative im portance, free will and determ inism apply equally to the two schools o f thought. Even if this reasoning is accepted, it is still, o f course, essentially about perceived overlaps betw een classicism and positivism , and does no t provide a solution to the free will versus determ inism debate. N eo-positivism was strongly com m itted to socalled scientific research: to the gathering of ‘hard facts’ and plotting correlates. Roshier (1989: 68) was sceptical about its success: It has failed to establish clear-cut causal variables that differentiate offenders from nonoffenders . . . The best it has been able to achieve is loose, probabilistic associations which sometimes, in all but the terminology used, have treated individual offenders as at least partially free, rational and choice-making (and in so doing has to some extent converged with classical criminology).

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RADICAL CRIM INO LO GY

In spite of the rise of the New Right, the growing influence o f adm inistrative criminology at the level of policy, and much soul searching regarding M arxist social theory, radical criminology continued to have a prim e influence on academic criminology in Britain during this period under review. Although it encom passed a range o f perspectives, tak­ ing in Marxism, anarchism and versions of feminism, for the purposes of this discussion radical criminology will refer to criminological work that was part of a left/socialist tra­ dition. As such, it drew on interactionism and neo-Marxism, together with elem ents of other strands in criminology; for example, anomie and subcultural theory. A lthough there existed various schism s, on a general level the m ain features o f rad ­ ical crim inology were as follows: • The nature and extent o f crim e were analysed w ithin the context o f a specifically capitalist society. • Such a society was seen as characterised by inherent class conflict, and other conllictual divisions based upon, notably, patriarchy and racism. • Crime, law and social control were to be understood by locating them w ithin m ate­ rial and ideological contexts. • The ultim ate goal was the transform ation o f society along ‘socialist’ lines. • Individualised, positivist explanations o f crim inality were rejected. Identifying broadly based com m on features, however, provides only a vague indica­ tion of the nature o f radical crim inology. The question is: w hat did these things mean? To som e extent this question has already been addressed in the discussion o f radical crim inology during the 1970s, bu t in this section, taking us up to the mid-1990s, su b ­ sequent developm ents need to be looked at. In order to do this, the discussion will be structured around a consideration o f two im p o rta n t and com peting paradigm s that em erged in the 1980s, and provided the basis for intense theoretical debate am ong radical crim inologists. These were left realism (or radical realism as it was som etim es called) and critical crim inology (or left idealism , as it was called by left realists). Some o f the principal w riters associated with left realism in Britain were Richard Kinsey, John Lea, Roger M atthew s, Geoff Pearson and Jock Young. Critical crim inology was represented by, for exam ple, K athryn Chadwick, Paul Gilroy, Paul G ordon, Tony Jef­ ferson, Phil Scraton, Joe Sim and Colin Sum ner. The picture was com plicated, how ­ ever, because there were oth er crim inologists on the left who, w hilst being sym pathetic to the left realist position, were nevertheless critical o f som e or m uch o f the work (and som e o f those listed above may com plain about this labelling exercise). The debate betw een these two paradigm s did raise a n um ber o f im p o rta n t issues relating to the response o f radical crim inology (in term s o f theory and practice) to the grow th o f the New Right and the dism antling o f state socialism in the form er Soviet

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Union and eastern Europe. It also reintroduced questions o f general interest to crim i­ nology, such as: w hat is crim inology/or?

W h a t were left realists saying? A ccording to left realists, socialist crim inology should ‘take crim e seriously’. This m eant th at it should m o u n t a ‘realistic’, practical challenge to those on the right who have traditionally colonised the ‘law and o rd e r’ terrain. In order to accom plish this, left realism sought to: • Build up an accurate picture o f crim e and its im pact on victims. • Develop causal explanations o f crim inality. • Trace the relationship betw een offenders, victim s and form al and inform al con­ trols. • Develop ‘progressive’, yet realistic policies aim ed at the reduction o f victim isation rates, especially am ong m ore vulnerable poorer groups.

Crime and its impact A lthough left realists had argued th at the project o f ‘taking crim e seriously’ should include both ‘conventional’ crim e such as burglary and robbery, and w hite-collar and corporate crim e, in practice they concentrated on the form er (see Pearce and Tombs, 1992). This was perhaps inevitable given the reliance on localised victim surveys for generating data on am ounts and distribution o f crime. According to left realism , the fear o f crim e am ong working-class people was based upon th eir real experiences, and was therefore rational. It was not the result o f false consciousness created by m edia-induced m oral panics, as, said the realists, critical crim inologists seem ed to believe. Poorer people, in particular, had to contend with double victim isation: as victim s o f crim e and as victim s o f poverty. Furtherm ore, in answ er to the criticism o f taking a ready-m ade conceptual category - ‘crim e’ - left realists argued th at across a range of crim inal activities there existed a large consen­ sus regarding its harm fulness. They also acknowledged, though, th at the nature of crim e was to som e extent ‘m ystified’ by, for exam ple, m ass m edia accounts; one of the tasks o f crim inology, then, was to demystify these stereotypes.

Explanations Crim inology was seen as a discipline th at should concern itself with the developm ent of explanations o f crim e. However: ‘The trouble with crim inology is th at it cannot

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explain crim e’ (Young, 1987:237). And, as far as left-wing versions are concerned: ‘on crim e, m ore than on m ost m atters, the left seems bereft o f ideas’ (Gross, 1982: 51). Young (1994) in particular argued th at w ithin crim inology there had been an ‘aetiological crisis’, th at is, the discipline had been perplexed by the curious fact th at crime rises correlated with both affluence and recession. Critical crim inology and adm inis­ trative crim inology were both censured for a lack o f interest in a causal explanation of crim e. The form er was seen as focusing on crim inalisation (th at is, the construction and application o f the law), w hilst the latter focused sim ply on crim e control. Left realists supported the view th a t the post-w ar period had seen real increases in am ounts o f crim e, coupled with greater sensitivity on the p a rt of victim s to its effects. This was the w orst o f all worlds: official statistics show ed an increase in the crime rate, the fear o f crim e had increased, and there were real increases in the crim e rate. Critical crim inologists were accused o f refusing to recognise the harm fulness of predatory crim e carried out by working-class m ales, because they concentrated m ainly on the crim es o f the powerful. W hen they did discuss working-class crim e, said the left realists, they either approached it in a spirit o f m isplaced sym pathy for the offender as victim, or rom anticised it as proto-revolutionary action. The left real­ ist position was th at conventional crim e is, in the m ain, carried out by poorer w ork­ ing-class males, and th at the bulk o f this is intra-class rather th an inter-class. However, there was a rejection o f the positivist view th a t unem ploym ent or poverty causes crim e. Jock Young, who had been the m ost pro m in en t p ro p o n e n t o f left real­ ism, drew on M e rto n ’s concept o f anom ie, defined as a lack o f opp o rtu n ity to achieve cultural expectations, and it was poorer working-class people who experienced a lack o f o p p o rtu n ity m ost acutely. T hus social class position was im p o rta n t in th at it cre­ ated a situation w here, because o f relative deprivation - th at is, a subjective feeling th at w hat one has achieved is less th an w hat one deserves - there are greater pres­ sures to com m it property crim e. He also p ointed to the im portance of working-class m ale subcultures as carriers o f m acho, patriarchal values. Focusing on the offender, though, was seen as offering only a partial explanation o f crim e. Left realists stressed the need for analyses to recognise th at offenders are only one elem ent o f a set o f rela­ tionships out o f which is created the ‘crim e p ro b lem ’. Young (1994), for instance, spoke o f the ‘square of crim e’: offenders, victims, form al controls and inform al con­ trols. Richard Kinsey and his colleagues favoured a pentagon: offender, v ictim /w it­ ness, public, the city, police (A nderson et al., 1991).

Policies In an effort to seize the ‘law and o rd e r’ debate from the right, left realists attem p ted to develop concrete, practical policies involving, for exam ple, local authorities and police, and aim ed at reducing crim e levels and the unequal victim isation o f the w ork­ ing class. This engagem ent with policy was not seen as m ere ‘reform ’, traditionally

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associated w ith liberal thought, but as progressive ‘reform ism ’, with the ultim ate prize being the creation o f a socialist society. Ian Taylor (1982) used the phrase ‘tra n ­ sitional socialist crim inology’; others spoke o f ‘pre-figurative socialism ’. There were echoes here o f w hat oth er socialists had argued for som e tim e: E. P. T hom pson, for exam ple, took the view th at historically the rule o f law had to som e extent protected the working class from the excesses o f the ruling class, and Alan H unt (1980) had argued th at law will always be necessary, even in a socialist society. Such sentim ents had not always gone down well w ith others on the left (see the earlier discussion of the 1970s). A com m on them e am ong left realists was the notion o f com m unity' and a stress on responses to crim e at the local level (see, for exam ple, Gross, 1982; M atthew s, 1992; M cM ullan, 1986; Taylor, 1981, 1982). This appeal to localism was seen as forg­ ing links with the historical struggle o f the w orking class to im prove th eir lot, and pitched progressive reform at a m ore m anageable level. G ross (1982) argued for the establishm ent o f self-help groups and ‘citizen defence sq u ad s’; similarly, E instadter (1984) proposed crim e prevention program m es based upon ‘supportive neighbour­ hood netw orks’; M ichalowski (1983) argued for the dém ocratisation of policing and ‘a u th en tic’form s o f p opular justice; Taylor (1981) p ointed to the need for the p a r­ ticipation o f working-class people and ‘m arginalised g roups’ in such things as com ­ m unity hom es and m agistrates’ courts. Broader-based ‘progressive’ state intervention was also suggested: for exam ple, victim -offender m ediation schem es, target-hardening, better youth facilities, and victim and family su p p o rt schem es (see M atthew s, 1992).

CRITICA L C R IM IN O LO G Y AND LEFT REALISM

The left realist criticism of ‘left idealism’ Criticism o f critical crim inology, or ‘left idealism ’ centred on the following them es: • They had failed to recognise the real harm caused by conventional crim e, and to this extent had failed to ‘take crim e seriously’. C oncentrating on criminalisation and m oral panics, rath er th an on actual offenders (the exception being the crim i­ nality of the powerful), and highlighting w hat they saw as other, m ore harm ful problem s faced by the w orking class, critical crim inologists had ignored causal explanations of crim e and at the sam e tim e allowed the right to dictate the term s of the ‘law and o rd e r’ debate. • They had taken a stance based upon utopianism - th at is, an all or nothing com ­ m itm ent to a crim e-free socialist future - instead of engaging with practical p ro b ­ lems o f crim e control in the present. This entailed a rejection o f ‘reform ism ’, and any attem p ts to work constructively with agencies such as the police.

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• They h ad ten d e d to rom anticise w orking-class crim e, seeing it as p roto-revolutionary action. F u rth erm o re, th ere w as a stro n g elem ent o f m oral am bivalence re g ard ­ ing certain form s o f expressive deviance; for exam ple d ru g use. • Som e critical w riters h ad o p ted for a naive ‘a b o litio n ist’ stance; for exam ple, a rg u ­ ing for the d ism an tlin g o f the p riso n system , o r for a d eclaration o f peace, ra th e r th an war, on crim e (see Pepinsky an d Q uinney, 1991). • T here was a rejection o f the idea th a t real increases in crim e h a d occurred. A m ounts o f recorded crim e w ere seen as a function o f re p o rtin g an d recording processes, ra th e r th a n as a register o f increases in the crim e rate.

Criticisms of left realism by critical criminology Som e o f th e m ain criticism s o f left realism will be used to provide a fram ew ork w ithin w hich to explore som e o f the w ider crim inological issues raised by this intra-left debate. The concept o f crime One of the strongest attacks on left realism has been that it is essentialist . . . that it attributes to the commonsense phenomenon crime’ - a phenomenon that consists of many different types of lawbreaking and many different modes of criminalization - a unitary existence known to all people of good will and common sense. (Carlen, 1992:59) Clearly, th is is an issue th a t raises m ajo r epistem ological q u estio n s c o ncerning the n a tu re o f crim inology (for discussions w ithin th e co ntext o f left realism , see Brown and Hogg, 1992; C arlen, 1992; Hogg, 1988). A ccording to critical crim inologists, being ‘realistic’ m ea n t su rre n d e rin g to p o p u lar stereotypical concep tio n s o f crim e. T hus, left realism was seen as m erely paying lip service to the re q u ire m e n t to consider w hite-collar a n d co rp o rate crim e, an d c o n ce n tra ted on certain conventional form s o f w orking-class crim e, thereb y helping to p e rp etu ate d o m in a n t ideological u n d e r­ sta n d in g s o f the ‘crim e p ro b le m ’: ‘I am n o t convinced th a t this em phasis o f left real­ ism is deserved. In m y o pinion, inter-class crim e is an equally serious an d real pro b lem th a t exploits a n d victim izes w orking class p eo p le’ (M cM ullan, 1986:190). D efending left realism , Young (1987) argued th a t p o p u lar fears an d u n d e rs ta n d ­ ings have a ‘ratio n al kernel’, and Rafter (1986: 12) w rote: ‘It is tim e to face the fact th a t a core o f consensus does lie at the h e art o f the crim inal law an d to consider the aetiology o f serious offending in this lig h t’. T his, said critical crim inologists, m ay be correct, b u t references to ‘kern els’ and ‘cores’ o f ratio n ality did n o t explicate those u n d e rstan d in g s th a t w ere ‘irra tio n a l’, an d avoided a c o n fro n ta tio n w ith the role o f ideology. However, deb ates over the concept o f crim e involved m ore th a n the issue o f

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focusing on only som e form s o f offending. W hile left realists acknow ledged the con­ trib u tio n m ade by labelling theory, they co n te n d ed th a t critical crim inologists had exaggerated the im p o rta n ce o f the ‘re a c tio n ’ in the creation a n d shaping o f crim inal behaviour. Left realists, therefore, u n d e rlin ed w hat they saw as a real, objective crim e pro b lem w ith it own genesis. For critical w riters, th o u g h , this was to re tu rn to an earlier, uncritical an d com m on-sensical view o f ‘crim e’, w here b o th crim inals and th eir b ehaviour are special: People who are involved in ‘crim inal’ events do not appear in themselves to form a spe­ cial category of people. Those who are officially recorded as ‘criminal’ constitute only a small part of those involved in events that legally are considered to require criminalisa­ tion. Among them young men from the most disadvantaged sections of the population are heavily over-represented. (Hulsman, 1986: 65) H ulsm an th en m ade the p o in t th at the w orking class, tow ards w hom left realists o ri­ e n t th e ir work, experienced a w hole range o f n o n -crim in al events in th eir lives th a t are harm ful or distressing; for exam ple, m atrim o n ial difficulties, difficulties betw een p a re n ts an d children, and h ousing pro b lem s. However, for those involved th ere is ‘n o th in g w hich distinguishes th o se “c rim in al” events in trinsically from o th er difficult or u n p lea sa n t situ a tio n s’ (ibid.: 65). T he task for crim inology is, he said, to ‘d e b u n k ’ the conceptual category o f ‘crim e’ as it exists w ithin the context o f the c rim inal justice system , an d to focus in stead on ‘pro b lem atic situ a tio n s’. In a sim ilar vein, S tein ert (1985: 329) w rote: To ‘take crime seriously’ in this situation means that we take troubles seriously, but not as ‘crimes.’ That people are mugged in the streets, that women are raped and beaten . . . that environments are poisoned by irresponsible production, that people who live together are alienated from each other - all this is undesirable irrespective of whether it is crime' or not. O n this basis, S tein ert discussed ‘socialist’ policy in te rv en tio n s th a t are n o t tied in h ere n tly to a c rim inal justice fram e o f reference, for exam ple into th e area o f public tra n s p o rt. As Brown and H ogg (1992:144) have said: The most fundamental problem in the realist theory, programme and methodology lies in the dim inution of concern with the concept o f ‘crime’ itself. This is not a theoretical luxury, but a strategic relaxation with im portant political effects. Critical crim inologists, th en , stressed the political a n d ideological bases o f crim e and crim e control. The essential a rg u m e n t w as th a t left realism had sim ply d rifted back tow ards a tra d itio n a l liberal positio n , th o u g h it was now graced w ith a progressive

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gloss, an d in the process ditch ed m any o f th e theo retical advances m ade by radical crim inology: By their overall commitment to ‘order through law’ . . . [left realists] have retreated far from the theoretical gains of twenty years ago. Their regresssion into the assumptions of the standard criminal law model of social control - criminalization and punishm ent - is premature. (Cohen, 1986:131) T his c o m m en t by Stan Cohen, an d o th e r criticism s o f left realism , was ad d ressed by John Lea (1987). In the course o f his discussion he referred to the ‘a b o litio n ism ’ o f H ulsm an m en tio n ed above a n d in the process to u ch ed on som e im p o rta n t p o in ts regarding the n a tu re o f the crim inological project. In Lea’s view, to speak o f ‘p ro b lem ­ atic situ a tio n s’ begs the q u e stio n o f how do we identify them , especially as they will be so wide ranging. T hus he argued the case for taking ‘crim e’ as the central concept on th e basis o f th ere being a large consensus o f agreem ent regarding its h arm fulness. C ritics o f this view, however, w ould say th a t n o t only does it fail to q u estio n the id eo ­ logical sources o f p o p u lar u n d e rstan d in g s, on w hich basis draco n ian crim inal justice policies m ay be in tro d u c ed (for exam ple, the 1994 C rim inal Justice and Public O rder Act a n d its im p act on travelling people), it also leads to w hat we m ig h t call a ‘p a rtic u ­ laristic’ crim inology: a crim inology em pirically tied to a specific society at a specific m o m en t. The result is th a t the crim inologist is able to study only those activities th at have been crim inalised, w ith the assu m p tio n th at they are ‘b a d ’. T his c o n tra sts with the, at least potentially, ‘universalistic’ ap p ro ach o f critical and o th er crim inologies. In extremis, the d istin c tio n betw een the tw o a p p ro ach es can be illu strated if we im ag­ ine the crim inological project w ith in the co ntext o f N azi society in G erm any. ‘C rim e’ here could n o t be e q u ated w ith ‘pro b lem atic situ a tio n s’ or ‘b a d n ess’ as these are u n d e rsto o d by Lea, th o u g h from the p o in t o f view o f the N azi state they were. To say th a t B ritain in the 1990s was n o t the sam e as G erm any in the 1930s m isses the p o in t, and does n o t eradicate the intellectual pro b lem for crim inology. Even if we all agreed th a t, at a given m o m e n t, defined crim inal events really are ‘b a d ’, it still leaves crim i­ nology as an academ ic discipline tied to defin itio n s o f crim e th at h a p p en to coincide w ith its m o m e n t in history. Interestingly, in a study o f offending an d victim isation am ong school-age children in E dinburgh carried out by a leading p ro p o n e n t o f left realism , R ichard Kinsey, and colleagues, the researchers did in fact stray from a focus on ‘crim e’ as such, a n d d ealt w ith ‘pro b lem atic situ a tio n s’. A lthough th e text was lit­ tered w ith references to ‘the im pact o f crim e’, ‘caused by crim e’, an d ‘contact w ith crim e’, m any o f the events referred to w ere n o t actually crim es (A nderson et al., 1991). Focusing sim ply on c u rre n t d efinitions o f ‘crim e’ is to ignore the p o in t th a t in B ritain today, in B ritain ’s p a st and in o th er societies, th ere are exam ples o f ‘crim e’ th a t m any o f us, including the left realists, w ould n o t wish to conceive o f as ‘b a d ’ and in need o f erad icatio n . As C arlen (1992: 58) said: ‘W hereas the realism o f D urkheim

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an d P opper w as aim ed at sub v ertin g com m on sense, left realists a p p e a r to call for a th eo ry o f crim e th a t will fit th e facts o f crim e as p opularly conceived o f in com m on sense’. Victims Critical crim inologists, along w ith others, frequently based th e ir critiques o f left real­ ism on the them e o f the uses and abuses o f local victim surveys. Som e argued th a t c o n cen tratin g on the victim s o f crim e in certain w orking-class n eig h b o u rh o o d s gave crim inology too narrow a focus, an d in effect su rre n d ere d to con cep tu alisatio n s o f the social w orld provided by survey resp o n d en ts: ‘A rguably, the advocacy o f in n er city victim s, and an ill-concealed c o n te m p t show n for “su b u rb a n souls”, c o n stitu tes a narrow p latform for a socialist strategy dealing w ith crim e’ (M ugford an d O ’Malley, 1991; b u t see Young an d M atthew s, 1992, for a defence). As has been indicated earlier, one o f the biggest difficulties w ith victim surveys is th a t they fail to register instances o f victim isation by big business an d w hite-collar crim inals. T his raises the general p o in t th at the validity o f a victim survey rests on the re sp o n d e n t’s know ledge. Clearly, in som e cases - for exam ple, illegal currency dealing on the m oney m ark ets - re sp o n d en ts will be far rem oved from the sta tu s of victim . However, in o th e r cases - for exam ple, the illegal use o f an tib io tics by a b eef farm er - they m ay be d irect victim s, th o u g h they will n o t be aw are o f it. F u rth e r­ m ore, som e left realists, such as Young, suggested th a t som e people have a low to le r­ ance o f crim e, an d are therefore m ore victim ised th an are those w ith a high tolerance. It is an im p o rta n t p o in t, b u t it raised huge theoretical pro b lem s th a t are yet to be resolved. O n a m ethodological level, W alklate (1989) discussed a n u m b e r o f difficul­ ties w ith local victim surveys; for exam ple, th a t they do n o t always su p p o rt the idea th a t w orking-class people are m ore likely to be victim s o f p ro p e rty crim e th an the m iddle class. O ne o f the p rim a ry tasks o f victim surveys for left realism was to show th a t crim e really is a p roblem for m any w orking-class people, an d th a t to a significant degree they w orry a b o u t it (m ore th a n , for instance, h ousing or public tra n s p o rt). W hile this was valuable in term s o f exposing th e dam age done by crim e, it did re in tro d u ce the n o tio n o f ‘pro b lem atic situ a tio n s’ into the debate. W hat, we m ig h t ask, w ould be the relative im p o rta n ce o f o th e r p roblem s n o t on the list in the lives o f resp o n d en ts? A nd, th e ir significance is likely to change over tim e anyway. Ruggiero (1992: 135) argued th a t left realists p roceeded as if th ere was a conve­ nien t split betw een victim s (th a t is, ‘resp ectab le’ people) an d offenders w ithin the w orking class - or any social class: They imply a notion of working class centred on values such as ethical integrity, produc­ tivity, social merit and fairness. One is induced to think that what they describe as a neat divide between offenders and victims corresponds to a similar divide between legality and illegality.

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In a study o f the East End o f London, H obbs (1988) stressed the need to recognise th at crim inal activities cannot inevitably be equated with universal ‘h a rm ’: By concentrating almost exclusively on intra-class crime, left realism is in danger of going the same way as its predecessors. For it is essential to stress the variety of criminal opportunities that are available to the working class and how, on occasions, these opportunities can enhance rather than encumber inner city life. (Quoted in Ruggiero, 1992:136)

Crime control policies Left realists were accused o f ‘idealism ’ in their characterisations o f working-class ‘co m m unity’, and an overabundance of faith in the willingness of existing organisa­ tions to radically alter th eir structures and policies. Some o f the m ain argum ents were as follows: • Closer attention needed to be paid to the nature o f so-called ‘com m unities’, and to the allocation o f resources th at would u nderpin local action. • H ulsm an (1986) raised the issue o f w hat the agency o f reform will be. In other words, which individuals or groups will actually be willing and able to im plem ent reform ist policies? Extending this further, Stan Cohen (1988:229) noted the wider social and political context: ‘the essence o f state pow er is no t just the particular way it deploys its forces o f crim inalization and p unishm ent bu t its initial norm aliz­ ing power, th at is, its radical m onopoly to define w hat is rig h t’. • Jefferson (1986) suggested th at left realists had failed to appreciate the lim itations to police effectiveness, and th a t a closer involvem ent w ith the com m unity on the p a rt o f the police will have im plications for civil liberties. • The call to m obilise the com m unity around the idea o f ‘popular justice’ was seen as highly problem atic. If this occurred, then ‘justice’ m ight becom e m ore punitive and draconian than it was at present. W hen discussing p opular justice, left realists did acknowledge the danger th at those involved may resort to exem plary p u n ish ­ m ent or violent direct action against ‘offenders’ on the basis of m oral panics and m isinform ation. Thus they logically argued that popular justice presupposes an ap propriate inform ation system is in place, th a t the education system should adjust accordingly, and th at the m ass m edia should be reform ed to suit. Interest­ ingly, this line o f reasoning pushed left realism tow ards critical crim inology, in th at it fairly soon arrived at w hat appeared to be a socialist transform ation o f soci­ ety. This returns us to one o f the central issues: the extent to which justice can be achieved w ithin an unjust society. As is frequently the case with com peting crim inological paradigm s, as tim e passed the debate betw een left realism and critical crim inology becam e increasingly polarised.

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One outcom e of this m ight be an im plication th at radical crim inologists had to make a choice and accept one o f the paradigm s whole cloth. However, this ignores areas o f dis­ agreem ent w ithin each paradigm , as well as areas o f agreem ent between them . It also ignores areas o f agreem ent between them and other crim inological paradigm s. Critical crim inology’s agenda em phasised the political, economic and ideological structures within which processes o f crim inalisation and deviantisation, especially of vulnerable and m arginalised groups, occurred (see Scraton and Chadwick, 1991; Sumner, 1994). O ut o f this arose studies o f apparatuses of state control and regulation seen w ithin the context o f class conflict, patriarchy and racism. This, though, did not m ean that critical crim inologists were disinterested in the victim isation o f workingclass people. There are, however, different sorts o f victims, and different sorts o f victim ­ isation resulting not just from certain crim inal offences, but from a range of experiences and events. Left realism ’s agenda em phasised the social reality o f crime in term s o f the crim inal victim isation of, in particular, working-class people. Thus causal explanations of conventional’ crime and an engagem ent with reform ist policies became param ount. This, though, did not m ean that left realists were disinterested in processes o f crim inal­ isation and the role played by ideology in constructing the ‘crime problem ’. The debate between the two flowed naturally from rather different prim ary agendas.

FINAL REMARKS ON THIS PERIOD

If we look at the general direction taken by criminological research in Britain during the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, the overall im pression is that there was a trend tow ards m ore narrowly focused, policy-oriented approaches, though these were not per se to be criticised. However, such research had tended to take precedence over the ‘big’ theoreti­ cal debates, although, as we have seen, these debates still continued. This trend, and a degree of theoretical stasis, was partly accounted for by the institutional pressures sur­ rounding crim inology and the dem ands m ade on researchers by funding agencies. W here, in the light o f these developm ents, was crim inology heading? A pessim istic (for som e) prediction would conjure up the scenario o f a post-theoretical version of crim inology. M ore optim istic crystal gazing would note the enduring com m itm ent to a theoretical discourse am ong m any crim inologists in this country, and the con tin u ­ ing im portance o f crim inological theory for those teaching the discipline (and noted by Rock, 1994, in his survey of the social organisation of crim inology). In the con­ cluding chapters we shall see w hat happened.

Conventional crime Over the years, for m any crim inologists the crim inological project has coalesced around the types o f offences and offenders th at we are fam iliar with from the crim inal

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statistics. We m ight say th a t the m ainstay o f crim inological research has been con­ v entional’ crim e, crim e which, the evidence suggests, is disproportionately com m it­ ted by lower-working-class m ales. Furtherm ore, and being ‘realistic’, it has to be acknowledged th at these are the crim es th at the public, understandably, w orries about m ost. N ot surprisingly, because o f the lack o f im m ediate personal im pact, they are less w orried about expense account fiddles, illegal arm s deals, and so forth - the crim es o f the powerful. W hen a crim inologist is invited into a television studio to participate in a p ro ­ gram m e on, for instance, ‘crim e today’, or ‘vandalism in the city’, there is the same focus, and the crim inologist is usually expected to explain why they, the crim inals involved, do it. Certainly, he or she will no t be expected to entertain the viewers with an exposition on the conceptual c onundrum s surrounding definitions o f crim e and deviance. Significantly, the sam e crim inologists are not usually in the studio when issues such as pollution, nuclear testing in the South Pacific, bullying by employers, or the collapse o f an international bank due to fraudulent practices is being dis­ cussed. Typically, crim inologists get sucked into a m ilieu stru ctu red around com ­ m on-sense understandings o f the ‘crim e pro b lem ’, and inevitably this m eans a preoccupation with the crim es o f the powerless. T hat the m edia concentrates on certain sorts of conventional crime is one thing, but to make it the raison d ’etre of academic crim inology is som ething else. Obviously, when we consider th at the crim inal statistics are dom inated by conventional crime, th at vic­ tim surveys show that this is w hat people fear, and th at such things as stealing cars, breaking into hom es and engaging in random violence causes real misery and suffering, crim inology’s interest in conventional crime is understandable and im portant. The social distribution o f different types of offending is partly accounted for by the different opportunities available. Those working in professional or m anagerial occupations are m ore likely to have access to less risky (and often m ore socially acceptable) crim inal acts than are unskilled m anual workers or the unem ployed. Those owners of small busi­ nesses inclined to ‘skim o ff’ a few tax-free pounds from the day’s takings, or the builders who for cash in hand will ignore VAT, or employees who add an extra mile or two to a mileage claim, have no need to take the risk o f breaking into a house, or robbing som e­ one on the street in order to top up their income. And the opportunities available at a corporate level take us into another league o f criminality. Is behaviour such as this ‘abnorm al’ or a function of ‘disorganisation’ as some versions o f positivism suggest? The m ain point to make, though, is that a crude reading o f the crim inal statistics can give a rather m isleading picture o f the social distribution of crime and crim inal m otiva­ tions. Although no crim inologist would argue that non-conventional crime should be ignored, in some quarters of crim inology this is precisely w hat has happened, with the result that the ‘underclass’, or ‘socially excluded’ (or some functional equivalent) becom es defacto the source of Britain’s crime problem . D uring the 1980s and the first h a lf o f the 1990s, as we have seen, it was not posi­ tivism bu t adm inistrative crim inology th at had m ost influence in governm ent circles.

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The atten tio n was still on conventional crim e, bu t the search for causes had been dis­ placed by the search for ways o f preventing offences taking place. The m otivation to com m it crim e was taken as given; its aetiology, although interesting, was no t under consideration.

W I N N I N G T H E FIG H T A G A IN S T CRIME?

In Septem ber 1995, as p a rt o f w hat was called a ‘good news on crim e’ tour, the then Hom e Secretary, M ichael How ard, was interview ed on a local radio station in Birm ­ ingham . He reported th at governm ent crim e prevention policies were now beating crim e, and he gave particular prom inence to the value o f security video cam eras. H ow ard’s ‘good new s’ m essage m ade the front page in a n u m b er o f national news­ papers. A lthough this is no t strictly relevant, it is im possible to resist the tem ptation to m ention th at as the Hom e Secretary was being escorted by police and security staff from the studios through a back entrance, two youths came in by the front door and stole a large n um ber o f pictures of DJs off the wall. Ironically, they were filmed doing this by security cam eras in the studio. A lthough How ard based his argum ent on official statistics (with all the problem s th at th a t involves), supposing we took w hat was said at face value - th a t the num ber o f offences com m itted had, because o f various crim e prevention initiatives, been sig­ nificantly reduced - w hat did this really tell us? To learn th at fewer houses were being burgled, cars stolen, or individuals beaten up on a Saturday night, was, in itself, obvi­ ously ‘good new s’. However, presenting the issue in this restricted form at was m is­ leading. The Home Secretary’s fight against crim e was based upon adm inistrative crim inology’s search for ways o f controlling crim inally m otivated individuals. Thus control was the key concept. People were still w anting to com m it crim e, bu t the project becam e one o f som ehow preventing them from doing it. A ttractive as this project at first glance m ight seem, no one would argue th at crim e control at any cost is a good thing. Therefore, a ‘real’ reduction in crim e, if th at could be established, does not o f itself m ean th at the quality o f life (which, arguably, should involve such things as freedom , justice and rights) has necessarily im proved. At a hypothetical level, one could im agine a situation where crim e really did p lum m et to very low levels, bu t where, because o f controls on behaviour, everyday life had becom e intoler­ able. The political, and in som e q uarters crim inological, com m itm ent to situational crim e control involves a range o f preventive m easures: physical security (steering locks on cars, bars on w indows, security cam eras, etc.); personal and com m unitybased strategies (risk avoidance, N eighbourhood W atch, etc.); different m odes of policing. If, after consulting with security com panies (and som e com panies have no qualm s about using telephone m arketing to inform householders th at they are threatened by a crim e wave), hom es becom e virtual fortresses, if ‘risk avoidance’ m eans th at the elderly im prison them selves in th eir houses and m any people do not

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THEORY

go in to city c en tres in th e evening, levels o f crim e m ay go do w n , b u t social life has clearly su ffered . So a lth o u g h a re d u c tio n in crim e m ay a p p e a r to be so m e th in g th a t we sh o u ld a p p la u d , th e overall c irc u m stan c es in w hich it o ccu rs n eed to be co n sid ere d . It is n o t, th o u g h , ju s t a m a tte r o f how effective o r d ra c o n ia n situ a tio n a l crim e c o n ­ tro l m e a su re s are. T he e n tire p ro jec t p u sh e s to o n e side th e issue o f c rim in al m o tiv a ­ tio n s a n d th e ir so c io -cu ltu ra l c o n te x ts, w h e th e r re la tin g to th e crim es o f th e pow erful o r th e crim es o f th e pow erless. T he existence o f in d iv id u a ls w ho w a n t to co m m it crim e is sim ply tak e n as given: th e tric k is to p re v e n t th e m d o in g it. V ariations in levels o f crim e b etw een one society a n d a n o th e r are a c c o u n te d for, th ere fo re, sim ply in te rm s o f th e effectiveness, o r o th erw ise, o f th e so rts o f c o n tro ls m e n tio n e d above. H ow ever, in i ts e l f ‘su ccessfu l’ crim e c o n tro l tells us n o th in g a b o u t th e n a tu re , e x te n t a n d so u rces o f c rim in al m o tiv a tio n s. Sim ply tak in g crim e levels as an index of, for in stan c e, th e ‘q u a lity o f life’ in d iffere n t societies is th u s highly m isle a d in g . E q u atin g a re d u c tio n in crim e, how ever m ea su re d , w ith ‘g o o d n e w s’, a n d th ere fo re im p ly in g th a t th e re h as b een a q u a lita tiv e im p ro v e m e n t in social life, is o n e-sid ed in th e ex trem e. If th e p h e n o m e n o n o f crim e is u se d as an in d ic a to r o f th e q u a lity o f life w ith in a society, th e n th e n a tu re a n d e x te n t o f c rim in a l m o tiv a tio n s c a n n o t be ig n o red . T h is m ea n s e x am in in g th e w hole n a tu re o f th a t society in o rd e r to piece to g e th e r a n d u n d e rs ta n d th e s tru c tu ra l ro o ts o f crim in ality . In d e ed , ra th e r th a n ‘good n e w s’ from th e fro n t re g a rd in g th e ‘fig h t a g a in st c rim e ’, we w o u ld have been b e tte r served if we h a d had g o o d new s from th e fro n t re g a rd in g th e fig h t a g a in st in eq u ality , in ju stice, o p p re ssio n a n d greed.

S e le c t e d fu r t h e r r e a d in g An up-to-date re p o rt and analysis based upon the C am bridge Study o f D elinquent Devel­ o p m en t is Piquero, A. R., F arrington, D. P. and Blum stein, A. (2007) Key Issues in Crimi­

nal Career Research: New analyses o f the Cambridge Study o f Delinquent Development, C am bridge: C am bridge University Press. A com prehensive, accessible and recent discus­ sion o f crim inal career research is Soothill, K„ Fitzpatrick, C. and Francis, B. (2009) Understanding Criminal Careers, C ullom pton: W illan. A good review o f fem inist research over the period covered in this ch ap ter is H eidensohon, F. (1994) ‘G ender and crim e’, in M. M aguire, R. M organ and R. Reiner (eds) The Oxford Handbook o f Criminology, 1st edn, Oxford: C larendon Press. For a discussion o f violence tow ards w om en, see Stanko, E. (1988) ‘H idden violence against w om en’, in M . M aguire and J. Pointing (eds) Victims o f Crime: A new deal? M ilton Keynes: O pen University Press, a collection which addresses crim e victim isation in general. W alklate, S. (1995) Gender and Crime, H em el H em pstead: H arvester W heatsheaf, offers an accessible discussion o f gender issues.

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An influ en tial stu d y o f m ascu lin ities is M esserschm idt, J. (1 9 9 3 ) M a scu lin ities a nd C rim e, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. For an overview o f the concerns o f a d m in istrativ e crim inology, see Heal, D. and Laycock, G. (eds) (1 9 8 6 ) Situational Crime Prevention: From theory into practice. A highly influ en tial p a p e r w ritte n from a conservative, ‘rig h t re a list’ p erspective is W ilson, J. Q. and Kelling, G. (1 9 8 2 ) ‘Broken windows: the police neighborhood safety’,

Atlantic M onthly, March. The collection o f c h ap ters in Stenson, K. and Cowell, D . (eds) (1 9 9 1 ) The Politics o f

Crime Control, London: Sage provide a good overview o f th is perio d . D iscussions o f left realism can be fo u n d in M atthew s, R. and Young, J. (eds) (1 9 9 2 ) issues

in Realist Criminology, London: Sage; an d Young, J. and M atthew s, R. (eds) (1 9 9 2 ) Rethinking Criminology: The realist debate, London: Sage. An exam ple o f an a lte rn a tiv e ‘c ritica l’ crim inology is Scraton, P. (ed) (1 9 8 7 ) Law, Order

and the Authoritarian State, M ilton Keynes: O pen University Press. For discussions o f a b o litio n ism see Bianchi, H. and van Swaaningen, R. (eds) (1 9 8 6 )

Abolitionism: Towards a non-repressive approach to crime, Am sterdam : Free University Press.

P o s t s c r ip t MIGHT T hey are tough now A nd so su re o f them selves T h a t we even begin to accept it Because they d o n ’t try to hide A nd they d o n ’t care w ho sees. T hey are con fid en t A nd th a t’s w h a t m akes us weak But w hen the change com es (an d it will) T he tru th will shift Because they are w rong It ju st h a p p en s th at For a tim e T hey have th e pow er. N igel M ello r (1 9 8 9 ), For the Inquiry, L o n d o n : D a b H a n d Press.

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T H E MID-1990S I N T O T H E M ILLEN N IUM

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K ey th e m e s •

N e w Labour, old problems

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Restorative justice

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Imprisonment

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Social policy and N e w Labour

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Crim e prevention, crime reduction and community safety

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Crim e and criminal justice: the wider context

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Criminology in the new millennium

V

J

INTRODUCTION

T his final ‘c o n te x tu al’ c h ap ter takes us from the m id-1990s to the p re sen t day, a p eriod th a t saw the replacem ent o f a C onservative go v ern m en t by a (New) L abour gov ern m en t, w hich, at the tim e o f w riting, is in its th ird term o f office. The ch ap ter gives p a rtic u la r a tte n tio n to New L ab o u r’s crim inal justice policies, tracin g b o th the con tin u ities a n d d isco n tin u ities betw een th em and the previous C onservative a d m in ­ istratio n . The stress on a ‘tough on crim e’ agenda is discussed, n oting, for instance, th e large increases in p riso n p o p u latio n s d u rin g the p erio d u n d e r review. However, social policy a n d elem ents o f w elfarism are also referred to, a n d it is w ithin this co n ­ text th a t n o tio n s o f co m m u n ity safety an d restorative justice are discussed. The ch ap ­ te r concludes w ith an analysis o f globalisation, social change an d the late m o d ern c ondition. We now reach the final phase (in this review) in the histo rical developm ent o f socio­ logical crim inology. T his coincides w ith a p eriod th a t begins w ith the election o f a L abour go v ern m en t in 1997 an d takes us to the end o f the first decade o f the new m il­ lennium . At the tim e o f w riting, L abour is experiencing an u n p re ce d en te d th ird term in office, a n d the UK, along w ith the rest o f the w orld, is experiencing an econom ic recession o f u n p re ce d en te d - at least d u rin g th e post-w ar p erio d - p ro p o rtio n s. The c h ap ter here provides an overview o f the social, econom ic a n d political contexts w ithin which sociological crim inology has c o n tin u ed to develop over this sam e

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period. In order to do this, the chapter works, as it were, from the inside outw ards, and is thus organised into three sections addressing in turn: • Crim inal justice and oth er policies linked to issues o f law and order introduced by New Labour. • Shifts in the nature o f crim inal justice processes th at developed p rior to the elec­ tion ofN ew Labour, bu t continue to play an im p o rta n t role. • Broader, and continuing, social, political and econom ic changes, som e operating on a global level, th at provide a backdrop to the above. This will allow a discussion o f the specific characteristics o fN e w L abour’s policies, the continuities and discontinuities betw een the past and the present, and the w ider context w ithin which these policies have been im plem ented, together w ith th eir broader im plications. O f course, these different dim ensions are no t m utually exclu­ sive; in various ways and to varying degrees they interact with each other. As an aside, it can be noted here th at in 2007 the Home Office was split into two organisations: a new M inistry of Justice (responsible for prisons, probation, crim inal justice and sentencing), and a re-fashioned Hom e Office (responsible for terrorism , security, policing, drugs, im m igration, ID cards and anti-social behaviour).

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LABOUR, OLD PROBLEM S

A political transformation The project of creating New Labour, and thereby distancing the party from the ‘o ld ’, was well under way p rior to the general election o f 1997. Officially, the logic guiding this transform ation arose from a need to respond to a changing w orld by developing a m ore ‘relevant’ political agenda and a m ore a p propriate set o f policies. In other words, to becom e ‘realistic’ - a concept that, as we have seen, began to gain currency in various q u arters during the 1980s. Allied to this was the conviction th at the ideol­ ogy and policies associated with Old Labour would make w inning an election diffi­ cult, if no t im possible. The central problem faced by New Labour, though, was (and is) devising a strong and coherent political platform , and a tte n d an t policies, th at would distinguish the party from the two oth er m ajor political parties and yet, at the sam e tim e, link it to the ‘core’ values associated with a perceived historical role for the Labour Party - though this role had to be responsive to a changing w orld. This project required the evolution o f a particular type o f discourse and the careful control of inform ation and statem ents supplied to the m edia (distrust o f the m edia, and in particular new spapers, am ong Labour politicians has - and not w ithout som e justifi­ cation - had a long history). Gradually, the ‘old ’ language o f Labour - socialism , capi­ talism , working class, poverty, the poor, redistribution, equality, etc. - was replaced

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by a language seen as m ore a p propriate to the condition o f late m odernity (and less contentious and abrasive am ong non-traditional Labour Party supporters, described in sh o rth a n d form as ‘m iddle E ngland’). Increasingly, references were m ade to the T hird Way, m arket society, the socially excluded, and oppo rtu n ities and choice for all. Clause 4 disappeared from the Labour Party constitution. Paralleling this, as the influence o f M arxist social theory began to wane, the discourses o f radical crim inol­ ogy were m odified, as they too incorporated a new, and often sim ilar, conceptual lan­ guage. For New Labour, the goal was to achieve a national consensus on the basis o f a non-ideological politics, one th at broke w ith older notions of left and right (Becket and Hencke, 2004); in effect to rise above ideology by establishing a consensual ‘T hird Way’ and leave behind notions o f left and right associated w ith Old Labour (see, for exam ple, G iddens, 1994).

Getting tough O f particular im portance was challenging the traditional perception am ong the elec­ torate o f the Conservatives as the party o f law and order and, in the process, denying any suggestion th at Labour was ‘soft on crim e’. W hile disillusionm ent w ith the Con­ servative governm ent am ong large sections of the electorate in 1997 gave New Labour a pow erful advantage at the polls, an election victory was no foregone conclusion. The electorate needed to be convinced o f New L abour’s m anagerial com petence across a range o f policy issues. W ithin the context of law and order, ‘com petence’ equated with being tough on crim inals. D uring the 1980s, there were m ajor differ­ ences betw een the Conservatives in office and Labour in opposition over issues o f law and order; however, these becam e m uch less significant during the 1990s. By 1997, L abour’s election m anifesto claim ed th at it was ‘the party o f law and order in Britain today’. One phrase in particular sum m ed up New L abour’s approach: ‘tough on crim e, tough on the causes o f crim e’. A m ong a cacophony o f sound bites gracing the election process in 1997, this one grabbed the headlines. In fact, it first appeared in an article w ritten for the New Statesman by Tony Blair in 1993, when he was shadow Hom e Secretary and, as Young and M atthew s (2003: 5) say: ‘the article . . . contains all the seeds o f the subsequent crim e policy ofN ew Labour, both in term s of analysis and policy im plications’. The phrase ‘tough on crim e, tough on the causes o f crim e’, was highly effective because the mélange o f possibilities regarding w hat it could m ean m ade its appeal virtually universal, especially as few people had read the original article (for a left/social dem ocratic audience, for instance, ‘tough on the causes o f crim e’ was equated w ith addressing the structural roots of crim inality, seen in term s of inequality and social injustice). A pithy statem ent unencum bered by detail, m ak­ ing it difficult to argue against, often has the greatest im pact. D uring the 1997 election, it was the overall im pression o f toughness, rather th an detailed disquisitions on planned crim inal justice policies, th at was crucial. The

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m anifesto stated, for exam ple, th a t ‘we believe in personal responsibility and in p u n ­ ishing crim e’. The core m essage, therefore, was seductively sim ple: New L abour is tough, not soft, on crim e. Unsurprisingly, this intrusion into the rhetorical dom ain they saw as their own presented the Conservative Party w ith serious difficulties, and senior Tories reacted predictably by p u ttin g forw ard even ‘to u g h er’ policy sugges­ tions. In 2004, for instance, as an o th er election loom ed, M ichael How ard, then leader of the Conservatives, said th at if elected, his governm ent would end the current police practice o f recording all stops and searches. This practice (which was recom m ended in 1999 by the M acpherson R eport) was, for How ard, a reflection o f ‘sociological m um bo-jum bo and political correctness’ (quoted by G arland, 2005: 63-4). This has to be seen against the backdrop o f very large pro p o rtio n ate increase in the n um ber of Asians subject to a stop and search, following the 2000 Terrorism Act. Once in power, New L abour’s first Hom e Secretary, Jack Straw, was swift to underline the govern­ m e n t’s tough credentials. ‘Squeegee m erch an ts’ and street beggars were vilified; the benefits o f ‘zero tolerance’ policing were applauded; and, following a tabloid ‘stin g ’ involving his son and cannabis, he took p arental responsibility by presenting his son to the police. The Daily Mirror christened him ‘D irty Jack’ (a reference to Clint East­ w ood’s movie character, Dirty Ilarry) after he ‘adm o n ish ed ’ a youth in his con­ stituency for spitting from a bridge (w hether or not he said A re you feeling lucky p u n k ’ is unrecorded). In spite o f this, and illustrating how difficult it is to please everyone, a leader in the Daily Telegraph m ade the rem arkable assertion th a t ‘At the Hom e Office, it is the soft-on-crim e, liberal consensus th a t is back in charge’. Since com ing into office in 1997, this tough stance has been reflected in various pieces o f legislation. As Downes and M organ (2002:297) pu t it: A string of largely punitive measures, announced in discussion papers in Opposition and mostly enacted in office, in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and other statutes, were designed to meet the ‘tough on crime’ agenda . . . all measures that would hardly have been countenanced by Labour before 1992. The reluctance o fN ew Labour to revert to m ore liberal pre-1992 approaches to law and order, coupled with a belief th at its policies ‘w orked’, resulted in fu rth er ‘tough’ legislation following th eir 2001 election victory. For Downes and M organ, New Labour have failed to capitalise on their ‘political hegem ony’ in m atters o f law and order, and shift the em phasis tow ards a m ore liberal approach. Young (2003a) points to New L abour’s failure to draw on the ‘crim e drop dividend’ and the evidence from academ ic crim inological research, choosing instead to continue with a populist approach. From this perspective, policy was driven by public opinion strongly influenced by ‘a m ass m edia which has consistently taken the m ost pessim istic view o f the crim e pro b lem ’ (ibid.: 36). However, and regard­ less of its obsession with public opinion, the governm ent was unlikely to alter its tough-on-crim e stance (for exam ple, by seeking a significant reduction in custodial

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sentences) because, first, there was political capital to be gained from linking existing policies to a continuing fall in the crim e rate (though sim ultaneously not denying th at crim e risks continued) and, second, to do so would leave it open to accusations o f vac­ illation. This was especially im p o rta n t if we note that according to the British Crime Surveys, and in spite o f statistical evidence to the contrary, m ost people felt th at crime was rising, and th at courts were too lenient on offenders. W hilst a shift in policy inform ed by the evidence from research may bring dividends in the long term , sh o rt­ term electoral considerations have always played a m ajor role in governm ental deci­ sion m aking. From a m ore cynical perspective, and alluded to above, there is some political capital to be gained by allowing public concerns about increasing risks to fom ent. One inference th at m ight be draw n from the above discussion, and especially the argum ents pu t forw ard by Downes and M organ and Young, is th a t New L abour’s policies are sim ply a populist response to perceived public opinion and, if the tru th be known, contradict w hat the governm ent would actually w ant to do. However, w hilst som e o f the law and order rhetoric may be characterised in this way, it seems perfectly reasonable to see these policies as being entirely consistent w ith the ideol­ ogy o fN e w Labour as m anifested in so-called T hird Way politics. T here is no evi­ dence th at sufficient political hegem ony or reductions in the crim e rate would som ehow trigger a covert, latent predilection to introduce m ore liberal policies. Tonry (2004) has added to this debate by suggesting th a t the m ore judicious ofN ew L abour’s crim inal justice policies were introduced because they address non-controversial issues. Having said that, it would be m isleading to characterise New Labour’s crim inal ju s­ tice policies, together with oth er policies intended to have an im pact on problem s o f crim e and disorder, as uniform ly illiberal and sim ply a sop to tabloid-generated p u b ­ lic opinion. Indeed, developing a coherent, sim plified and easily digested overview of these policies is, because o f the inconsistencies, difficult. As M organ and Allen (2004: 3) pu t it: ‘C ontem porary crim inal justice is difficult to characterise, with contrasts and contradictions at seemingly every tu rn ’. T hus we can note, for instance, the H um an Rights Act; m inim um wage legislation; the M acpherson Inquiry into the racially m otivated m urder o f Stephen Lawrence; Youth Justice pa rtn e rsh ip s and program m es aim ed at the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders; efforts directed at the regeneration o f com m unities and tackling social exclusion; and a recognition th at problem s o f crim e and disorder are connected to the corrosive effects o f deeper econom ic and social factors, such as long-term unem ploym ent - a connection th at the Conservative Party, when in governm ent, refused to acknowl­ edge. The link betw een social exclusion/unem ploym ent and crim inality is double edged though. Clearly, the evidence from official statistics on those convicted o f ‘vol­ um e crim e’ such as burglary and theft indicates the salience o f form s o f deprivation. However, as has been stated earlier, there is a danger th at the problem o f crime continues to be the problem o f the so-called ‘underclass’, in the process recycling

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nineteenth-century images o f the ‘dangerous classes’, and ignoring the huge am ounts of crim e com m itted by better-off, and, ostensibly, ‘respectable’, m em bers o f society. K arstedt and Farrell (2004), in their recent research, illustrate th at ‘inclusion’ is no guarantee o f law -abiding behaviour - 64 per cent o f those classified as m iddle-class ‘professionals’ adm itted th at they com m itted at least one dishonest offence during the last year, com pared with 43 per cent of those on lower incom es. The total cost of ‘respectable’ crim e - fraud and forgery - is estim ated at £14 billion per year. And, as recent revelations in the wake o f the collapse o f m ajor global financial in stitutions have show n, there is also a danger o f ignoring the harm fulness o f legal ploys to avoid paying taxes: Royal Bank of Scotland tied up at least £25bn in complex international tax-avoidance schemes during its boom years, costing the British and US treasuries more than £500m in lost revenue . . . It is the first time that a major bank has admitted the existence of such deals on this scale. The new management at RBS, mindful of the fact that it is now 70% owned by the taxpayer, has disbanded the department responsible. (Lawrence and Leigh. 2009:1)

A conceptual framework The governm ent’s crim inal justice legislation, including its flagship legislation, the 1998 Crime and D isorder Act, represents an a tte m p t by New Labour to m anage a fun­ dam ental tension present in all post-W orld W ar Two crim inal justice policies aim ed at dealing with offenders (and discussed previously): the tension betw een justice and welfare. Justice (which signals ‘toughness’ and has continued to play the d o m inant role) em phasises personal culpability and p unishm ent as retribution and deterrence, w hilst welfare em phasises the social causes o f crim e and the re h a b ilita tio n /tre a t­ m en t/rein te g ra tio n o f offenders (and, in som e q uarters at least, signals ‘excuse m ak­ ing’ and being soft on crim e). Put a n o th e r way, it reflects the tension betw een, on the one hand, classicism /neo-liberalism and individuals w orthy o f blam e and, on the other, positivism and ‘dam aged’ individuals. New Labour has sought to resolve the tension by incorporating w hat are seen as the strengths o f each approach into a stra t­ egy based upon partn ersh ip s and m anagerialist principles. Young and M atthew s (2003) argue th a t New L abour’s a tte m p t to m anage these different approaches offers an alternative to Old L abour’s positivism and neo-liberalism ’s classicism. W hether or not this has resulted in T h ird W ay’ law and order policies, in the sense o f creating som ething new, rath er th an a continuation, or recycling, o f already existing policies (and finding som e m iddle ground som ew here betw een Attlee - see below - and T hatcher), is, however, debatable. Young (1999) and M atthew s and Young (2003), however, do provide useful analyses of the principles inform ing New L abour’s policies relevant to crim e and its reduction,

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and in the process indicate how these policies are intended to interact with one another. Unlike previous Conservative adm inistrations, New Labour acknowledges that the causes o f crime are ultim ately located in the dam aging effects o f global eco­ nom ic and social factors over which individual offenders, and the families in which they are brought up, have no control. Particular attention is given to social exclusion and disintegrating com m unities deficient in social capital (for critical discussions of the concept o f social exclusion, see Gans, 1995; M ooney and D anson, 1997; Young, 1999, 2007). The problem s confronted by those living in such com m unities are m ulti­ farious, and therefore require ‘joined-up’ m ulti-agency interventions. Crime itself is specifically linked to poor socialisation w ithin the family and the school, coupled with weak com m unity-based social controls, leading to problem s such as drug and alcohol abuse. Social policy interventions are oriented tow ards the creation o f a flexible, skilled workforce and the regeneration o f com m unities and, ultim ately, the eradica­ tion o f poverty and social exclusion and the establishm ent o f strong social netw orks. Inherent in these control strategies is the idea o f building up ‘social capital’ (Putnam , 2000) in ‘problem ’ neighbourhoods: Social capital is conceived of as the ‘social glue’ that is derived from residents’ active par­ ticipation in local social networks that benefit the whole community in terms of making it a better place to live. (Innes, 2003:152) The broad th ru st o f social policy can, therefore, be seen to represent the second p art o f the tough on crim e, tough on the causes o f crim e couplet. Ostensibly, this is very sim ilar to the positivist-style policies o f the two decades following W orld W ar Two, in th at it acknowledges the links betw een offending and social and econom ic depriva­ tion. There are, however, m ajor differences, which becom e a p p aren t when the ‘tough on crim e’ half o f the couplet, as reflected in New L abour’s crim inal justice policies, is taken into consideration. D uring the earlier post-w ar period, and beginning with A ttlee’s 1945 Labour governm ent, there was a view th at social reform w ould lead to a gradual reduction in crim e, and crim inal justice interventions were directed at what were seen as residual crim e problem s (see the discussion in C hapter 4). By the late 1960s, though, rising crim e rates acted to challenge this optim ism , and encouraged the political parties to develop alternative strategies, in term s of both general social policy and crim inal justice policy. In essence, three periods o f post-w ar history can be identified, each exhibiting dif­ ferent understandings of, and approaches to, crim e and crim inality. In the first, im m ediate post-w ar period, offenders were seen as ‘dam aged’, th eir crim inality resulting from social and econom ic factors. From this determ inistic perspective, offenders were not to blam e and, therefore, crim inal justice interventions should focus on their trea tm e n t/re h ab ilitatio n (especially children and young people). This reflected a positivist conceptual fram ew ork and prioritised structure over agency.

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D uring the second, post-1979 period, the Conservative governm ent w orked w ithin the fram ew ork o f neo-liberal classicism, and stressed voluntarism ; agency was priori­ tised over structure. T hus offenders were blam ew orthy and should be dealt with accordingly. In the third, New Labour period, u nderstandings of, and approaches to, crim e and crim inality are m ore com plicated. Crim inal justice policies are a complex m ixture o f both neo-liberal classicism (linked to discourses o f risk) and positivism . A lthough social policies aim ed at regenerating com m unities and eradicating social exclusion appear to prioritise structure over agency, it is clear th at crim inal justice policies reflect a 'tough on crim e’ (which equates with tough on crim inals) agenda, and this requires prioritising agency over structure. Ultimately, offenders are respon­ sible for their behaviour. W hat is particularly interesting is the way in which both individual responsibility and potentially determ inistic structural factors have been incorporated into New L abour’s conceptual fram ew ork. In effect, it is an a tte m p t to accom m odate sim ultaneously a dem and for welfare and a dem and for justice, and at core relies on a variation of H obbes’s social contract theory. From the perspective of New Labour, betw een 1979 and 1997 Conservative governm ents did little to am elio­ rate the dam aging consequences o f post-industrialism and, indeed, exacerbated the consequences. U nder those circum stances, it was relatively easy to be sym pathetic in a liberal sense to the view th a t crim inality was the result o f social and econom ic fac­ tors. However, the in troduction by New Labour of a range o f m easures aim ed at im proving the lot o f the socially excluded has created a different situation, one where, from the governm ent’s perspective, excusing the behaviour of offenders is in ap p ro ­ priate. O ffenders and the families th at produced them are now blam ew orthy, for they have failed to grasp the oppo rtu n ities th at have been pu t in place. They may not have control over global social and econom ic forces, but they are now in a position to m ake rational decisions regarding personal behaviour. It is this stress on agency and volun­ tarism th at provides the logic and justification for a ‘tough on crim inals’ approach to crim inal justice, and happens to tap into w ider societal feelings o f anger and resent­ m ent tow ards offenders (Pratt, 2000).

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

However, as stated earlier, this does not m ean th at welfarist principles no longer fea­ ture in New L abour’s crim inal justice policies. The 1999 Youth Justice and Crim inal Evidence Act, for instance, introduced the m andatory sentence of a referral order for som e, but not all, young offenders. It is only applicable to first-tim e offenders aged 10 to 17, who plead guilty, or are convicted of, a non-custodial offence. The order requires the young person to attend a youth offender panel, which can consist of a wide range of people, for example m em bers o f the youth offending team , parents o f the young offender, volunteers from the local com m unity, and the victim. There are two key ou t­ comes th at the panel will seek to achieve: th at the offender m akes som e reparation for

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his or her behaviour, and th at a program m e to prevent further offending is drawn up (N ew burn et al., 2001; M iers et al., 2001). This approach to youth justice, which has occurred in m any other countries, reflects the growing influence o f restorative justice. Restorative justice is particularly associated with m odes o f dispute resolution found in small-scale societies - New Z ealand M aori society is the archetypal exam ple. It repre­ sents an alternative approach to one based upon retribution a n d /o r deterrence, which is seen as alienating the offender from the com m unity and likely to increase anger, conflict and further harm . W ith restorative justice, the offender is expected to repair the harm done to the victim and the com m unity by some sort o f reparation, w hilst at the sam e tim e acknowledging the w rongfulness o f their behaviour. The theoretical underp in n in g for restorative justice is the work o f Braithwaite (1989,1998). His sem inal Crime, Shame and Reintegration (1989) was an attack on the retributive tradition th at dom inated justice system s around the w orld. Drawing on ideas from labelling theory, he argued for a m uch m ore inform al approach directed at the reintegration o f offenders into the com m unity, as opposed to th eir stigm atisation and m arginalisation. This is accom plished by the ‘reintegrative sham ing’ o f the offender. Over the years the theoretical analysis has, on the basis o f em pirical research and academ ic debate, been refined and m odified. In a recent discussion and review by Braithwaite and his colleagues (Ahm ed et al., 2001), an ‘ethical id en tity ’ conception o f sham e and a theory o f ‘sham e m anagem ent’ are developed. Briefly, eth­ ical identity involves an offender feeling th at their actions are bad, and th at w hilst they are not irretrievably bad, there is an aspect of self th at has to change. Sham e m an ­ agem ent refers to a process where an offender is enabled to develop a ‘self-regulating conscience’, thereby reducing the chances o f further offending. Evidence for the success o f restorative justice program m es is at the m om ent incon­ clusive (Latim er et al., 2001; Johnstone, 2003). As far as this country is concerned, N ew burn et al. (2001) have highlighted the low levels of victim involvem ent in youth offender panels. Crawford and N ew burn (2002) have pointed to the contradiction betw een the principle o f restorative justice and the punitive tone o f youth justice pol­ icy, as well as the punitive reality o f custodial sentences for a large n u m b er o f young offenders (restorative justice is reserved for those who com m it relatively m inor offences). In addition, they note the tension betw een the nature o f the restorative ju s­ tice process and a m anagerialist requirem ent for speedy and econom ic outcom es. There have been criticism s o f restorative justice and reintegrative sham ing arising from concerns regarding the nature o f the com m unitarian ethos inherent in such concepts. Lacey (1998), for exam ple, focuses on notions o f inclusion and exclusion and the assum ption o f a neat ‘good’ and ‘b a d ’ division betw een offenders and nonoffenders, seen respectively as ‘th em ’ and ‘us’. In a sim ilar vein, Scheingold (2000) argues th at restorative justice may lead to a greater intolerance o f difference, coupled with an a tte m p t to create conform ity by m eans o f coercion. Given th eir preoccupation with preserving a ‘tough on crim e’ image, there has always been a degree o f am bivalence tow ards com m unity-based initiatives, such as

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restorative justice, on the p a rt o f the governm ent. A recent exam ple illustrates the M inistry o f Justice’s desire to m anage th at image by em phasising th at such initiatives do not represent a ‘soft’ approach. At the end o f 2008 a new com m unity service p ro ­ gram m e was launched, which involves convicted offenders carrying out unpaid work in the com m unity, w hilst wearing bright orange bibs with the w ords ‘com m unity pay­ back’ on the back. According to the justice secretary, Jack Straw (2008: 6): The more we can get across to the public that community punishments are effective and tough, the fewer people the courts will find it essential to send to prison.

IMPRISONMENT

W ills (2007) has analysed the Labour governm ent’s track record in relation to juve­ nile justice, since com ing to power in 1997. Sum m arising this record, she m akes two im p o rta n t observations: • Public debate about juvenile justice is characterised by two contradictory m yths: th at the past was a golden age o f law and order, and th at the treatm en t o f juvenile crim inals is m ore enlightened today. • However, they have been used by the governm ent to justify a punitive stance tow ards juvenile crim inals which in m any ways is m ore severe th an at any point since the 1850s. One indication o f how punitive a society is when responding to crim inal behaviour is its rate of im prisonm ent in com parison to oth er societies. In spite o f the introduction o f initiatives based upon notions o f restorative justice (and oth er com m unity-based, non-custodial sentences), there has been an extraordinary growth in the prison p o p u ­ lation - for children, young persons and adults - in this country since Labour came to power. Currently (as show n by the detailed statistics in C hapter 2), England and Wales has the highest rate o f im prisonm ent am ong its European neighbours, ap art from (and only just) Luxem bourg and Spain. The n um ber o f adult prisoners has increased by 38 per cent since 1997. The grow th in the prison population has, not su r­ prisingly, stim ulated a significant am ount of critical research and com m ent w ithin crim inology in recent years (see, for instance, Cavadino and Dignan, 2002; O ’Malley, 2004; Jewkes, 2007). Some o f the factors th at have led to this situation can be sum m arised as follows: • The Labour governm ent has introduced around 3,000 new crim inal offences. • Increased use o f indeterm inate sentences. There are now m ore people serving indeterm inate sentences than there are serving sentences o f less than 12 m onths. • Increased n um ber of m andatory m inim um sentences.

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• The use o f the ‘two strikes and you’re o u t’ principle. • Longer sentences im posed by the courts. The average crown court sentence length has increased by 25 per cent over the last decade. • M ore people have ended up being jailed because o f the use o f suspended sentence orders. Introduced in 2003, about 3,000 per m onth are now given out by the courts. They carry an im plicit threat o f a custodial sentence if an offender re-offends. Because they are subject to strict conditions, m any end up breaching them (though the offence may be a relatively m inor one) and, as a result, m any are then given a prison sentence. M ost orders are issued by m agistrates’ courts, alm ost half o f them for sum m ary offences such as driving while disqualified and com m on assault. • W hile the 2003 C rim inal Justice Act was intended to lead to heavier custodial sentences for violent and sexual offences, and a concom itant shift tow ards n o n ­ custodial, com m unity-based sentences for less serious offences, courts have tended to em brace the form er rath er than the latter in their sentencing practices. • Net w idening. An Anti-Social Behaviour O rder begins life as a civil in stru m en t, as do official interventions into family life when children play tru an t from school. However, and regardless o f w hat m inisters had in m ind when fram ing the respec­ tive legislation, in each case a failure to comply with w hat has been ordered may eventually transform a civil action into a crim inal one, and with it the possibility of im prisonm ent. For instance, over the last six years, around 130 p arents have been sent to prison because th eir children have tru an ted . This raises a further issue regarding blam e for juvenile offending. The huge increase in p arenting orders for p arents o f youngsters w ho offend suggests th at it is the p arents who are to blam e; and yet, lowering the age o f crim inal responsibility to 10 in the 1998 Crime and D isorder Act, suggests th at the offender is to blam e. In practice, it seems that, som ehow, both are to blam e. The governm ent now plans to build two new ‘tita n ’ prisons, which betw een them will hold 5,000 prisoners, and the M inistry o f Justice estim ates th at England and Wales will have a prison population o f 96,000 by 2014. These will be private prisons (the p ri­ vatisation o f the prison estate during L abour’s term s o f office has also a ttracted a large am ount of critical attention from crim inologists).

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Social policy u nder New L abour is oriented prim arily tow ards the achievem ent o f equality of opportunity, rather then a redistribution o f incom e and wealth and a reduction in m aterial inequality per se, which raises an obvious question: how can equality o f o p p ortun ity be achieved in a society th at is fundam entally unequal? Blanden et al. (2004) have carried out research com paring the incom e o f people born in 1958 with the incom e o f those born in 1970 in order to assess am ounts o f social

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m obility during these respective periods. Those growing up in the earlier period, when m aterial inequality was decreasing, m oved further ahead o f their p a re n ts’ incom e than did those grow ing up in the latter period, a period when m aterial inequality was increasing. Research by Paxton and Dixon (2004) show ed th at there had been a reduction in the n um ber o f people living in poverty in this country (‘poverty’ is defined as 60 per cent o f m edian earnings after taking housing costs into account) since New Labour came to power. Furtherm ore, w hilst the child poverty rate in Britain in 1998 was the highest am ong the then fifteen European m em ber states, by 2001 it was in eleventh position. In 2004 the governm ent achieved its target o f reduc­ ing child poverty by 1 m illion, and has a target o f halving child poverty by 2010 (it is highly unlikely th at they will m eet this target, especially given the current econom ic recession). However, inequalities in incom e and in wealth have continued to widen since 1997, continuing a twenty-five-year tren d beginning in the late 1970s. O f partic­ ular im portance w ithin the context o f this discussion is th at the living stan d ard s of the poorest 1 per cent have fallen. After falling each year since 1996/97, in 2005/06, then again in 2006/07, the pro p o rtio n o f people living in poverty in the UK rose; in 1996/97 the figure was 25 per cent and in 2006/2007, 22 per cent. Currently, 30 per cent o f children live in poverty (for detailed, up-to-date inform ation, see Palm er et al., 2008; for a review o f poverty and inequality since Labour came to power in 1997, see Hills et al., 2009).

CRIM E P R E V E N T IO N , CRIM E R E D U C T IO N AND COM MUNITY SAFETY

As we saw in C hapter 12, politicians and policy m akers in both Britain and the United States had, by the 1980s, becom e disenchanted with the notion o f rehabilitation and approaches to crim inal justice based upon welfarist principles. In a ‘nothing w orks’ (M artinson, 1974) atm osphere, and encouraged by right-w ing political agendas, there was a shift in policy tow ards inform al, as well as form al, m odes o f social control, and crim e prevention policies based upon the idea o f situational crim e control. This shift was influenced by the work o f adm inistrative and conservative crim inologists, and in tu rn stim ulated fu rth er academ ic work of this so rt (for a b rief review, see Jam es and Raine, 1998). A lthough ‘D efinitions o f crim e prevention . . . rem ain the subject o f intense debate’ (Crawford, 1998: 27), it becam e a key organising concept for crim inal justice policy m akers from the early 1980s onw ards (see, for exam ple: Tuck, 1988; G raham and Bennett, 1995; Ekblom, 2000; Pease, 2002), though it was largely used in relation to situational crim e control. T hroughout the 1980s and 1990s various governm ental and non-governm ental bodies were set up and charged w ith developing ‘best prac­ tice’ in areas of crim e prevention, and a variety o f reports on this them e were p u b ­ lished. One such re p o rt published by the S tanding Conference on Crime Prevention

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in 1991 - the M organ Report - was destined to be particularly influential. The authors suggested th at crim e prevention should be a statu to ry responsibility o f local authorities, though they preferred the term ‘com m unity safety’ to th at o f crim e p re­ vention. The incum bent governm ent may not have been overly im pressed by the report, especially because o f the Conservatives unw illingness to devolve crim e p re­ vention responsibilities to the local authorities (the governm ent responded by replac­ ing the Standing Conference with an o th er body - a N ational Board for Crime Prevention), bu t the re p o rt’s sentim ents were in accord w ith those o f nascent New Labour. As the discussion th at follows indicates, New L abour’s approach to law and order exhibits both continuities and discontinuities w ith th at o f the previous ad m in istra­ tion, in addition to being contingent upon wider, global social and econom ic changes. Key exam ples o f continuity are: • a continuing core investm ent in strategies o f situational crim e control (linked, ini­ tially, to com m unity safety, then to crim e reduction); • a com m itm ent to the notion o f pa rtn e rsh ip s and inter-agency cooperation; • a com m itm ent to m arket-style reform s, privatisation and the m anagem ent of problem s o f crim e and disorder through a process o f devolution o f responsibility to crim inal justice m anagers and the local com m unity; • an em phasis on the m anagem ent o f risk and the reduction o f victim isation, rather th an on trad itio n al crim inal justice concerns such as the apprehension and convic­ tion of offenders; • presiding over a large, expanding prison population as p a rt o f an avowed m ission to be ‘tough on crim e’. In spite o f the Conservative governm ent’s rejection o f m any o f its recom m endations, the ideas presented in the M organ Report found fertile ground w ithin m any local authorities p rior to the 1997 election. Although som e local authorities had in tro ­ duced strategies based upon the notion of com m unity safety in the 1980s (when it was virtually synonym ous w ith crim e prevention), during the 1990s local authority discourses on crim e and disorder were increasingly stru ctu red around the term , and by the mid-1990s a m ajority had policy statem ents on com m unity safety in place. This process was encouraged by the availability o f central governm ent funding (in the shape o f the Challenge Fund and p artn ersh ip grants). Social policy was, it appeared, being crim inalised. C om m unity safety continued to have a pow erful resonance am ong local authorities following the election o fN ew Labour, and there was a p ro ­ liferation o f com m unity safety coordinators/officers, and com m unity safety stra t­ egies. However, there was (and is) no consensus regarding the precise definition of ‘com m unity safety’. There is som e agreem ent on a general level regarding its m eaning, though. It is seen as encom passing a broader range o f risk-related, quality o f life issues th an the

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concept o f crim e prevention, for exam ple anti-social behaviour, the so-called fear of crim e, road safety and environm ental pollution. The obvious question to ask, though, is where is the line to be draw n? W riting prior to the election o f a Labour adm inistration, Hughes (1998: 10) argued th at its conceptual vagueness opens up at least the possibility o f progressive policies at the local level: . . . the very emptiness of the concept of community safety . . . perhaps offers the opportunity for creative ideological appropriation by local, progressive alliances and networks which could challenge regressive local and centralist tendencies on law and order. It is also generally agreed (in conform ity with the M organ R eport) th at com m unity safety is concerned with both the situational and the social aspects o f crim e and dis­ order, in the sense th at dealing with such problem s requires the involvem ent of the local com m unity in general - local residents, the local authority, business and various agencies - so th at on the basis o f partn ersh ip s and m ulti-agency cooperation, all are actively m obilised in the pursuit o f a safer social environm ent. The em phasis on the victim has m ade crim e prevention virtually synonym ous with victim isation avoid­ ance, thereby continuing an approach to crim inal justice based increasingly on the m anagem ent o f risk (the concept o f ‘risk’ is discussed below). Such an approach, directed at risky situations, risky populations and populations at risk, requires the developm ent o f m echanism s capable o f auditing and assessing risk w ithin a local context. As a consequence, under the custodianship ofN ew Labour, we have seen the fu rth er intru sio n o f an audit culture into crim inal justice processes and beyond. Insurance com panies have honed th eir actuarial skills and produced assessm ents of the risks o f household burglary according to particular postcodes. This inform ation can then be used to determ ine the costs o f insurance prem ium s, and w hether or not conditions involving extra security m easures should be attached to a policy; in som e cases, the inform ation results in a refusal to provide insurance (actuarialism and crim inal justice policy is discussed below). This offers an o th er glim pse o f an evolving process o f w hat came to be term ed ‘responsibilisation’ in this country, w hereby indi­ vidual citizens are expected to becom e active pa rtn e rs in the prevention and reduc­ tion of crim e (O ’Malley, 1996; Haggerty, 2003). Beginning in the 1980s, and continuing today, the realm o f penology has em braced the techniques o f m anagem ent through electronic tagging and the extension and increasing privatisation o f the prison estate. In the case o f the latter, attem p ts at reha­ bilitation (especially in relation to younger prisoners) still continue, bu t the prim ary concern is with cost effectiveness, and the control o f prisoners through incapacita­ tion. The high recidivism rates, especially am ong young offenders, provide a sobering counter-argum ent to the view th at 'prison w orks’. A lthough m anagerialist techniques of risk reduction th at seek to identify those thought to pose the greatest threat are very often directed at the socially excluded, a significant developm ent over the past

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few years is the application of these techniques to the population in general, or at least those who happen to be present in a particular location, for exam ple one cov­ ered by CCTV cam eras (though research has shown that, in practice, operatives in CCTV control room s often use com m on-sense a n d /o r discrim inatory u n d e rstan d ­ ings o f ‘risky people’ - see N orris and A rm strong, 1999).

From community safety to community crime reduction New L abour’s ideas on law and order th at were developed p rior to th eir election vic­ tory culm inated in the 1998 Crime and D isorder Act, which m ade local authorities and the police the ‘responsible au th o rities’ working in p artn ersh ip with other agen­ cies as m em bers o f a Crime and D isorder Reduction Partnership (CDRP). The govern­ m ent also provided a significant am o u n t o f funding linked to a N ational Crime Reduction Strategy, as p art o f its com prehensive spending review. The strategy reflected the governm ent’s enthusiasm for evaluative crim inological research aim ed at establishing exam ples o f ‘w hat w orks’, and the use o f the term ‘crim e red u ctio n ’ ra th e r than ‘com m unity safety’, itself indicated a narrow ing o f focus and the creation o f a policy dom ain where success or failure are m ore am enable to quantitative assess­ m ent. A ‘w hat w orks’ database has been produced by the Crime Prevention College; Hom e Office ‘toolkits’ provided practical advice to local CDRPs; and the Social Exclu­ sion Unit works in unison w ith the Crime Prevention Agency in order to coordinate various cross-departm ental initiatives. In addition, NVQ education program m es in this field have been developed as a way o f enhancing p ractitioner expertise. In sum , it is a complex, and still developing, edifice built around notions o f risk, crim e reduc­ tion, com m unity, partn ersh ip s and audits. Particularly w orth noting in this respect is the statutory duty placed on the responsible authorities in England and Wales to p ro ­ duce three-yearly crim e and disorder ‘strategic asssessm ents in their locality, and to use the inform ation as the basis for setting a crim e and disorder reduction strategy, and assessing the success or otherw ise o f previous strategies’ (Tierney, 2001). A n u m ­ ber o f w riters have pointed out th a t the success o f initiatives derived from a ‘w hat w orks’ principle is d ependent upon local political and organisational contexts. As Tilley (2001: 81) says, the principle becom es ‘dangerous nonsense’ when these con­ texts are not taken into account. Crime reduction may have replaced com m unity safety as the central focus, but ‘com m unity’ plays a central role in crim e reduction discourses, and incorporates notions o f social disorganisation, subcultural strain theory and relative deprivation. There is also a tendency to characterise neighbourhoods in term s o f ‘the com m unity’ - victim s or potential victim s o f crim e - and, regardless o f w hether or no t they actu­ ally live in the neighbourhood, ‘outsiders’ - th at is, offenders. The com m unity is expected to involve itself in crim e reduction (N eighbourhood W atch, im proved secu­ rity, providing witnesses, and engaging in consultation processes w ith CDRPs).

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Research on inter- or m ulti-agency partn ersh ip s, including my own research (T ier­ ney, 2001), has indicated som e o f the problem s th a t can arise due to sectional in ter­ ests and power differentials (Crawford, 1997; Gilling, 1997). The police, for instance, may dom inate the local policy process because o f their role o f ‘inform ation brokers’ (Ericson, 1994). G arland (2000) argues th at these developm ents have created a ‘crim e com plex’ - a ‘distinctive culture’ where public opinion and m edia and political dis­ courses are obsessively concerned with the risks o f crim e. As a consequence, people are acutely conscious o f the requirem ent to m anage and organise th eir lives in order to avoid victim isation, which in tu rn has led to the grow th of a vast, and highly lucra­ tive, security industry. And as Stenson (2 0 0 1 :2 2 -3 ) says: The introduction, inter alia, of CCTV, new insurance technologies, new means to assess and manage ‘dangerousness’ and other risks of crime . . . are among the host of ways in which new powers have, to use Michel Foucault’s term, created a new ‘governmentality’. This refers to the new means to render populations thinkable and measurable, through categorisation, differentiation, and sorting into hierarchies.

CRIM E A N D C R IM IN A L JU S T I C E : T H E W I D E R C O N T E X T

Globalisation, social change and late modernity By the last p a rt o f the tw entieth century a variety o f global social, econom ic and po lit­ ical changes were already having a profound im pact on social life - locally and at the level of the nation state. As we have seen, crim inology as an academ ic discipline was a pro duct o f the E nlightenm ent, and for m ost o f its history has allied itself to w hat has been described as a m odernist project. Criminology, along with oth er disciplines, has had to confront the challenges posed by these changes to the nature o f social life, as well as the intellectual challenges em erging from the developm ent o f w hat p u rp o rt to be m ore ap propriate m odes o f theoretical analysis. The society th at we now inhabit has been variously, and som etim es bewilderingly, labelled as late-m odernity, highm odernity, liquid m odernity, hyperm odernity, postm odernity, post-fordist, p o st­ industrial, New Tim es and risk society. If the social w orld can no longer be described as ‘m o d ern ist’, then, it is argued, m odernist m ethodologies, intellectual assum ptions and conceptual fram ew orks harnessed in an effort to explain and u n d erstan d crime and deviance are singularly unsuited to the task at hand (South, 1997). The m ost stri­ dent expressions o f such a view are associated with postm o d ern ist social thought, and this and its influence on sociological crim inology are exam ined in C hapter 15. However, although there is w idespread agreem ent am ong sociologists that, since the m id-tw entieth century, there have been m ajor changes to social life, there are intense debates regarding the precise nature of these changes, as indicated by the various labels used to describe p resent conditions. For som e, there has been a qualitative

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transform ation o f such m agnitude th a t sociology’s theories and concepts have ceased to be viable (Baudrillard, 1988), w hilst others view the m odernist project as u n ­ finished (H aberm as, 1987). There is not the space here to delve into the complex nuances o f these debates, but we can sum m arise the m ain social, econom ic and political changes th at have been identified (needless to say, the im pact o f these varies from society to society, as well as in particular societies): • globalisation: • post-industrialism and post-fordism ; • the dom inance o f neo-liberal laissez-faire capitalism , accom panied by a stress on individualism and an intense consum erist culture, where consum ption functions as the vehicle for exploring and developing identities; • a re structuring of labour m arkets and social class relations, involving a flexible and rapidly changing workforce; • the expansion of inform ation technology and m ass com m unications, im pacting on the circulation o f knowledge, which, together w ith greater am ounts o f geo­ graphical m obility, have led to w hat G arland and Sparks (2000) describe as ‘the stretching o f tim e and space’; • a restructuring o f family and com m unity life; • enhanced o pportunities to construct personal identities freed from the cultural constraints associated with class, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, leading to diverse and contradictory social processes; • a heightened sense o f uncertainty and am biguity regarding social life and increas­ ing concerns with risk and security; • the (paradoxical) growth o f both individually located m oral relativism and funda­ m entalist appeals to m oral absolutism . Some tim e ago, Hood (1991) used the term New Public M anagem ent to describe the ways in which organisational techniques previously associated with the private sector were now being applied to public sector organisations, including those concerned with crim inal justice. Driven by the principles o f efficiency, effectiveness and econ­ omy, this approach continued with the election o fN e w Labour in 1997. In conse­ quence, the world of crim inal justice is now steeped in m anagerialist concepts of targets, auditable perform ance, best value and consum er sovereignty, and strongly com m itted to m arket-based com petition as well as, where th o u g h t appropriate, p ri­ vatisation. It has also incorporated a process o f decentralisation, w hereby respon­ sibility and accountability for im plem enting crim inal justice policies are devolved by central governm ent to smaller, localised organisational units. This is particularly evi­ dent in the case o f local Crime and D isorder Reduction P artnerships. T hus overall policies derive from central governm ent, which also controls the funding available, but these policies are pu t into practice at a local level, on the basis of inter-agency

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partn ersh ip s. Political theorists have described these developm ents as, for example: ‘Hollowing out o f the national state’ (Jessop, 1993); ‘G overning w ithout governm ent’ (Rhodes, 1997); ‘Death o f the social’ (Rose, 1996). As Leishm an et al. (1996) have argued, though, processes o f governance based upon elem ents o f centralisation, decentralisation and fragm entation, carry the potential for conflict am ong the con­ stitu en t parts. This raises an im p o rta n t, general issue. In these analyses, such developm ents are situated w ithin the context o f an increasingly globalised world; however, the social, econom ic and political features o f globalisation find expression in regional and local contexts. In oth er words, globalisation does no t m ean the end o f the local. As H obbs (1998:416) p u ts it in a discussion o f organised crime: The dialectics between the local and global . . . epitomises and underlines markets in both the legitimate and illegitimate spheres where complex affinities between global and local spaces are negotiated, creating an enacted environment consisting of indige­ nous renditions of global markets.

Risk and security In recent years, a significant am ount o f academ ic work has focused on the notion of risk, including, notably, Beck (1992) and his concept o f a ‘risk society’ (see also, Furedi, 1997; Leonard, 1997; Franklin, 1998; G iddens, 1998). In such a society, there is a heightened sensitivity to, and aw areness of, th reats to personal security. The risks involved perm eate all areas o f social life, taking in such things as crim e, pollution, disease, contam inated foodstuffs and nuclear accidents. W hilst it is acknowledged th a t risks have been a feature o f social life thro u g h o u t history, in contem porary soci­ eties risks are seen as an unpredictable consequence o f global technological and eco­ nom ic developm ents: The modern view of risk was as artefact, measurable, knowable, calculable, and pre­ dictable. Risks in late or postmodernity as it has been dubbed, are characterized by uncertainty, indeterminancy, contingency and their global impact. Contemporary risks also require personal choice and navigation, resulting in increased uncertainty, anxiety and reflexivity. (Kemshall, 2003: 8) Kemshall (2003: 8), though, also p oints out that: ‘risk is actually a highly politicized and contentious concept, and has changed both in term s o f m eaning and usage th roughout history’. The contentious nature of the concept o f risk is indicated by a num ber of critical responses to, for example, Beck’s characterisation o f the ‘risk society’ (see, for instance,

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Adams, 1995; Turner, 2001). W ithin the context of law and order, the politicised nature o f discourses of risk has two im p o rtan t im plications. First, an em phasis upon the risks o f crim inal victim isation can generate political capital if the public believes that a party in power, or a party seeking power, offers the best hope o f m inim ising the chances o f such victim isation. And, second, the public’s preoccupation with the risk of victim isation can prepare the ground for the acceptance of new, m ore intrusive, leg­ islative powers introduced as necessary if the public is to be protected. Current con­ cerns with international terrorism following the attacks on the New York W'orld Trade Center in 2001, London in 2005, and elsewhere around the world, have led to a wide range o f global responses, involving both internal and external security. The British governm ent’s anti-terrorist legislation, for example, allows suspects to be detained for lengthy periods w ithout charge or access to legal advice, a sim ilar situation to th at at G uantanam o Bay in Cuba, where hundreds o f suspected terrorists are presently being held in detention (though US President O bam a plans to have the facility closed down in the near future).

Surveillance Allied to discussions o f security and risk is the issue of surveillance. D evelopm ents in various form s o f surveillance in the UK since 1997 have stim ulated m uch research and debate am ong politicians, journalists and civil liberties organisations, as well as academ ic crim inologists. It is estim ated th at there are betw een 4 and 5 m illion CCTV cam eras currently in use in the UK, a greater n u m b er than in any oth er country in the w orld. Cam eras are increasingly incorporating autom atic n um ber plate recognition (ANPR), and in the near future this will allow all road vehicle journeys to be tracked and recorded. Infor­ m ation will be stored for up to five years. In addition, m any CCTV cam eras include facial recognition technology. T ransport for London ‘O yster’ cards record details of journeys m ade, and this inform ation can be requested by authorised agencies. If im plem ented through legislation, the governm ent’s 2008 com m unication data bill will create a central database able to track all telephone calls th at an individ­ ual makes, every website visited, and every text and email they send. It is intended th at this inform ation will be routinely stored and analysed. The bill proposes that telecom s com panies and internet service providers will be legally required to give this inform a­ tion to the Hom e Office in order to protect national security and aid in the detection of crime. Records based on m obile netw orks can now locate a caller to within 100 metres, wherever they are. The new database will be operated by the private sector. Since O cto­ ber 2008, telecom s com panies have been required to store records of phone calls and text messages for twelve m onths. At the present tim e, under the Regulation of Investi­ gatory Powers Act, approxim ately 700 bodies are licensed to m ake a certified request

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to telecom s or internet com panies for inform ation on the use o f th eir services by indi­ viduals. D uring the last 12 m onths, around half a m illion requests were m ade. The Act allows local authorities to, in effect, spy on residents in order, for exam ple, to satisfy them selves that a particular family actually lives w ithin the catchm ent area o f a school to which they have applied to send their child. ID cards containing biom etric inform ation are gradually being introduced in the UK. The process began in 2008 with foreign residents and is scheduled to take four years to com plete. Inform ation from ID cards will be stored on the N ational Identity Register, a database capable o f recording all instances where an individual discloses their identity in order to access a service, for exam ple when hiring a car or booking a flight. This inform ation will stay on the database until the cardholder dies. Piloted in 2004, the N ational e-Borders Scheme uitilises advance passenger infor­ m ation from airlines etc. in order to establish personal profiles o f anyone entering or leaving the UK. W here necessary, travel histories can be built up using biom etric data, such as iris p attern s and face recognition. The system is expected to becom e fully operational in 2009, and the inform ation is prim arily for use by the Home Office, though other governm ent security agencies will, when necessary, have access to it. It is also w orth noting th at since the attacks on the W orld Trade Center in New York in 2001, m ajor agreem ents relating to issues o f security have been established betw een the European Union and the United States. As Bunyan (2 0 0 8 :1 ) p oints out, there are six agreem ents covering justice and hom e affairs: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Europol (exchange of data) Mutual assistance (yet to come into effect) PNR (passenger name record) SWIFT (all financial transactions, commercial and personal) Extradition (yet to come into effect) Container Security Initiative (CSI)

The first four involve the exchange of personal information on individuals. All have been controversial with the one on PNR going to the European Court of Justice with the result that its legal basis had to be changed. In pro p o rtio n to its population, the UK has the largest DNA database in the w orld. According to the Hom e Office, genetic sam ples from 7 per cent o f the population are stored on the database. Virtually everyone arrested by the police for a recordable offence is required to provide a DNA sam ple, regardless o f w hether or not crim inal proceedings follow, and the inform ation is retained until the individual reaches their 100th birthday. G enetic inform ation on ju st over 1 m illion children and juveniles aged u nder 18 years is now stored on this database. Hom e Office figures indicate th at of these, 88 per cent were either charged, convicted or received a w arning; however,

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the percentage o f these who were charged bu t subsequently found not guilty has not been m ade public. Townsend and A sthana (2008:1) re p o rt that: The director of forensic science at Scotland Yard and DNA spokesman for the Associa­ tion of Chief Police Officers, said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five. The retention o f the DNA o f those no t found guilty o f a crim inal offence has been o f particular concern to m any people. In fact, in 2008 the European C ourt o f H um an Rights ruled th at the UK governm ent was in breach o f the European Convention by retaining the genetic m aterial o f innocent people. D evelopm ents in surveillance technologies and techniques in the UK and other countries are a response to previous and possible future acts o f terrorism , as well as increasingly sophisticated and globalised form s o f (non-political) crim e, notably ille­ gal drug m arkets. Critical debate regarding these developm ents has focused on neces­ sity and efficacy (do we need all of these m easures and do they work?), and issues of privacy and civil liberties (has the reach and pow er of surveillance gone too far?). The answ ers to these questions are, o f course, not at all self-evident, bu t depend upon both knowledge and subjective judgem ents. Few m em bers o f the public possess any significant relevant knowledge relating to, for instance, the am ount and nature o f ter­ rorist actions th at have been thw arted, or the n um ber o f crim inal convictions result­ ing from the use o f different sorts o f surveillance. Thus, in general, judgem ents will be inform ed by beliefs and im pressions regarding successful outcom es, com bined with subjective perceptions regarding civil liberties, privacy and hum an rights. M any w riters have gathered together the issues raised above and discussed them w ithin the context of h um an rights. Raab (2009), for exam ple, provides a critical overview o f the increase in the state’s legal pow ers since Labour came to power in 1997, pointing out th at since then, the Hom e Office has introduced m ore legislation th an all previous governm ents com bined.

Actuarial justice The origins o f actuarialism lie in the insurance business. It refers to the process o f using statistical data in order to calculate the chances o f a particular type of event, such as an injury or a burglary, occurring. This assessm ent of risk is based upon the production o f aggregated data, for exam ple all houses w ithin a given postcode area, or all people o f a certain age. Insurance prem ium s reflect the degree o f risk: the greater the risk, the greater the prem ium . A ccording to Feeley and Sim on (1994)

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actuarialist principles have gradually perm eated the crim inal justice process. Referred to as actuarial justice, it involves identifying, classifying and, ultim ately, m anaging populations th at are considered to pose a threat to others. Borrowing from the w orld o f insurance, the focus is on these populations as aggregates, rath er than as individuals and, unlike traditional approaches to justice, where individuals are judged after they have offended, here judgem ents are anticipatory: Actuarial reasoning about risk gives rise to distinctive techniques for managing risk. Risk-management is forward-looking, predictive, oriented to aggregate entities and concerned with the minimization of harms and costs, rather than with the attribution of blame or the dispensation of individual justice. (Garland, 1997:182) Strategies o f actuarial justice, then, depend upon the collation of inform ation in order to build up profiles of high risk populations. The police (especially police Intel­ ligence Units) are a key repository for this inform ation, which can come from a wide range o f sources: crim inal records, beat officers, inform ers, N eighbourhood W atch m em bers, targeted surveillance, CCTV operatives, etc. However, w hilst actuarial dis­ courses p resent an image o f rational-scientific risk assessm ent and decision m aking, research shows th a t the authorities often use m oral judgem ents, guessw ork and hunches based upon stereotypical understandings o f particular groups, and actuarial justice is to a significant extent m obilised to target the socially and econom ically deprived sections o f society (Stillman-Ashby, 2004). Using the exam ple o f the regula­ tion o f stu d e n t alcohol use in Canada, M oore (2000) shows how the authorities utilise com m on sense, as well as ‘scientific’ actuarial knowledge, as a basis for decision m ak­ ing. A further dim ension to this, as H udson (1995: 12) has argued, is th at the use of actuarial, ‘risk factor’ assessm ent as the basis o f sentencing can discrim inate against black people: ‘Criteria such as stable hom e or em ploym ent record obviously disad­ vantage black people who have higher rates of unem ploym ent and face m ore discrim ­ ination in housing, th an do th eir w hite c o u n te rp arts’.

C R I M I N O L O G Y IN T H E N E W

MILLENNIUM

We can begin this section with som e good news. Since the first edition of this book appeared in 1996, crim inology’s fortunes as an academ ic discipline have im proved significantly. This includes sociological crim inology, though the whole issue o f once relatively discrete academ ic subject areas has becom e m ore contentious and p ro b ­ lem atic. However, the last few years have seen a large grow th in the n um ber o f u n d er­ graduate and postgraduate degree program m es in crim inology, and associated areas (helped partly by the governm ent’s com m itm ent to expanding the n um ber of people studying for a degree and, good or bad, by the popularity o f the television series

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Cracker and CSI), and NVQ courses in com m unity safety have been introduced in the fu rth er education sector. There are also now ‘benchm ark sta te m en ts’ for crim inology from the Q uality A ssurance Agency (these function to provide academ ic guidelines for undergraduate degree program m es in England and Wales). At the sam e tim e, individual m odules in the sociology o f crim e and deviance, offered as com ponents of a b roader sociology undergraduate degree, continue to be popular. As G arland (2002: 45) says in a historical review o f crim inology: ‘its continued expansion is p e r­ haps a m easure o f the social and in stitutional forces th a t continue to underw rite the existence o f British crim inology’. This expansion w ithin higher education has had a m ultiplier effect in term s of the n um ber o f academ ics teaching and researching in the area o f crim inology and, obvi­ ously, work is m ore likely to be published if there exists a thriving m arket. This is good news for those working within the discipline, especially if they are the a u thors of crim inology texts such as this. A fu rth er consideration here is the sw ord o f Dam ocles hanging over the heads (and furrow ed brows) o f academ ics these days - the periodic Research A ssessm ent Exercise (RAE). U nder this system , exam ples o f published research are subm itted to a national body for assessm ent. The subsequent ratings contribute to the reputation o f a university and its subject areas in term s o f research activity and quality, as well as the am ount o f research funding th at can be attracted. This too has c o ntributed to the blossom ing o f research and publications am ong all academ ic disciplines, including crim inology. However, debates about the overall quality o f such publications, rath er th an the quantity, have tru n d led on since the inception o f the RAE process, bu t these will be sidestepped here. We can also note th at an expansion o f stu d en t num bers in universities has led to increasing financial pressures on this sector, with the result th at m anagers have increasingly encouraged academ ic staff to seek out research grants. For crim inologists, evaluative research has provided one o f these sources o f incom e. The grow th of w hat M arginson and Considine (2000) have called the ‘enterprise university’ has, however, had im p o rta n t ram i­ fications in term s o f advances in the developm ent o f crim inological theory. Lacking ‘practical’ relevance and, if w ritten from a critical perspective, antagonistic tow ards the m achinery o f social control w ithin neo-liberal econom ies, funding directed at th e ­ oretical scholarship is likely to be in relatively short supply. The developm ent o f an approach to crim inal justice based on decentralisation and infused with notions o f risk, perform ance indicators, audits and ‘w hat w orks’ has cre­ ated a grow ing dem and for various types o f national and locally based research. Although m uch national research o f this sort has been carried out by Home Office researchers, it has also been contracted out to academ ic crim inologists. At a local level, as m entioned earlier, Crime and D isorder Reduction P artnerships (CDRP) are obliged to carry out yearly audits o f crim e and disorder (including com m unity con­ sultation and ‘fear of crim e’ surveys), and develop crim e and disorder reduction stra t­ egies - since 2006 these have been referred to as ‘strategic assessm ents’. Along with this, they are expected to conduct evaluations o f crim e and disorder reduction

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initiatives introduced locally. As a consequence, and especially during the first few years following the 1998 Crime and D isorder Act (which introduced a three-yearly version) when ‘in-house’ expertise tended to be in sh o rt supply, crim inologists found them selves in dem and (though local authorities and their CDRPs also used private research organisations). Evaluative, policy-oriented research is, o f course, no t the sam e as research oriented tow ards the developm ent o f theory, and for this reason often has little status am ong those who have grander am bitions for crim inology. Additionally, B ottom s (1995) argues th at policy-oriented research o f this kind often pushes the researchers into a world m ore fam iliar to accountants th an crim inolo­ gists. On a m ore optim istic note, though, local research o f this type could provide o pportunities to venture beyond ‘evaluation’ as narrow ly conceived. There is the potential for academ ic researchers to influence the local policy process by utilising a critical perspective and draw ing on the conceptual language o f academ ic crim inol­ ogy. Furtherm ore, the findings from evaluation research can provide the raw m ate­ rials for the developm ent o f theoretical ideas. As the Am erican critical crim inologist Currie (2007: 183) puts it: ‘the bottom line question is . . . if we d o n ’t do this work, who will?’ N onetheless, and as W alters (2001:215) rem inds us: Criminology throughout its development has largely been a state-directed enterprise and there is a growing trend by government to shape the type and production of criminological knowledge, that is, a pragmatic knowledge tied to the immediate needs of the state apparatus. Thus the type o f crim inological research th at is in dem and, and listened to by policy m akers, is circum scribed by particular political agendas and convictions. The research referred to above is directed at already existing crim inal justice policies; the influence o f crim inological research on the actual creation o f policy is m uch less apparent. This is an issue explored by H aggerty (2003) (see also, Becket, 1997; Caplow and Sim on, 1999; and W alters, 2007). A lthough he discusses it w ithin the context o f the U nited States, it does have relevance to experiences in Britain. His basic argum ent is th at since the 1970s, academ ic crim inology’s influence on the develop­ m ent o f governm ent policy has dim inished significantly, due to (i) the grow th of neo­ liberalism (ii) the ‘ascendancy of a highly sym bolic public discourse about crim e’ (Haggerty, 2003:217), m aking it a key factor in elections, and (iii) the in troduction of new technologies o f control. Under these conditions, the legitim isation and endorse­ m ent o f crim inal justice policies by experts from crim inology becom es increasingly irrelevant, th eir places taken by political advisers and focus groups. A lthough crim i­ nological research still has an im p o rta n t role to play, its value is judged in term s of its pragm atic c o n tribution to particular strategies o f crim e control: ‘crim inologists becom ing experts in the operation o f distinctive form s o f panoptic pow er’ (Haggerty, 2004: 217). This is no t to say th at crim inologists have had no influence on policy

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fo rm atio n over the last tw enty-five years or so, rather, th a t w hen they have been influ­ ential it is because th eir expert c o n trib u tio n s are co n g ru en t w ith th a t g o v e rn m e n t’s bro ad political agenda. T his agenda has increasingly taken c o n su m er preferences, located in percep tio n s o f ‘public o p in io n ’, in to account. It is for this reason th at ad m in istrativ e crim inology (discussed in C h ap ter 13), w ith its em phasis on crim e red u ctio n th ro u g h situ atio n al crim e control, has c o n tin u ed to have an in fluential role in term s o f policy. At the sam e tim e, m ain stre am crim inology’s em pirical w ork on the correlation betw een various social and econom ic factors an d the p ro p en sity to offend has found a ready audience am o n g local CDRPs (see the discussion o f c rim inal career research in C h ap ter 13). T his has arisen from the re q u ire m e n t to identify such things as crim e an d d iso rd e r h ot-spots an d young people at risk’, an d in the process con­ sider w hat are seen as relevant causal factors (though local strategies are d o m in a ted by situ atio n al crim e co n tro l an d ‘co m m u n ity safety’). The crim inal career research associated w ith m ain stre am crim inology is now adays su b su m ed u n d e r th e title o f de velopm ental crim inology, an d is c oncerned w ith: . . . the development of offending and anti-social behaviour; risk factors at different ages; and the effects of life events on the course of developm ent. . . efforts are made to investigate the prevalence of offending at different ages, the frequency of offending by offenders, the ages of onset and desistance, and specialization and escalation of offend­ ing overtime. (Farrington, 2002: 658, in a useful overview) T he pressu re on academ ic crim inologists and c o n tra ct researchers to a ttra c t outside research fu n d in g now adays, and the im plications o f this from the p o in t o f view o f the co n strain ts it im poses on the n a tu re o f the research carried out, is for m any a m ajor source o f concern. For exam ple, in a fairly bleak assessm ent, B arton et al. (2007: 200) com m ent: Academic researchers, if they fail to break out of the state and policy-funded trap, are expected to spend their entire careers working to research specifications and answering research questions designed by bureaucrats. The disciplinary aspects of this process are obvious, as are the less remarked-upon effects of alienation experienced by this growing army of contract researchers in universities. However, we sh o u ld n o t ignore th e progressive gains in relation to c rim inal justice policy th a t have been n udged along by im p o rta n t c o n trib u tio n s from m ore critical researchers and th eo rists. G ood exam ples are in areas o f dom estic violence, racially m otivated violence, and rape. Q uestions regarding the role and relevance o f crim inology have surfaced recently w ithin the co ntext o f deb ates a ro u n d the n o tio n o f public crim inologies. These deb ates have been influenced by B uraw oy’s (2004, 2005) a rg u m e n ts in favour o f

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developing a public sociology, w ith crim inologists shifting the focus from one aca­ demic discipline to another. Following Burawoy, advocates o f public crim inologies (see, for exam ple, C hancer and M cLaughlin, 2007; Currie, 2007) take the argum ent beyond the need to sim ply engage in policy-oriented research. W hilst there are dis­ putes as to its precise m eaning, on a general level ‘public’ crim inology looks beyond academ ia, and seeks to inform b roader public and political debate and m edia repre­ sentations, in order to have a significant (and progressive) influence on public policy relating to crim e and crim inal justice. T hus, for exam ple, instead of w riting books th a t will only be read by a handful o f academ ics, crim inologists are encouraged to put their energies into inform ative crim inological books th at are aim ed at a m uch wider audience - in the United States such books are referred to (som etim es disparagingly) as ‘tra d e ’ books (Currie, 2007). W hen governm ents place great em phasis on a tte m p t­ ing to m atch their policies to ‘public o p in io n ’ - as assessed by, for instance, so-called focus groups - then influencing public opinion could play a p art in, in tu rn , influenc­ ing public policy. This is an interesting and im p o rta n t issue, and raises the fundam ental question of w hat is crim inology for? There is a long-standing com plaint within the discipline th at academ ic crim inology has m ade little im pact on actual crim inal justice policy and practice. The extent o f this influence has, though, ebbed and flowed over the years. In the im m ediate post-w ar period, w hen the governm ent was striving to construct a wel­ fare state, British crim inologists w orked closely w ith politicians and policy m akers (G arland and Sparks, 2000). In the United States the early 1960s saw strong influence on policy com ing from strain theorists such as Cloward and Ohlin (1960). However, as m entioned above, the influence o f crim inological ideas and knowledge on public policy will always be contingent upon the degree to which they are in tune with the b roader political ideas, or ideologies, o f those in power. Since the 1950s and 1960s the w orld has, o f course, changed enorm ously. As Chance and M cLaughlin (2007: 157) put it: The categorizations that a generation of post-war criminologists took for granted have been sidelined by (a) the politicization of crime fears (b) victim-oriented criminal jus­ tice policy shifts and (c) the extension of private sector involvement in crime control and the delivery of criminal justice services. At the sam e tim e (as this book illustrates), there has been an exponential grow th in the sheer volum e of crim inological research and theory, bringing with it a huge n u m ­ ber o f com peting, and often contradictory voices from w ithin the discipline. Policy m akers have to decide which of these voices to listen to. For Currie (2007:179), p art of the problem lies w ithin the (largely university-based) discipline itself: . . . we are not well set up institutionally to do this job. There are few structural incen­ tives for it, and indeed there are very powerful ¿/«incentives to doing the kind of work

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we need to do if we want to affect the public mind. The hard fact is that you get few points in the academic discipline of criminology. .. for doing this work, and indeed you may get hurt if you do too much of it, especially in the institutions that wield the most ‘clout’ and credibility in the wider world - the research universities. The nature and role o f radical or critical crim inology u nder these circum stances has been the subject o f som e debate since the m id-1990s, and is obviously o f particular interest for those whose work has grown out o f a left-wing, socialist tradition (W alton and Young, 1998; C arrington and Hogg, 2002). The fall from grace o f M arxism which provided radical crim inology’s theoretical foundations - and the dism antling o f state socialism in the form er Soviet Union, etc., and with it the seemingly inex­ orable grow th o f neo-liberal m arket societies, have clearly had a m ajor im pact. The response am ong w riters belonging to this trad itio n has been to theorise the nature o f law -and-order policies w ithin the context of these social, econom ic and political changes (see, for exam ple, Taylor, 1999; G arland, 2000; Pitts, 2001; Stenson and Sul­ livan, 2001; Lea, 2002; M atthew s and Young, 2003), w hilst exploring the possibilities in term s o f developing a distinctive, coherent and convincing radical/critical crim i­ nology in a post-M arxist period (this is exam ined in detail in the next chapter). There are significant challenges attached to this task: Very few would have predicted the rapid demise of radical criminology, a brand of theo­ rizing that once seemed so strong that it would sweep all before it, at least in large parts of Europe, Canada, and Australasia. (Rock, 2002: 75) One pro m in en t writer, Jock Young, w ho continues to address these challenges, m akes an im p o rta n t, positive point regarding critical crim inology at the present tim e: My argument so far is that critical criminology in this age of the gulag and the punitive turn is massively needed - it is the counter-voice to neoliberalism and conservatism. And what is more, critical criminology is flourishing. (Young, 2002:259) Young then goes on to substantiate his claim, listing a large n um ber o f texts in this genre, including this book. Personally, I am happy to endorse this view, w hilst at the sam e tim e acknow ledging th at there is no sim ple answ er to the question o f precisely w hat is m eant by the appellation critical’ in this context. N otw ithstanding this, inevitably, undergraduate students o f crim inology will be introduced to the ideas contained in these texts, and these students will provide the next generation o f th eo ­ rists and researchers (including those who will conduct evaluative research sim ilar to th at discussed above).

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S e le c t e d f u r t h e r r e a d in g A good in tro d u c tio n to the area o f crim e p re v en tio n an d c o m m u n ity safety is Hughes, G. (1 9 9 8 ) Understanding Crime Prevention, Buckingham: O pen University Press; a n d to the th em e o f social c o n tro l in c o n te m p o ra ry society, Innes, M. (2 0 0 3 ) Understanding Social Control:Deviance, crime and social order, M aidenhead: O pen University Press. For m ore detailed analyses o f crim e p re v en tio n an d c o m m u n ity safety see Crawford, A. (1 9 9 8 ) Crime Prevention and Community Safety: Politics, policies and practice, London: Longman; an d M atthew s, R. and Pitts, J. (eds) (2 0 0 1 ) Crime, Disorder and Community

Safety, London: Routledge. G illing, D. (2 0 0 7 ) Crime Reduction and Com m unity Safety: Labour and the politics o f local crime control, Cullom pton: W illan analyses New L ab o u r’s policies an d th e ir im p a c t at a local level. See also, Hughes, G. (2 0 0 7 ) The Politics o f Crime and Community, Basingstoke: Palgrave. C ritical discussions o f a range o f issues p e rta in in g to c o n te m p o ra ry crim e co n tro l are p ro ­ vided by: Stenson, K. and Sullivan, R. R. (eds) (2 0 0 1 ) Crime, Risk and Justice, Cullompton: Willan; M atthews, R. and Young, J. (eds) (2 0 0 3 ) The New Politics o f Crime and Punish­ ment, Cullom pton: W illan; and Blomberg, T. G. and Cohen, S. (eds) (2 0 0 3 ) Punishment and Social Control, 2nd edn, N ew York: Aldine de Gruyter. A critical analysis o f govern­ m en t responses to so called anti-social behav io u r is provided by Burney, E. (2 0 0 5 ) Making People Behave: Anti social behaviour, politics and policy, Cullompton: W illan. The use o f im p riso n m e n t w ithin the co n tex t o f m ark e t society is exam ined by Stern, V. (2 0 0 6 ) Creating Criminals: Prisons and people in market society, London: Zed Books. A very co m p reh en siv e overview o f im p riso n m e n t will be fo u n d in Jewkes, Y. (ed) (2 0 0 7 )

The Prisons Handbook, Cullom pton: W illan. For an a u th o rita tiv e guide to c u rre n t key a n ti-te rro rist legislation in this c o u n try , see W alker, C. (2 0 0 9 ) Blackstone's Guide to the Anti-Terrorism Legislation, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. T he ‘e x tra o rd in a ry re n d itio n ’ p ro g ram m e o f the U nited States, w hich involved the secret tra n sfe r o f te rro rist, or terro rism -co n n e c te d , suspects to p riso n s in various p a rts o f the w orld, is e xam ined by Grey, S. (2 0 0 6 ) Ghost Plane: The

true story o f the CIA torture program, New York: C. Hurst and Co. The classic tex t on ‘risk so ciety ’ is Beck, U. (1 9 9 2 ) Risk Society: Towards a new m oder­ nity, London: Sage, an d K em shall, H. (2 0 0 3 ) Understanding Risk in Criminal Justice, M aidenhead: Open University Press, offers an accessible in tro d u c tio n to n o tio n s o f risk, risk a ssessm en t an d actu arialism w ith in th e co n tex t o f crim in al justice. For a critical discussion o f the L abour g o v e rn m e n t’s legislative p ro g ram m e an d its im p a c t on civil liberties, see Raab, D. (2 0 0 9 ) The Assault on Liberty, London: HarperCollins. A good in tro d u c tio n to surveillance a n d CCTV is C olem an, R. (2 0 0 4 ), Reclaiming

the Streets: Surveillance, social control and the city, Cullom pton: W illan. Also on the th em e o f surveillance: Lyon, D. (2 0 0 7 ) Surveillance Studies: An overview, Oxford: Polity a n d M athiesen, T. (2 0 0 4 ) ‘The rise o f the surveillant state in tim es o f globalization’, in C. Sum ner (ed) The Blackwell Companion to Criminology, Oxford: Blackwell.

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T he c o n cep t o f a ctu aria l justice w as originally p u t forw ard in Feeley, M. and Sim on, J. (1 9 9 4 ) ‘Actuarial justice: The em erging new crim inal law ’, in D. Nelken (ed), The Futures

o f Criminology, London: Sage. R estorative justice has a th eo re tic al basis in th e w ork o f John B raithw aite: Braithwaite, J. (1 9 8 9 ) Crime, Shame and Reintegration, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; for a m ore recen t d iscussion, see Ahm ed, E., Harris, N ., Braithwaite, J. and Braithwaite, V. (2 0 0 1 ) Shame Management Through Reintegration, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A discussion o f resto rativ e ju stice from a p ra c titio n e r’s p erspective is p rovided by Liebm ann, M. (2 0 0 7 ) Restorative Justice: How it works, London: Jessica Kingsley. See W algrave, L. (2 0 0 8 ) Restorative Justice, Self-interest and Responsible Citizenship, Cul­ lom pton: W illan for a so p h istica ted discussion o f the concept. A c o m prehensive overview o f the th eo ry a n d p ractice o f resto rativ e justice is p rovided by Johnstone, G. and Van N ess, D. W . (eds) (2 0 0 6 ) Handbook o f Restorative Justice, Cullom pton: W illan. The jo u rn a l Theoretical Criminology, 10(1), February 200 6 is a special issue on th e th em e of gender, race a n d resto rativ e justice. For an in te re stin g d iscussion o f crim e an d crim e c o n tro l in histo rical context an d c o n te m ­ p o ra ry m an ifestatio n s, see Lea, J. (2 0 0 2 ) Crime and M odernity, London: Sage. An A m erican stu d y o f the crim e c o n tro l in d u stry , w hich seeks to steer a course betw een tra d itio n a l liberal an d conservative o utlooks, is Ruth, H. and Reitz, K. R. (2 0 0 3 ) The Challenge o f Crime: Rethinking our response, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. T he n o tio n o f ‘public crim in o lo g y ’ is explored in detail in Loader, I. and Sparks, R. (2 0 0 8 )

Public Criminology? Studying crime and society in the twenty-first century, Abingdon: Routledge.

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Key th e m e s Postmodernist perspectives Feminist perspectives Perspectives on masculinities Control perspectives Cultural perspectives Critical perspectives

v_

INTRODUCTION

In this final chapter, the discussion o f theoretical developm ents in crim inology is stru ctu red around the notion o f ‘perspectives’ rath er than, for exam ple, ‘schools of th o u g h t’. This is to em phasise the continuing fragm entation and diversity character­ ising contem porary crim inological theory in Britain, the United States and elsewhere in the w orld. The continuing influence o f postm odernist thought, along w ith various critiques, is exam ined. The chapter gives due weight to m ore recent fem inist perspec­ tives on crim e, crim inality, social control and social justice, as well as ongoing debates surrounding the concept o f m asculinity. A resurgence o f interest in control theory am ong academ ic crim inologists and the directions taken by m ore recent th eo ­ rists are discussed in detail. So too are highly influential and significant theoretical developm ents associated with cultural crim inology. The chapter concludes with an analysis o f critical perspectives and th eir theories, agendas and relevance as we reach the end o f the first decade o f the tw enty-first century. This chapter exam ines developm ents in crim inological theory from the m id-1990s to the p resent day. The discussion in the previous chapter covered the sam e period, and provided a general social, political and econom ic context w ithin which these develop­ m ents may be situated. This, o f course, does not reflect a neat ru p tu re betw een devel­ opm ents up to the m id-1990s and developm ents since then. In order to underline the fact that contem porary crim inological theory is charac­ terised by fragm entation and the cross-fertilisation o f ideas, the discussion th at

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follows is based upon ‘perspectives’ rath er th an ‘schools’. Referring to schools gives the w rong im pression regarding how crim inological theory has evolved in recent years, suggesting as it does, self-contained theoretical clusters. Tracing the recent tra ­ jectories o f these m ajor perspectives will draw out continuities and discontinuities, com plexity and uncertainty and, it is hoped, the vibrancy th at still anim ates this field o f study. At the sam e tim e, however, the use o f the term perspective does allow for the reten tio n of a sense o f history in term s o f particular theoretical traditions. W hilst not an exhaustive list, in com bination, these perspectives are m ajor com ponents o f the contem porary crim inological project. This book has introduced the reader to a very wide range o f perspectives found w ithin sociological crim inology and the sociology o f deviance. M any of the ideas con­ stituting this history - som etim es from the relatively distan t past - continue to have a presence w ithin contem porary crim inology, often rew orked in an effort to make them m ore relevant to a world th at has experienced irrevocable global changes over the last q u a rte r o f a century. On the oth er hand, for som e crim inologists influenced by postm odernist social theory, these ideas are largely associated with a (failed) m o d ­ ernist project and are, therefore, nowadays singularly irrelevant (though none o f this is peculiar to crim inology). The result is th at the recent past has w itnessed an intensi­ fication o f debates regarding w hat crim inology is. Ostensibly, this is sobering news for students grappling with the theoretical concerns o f crim inology, and yet, m ore positively, such debates are im p o rta n t in th a t they signal a willingness am ong at least som e crim inologists to respond critically to profound social, political and econom ic change, and in the process address im p o rta n t and interesting theoretical challenges. At the present tim e and, indeed, th ro u g h o u t its history, these debates have sprung from the diverse ways in which crim inologists have endeavoured to answ er certain fundam ental questions: •

W hat to study? For exam ple, offending behaviour, social control reactions and crim inalisation processes, the nature o f the crim inal justice system , the m eaning of ‘crim e’ and ‘deviance’, activities th at produce social harm s, etc. • Whom to study? For exam ple, the usual suspects associated with conventional crim e, corporate crim inals, professional crim inals, the poor, the rich, the state, etc. • IIow to study? For exam ple, library-based theoretical work, ‘hands o n ’ e thnogra­ phy, from a fem inist standpoint, ‘n u m ber-crunching’ using com puter software. • Why study? For exam ple, to find the causes o f crim e, to help in the fight against crim e, to transform society, to create gender equality, to fight racism , to attract dep artm en tal funds, to enhance one’s Research A ssessm ent Exercise rating. The different ways in which these are answ ered will shape the theories and research m ethodologies constituting the discipline - or, as Lea (1998) describes it, ‘field’ - of criminology. Clearly, the range o f possibilities is enorm ous, and this is reflected in the m any different understandings o f w hat is m eant by the ‘crim inological project’, and

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one principal aim of this book is to m ake problem atic the issue o f w hat crim inology is. The fact th at no universal agreem ent exists, so th at we have to speak o f criminolog/Vs, is no bad thing; the tim e to worry is if academ ic freedom were to be so constrained th at intellectual disputes no longer exist. The process o f developing and refining crim ino­ logical theories is unfinishable, rather than unfinished business. From a m ore negative position (though not one they take them selves), and referring specifically to the sociol­ ogy o f deviance, Downes and Rock (2003: 352) point out that: ‘One significant devel­ opm ent over the past decade or so has projected the view th at it is exhausted, unable to cope with new trends in crim e and society or with new perspectives in social theory’. These views being associated with, respectively, Sum ner (1994); M orrison (1995); and Nelken (1994). S um ner’s ‘obitu ary ’ for the sociology of deviance has already been referred to, though this, together with the c ontributions from the oth er two sources, is retu rn ed to below. Again, it has to be stressed th a t w hilst the various theoretical perspectives addressed in this chapter do not represent an exhaustive list o f pos­ sibilities, they are, in com bination, intended to indicate the m ain currents w ithin contem porary sociological crim inology.

POSTMODERNIST PERSPECTIVES

P ostm odernism is discussed here in term s o f som e o f the key them es and ideas with which it is associated, rath er than as a ‘school’ o f crim inology. Emerging during the second half of the tw entieth century, theories described as postm odernist had their origins not in the social sciences, but in fields such as literary criticism and architec­ ture. Postm odernist thought has, though, increasingly influenced the work o f sociol­ ogists and oth er social scientists, including those interested in areas o f crim e and deviance. However, this influence is com plex and varied. In som e cases, crim inologi­ cal discourses have, w ittingly or unw ittingly, incorporated a variety o f them es and ideas associated with postm odernism , in other cases, discourses are inform ed by w hat we m ight m ore loosely describe as a p ostm odern sensibility. The crim inologists involved, though, do no t necessarily label them selves as ‘p o stm o d ern ists’. Very often, they prefer the term 'late’ or ‘high’ m odernity to p ostm odernity when discussing con­ tem porary society, reflecting a view th a t we are ‘w itnessing an acceleration or radicalisation of m odernity its e lf’ (Valier, 2002: 171). Furtherm ore, as Cohen (1998: 101) argues, som e o f these ideas could be found w ithin crim inological theory ‘well before Foucault m ade these subjects intellectually respectable’ (see, also, Young, 1998). On the them e o f ‘deco n stru ctio n ’ - a key p ostm odernist concept - Cohen traces the deconstruction o f the concepts o f crim e and deviance in new deviancy theory, the new crim inology and abolitionism . In their discussion o f p ostm odern crim inology, Lilly et al. (2007) designate a whole range o f crim inological work as ‘p o stm o d ern ’; for exam ple, fem inist perspectives, the new crim inology, abolitionism , peacem aking crim inology and constitutive theory. They do this, not sim ply because the work

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concerned was produced during a period supposedly following m odernity, but because the work represents a critique o f the m odernist project, and especially posi­ tivism . It is, therefore, im p o rta n t to reiterate the point m ade elsewhere in this book: th at although in broad term s particular traditions can be identified, contem porary crim inology is characterised by a significant degree o f fragm entation. This is not a conspiracy to m ake life difficult for stu d en ts o f crim inology; it reflects the fact th at there are no neat divisions betw een one perspective and another. As a conse­ quence, aspects o f postm o d ern ist thought, as outlined below, reappear th roughout this chapter. A fu rth er com plication is th at postm odernism puts forw ard a philosophical posi­ tion th at is antagonistic tow ards the idea o f grand narratives, including, by defi­ nition, a postm odernist grand narrative. T hus as Lea (1998:165) points out: Postmodernism is a bit like criminology in that it too is best described as an area, a loose collection of themes, rather than as in itself a coherent philosophy. To attempt a description of postmodernism in the latter sense would be to fall precisely into the trap of attempting to articulate it as a grand narrative, or global world view, when one of its main thrusts is precisely the denial of the possibility of such standpoints. However, and acknow ledging the above p oints (and som e w riters argue th at it does represent a grand narrative), we can outline som e o f the m ain them es and ideas asso­ ciated w ith postm odernism by focusing on three key dim ensions. • First, postm odernist thought developed as a critique o f m odernism : the philo­ sophical principles th at em erged during the E nlightenm ent period in the eight­ eenth and nineteenth centuries. M odernism is associated w ith an optim istic belief in progress, based upon an assum ption th at the social and physical world can be understood and controlled through the application o f scientific rationality. Therefore, as knowledge increased, so would society’s ability to solve problem s such as crim e. As we have seen, and particularly following its absorption o f posi­ tivist ideas, for m uch o f its history crim inological work was dom inated by this m odernist view o f the world (a break with this tradition began with the advent o f new deviancy theory): ‘M odernity was und erp in n ed by a faith in certain grand narratives . . . particularly those o f progress, self-advancem ent and em ancipation’ (M orrison, 1995: 453). From a postm o d ern ist perspective this faith was naive in the extrem e. The application o f science and technology has in m any ways im proved the lot o f hum ankind, say p ostm odernists, but it has also brought with it m ajor problem s, such as the destruction of the environm ent and the pow er to wage war on a massive scale; it has also provided the basis for enhanced system s of surveillance and control. Furtherm ore, the so called rationality of m odernism orchestrated such things as im perialism , slavery, and class, ‘race’ and gender inequalities.

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• Second, postm odernists argue th a t during the second half o f the tw entieth century there was a qualitative transform ation in the nature o f the social world: a previ­ ously m odern social w orld becam e postm odern. The postm odern social w orld, or condition, is associated with such things as globalisation, post-industrialism , hyper-consum erism , reflexivity, the dissolution o f traditional (left-rig h t) political ideologies, pluralism , diversity and difference. • T hird, postm odernists believe th at new - postm odernist - ways o f u nderstanding the social world are required. At the core o f m odernism is the belief th at the application o f scientific rationality will gradually reveal the true nature of social reality. T hus from a m odernist perspective the social w orld is, as it were, w aiting to be m ade into an ordered whole on the basis o f ap propriate concepts (such as capitalism , class structure, m asculinity and fem inin­ ity) and a p propriate m ethodologies (based upon science). For postm odernists, this entire project is fatally flawed and, historically, has created illusions, rather than a truthful m odel, o f social reality. One o f the m ajor influences on postm odernist thought came from the post-structuralist theory associated with various French w riters, notably Foucault (1977) - who had the greatest influence on a specifically postm o d ­ ern crim inology - Lyotard (1984), Baudrillard (1984) and D errida (1976). Post-structuralists theorists rejected the view th at social processes, relations and behaviours should be analysed and understood by seeing them as products of interrelated and relatively stable, econom ic, political, kinship etc. institu tio n s constituting the deeper structural basis o f social life. Instead, they prioritised hum an agency and subjectivi­ ties, and argued th at the ‘reality’ o f social life arises from language and texts; th at is, it is em bedded in, and constituted by, discourse. From this perspective, there is no other, m ore ‘tru th fu l’ (let alone structural) reality. For post-structuralists, the illusions o f m odernist thought derive from the nature o f language. As m entioned above, a key concept in p ostm odernism is deconstruction, an intellectual device associated w ith D errida (1976). D econstructionists argue th at the w ords used to give m eaning to the social world do no t create a ‘real’ u n d er­ standing o f th a t w orld. Rather, they create bodies o f knowledge th at in effect exclude other, alternative, though ultim ately equally valid, bodies o f knowledge. At first glance this may seem sim ilar to M arx’s notion o f ideology. However, for M arx, an ide­ ology is a false representation o f reality, and science would unm ask ideology in order to provide a true picture o f reality. P ostm odernists, on the oth er hand, argue th at there is no essential, deeper reality in the social world th at can be brought to light; all th at we have are texts and signs representing versions o f reality and, therefore, the possibilities are lim itless. The process o f constructing a m eaningful social world is, therefore, an expression o f pow er and dom ination. This is because, say p o st­ m odernists, the w ords used to give m eaning to the w orld require dualities; they are always referenced against an opposite: crim e and non-crim e, good and bad, fem i­ nine and m asculine, terro rist and non-terrorist, for instance, as if there existed an

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essential difference betw een each o f them . Official discourses may create an ordered social world, but by definition it is one based upon seemingly ‘fixed’ hierarchical social divisions. From the point o f view o f p ostm odernists, then, the task should be one of deconstructing language in order to expose the processes w hereby knowledge is created. We can develop this fu rth er by exam ining briefly som e aspects o f the postm odern condition as seen by p ostm odernist w riters. O f particular im portance is the argu­ m ent th a t social life has becom e increasingly pluralistic:

The basic theme is the ‘loss of the social’ in the old sense that societies consisted of stable structures, classes and institutions, into which individuals were integrated and from which they took their outlook and social roles . . . Class is being replaced by iden­ tity, and stable social and political institutions by a fluid, pluralistic and contingent informalism. (Lea, 1998:166)

For p ostm odernists, therefore, the hum an subject is free to explore and experim ent with a plethora o f identities and lifestyles. U nencum bered by the past, or by class, etc., or even by m oral foundations (G ardiner, 1996), individual identities are fluid and contingent, and do not constitute a unified whole; indeed, the p ostm odern con­ dition is seen as requiring this fluidity (Schrag, 1997). This does not m ean th at there is an absence o f m orality; rath er th at the previous, stable, sources o f m orality have dissolved. The result is a social w orld characterised by fragm entation and diversity, and a m ultiplicity of m odels o f order o f such com plexity as to be unam enable to so called scientific inquiry. As W illiam s (2000: 7 1 -2) says:

One strategy - of the sceptical version of postmodernism - invokes the contemporary presence and growth of new kinds of individuals without singular identities, or indeed any of the conventional attributes of stable subjectivities. Such individuals are por­ trayed as the product of their own autonomous actions chosen without regard to consis­ tency, alignment with collectivities or attachment to moral values.

‘Sceptical’ postm odernism referred to in the above quote, has been distinguished from ‘affirm ative’ postm odernism . The latter draws back from an utterly relativistic view o f com peting claims to knowledge, and exhibits an inclination to engage posi­ tively w ith political program m es (see Rosenau, 1992, for a detailed discussion). This discussion raises an im p o rtan t, fundam ental issue regarding p ostm odernist analyses: an often im plicit assum ption th a t analyses o f the ‘p ostm odern co n d itio n ’ can only be accom plished by using postm odernist theory and m ethod. This suggests th at all other theories and m ethods are, as far as contem porary society is concerned, irrelevant. It is, though, an assum ption th at has been rightly challenged by som e, for

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exam ple Carlen (2008: 528) in a discussion o f Young’s (2007) book The Vertigo o f Late M odernity: Too often sociological and criminological texts have a chronicity of reference that sug­ gests that late or postmodern conditions can only be analysed by reference to postmod­ ern texts; so it was a relief to read a text which demonstrates that sociology can be scientific in the sense of creating new knowledge and new ways of knowing from bits and pieces of classical sociology. As indicated above, the postm odernist perspective presents a n um ber o f key chal­ lenges to sociological studies o f crim e and deviance. Crucially, crim e and deviance cannot be distinguished from behaviour in general in term s o f som e essential m ean­ ing; so-called crim inal or deviant behaviour is literally everywhere, and contingent upon a plurality o f m odels o f order. Furtherm ore, traditional attem pts to identify causal factors (or correlations) becom e highly problem atic because these ‘factors’ (for instance, class, ethnicity, gender) and the institutional arrangem ents th at supported them no longer have salience. Constitutive crim inology provides an exam ple o f affirm ative postm odernist theo­ rising oriented explicitly tow ards the issue o f crim e. U nsurprisingly, given its intellec­ tual roots, its approach is strikingly different to the approaches associated with the bulk o f crim inological theorising, and its influence on the discipline o f crim inology has, at least up to now, been lim ited. Frankly, and leaving aside the validity o f its analyses and ideas, the reason for this probably lies in its theoretical com plexity and, reflecting this, the m ode of exposition associated with its p roponents. As one socio­ logical crim inologist puts it: ‘H enry and M ilovanovic’s (1999) alm ost incom prehensi­ ble (to me, at least) constitutive crim inology . . (Snider, 2004: 245). From the perspective o f constitutive crim inology, ‘crim e’ is the product o f unequal relations of pow er betw een one person (the victim ) and an o th er (the offender). M ore specifically: ‘the pow er to deny others their ability to m ake a difference’ (H enry and Milovanovic, 1996: 116). Crime exists when individuals are treated in disrespectful ways so th at they are unable to freely express their hum anity, thus they are prevented from becom ­ ing ‘fully social beings’. Crime, therefore, equates with the harm arising from the dis­ respect shown to victim s by offenders. Instead o f explaining crim e in term s o f causal factors as norm ally understood, constitutive crim inologists view it as ‘co-produced’ by society as a totality. Using w hat is referred to as a ‘holistic’ approach, victim s and offenders are seen as social identities discursively co-produced, or constructed, by all p articipants through discourse. Looked at like this, crim e, crim inality and related phenom ena are discursively constituted through social and cultural processes - from policing to film -m aking. Postm odernism , sceptical or otherw ise, has been subject to a variety o f criticism s. Callinicos (1989) sees it as an intellectual fad, which som e academ ics have latched

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on to as a substitute for M arxism . In his view, so-called postm odernist ideas have been around for m any years and can be found in the work o f classical sociological th e ­ orists such as M arx, W eber and D urkheim . He also says th at postm odernism is itself a grand narrative. From the field o f literary theory, Eagleton (1996) takes p o stm o d ­ ernism to task for its extrem e relativism , w hereby all tastes and beliefs are seen as being o f equal validity. A com m on criticism is th at p ostm odernism is unable to develop progressive ideas and policies th at can change the social world for the better. This, however, is no t only associated with postm o d ern ist thought. As Cohen (1998) p oints out, w ithin the radical trad itio n in crim inology, there are tensions betw een the m erits o f deconstructionism and a sceptical outlook, and the m erits o f engaging with the ‘real’ w orld and its problem s and harm s. He traces these tensions back to the 1960s and new deviancy theory: ‘the urge on the one hand to be “relevant”, and on the oth er to detach ourselves from w hat others define as relevant’(Cohen, 1998:120). W hilst recognising the practical difficulties th at it presents, Cohen (1998: 122) argues the case for a ‘triple loyalty’ on the p art o f the crim inologist: first, an overriding obligation to honest intellectual enquiry itself (however sceptical, provisional, irrelevant and unrealistic); second, a political commitment to social justice, and third (and potentially conflicting with both), the pressing and immediate demands for short-term humanitarian help. We have to appease these three voracious gods. For critical crim inologists in particular, this is problem atised around a desire to stay in w ithout ‘selling o u t’, th at is, attem p tin g to develop a crim inological project th at is capable o f satisfying sim ultaneously academ ic, political and hum an rights agendas. Critical crim inology is discussed later.

FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES

Criminology and feminisms It might be supposed that today there are few silences left to articulate and the ‘classic masculine discourse’ of criminology . . . has been well and truly (if paradoxically) ‘pene­ trated' by feminism. This is not the case. Doubts are still expressed . .. (Gelsthorpe, 2002:112) In spite o f the theoretical, institu tio n al and political gains over recent years, from the point o f view o f fem inist w riters there is still som e way to go before Naffine’s (1997) charges th at crim inology is m ale-dom inated, and th at m en still ten d not to recognise th eir own m aleness (as opposed to w om en’s fem aleness), can be dropped. G elsthorpe (2002:131) adds a further note o f pessim ism by suggesting that: ‘over the past decade

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. . . a popular backlash against fem inism . . . has im pinged upon the academ ic world of crim inology’. C arrington (2002: 114) argues th at post-structuralist ideas and a com m itm ent to anti-essentialism have led to fem inism becom ing: ‘a vital and vibrant p art of critical crim inology, not som e add-on or afte rth o u g h t’, though she also argues th at in som e q u arters o f critical crim inology there is: ‘a continuing and deeply p ro b ­ lem atic denial o f the legitim acy o f victim isation still prevalent’ (2002: 115). Howe (2004: 269), on the oth er hand, lam bastes n ew /critical crim inology for failing to ‘m eet fem inist challenges on the m an q u estio n ’, adding: The new criminologies might purport to make an epistemological and political break with positivist paradigms. Yet when faced with the issue of pervasive men’s violence, they soon retreat into victim-blaming etiologies and antediluvian conceptualisations of ‘gender’ reminiscent of the old-order criminology they claim to have supplanted. Once again, we are rem inded o f the diversity and divergences characterising contem ­ porary crim inology. The above com m ents also indicate th at debates regarding the relationship betw een fem inism and crim inology, w hether or not a fem inist crim inol­ ogy is possible and, guided specifically by p ostm odernist ideas, w hether or no t fem i­ nism should free itself from crim inology and develop an alternative epistem ology (as discussed in C hapter 13), continue to thrive. These debates reflect the different approaches and agendas existing w ithin fem inism itself (which is why fem inism s is preferred to fem inism ). W alklate (2003) provides a useful sum m ary o f the m ajor strands w ithin fem inism and their im plications in term s o f ‘doing’ crim inology. The relationship betw een liberal fem inism and traditional, m ainstream crim inology is relatively unproblem atic, given th at each strives to apply social scientific m etho­ dologies in an effort to im prove knowledge relating to offending behaviour and crim ­ inal justice processes. On this basis, liberal fem inists concern them selves with the issue o f gender discrim ination. Radical fem inism focuses on m en and the problem s they create for w om en, thus the nature of the relationship with crim inology is: ‘largely d ependent upon w hether or no t “m en ” as m en are considered the central con­ cern o f the crim inological agenda’ (W alklate, 2003: 80). Research carried out from the perspective o f socialist fem inism situates the experiences o f m en and wom en w ithin the social, political and econom ic structures o f m arket society, with a view to ultim ately replacing th at society with a socialist one. Clearly, the degree o f com pati­ bility betw een this and crim inological agendas depends upon the degree o f conver­ gence in relation to u nderstandings o f the w ider m arket society, the gendered nature of th at society, and the desire for a socialist transform ation. Postm odernist fem inism ‘poses the m ost fundam ental challenge for crim inology’ (W alklate, 2003: 81). This is because o f the postm odernist rejection o f the idea th at ‘correct’ knowledge regarding the nature o f social reality can be assem bled by social scientists, m aking the link betw een postm odernist fem inism and a crim inology oriented tow ards issues o f social policy highly problem atic (see the discussion of postm odernism in the previous

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section o f this chapter). As is the case with critical crim inologists, a central issue for fem inists is th at o f staying in w ithout selling out. We can add an o th er perspective to the above, th at o f black fem inism . This developed out o f the com plaint that the vari­ ous types o f fem inism had failed to acknowledge the significance o f m inority ethnic status when analysing w om en’s experiences (for instance, because o f racism ). In a recent overview, H eidensohn and G elsthorpe (2007) suggest th at since its beginnings in the 1970s, fem inist crim inology has, broadly speaking, passed through three m ain phases. ‘E m piricism ’, w here the aim was to increase the visibility of w om en in crim inology; ‘sta n d p o in tism ’, where the aim was to provide accounts o f the social w orld from the perspective o f wom en; and 'deconstructionism ’, which drew on postm odernist th o u g h t in order to confront and challenge conventional dis­ courses. Clearly, because o f the ways in which they represent the ‘reality’ o f gender, crim e and social control, and thus understandings o f (gendered) social identity and the ‘o th e r’ (viewed as, for exam ple, abnorm al or perverted), language and texts are of particular interest to crim inologists. A key dim ension to this is the rejection o f essentialist representations o f w om en and m en, in favour o f an approach th at sees no nec­ essary (or, by definition, ‘n o rm al’) coincidence o f sex, gender and sexuality in each individual. Having said that, som e fem inist w riters sym pathetic to a postm odernist approach, have sought to analyse social life in term s o f both discourse and social rela­ tions (for exam ple, Sm art, 1995; Daly, 2006). W hile there are diverse perspectives am ong fem inists, gender rem ains the core concept (with equal weight being given to understandings of both fem ininity and m asculinity). However, fem inist work has increasingly m oved away from an earlier tendency (in the 1970s and 1980s) to essentialise gender/sex. An anti-essentialist stance is one that rejects the idea th at gender can function as a single, totalising, explanatory concept, as if all w om en (and m en) are the sam e in term s o f experiences and identities: ‘M ost fem inist scholars today are concerned with linking sex/gender to oth er social relations and w ith m aking particular (not generic) claim s about w om en or m en ’ (Daly, 1997:41). A tendency to essentialise, especially with reference to the concept o f crim e, is, as we have seen, associated with m uch crim inological theorising over the years. Early versions o f radical/critical crim inology, for instance, did this in relation to ‘the work­ ing class’ and ‘capitalists’. Both critical crim inology and fem inist-influenced crim i­ nology have, however, m oved on: A founding claim of feminism was that women have common interests arising from a common experience, of which they should be aware . .. over the last two decades. . . this has been challenged by the recognition of important differences among women. (Valier, 2002:148) Thus, increasingly, fem inist analyses o f female (and m ale) crim inal behaviour, victim ­ isation, or experiences of the courtroom or prison, have pointed to the interplay

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betw een such things as gender, class and ethnicity. From this perspective experiences and identities are highly fluid and contingent upon particular circum stances (see, for exam ple, C arrington, 2002). The com plexity o f these processes m akes it difficult (som e w ould say im possible), though, to discern the precise role and relative salience of the various factors.

Offending and punishment In the discussion o f fem inism and crim inology in C hapter 13, reference was m ade to the argum ent found in som e circles th a t the influence o f fem inism and the grow th of the w om en’s m ovem ent had, in effect, liberated w om en, triggering an upsurge in female crim inality. W hether linked explicitly to the w om en’s m ovem ent or not, sto ­ ries about a p p aren t increases in female transgressive behaviour (which is always likely to be judged as ‘doubly deviant’, because it steps outside o f notions o f accepted fem ale behaviour) have routinely appeared in the m ass m edia over the last few years. Chesney-Lind and Irw in (2007) argue th at recent attem pts to deviantise young w om en represent an a tte m p t to punish those viewed as transgressing stereotypical understandings o f female propriety. W hat is particularly interesting about these debates is th at they concentrate on the issue of w om en becom ing m ore like m en. However, as H eidensohn (2002: 497) says: ‘Q uestions which have scarcely ever been considered, yet could be equally valid, are why males are no t m ore like females, and how the sex/crim e ratio could be altered from th eir perspective’. The m ost recent, and highly detailed, statistical rep o rt on wom en and the crim inal system in England and Wales is by H unter et al. (2009). The rep o rt uses data from the M inistry o f Justice relating to, for instance, victim isation, offending - recorded and self-reported - and sentencing. In 2 0 0 6 -0 7 ,1 7 per cent o f those arrested for a notifi­ able offence were w om en and 83 per cent m en. The n u m b er o f people arrested has increased since 2002-03, though at a slightly greater rate for w om en. O f those issued with a caution, w arning or reprim and in 2006-07, 28 per cent were w om en and 72 per cent m en; 14 per cent o f those proceeded against (th at is, taken to court) were wom en and 86 per cent m en; 8 per cent of wom en and 92 per cent of m en were given a custodial sentence. Figures based upon known offenders give a ratio o f around 5 to 1 for m en and wom en, a ratio th at has rem ained virtually the sam e over the past tw enty years. As the re p o rt notes, there has been som e convergence since 2002-03; however, this involves less serious, rath er th an m ore serious, offending. Self-report studies, though, continue to put this ratio - in relation to serious and less serious offending - at around 2.5 to 1. An increase in alcohol consum ption am ong young w om en is one of the latest areas o f concern (linked by the m edia to the grow th o f a socalled ‘lad ette’ culture). A self-report study for the Office for N ational Statistics (2003) found th at betw een 1992 and 2002 alcohol consum ption am ong young w om en aged 16 to 24 had doubled; over the sam e period alcohol consum ption am ong

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m en had decreased. However, the study also found th at in 2002 males were still heav­ ier drinkers than females. As far as underage drinking is concerned, a recent study of 15-16-year-old teenage girls found th at there had been a sharp rise in alcohol con­ sum ption over the past eight years am ong this group, to the extent that in 2003 they had overtaken their m ale co u n terp arts in units o f alcohol consum ed w ithin the previ­ ous m o n th (Centre for Research in Public Health and Prim ary Care D evelopm ent, 2004). Reviewing the literature on changes in female offending, W illiam s concludes (2004: 474): These studies point to the absence of any strong direct causative link between the women’s movement and women’s crim inality. . . They suggest that even if the women’s movement has made a difference in the power or control of women . . . this would not necessarily lead to a large difference in female crime rates because other traditional socialising aspects may remain, or because women may be less likely to choose such behaviour. Females represent a sm all, though rising, pro p o rtio n o f the prison population in England and Wales. O f the total prison population in 1992, 3.4 per cent were females, rising to 4.4 per cent and 6 per cent in 1997 and 2004 respectively. In 2007 it had fallen to a figure o f 5 per cent, a dow nw ards tren d following a steep rise in the p ro p o r­ tion o f female offenders given a custodial sentence in the 1990s. This decrease, though, is largely due to a significant reduction in the n um ber o f wom en rem anded in custody p rio r to a court appearance. The n u m b er o f wom en receiving a custodial sen­ tence doubled betw een the beginning and the end o f the 1990s, although the length o f sentence decreased, and was significantly less th an th at for m en. A round 30 per cent o f female and 20 per cent of m ale prisoners are from m inority ethnic groups, and 20 per cent are foreign nationals com pared to 11 per cent for m ales. The earlier increase in female im prisonm ent, during a period when the n um ber o f wom en found guilty of, or cautioned for, an indictable offence was declining, is seen by Carlen (2000) as reflecting a significantly m ore punitive response on the p art o f the courts to female offending, especially for the econom ically disadvantaged. She also links this to judgem ents about a w om an’s culpability in term s o f both her offending behaviour and her sexual behaviour and perceived track record as a m o th er and ‘good wife’/p a rtn e r. G elsthorpe and M orris (2002), on the oth er hand, point to a shift tow ards an increasingly punitive sentencing policy guided by risk assessm ent, th at is, the likelihood o f fu rth er offending. Deakin and Spencer (2003: 133) sum up these developm ents as follows: Our argument is quite simply that there is little evidence to justify the significant increase in the use of custody for women. There has been a failure on the part of policy makers and practitioners to take account of women’s needs within the ‘what works’ strategy . . . The over-use of custody for women is a serious issue with far-reaching con­ sequences on those women sentenced to periods of imprisonment.

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One far-reaching consequence concerns those female prisoners who have children 55 per cent o f women in prison have children under the age of 16, and one-third of these have a child under the age of 5. A nother concerns the psychological im pact o f im prison­ m ent on women; each year 25 per cent are involved in some kind o f self-harm incident (for a useful introductory discussion of w om en’s im prisonm ent, see Carlen and Worrall, 2004). Although a small num ber of dedicated w om en’s prisons have been built recently, the earlier feminist argum ent that the crim inal justice system has problem s dealing with female offenders, because it is basically designed for men, still has relevance (see W orrall, 2003, for a discussion o f women offenders and the use of com m unity sentences). On a different level, Alison Young (1998) draws on feminist and post-structuralist m etho­ dologies in her analysis of the experiences o f victims of rape during cross-examination. Using the technique of deconstruction, she argues th at legal discourses act as a masculinist coercive instrum ent, an established and one-sided exercise in power, which effectively silences the victim ’s account. Feminist research has continued to em phasise the point that the crim inal justice system does not respond to crime victims (and offenders) in a gender-neutral way. In the case of female victims of violent crime especially: A range of rich gendered symbols and signifiers, such as dress, manner, conduct, appearance, associates, place and time are called upon in a variety of insinuation strat­ egies to imbue the female victim with contempt and suspicion . . . Men . . . are rarely scripted into such narrow victim-blaming typologies, unless of course they happen to be gay or transsexual, that is outside of hegemonic forms of masculinity. (Carrington, 2002:117)

Offenders As the above discussion indicates, when com pared to m en, wom en are still m uch less likely to engage in crim inal behaviour, especially serious crim inal behaviour. Clearly, this raises im p o rta n t issues relating to gender and crim inality, though from the point of view o f both fem ininity and m asculinity (see below). In recent years, fem inist research into female crim inality has continued, m ost o f it sceptical of m ainstream crim inology’s ability, or willingness, to incorporate gender into analyses. On a general level, it is recognised th at understandings and experiences o f gender have a significant influence on the propensity to com m it crim e. In this way, gender-based social struc­ tures and processes, together with a tten d an t learned behaviour, create particular controls on w om en’s behaviour (H eidensohn, 2000). It is im portant to recognise, though, that gender roles w ithin a particular society only provide a general context, and analyses need to take into consideration (i) specific understandings of fem ininity and m asculinity, (ii) the relevance o f other contingent factors such as class and ethnic­ ity, (iii) the specific contexts and circum stances in which female and m ale crim inal behaviour occurs, and (iv) the ways in which all three interact with each other. Specific

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contexts will include, for example, the experience o f victim isation, the desire for retali­ ation or resistance, and the m obilisation o f defensive and control strategies. A num ber o f recent studies o f female crim inality have stressed the im portance of ‘agency’ and social context, and the variety of dynam ic and creative processes at work. In their Glasgow-based study, Burm an et al. (2000) found th at the m inority (10 per cent) o f teenage girls in their sam ple who adm itted to being involved in violent behav­ iour did so for in strum ental reasons based on gaining respect and status; thus, the authors argue, the behaviour could not be w ritten off as ‘irratio n al’. Placing the behav­ iour w ithin a broader context, when com pared with the rest of the sam ple, those involved in violence were m uch m ore likely to have personal experience o f being phys­ ically assaulted. They also had relatively low socio-economic status and tended to engage in other, non-violent crim inal behaviour. In a study o f females who engaged in street robbery, M iller (1998) found th at although the wom en concerned faced various constraints deriving from their gender, they m anaged to open up their own spaces on the street, w ithin which to negotiate and explore their identities. In her study of female drug dealers in the United States, M aher (1997) too shows how the wom en concerned were able to challenge traditional, gender-based expectations. The w om en had sim ilar m otivations to their male counterparts, but the ways in which they organised their dealing had to be tailored to suit the opportunities available to w om en in a maledom inated m arket constructed around traditional understandings of gender. The con­ straints im posed by male understandings of gender roles was noted in an earlier study o f delinquent girls by Cam pbell (1981). Although the girls concerned were prepared to join delinquent gangs, they entered a milieu where they were expected to conform to notions o f female roles based upon subordination and support. The im portance o f context and circum stances in relation to female offending is well illustrated in Jam ieson’s (1999) p aper on genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda in the 1990s. Taking the exam ple o f extrem e violence, she challenges essentialist readings o f gender th at cast w om en in the role o f victims, and shows how vio­ lent behaviour should be understood in term s o f its relationship to socially constructed identities, which include gender. In the case o f Rwanda, nearly all the H utu - w om en, children and m en - were involved in the genocide directed at the Tutsi and, she says, this involvem ent o f w om en ‘has been largely ignored by fem inist th eo rists’ (ibid., 1999: 138). Thus, although th ro u g h o u t the w orld violence is over­ whelm ingly associated w ith m en, the potential for violence am ong w om en should not be overlooked. The capacity for violence cannot be fully u n derstood ‘if we insist on endow ing it only in the m asculine or the “ethnic” rath er than in the fem inine, the “h u m a n ”, or the “social”’ (Jam ieson, 1999:142). In Rw anda, as one example: Women along with children acted as ‘finishers off’. Their task was to locate those who were still living and kill them, using whatever - usually ‘low tech’- weapons were available to them (knives, machetes, ‘masus’ (nail-studded clubs) or sharpened sticks. (Ibid.: 142)

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This is no t to dow ngrade the im portance o f m asculinities and violence. Looking back through history, we will find situations where a large pro p o rtio n o f the female p o p u ­ lation in a particular country p articipated in acts o f violence. However, it w ould be surprising if a large pro p o rtio n o f m en in th at country were not them selves also involved in th at violence. It is w orth m aking one further point regarding Jam ieson’s work. Sadly, and I have to say ludicrously, there may be those of a certain tw ist of m ind w ho would wish to racialise her discussion. For this reason, it has to be stressed th at being, say, a w hite European or N orth Am erican w om an is no guarantee o f n o n ­ violence (Nazi exterm ination cam ps is one exam ple th at comes to m ind).

PER SPEC TIVES ON M ASCULINITIES

The last few years have seen a sharp increase in theoretical studies of m asculinities, m any focusing on the core issue th a t m en are m ore likely to involve them selves in crim e, and especially violent crim e, th an wom en are. For som e, the significance of crim inal behaviour in the construction o f m ale identities has been given particular atten tio n . O ther work, though, has broadened the debate considerably, by exam ining notions o f m asculinity w ithin the context of, for instance, victim isation (N ew burn and Stanko, 1994); p robation (H olland and Scourfield, 2000); the deviantisation of hom osexuality (G room bridge, 1999); and sp o rt (Jefferson, 1998). In addition, some studies have explored the relationship betw een the m ale body, gender characteristics and behaviour. H obbs et al. (2003), for exam ple, in their detailed study o f bouncers, indicate how the physiques o f the m en involved (as well as evidence o f earlier battles) provides a crucial resource, in term s o f both preventing and responding to vio­ lence. Here the body is com m odified; its image, strength and potential for violence is for sale: The authority of the vast majority of bouncers is embodied in their physicality . . . for the majority who ply their trade in the night-time economy, authority is derived from local reputation and the potential physicality of their bodies. This potential can be sug­ gested by bulk, in the case of body builders, evidence of engagement in combat, for instance a battered or scarred visage, or the presence of highly specialized skills and capabilities. (Hobbs et al., 2003:144) However, w hilst a consideration of the m ale body is obviously im p o rta n t, som e analy­ ses o f m asculinity tend to conflate gender and sex, draw ing a neat division betw een m en and wom en: In the popular accounts. .. masculinity runs through men like writing through rock. But this is a collapse of gender (masculinity) into sex (men). For example, all the

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contributors to that recent British Journal of Criminology special issue (1996) speak, always, about men and m asculinities. . . there are no masculine women or feminine men on these pages. (Hood-Williams, 2001:39) T his is an im p o rta n t p o in t to m ake, th o u g h , since th e special issue referred to, a n u m ­ ber o f w riters have no ted th a t m asculine b ehaviour an d id en tity can be fo u n d am ong th o se w ith fem ale, as well as m ale, bodies (C onnell, 2000, for exam ple). However, this in tu rn raises an equally im p o rta n t issue, an d one th a t indicates the com plexities involved in these debates. If m e n /m a le bodies are m uch m ore likely to engage in crim e th an w o m e n /fe m a le bodies are, a n d m asculine a ttrib u te s are overw helm ingly associated w ith m en ra th e r th an w om en, does this m ean th a t c rim inal w om en are m ore m asculine th a n n o n -c rim in al w om en? D oes it also m ean th a t crim in al m en are m ore m asculine th an n o n -crim in al m en? P resenting the issue in such stark term s, though, raises a w hole range o f a d d itio n al questions, such as, how is ‘m as­ culinity’ to be defined in the first place? A nd w hat kinds o f crim in al behaviour are being referred to? M any w riters have co nceptualised th e issue o f m asculinity in late m o d ern ity in term s o f tran sfo rm a tio n a n d crisis. Collier (2004: 289) p u ts it like this: From this perspective, the debate about masculinities and crime is itself, in effect, seen as emblematic of wider concerns and anxieties around the meaning of social, economic, cultural and political changes since the 1980s, not least those between men and women . . . the idea that something is happening to men and their shifting ‘masculinities’ and that this relates to crime. (Emphasis in original) M e ssersch m id t’s (1993) ‘stru c tu re d action th e o ry ’ ap p ro ach to m asculinities and crim e w as discussed briefly in C hapter 13 (for a fu rth e r d evelopm ent, see M esser­ sch m id t, 1997). His th eo ry drew on C onnell’s (1995) n o tio n s o f ‘hegem onic’ an d ‘su b ­ o rd in a te d ’ m asculinities, ideal types of, respectively, ‘acc red ited ’ and ‘d isc red ited ’ m odels o f m anliness. ‘H egem onic’ m asculinity provides th e d o m in a n t, culturally approved, yardstick against which m en create and define them selves as m en and, in c o n tra d istin c tio n to (sociologically speaking) ideal-type n o tio n s o f su b o rd in a te d m asculinity (or n o tio n s o f fem ininity), em phasises a ttrib u te s co m m en su rate with crim inal, a n d especially violent, behaviour: ‘practices tow ard a uthority, control, com ­ p etitive individualism , in d ep en d en ce, aggressiveness, a n d capacity for violence’ (M esserschm idt, 1993: 82). Looked at like this, crim e re p re se n ts one way in w hich m en ‘do’ or accom plish gen d er - it is a way o f providing evidence o f m anliness and resisting accusations o f w eakness. F u rth erm o re, for M esserschm idt, the different types o f crim e associated w ith different m en arise from th eir stru c tu ra l location in society: factors o f class an d ‘race’ will influence b o th the a m o u n t o f pressu re to be ‘m anly’ in this sense, an d the n atu re o f the response to th is pressure.

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M esserschm idt’s analysis of m asculinities has now assum ed an im p o rta n t place w ithin crim inological theory; it has, though, stim ulated a n um ber o f criticism s. First, it has been noted th at m uch crim e, because o f its nature, does not require the a ttrib ­ utes associated with hegem onic m asculinity. Second, it has been said th at the central argum ent is tautological. As Collier (2004: 293) puts it (see also, VValklate, 1995; Hood-W illiam s, 2001): Masculinity is depicted as both primary and underlying cause (or source) of a social effect (crime); and, simultaneously, as something which itself resultsfrom (after all, it is accomplished through) recourse to crime. (Emphases in original) T hird, as Hood-W 'illiams (2001) points out, M esserschm idt’s form ulation is unable to clarify why it is th at only some m en use crim e to accom plish m asculinity and, as Jeffer­ son (1996) says, only a m inority w ithin class or ethnic groupings. Fourth, it is notice­ able th at the attrib u tes apparently associated with m asculinity are negative ones; there is little room for the kind or sensitive m an. Jefferson (1997; see also Hollway and Jefferson, 2000) has addressed these th eo re t­ ical debates by placing particular em phasis upon individual m ale subjectivities and how these are contingent upon no t social structure, bu t (using the lens o f post­ structuralism ) discourses o f m asculinity. This psycho-social approach rejects w hat is seen as the determ inism found in stru ctu red action theory. On the basis of, for instance, a case study o f the boxer ‘iro n ’ Mike Tyson, Jefferson (1998) seeks to illus­ trate the com plexity o f ‘m asculinity’ as subjectively understood - the deeper psycho­ logical dim ensions involving anxiety, uncertainty and contradiction. T his approach to und erstan d in g m ale crim inality has also been explored by G add (2000, 2002) w ithin the context o f violence tow ards w om en. Unlike M esserschm idt (1993), who equates dom estic violence with m en ‘doing m asculinity’, as p art o f a process o f reaf­ firm ing their (dom inant) m asculinity, G add em phasises the com plex tensions and am biguities surround ing the actions o f violent m en, their accounts o f these actions, and th eir ‘real’ feelings about w hat has happened. In the case o f dom estic violence perpetrators, Gadd (2002) argues th at they often experience intense feelings of sham e, rath er than guilt-free satisfaction th at h o nour has been restored. He also argues th at m any m en have a contradictory, and hence volatile, relationship with th eir female partner, deriving from a perception o f w om en th at oscillates betw een two extrem es: idealisation and denigration. Psycho-social approaches have generated a fair am o u n t o f criticism . One o f the chief ones is th at the conscious and unconscious processes, referred to as the ‘psyche’, cannot be categorised as ‘m asculine’ or ‘fem i­ nine’ (Hood-W illiam s, 2001). The com plexity o f the issues - especially the contradictions and am biguities raised by notions o f m asculinity, and in particular the relationship betw een m as­ culinity and violence, is indicated in a recent review, by ex-lifer Erwin Jones (2009), of a newly released film called Bronson. The film is based on the life o f M ichael Peterson

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who, w hen he was younger and fighting as an unlicensed boxer, changed his nam e to C harles B ronson. A part from a few m o n th s outside, B ronson has sp e n t the last thirtyfive years in p rison. He has a re p u ta tio n for extrem e violence, a n d over the years was frequently described by the m edia as ‘B ritain’s m ost dan g ero u s p riso n e r’. C urrently: he is being held in a specially constructed cage deep in the bowels of Wakefield highsecurity prison. He lives in total isolation, is fed through a hatch and spends his time exercising, writing and draw ing. . . his cartoon art sells w ell. . . and much of the money he makes from his art he gives to children’s charities. (Ibid.: 3) Jones goes on: We have had some correspondence recently. His first letter made me want to cry. ‘It has been nine years since I caused anyone any harm ,’ he wrote. ‘Surely it must be time now to give me chance?’ I was touched by his vulnerability. Having been a prisoner with little hope once, I wanted to reach out and reassure him. (Ibid.: 3) A fu rth e r dim ension to th is is th a t re tu rn in g B ronson to the priso n w ings could be risky for him , in th a t a younger p riso n e r m ight see th is as an o p p o rtu n ity to enhance th e ir (m asculine) re p u ta tio n th ro u g h violence. The year 2009 also sees the release o f Tyson, a d o c u m e n tary film a b o u t the boxer M ike Tyson, w ho provides a co m m en tary th ro u g h o u t the film . At one p o in t, as the audience see archival footage o f him e n te r­ ing the ring for a m ajor fight, Tyson says: ‘I com e a n d I have suprem e confidence, but I’m scared to d e a th .’ In th eir m ore recen t w ork, C onnell and M esserschm idt (2005) have acknow ledged th e dynam ic n a tu re o f m asculinity, as id en tity and guide to action, an d , in the p ro ­ cess, em phasised the ways in w hich it can alter d u rin g the course o f a lifetim e. They have also sp e n t m ore tim e analysing m asculinities and fem in in ities as in te rrela tio n a l p h e n o m e n a; in o th er w ords, th a t one c an n o t exist w ith o u t the other. M ale sexuality is a fu rth e r area o f c o n te n tio n w ithin c o n te m p o ra ry crim inology. W riting from the perspective o f w hat has been called ‘qu eer th e o ry ’, G room bridge (1999), for exam ple, m akes the p o in t th a t th ro u g h o u t its h isto ry crim inology has resisted engaging w ith m ale sexuality, except in the sense o f ab so rb in g im plicitly the view th a t heterosexuality equates w ith ‘n o rm a l’ sexuality (see also B ernstein, 2004).

C O N TRO L PERSPECTIVES

In C h ap ter 13 th ere was a discussion o f H irschi’s (1969) co n tro l theory, an exp lan a­ tion o f crim inality th a t seeks to answ er the q uestion: why do people not break the law? Since th en , a variety o f co n tro l perspectives has em erged, especially w ithin

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A m erican crim inology. In a d d itio n , H irschi an d G o ttfred so n (1993, 2000) have explored fu rth e r the concept o f control, as p a rt o f a general th eo ry o f crim e. In this w ork, the core a rg u m e n t is th a t crim inal b ehaviour (as well as m ore b roadly defined deviant a n d risk-taking behaviour) is a result o f low levels o f self-control. The degree o f self-control th a t an individual exercises is d e p en d e n t upo n the ways in w hich an individual has been socialised, especially w ithin the family, d u rin g the first few years o f th e ir life. In fact, for G ottfred so n and H irschi, to a large extent the die has been cast ro u n d a b o u t 8 years o f age. They also suggest th a t the effectiveness o f early socialisa­ tion processes will be influenced by genetic differences betw een one child and a n o th er. Low self-control is associated w ith various a ttrib u te s, such as im pulsiveness and a c o m m itm e n t to im m ediate gratification, a p ro p e n sity for risk-taking, and a lack o f concern for victim s. In c o m b in atio n , it is argued, such a ttrib u te s significantly increase the likelihood o f som eone engaging in crim inal b ehaviour w hen the o p p o r­ tu n ity p re sen ts itself. It should be n o ted , though, th at this version o f control theory is quite different to H irschi’s original version. In the first version, crim inality was d e p en d e n t u p o n the quality o f the social b o n d s tying an individual to the w ider soci­ ety, w hereas in the new version, low self-control is given priority. As Lilly et al. (2 0 0 7 :1 1 2 ) say: Hirschi changed his mind over the years. He once thought that social bonds were the main determ inant of crime. Later, however, he (and Gottfredson) came to believe that social bonds were merely a manifestation of a person's level of self-control and thus had no independent causal relationship to criminal involvement. C ontrol theory, including G ottfred so n and H irsch i’s fo rm u latio n , has had a c o n tin u ­ ing influence on crim inological th eo risin g and, w hilst it is difficult to test, som e em pirical research does su p p o rt the th eo ry (for instance, P ratt an d Cullen, 2000). As m en tio n ed earlier, som e w riters explain the low er rates o f fem ale offending by draw ­ ing on co n tro l th eo ry (see, for exam ple, H agan and Kay, 1990 and, m ore recently, H ayslett-M cCall a n d B ernard, 2002). O n the o th e r h a n d , criticism s o f c o n tro l theory have also co n tin u e d to appear. Schinkel (2002), for instance, criticises H irschi’s origi­ nal version o f co n tro l theory on tw o counts. First, for being tautological: the idea that the criminal has a weakened bond to conventional society tells us nothing new, since the criminal is part of the non-conventional, rather than the conventional, and a criminal, someone who commits non-conventional acts, is thus by definition someone who commits less conventional acts (since these constitute the ‘bond’ to con­ ventional society). (Ibid.: 141) A nd, second, for conceptually placing the crim inal outside society (in a realm o f the ‘n o n -c o n v en tio n a l’), ra th e r th an seeing ‘the c rim in al’ as p a rt o f society. G ottfredson

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and Hirschi's m ore recently form ulated self-control theory has also been criticised for being tautological. The basis for this criticism is that, in effect, the theory is sim ply stating th at people w ith low self-control engage in behaviours th at reflect low selfcontrol, and this still leaves the problem o f explaining the source of this low self-control - socialisation w ithin the family is only one am ong m any possibilities (Akers, 1991; Geis, 2000; and for responses to this charge, see H irschi and G ottfredson, 1993, 2000). A final point we can note is that, w hilst H irschi and G ottfredson suggest that deviant behaviour does correlate with class position, it is clear th at for the authors, low self-control is prim arily associated with those o f low socio-econom ic statu s - the lack o f m aterial and social success reflecting low self-control. This is in contradistinc­ tion to Hirschi's (1969) original form ulation, where he argued th at his em pirical research did not indicate th at lower class youths were disproportionately involved in offending. A fu rth er variant o f the control perspective is control balance theory, introduced by T ittle (1995), and subsequently refined by him (Tittle, 1997, 2000, 2004). Control balance theory attem p ts to provide an explanation o f a wide range of activities that result in social harm s, including crim inal ones (research oriented tow ards harm s, ra th e r th an crim e perse, is called zem iology). The concept o f ‘balance’ in this theory refers to the balance betw een, on the one hand, those controls acting on an individual and, on the other, those controls exercised by an individual. Too m uch o f the form er produces a ‘deficit’ o f control; too m uch of the latter produces a ‘su rp lu s’ o f control. D eviant, or socially harm ful behaviour, results from the pressure created by an im bal­ ance in the ‘control ratio’, due to either a deficit or a surplus o f control. If there is a deficit, says Tittle, deviant behaviour may be used in an a tte m p t to redress the bal­ ance, and if there is a surplus, it may be used in order to enhance an individual’s exist­ ing power to control others. In the second case, this pow er reduces the chances o f attracting a social or legal censure, m aking deviant behaviour a m ore viable option. C ontrol balance theory, therefore, offers a theoretical m odel th at is relevant to the deviant behaviour o f the pow erful as well as the powerless. It also applies to individu­ als and oth er ‘social en tities’, such as organisations (it could, therefore, be used to explain the illegal invasion o f one country by another, m ore powerful, country referred to as ‘a u to n o m o u s’ deviance, see below). This discussion, however, does no t exhaust the theoretical ingredients o f this explanation o f deviant behaviour. As a theory, it is m ade m ore complex because Tittle incorporates a n um ber o f factors, oth er th an relative am ounts o f power, into his analysis in an effort to provide a general theory o f crim e and deviance (for this reason, it is extrem ely difficult to test the theory). Specifically, he identifies four key factors th at will influence the decision to deviate: • A ccording to Tittle, we are all predisposed to resist the controls placed upon us by others. All hum an beings carry the potential to develop deviant m otivations because o f an inherent desire for personal autonom y. Individuals who experience

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an im balance in the control ratio are m ore likely to deviate in situations where this is com bined with a lack o f oppo rtu n ities to acquire desired goals in life. • The m otivation to deviate arises out o f a situation where an individual, having becom e ‘acutely aware o f an im balance in the control ratio, and experienced belittlem ent by others, feels th at deviant behaviour can be used to strengthen their autonom y’ (Tittle, 2000:320). • Social circum stances m ust provide an o p p ortunity to engage in deviant behaviour. • The individual has to be free from various constraints, such as the social bonds tying them to significant others, the risk o f being caught or suffering in som e way, the extent to which they can exercise self-control, and their m oral feelings regard­ ing the deviant behaviour involved. O f particular interest in this version o f control theory is the view th a t deviance can arise because an individual experiences either too m uch or too little control. It thus acts as an antidote to the view am ong som e policy m akers th at the solution to crime and deviance lies in m ore control. One problem with the theory, however, is th at con­ trol balance is pu t forw ard as the central causal concept, bu t deviant behaviour only occurs when a whole range o f oth er factors are present. It is thus difficult to assess the relative salience o f all o f these variables and, indeed, w hether oth er variables are, at least som etim es, m ore relevant. As Lilly et al. (2007:116) argue: His emphasis on autonomy as the wellspring of human motivation seems unnecessarily limited. Why not consider, for example, the desire for self-gratifications, a drive that many other control theories claim is universal and central to the motivation to deviate? In a recent paper, T ittle (2004) has fu rth er refined control balance theory and, in the process, acknow ledged a ‘logical flaw’ and ‘conceptual inconsistencies’ in the earlier form ulation. There is no t the space to delve into this in detail here, though one exam ple can be noted. Originally, Tittle had differentiated betw een ‘repressive’ and ‘au to n o m o u s’ form s o f deviance, and argued th at the first o f these is m ainly linked to those experiencing control deficits. Repressive deviance is where the p e rp etra ­ to r is directly involved in the deviance or confronts the victim (for exam ple, b u r­ glary); autonom ous deviance is where this is no t required, and ‘typically m akes use of third parties, organisations or structural arran g em en ts’ (2004: 399). However, T it­ tle accepts th at in practice it is difficult to distinguish betw een these two form s of deviance, and th a t ‘there is no necessary reason w ithin the logic o f the theory why a person w ith a control surplus would choose m ainly from am ong “a u tonom ous” deviant acts’ (ibid.: 400). Colvin’s (2000) differential coercion theory - put forw ard as an ‘integrated theory’ also focuses on the exercise o f pow er and its im plications for crim inality. According to Colvin, as individuals go through life they experience different degrees o f coercion, stretching from non-coercion to coercion (for exam ple, in the family). The coercion is

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used in order to get individuals to com ply with notions o f approved and appropriate behaviour. The m anner in which this coercion is applied, says Colvin, can be ‘consis­ te n t’ or ‘erratic’, and it is erratic coercion th at is m ore likely to lead to crim inal behav­ iour. The degree o f coercion experienced varies according to an individual’s structural position in society. T hus, says the theory, crim inality is m ore likely to be found am ong those who are subject to the coercion arising from such things as poverty, racism and a lack of educational o pportunities. W hatever its m erits, a fam iliar diffi­ culty here is th a t no t all of, say, the poor tu rn to crim e, m eaning th at the precise ori­ gins, nature and im pact o f coercion require explication. In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in varieties o f control theory, especially in the United States, where the ‘life-course’ theory o f Laub and Sam pson (2003) has been particularly influential (and see Laub et al., 2006, for a review). One o f the attractions o f this work is th at it puts forw ard a non-determ instic theoretical u nderstanding o f crim inality based upon an integration o f social structure, life events, and subjective interp retatio n s on the p art o f the individuals concerned. Life events, such as the nature of family relationships during childhood, em ploym ent opportunities, m arriage, and so on, are im p o rta n t in th at the theory is sensitive to the changing possibilities associated w ith these experiences as an individual goes through life. From this perspective, nothing is fixed or inevitable. Laub and Sam pson reserve particular criticism for the im pact o f form al involvem ent with the crim inal justice system , especially im prisonm ent, which they see as a m ajor factor influencing subsequent offending.

CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

Cultural crim inology is characterised by a fairly eclectic mix o f them es and ideas linked to a variety o f crim inological traditions, notably phenom enology, the n a tu ra ­ listic perspective associated with David M atza, interactionism , critical crim inology and subcultural theory, together with significant influences from p ostm odernist tho ught. As the nam e suggests, the w riters concerned have a com m on interest in the study o f crim e, deviance, m odes o f social control and related phenom ena w ithin the context o f culture. W ork o f this genre has focused on the nature and role o f the m ass m edia in late m odernity (or postm odernity, depending on one’s preference), together with transgressive behaviour and processes o f social control, conceptualised as p ro d ­ ucts and representations o f culture. For cultural crim inologists, a key feature of the late m odern w orld is th at it is ‘m edia-saturated’ (Ferrell and Sanders, 1995). Global electronic com m unications system s have m ade tim e and space m uch less relevant than previously, and created a world awash with constantly changing inform ation, images and signs. One dim en­ sion to this are the cultural m eanings attached to such things as crim e, crim inals, deviants, heroes and m onsters. These m eanings are produced, reproduced, circulated,

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reshaped, absorbed or rejected in a m ultiplicity o f com plex and continuous processes of interaction and interpretation. Individuals enjoy their fifteen m inutes o f fame, or infamy; a sm all boy becom es a feral, uncontrollable ‘rat-boy’; violent crim inals are transform ed into rom anticised lovable celebrities; whole com m unities are stigm a­ tised as the barbarians at the gate; exploited m igrant labour is recast as a threat to the ‘British way o f life’. In this frenzy o f images and signs, where the m edia act as m edia­ tors o f reality, the distinction betw een fact and fiction dissolves. Hollywood and South Central, Los Angeles, are in, one sense, w orlds apart, and yet converge as ‘the street scripts the screen and the screen scripts the stre et’ (Hayward and Young, 2004: 259). Instead o f seeking to determ ine the causes of crim e - seen as a futile task - many cultural crim inologists have tu rn ed their atten tio n to the ways in which representa­ tions o f crim es and crim inals are socially constructed by the m ass m edia and rep ro ­ duced in the form o f textual images (A. Young, 1997; Ferrell et al., 2004). These images perm eate the cultural realm and, in effect, becom e reality, but it is a frag­ m ented reality. They becom e p a rt o f the ‘m aps o f m eaning’ (Clarke et al., 1976: 9) am ong the public in general, those defined as crim inals and deviants, and the agents of social control whose job it is to respond to their transgressions (Tzanelli, et al., 2005). Im portantly, though, cultural crim inology em phasises th at cultural m eanings arise from interactional processes, in which individuals play an active and creative role. C ultural crim inologists, therefore, eschew the determ inistic m ethodologies and m odels of positivism , in favour o f ethnographic research oriented tow ards in te rp reta ­ tive understandings o f the cultural m eaning o f crim e, deviance and transgression am ong those involved. This connects these crim inologists to a long lineage o f qualita­ tive crim inological work, work th at aim s to give an insight into the ways in which people see, experience and shape their social w orlds as active participants. T hus stu d ­ ies have analysed crim inal and deviant behaviour in term s o f em otion, thrill and vis­ ceral excitem ent: a ‘sociology of the sk in ’, as Ferrell and Sanders (1995) describe it (see, for exam ple, W inlow, 2001; Presdee, 2000; Hayward, 2004). K atz’s (1988) now classic study, the Seductions o f Crime, offers a rich enthnography o f the sensual attrac­ tions o f risky behaviour. Fenwick and Hayward (2000) situate their analysis o f youth­ ful transgression w ithin the context o f a p ostm odern culture characterised by intense consum erism . T ransgression in the form o f illegal drug use or football hooliganism , for exam ple, is seen as one m ore leisure option, satisfying the consum er’s desire for novelty and im m ediate gratification. The notion o f risky, challenging behaviour is im p o rta n t in this context, for as O ’Malley and M ugford (1994) point out, although Katz focuses on crim e, the core theoretical argum ents apply to other, non-crim inal behaviours, which open up sensual spaces in an otherw ise m undane, controlled social w orld, w here consum ers experience leisure and thrill as com m odities. O ther w riters have explored these possibilities by analysing form s o f behaviour th at are exciting, or dangerous or provocative (or all three), though they do no t necessar­ ily involve rule-breaking and are difficult to situate on a spectrum o f public

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approval-disapproval; for example, rock clim bers scaling not rock faces, but dizzyingly tall city centre skyscrapers. Lyng (1990,1998) describes such activities as ‘edgew ork’. Cultural crim inologists are also highly critical o f adm inistrative crim inology’s characterisation o f offenders as instrum entally m otivated rational decision m akers, who, em ploying a form o f co st-b en efit analysis, weigh up the risks associated with a crim inal act. For cultural crim inologists, this approach to crim e control ignores the em otional dim ension to the m otivation to offend. In oth er words, th at offenders are often seeking a thrill, or adrenaline rush. One im plication o f this is th at, rath er than acting as a disincentive, the increased risk arising from crim e control m easures may provide an extra incentive (for exam ple, because o f the ‘thrill o f the chase’) to go ahead with the crim inal act. A lthough this kind o f crim inology will, o f course, provoke the usual criticism s from p ro p o n en ts of a positivist perspective (as well as criticism s from adm inistrative crim inology), som e versions o f cultural crim inology have also been criticised by some w riters sym pathetic to its m ethods and ideas. Young (2003b) is critical o f Katz (1988) for over-em phasising culture at the expense o f social structure, and therefore detach­ ing individuals from background factors such as poverty and education. These fac­ tors are im p o rta n t because of the bearing they have on the ways in which individuals experience, u n d erstan d and in te rp ret social life. Additionally, analyses need to be sensitive to the w ider structural context w ithin which cultural experiences are situ ­ ated and shaped in late m odern society. A good exam ple is the night-tim e econom y in this country - those city and town centre nocturnal leisure zones oriented prim arily tow ards young people and the consum ption o f alcohol. A lthough the cultural dim en­ sion to this is clearly im portant, analyses should, as H obbs et al. (2003) argue, also appreciate th at the nature, shape and evolution o f this econom y are closely linked to an intensely com petitive m arket dom inated by a handful o f very large com panies, who, as p a rt of a process o f u rb an regeneration, have w orked with local authorities on the basis of p rivate-public entrepreneurial partnerships. Likewise, w hilst it is correct to stress people’s creative engagem ent with culture, it should also be noted th at the m ass m edia are dom inated by a sm all n um ber o f global m u ltinational corporations whose messages have a m ajor influence on understandings of, for instance, the good life, good taste, good food, good sex and good war. As Sum ner (2004: 25) says: ‘Cul­ tural studies have taken over so m uch o f sociology and we even now have “cultural crim inology” . . . which proclaim s the culturalness o f m uch to do with crim e. But w hat o f econom ics and politics, and the “social”?’ O ’Brien (2005) has also criticised cultural crim inology for giving insufficient a tte n ­ tion to econom ic, political, psychological etc. factors. In addition, he is critical o f the way in which ‘culture’ and ‘subculture’ are conceived of, and dichotom ised, in the work of som e cultural crim inologists (see also, G arland, 2006). Subcultures, such as the one associated with the u rban graffiti artists in Ferrell’s (2006) study, tend to be presented as edgy’, exciting, risk-taking, politicised and praisew orthy, w hilst culture equates with ‘m ain stream ’ society, which is characterised as dull, m undane, bored

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and boring, and is hence m uch less praisew orthy. However, no t everyone m akes a public display o f th eir transgression; lots o f transgressive behaviour goes on, as it were, behind the closed doors o f ordinary life. Finally, som e cultural crim inologists have been criticised for avoiding issues of harm and m orality, and painting a one-sided, rom anticised picture o f crim inal behav­ iour. There is a rem inder here o f earlier criticism s o f new deviancy theorists for concentrating on deviance w ithout victim s (or where victim isation was obscured). Referring to K atz’s Seductions o f Crime, Howe (2004: 279), for instance, puts it like this: Getting caught up in the ‘wonderful attractions within the lived experience of criminal­ ity’, losing yourself to the ‘seductive appeal’ of violence, and grasping the ‘magic in the criminal’s sensuality’ can so deplete your resources that you overlook the dead bodies of the victims .. . Tellingly, sex killings and sexual assaults are omitted from Katz’s list of 'transcendent’ criminal projects.

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES

By the mid-1990s, and as discussed in C hapter 14, it was possible to broadly charac­ terise ‘radical’ crim inology in term s of two strands: a still avowedly M arxist critical crim inology (or ‘left idealism ’) and a dem ocratic socialist left realism . Now, nearing the end o f the first decade o f the tw enty-first century, and the nature o f w hat was called radical crim inology has becom e m uch less clear-cut, though not necessarily any less interesting and relevant. There are still recognisable differences betw een the left realists and others situated on w hat used to be m ore com m only described as the left o f the political spectrum . However, the term ‘radical’ has largely been discarded, and in general nowadays the preferred collective term is critical crim inology. One enduring quality o f critical crim inology since its em ergence as the ‘new ’ crim inology in the early 1970s (Taylor et al., 1973) has been a penchant for being iconoclastic. Young (2002: 2 5 4 -5 ) illustrates this delight in upsetting taken for granted u n d er­ standings o f crim e and social control by outlining a series o f ‘ironies’ which ‘served to turn establishm ent crim inology on its h ead ’: • Self-fulfilment - th at illusions and stereotypes o f crim e can be real in their conse­ quences and self-fulfilling in reality. • Seriousness - th a t crim e occurred thro u g h o u t the social structure and th at the crim es o f the pow erful were m ore serious in th eir consequences than the crim es of the poor. • Ontology - th at crim e has no ontological reality and th at the ‘sam e’ behaviour can be constructed totally differently. Thus, for exam ple, a serial killer could be either a psychopathic m onster or a hero if dropping bom bs daily in the Afghan War.

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• Decentring - th at the crim inal justice system is not the front-line defence against crim e bu t a m inor p a rt o f the system o f social control, itself crucially d ependent on inform al norm s o f civil society. • Selectivity - th at crim inal law, although phrased in a language o f form al equality, is targeted in a way th at is selective and substantially unequal. • Counter-productivity - th at the prison and the crim inal justice system produce crim inals rath er th an defuse crim inality. • Socialisation - th at the core values o f com petitiveness, acquisitiveness, individual­ ism and hedonism are close to the m otivations for crim e, so th at the well-socialised person is m ore likely to offend th an the undersocialised. • Contradiction - th at the ideals which legitim ate and hold the system together are the very ones which society thw arts and the frustration s generated seem to break the system apart. • Function - th a t ‘the crim inal’, ‘the o u tsid er’, ‘the o th er’, far from destroying the fabric o f society, produces stereotypes which hold the fabric together. • Secondary h a m - th a t the prim ary harm o f a social problem is frequently o f a lesser order than the secondary harm accruing from the intervention to control it. The prim e exam ple o f this being the regulation of drug use. In defence o f the continuing influence and relevance o f critical criminology, Young argues th at these ironies still have a contem porary resonance, adding: ‘critical crim i­ nology is flourishing . . . the m ajority o f centres th at teach crim inology are w ithin the rubric o f critical crim inology’ (2002:259). In the sam e vein, Scraton (2002: 35) states: Critical research, publication and teaching within criminology has a significant role in resisting the political and ideological imperatives of official discourse, state-sponsored evaluations of official policy initiatives and the correspondence of vocational training to the requirements of the crime control industry. N ot all o f those who would label them selves ‘critical theorists’ are as positive when assessing the current state o f critical crim inology. Hill and R obertson (2003: 111), for exam ple, argue for ‘a different approach to both theory construction and activism ’. They suggest an approach th at shifts the em phasis away from crim e and penalty tow ards the notion o f ‘social h a rm s’, guided by a central com m itm ent to hum an rights. This echoes the views o f H ulsm an (1986), discussed in C hapter 13, and raises m ajor epistem ological issues revolving around the use o f ‘crim e’ as a key referent (and will be returned to). From a som ew hat different perspective, one expressing a p o st­ m odernist sensibility, Pavlich (1999) chastises critical crim inology for failing to respond appropriately to the conditions of la te /p o st m odernity. The failure is seen as being m anifested in either w hat he sees as a highly constraining engagem ent with aspects o f crim e and the control of crim e, or a m isplaced faith in the possibility of achieving a ‘b e tte r’ w orld. This too raises m ajor issues which will be retu rn ed to;

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suffice at th is stage to say th a t Pavlich’s alternative lies in the concept o f ‘p aralogic’ - a concept in tro d u c ed by Lyotard (1984) - a form o f reasoning w hich seeks to generate innovative ideas by b reaking free from the intellectual c o n strain ts im posed by the su p p o sitio n s in h ere n t in already existing versions o f reason. T hus, as Pavlich (1999: 43) p u ts it: ‘Paralogy legitim ates know ledge claim s on the g ro u n d s o f a relentless iconoclasm th ro u g h w hich new vistas o f language a n d practices are so u g h t’ (em phasis in original).

A changing context As we have seen in earlier ch ap ters, critical crim inology h a d its intellectual ro o ts in neo-M arxism (th o u g h it did draw on w h at was th en m ore recent w ork on crim e and deviance, notab ly in te rac tio n ism and labelling theory), and its political ro o ts in socialism . Based upo n a fu n d a m e n ta l critique o f capitalism , seen as an in h eren tly crim inogenic and u n ju st system , its ultim ate goal was th e creation o f a socialist/co m m u n ist society. Over the last few years, th o u g h , and in tan d e m w ith a rejection o f g ran d narratives, M arxist social th eo ry has ceased to be an intellectual force; state socialist societies, such as the fo rm er Soviet U nion, have a b an d o n e d th e ir versions o f socialism an d em braced neo-liberal m ark et econom ies; a n d across E urope th ere has been the rise o f w hat som e call a liberal dem ocratic consensus - as personified by New L abour - which is p u rp o rte d to re p re se n t the ‘end o f ideology’. C ertainly, the d efinition o f ‘so cialism ’ an d the viability and desirability o f a future socialist society are, to p u t it m ildly, highly pro b lem atic issues - issues th a t, p u t in those term s, only rarely now find th e ir way in to th e w ritings o f critical crim inologists. M arxism , though, is concerned w ith b o th in te rp re tin g the w orld and changing it. T hus neoM arxism provided the conceptual tools for critical crim inologists to analyse the w orkings o f capitalism , a n d to situate crim e, deviance, social control, etc. w ithin th eir analyses. At the sam e tim e, a n d a lthough capitalism was seen to co ntain ‘the seeds o f its own d e stru c tio n ’ in the shape o f various c o n tra d ic tio n s, neo-M arxist critical crim ­ inologists w ere also c o m m itte d to playing a p a rt in its d e stru ctio n . As far as the first o f these is concerned, th ere are som e c o n te m p o ra ry w riters w ho suggest th a t in the context o f a ra m p a n t, global neo-liberal capitalism , we m ay see a resurgence in neoM arxist social th eo ry in the new m illennium , for exam ple: Far from being over, the argument with Marxism is only just about to begin all over again, this time in the context of a capitalism careering out of control and without the counter­ point of communism exerting a counter-pressure for egalitarian policies in welfare, income and wealth distribution, and the equivalent in international terms of the controls exercised by nation states over business and finance before the ‘big bang’ of global capital­ ism in the 1980s. . . a host of highly criminogenic trends have been set in motion. (Downes and Rock, 2007: 323)

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This may be so, but it is significant th at the focus o f critique in recent critical crim ­ inology has tended to be on ‘out o f c ontrol’ neo-liberal m arkets, ra th e r th an on capi­ talism per se, and illustrates the distance travelled since the early 1970s when, draw ing on neo-M arxist theory, the ultim ate goal was the replacem ent o f capitalism (‘out o f c ontrol’ or otherw ise) with socialism . However, at the tim e o f w riting, global capitalism is experiencing its m ost serious financial crisis since the D epression o f the inter-w ar years, and, in retrospect, Dow nes and Rock’s w ords are rem arkably prescient. In this section the focus is on those w riters whose work can, at least loosely, be seen as a product o f the neo-M arxist-influenced tradition discussed earlier on in this book. It is acknowledged that, in com m on w ith crim inology as a whole, present m anifesta­ tions o f this critical crim inological tradition are characterised by degrees o f diversity and fragm entation, partly resulting from the dissolution o f its explicit links with M arxist social theory. Furtherm ore, the past decade or so has seen the em ergence o f a range o f work th a t could also, reasonably, be described as ‘critical’ (for exam ple, cul­ tural crim inology, discussed above). Indeed, potentially, any crim inologist could describe their work as ‘critical’. None the less, in term s o f the structure of this book, which is guided by a sensitivity to historical context, this section conform s to the def­ inition of critical crim inology outlined above.

The agendas of critical criminology We can indicate on a very general level the sort o f work produced by contem porary critical crim inologists by using the fram ew ork provided by the four key questions posed at the beginning o f this chapter. Some exam ples o f this work are discussed below.

W hat to study? Crime, crim inality and control w ithin the context of neo-liberal m arket societies; penality; p rivate-public system s o f social control and governm entality in late m odern society; injustice, corruption and hum an rights viola­ tions; ethnicity, gender and m asculinities; green issues. Who to study? The ‘pow erful’, for exam ple, in the shape o f corporate and state crime; p e rp etrato rs o f ‘conventional’ crim e, linking th eir crim inality to neo-liberal m arket societies, inequality and globalisation. How to study? ‘Radical’ ethnography; through the perspective o f cultural crim inol­ ogy; on the basis of anti-positivism , anti-essentialism and deconstructionism ; th e ­ oretical work on social censures and socially constructed representations o f crime and the crim e problem ; as a critique o f the conceptual language and claims of adm inistrative and conservative crim inologies.

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Why study? For neo-M arxist critical crim inologists the ultim ate goal was the achievem ent o f socialism (or com m unism ), though w hat was m eant by a socialist (or com m unist) society was by no m eans agreed upon. Although ‘socialism ’ is still referred to am ong critical crim inologists (and even, though very occasionally, am ong New Labour cabinet m inisters), its ideological pow er has, over the last q u a rte r of a century, been hugely dim inished. Furtherm ore, large-scale, radical social m ovem ents in, for exam ple, Europe and N orth America now m obilise around issues o f globalisation and environm entalism , rather than socialism understandable given the collapse o f (state) socialism around the w orld, and its track record o f oppression and environm ental degradation. W hilst the raison d'etre o f critical crim inology continues to be a com m itm ent to critique oriented explicitly tow ards the realisation o f a m ore equal and ju st society, there is now ‘the problem o f the narrative which guides such a tran sfo rm a tio n ’ (Young, 2002: 269; see also Cohen, 1996, who sees ‘universal hum an rig h ts’ as the last rem aining m eta­ narrative). Jock Young addresses this problem by draw ing on B aum an’s argum ent that rather than being a project th at can be com pleted, socialism represents a sort o f utopian beacon: a horizon constantly on the move, perpetually receding, but guiding the travel. . . keep­ ing humans forever on the m ove. . . calling them to fight over new injustices and to take the side of the successive echelons of the left behind, injured, humiliated. (Bauman and Tester, 2001, quoted by Young, 2002:269) Some years earlier, George Orwell pu t it like this: The real objective of socialism is not happiness. .. Men use up their lives in heart-break­ ing political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another. And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue. (Orwell, 1943: 5)

Critical perspectives on concepts of crime and deviance Since its genesis at the beginning of the 1970s, a key feature o f critical (and postm oderninfluenced) crim inological theory has been ‘anti-essentialism ’: a refusal to take ‘crim e’ (and ‘deviance’) for granted, as if there was som e essential, inherent difference betw een those activities designated as crim inal and those designated as non-crim inal. From this perspective, the difference betw een them derives from the existence or absence of a rule, or, m ore specifically, a legal censure. The adoption of

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an anti-essentialist perspective challenges the ontological status o f ‘crim e’ - crim inol­ ogy’s central referent. T hus activities officially defined as crim inal cannot be distinguished objectively from oth er activities in term s of, say, essential m oral quali­ ties or notions o f harm fulness. Having said that, it would, however, be surprising to find anyone describing them selves as a crim inologist who argued th at crim e was inherently different to non-crim e, though there are those who, in spite of this, have attem p ted to identify a characteristic or quality shared by those who engage in crim i­ nal behaviour, for exam ple an aggressive personality or a lack o f self-control. N otw ithstanding this, the rejection o f essentialism - at least at an ideational level becam e routine following the influence o f new deviancy theory in the 1960s. Relativism in this sense, though, was not born w ith new deviancy theory. As Reiner (1988:138) says (and referred to earlier in this book), th a t deviance is not a quality of the act ‘may have been news to crim inology, bu t it was p latitudinous to crim inal lawyers’. The notion o f anti-essentialism is im p o rta n t because o f its im plications for debates regarding w hat critical crim inologists believe they should study. Although they recognise th at crim e has no essential m eaning, m any crim inologists w orking outside the critical tradition show little interest in these debates. This is particularly so when carrying out policy-oriented research - a police force spending large am ounts o f m oney on m apping crim e ‘hot sp o ts’, for instance, would hardly be thrilled by the revelation th at ‘there is no “ontological reality” o f crim e’ (H ulsm an, 1986: 65). An anti-essentialist stance m akes the issue o f w hat to study particularly problem atic for critical crim inologists because the legal rules defining crim e are seen as ideo­ logical constructs created by the pow erful (though left realism sees a significant degree o f congruence betw een these and public opinion). Therefore, as discussed earlier, and pu t simply, the study o f crim e as traditionally understood necessarily requires accepting and working w ithin the categorical constraints im posed by the ‘rule m akers’. Internal debates regarding w hat should properly be the object o f inquiry for criti­ cal crim inology have been in evidence since the early 1970s, and continue today. Indeed, these and oth er debates relating to the theoretical concerns of critical crim i­ nology have been on the increase since the m id-1990s (partly because o f the platform provided by the publication in 1997 o f a new journal, Theoretical Criminology). As a result, w ithin contem porary critical crim inology there exist a n u m b er o f approaches p u rp o rtin g to offer ways o f studying crim e th at are congruent with a fundam ental com m itm ent to anti-essentialism . In spite o f their differences, they all see ‘crim e’ as the product o f socially constructed crim inalisation processes; the different concep­ tions o f crim e derive from the fact th at each is focusing on, and giving priority to, dif­ ferent social processes. In oth er words, depending upon the nature o f the particular discourse, the signifier ‘crim e’ is referring to a variety of phenom ena. N one o f them is ‘w rong’; they are all ‘rig h t’ w ithin the context o f their specific discourses. These approaches are discussed in turn.

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Social censures As stated in C hapter 13, Sum ner (1990, 1994) is particularly associated w ith the notion o f deviance or crim e as a social censure (an adverse judgem ent). W ith this m odel there is no im plication th at practices designated as crim inal are inherently bad, or necessarily harm ful, but various publics may judge them as such, depending upon the circum stances in which ideological m oral discourses are created and evolve. W hat is not always appreciated, though, is th a t social censures may be analysed on two levels. First, at a general abstracted level, where no reference is m ade to specific, substantive exam ples. Thus, for instance, the social censure (or crim e) o f m urder can be discussed w ithout reference to actual practices defined as m urder; such practices need no t exist in order for the censure to exist. On a second level, substantive, actual exam ples o f practices subject to a social censure may be selected and the censuring processes analysed, for exam ple acts o f violence (Sum ner, 1997). Alison Young (1997) has taken up a similar, though m ore broadly based, them e in her analysis o f cultural im agery and the ‘crim ino-legal com plex’. Here Young is concerned with representa­ tions o f crim inality/deviance, rath er th an w ith p u ttin g forw ard an explanation or und erstan d in g o f the practices represented. A lthough, for exam ple, in her section on the Jam es Bulger case (the to d d ler Jam es Bulger was killed by two young boys), she discusses various attem p ts w ithin the w ider society to m ake sense o f w hat happened, these are used to illustrate fu rth er processes o f cultural representation; they are not evaluated as viable or otherw ise explanations per se. In these exam ples we see how crim e is studied in term s o f crim inalisation and representational processes and, because of this, analyses are seen as congruent with an anti-essentialist position.

Victims and criminalisation: left realism Left realist crim inologists have continued to defend their position as anti-essentialist in spite of the criticism s to the contrary discussed in C hapter 13. Jock Young’s (1997) ‘holistic’ approach is an a tte m p t to encom pass both the signifier, ‘crim e’, and the sig­ nified, ‘the crim inal’. Again, a specific type o f discourse, seen as anti-essentialist, is constructed, in this case on the basis o f a left realist und erstan d in g o f the crim inalisa­ tion process. Fundam entally, this process is derived from victim s’ accounts o f crim e. Through their in te rp reta tio n o f certain events as crim es, victim s are assigned a p ri­ m ary role in the crim inalisation process. Public understandings in the shape o f toler­ ance, disapproval and perceived harm fulness (and seen as largely reflecting a rational consensus) are the basis o f this process and, in effect, create the 'crim e pro b lem ’. W hereas oth er critical theorists focus on crim inalisation by the state and its agencies of social control, left realists focus on crim e as a product o f the will o f the people, and it is this notion o f crim e th at provides the crim inologist’s object o f inquiry. The left realists’ approach is discussed further below.

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Dispensing with legalism Some have argued th at the concept o f ‘crim inal’ behaviour should be retained, though severed from its link to crim inal law. An early version o f this has been dis­ cussed already: Schw endinger and Schw endinger’s (1975) argum ent th at ‘crim e’ should be redefined in term s o f universal codes o f conduct based upon hum an rights. This new, liberating, u nderstanding o f crim e is, they said, w hat crim inologists should study. M ore recently, and from a sim ilar sta n d p o in t (though as p a rt o f a m uch m ore sophisticated analysis), Henry and M ilovanovic (1996) seek to redefine crim e as resulting from unequal relations of power. ‘Crim e’, they say, is ‘the harm result­ ing from any a tte m p t to reduce or suppress a n o th e r’s position or potential sta n d ­ ing through the use of pow er th at lim its the o th e r’s ability to m ake a difference’ (ibid.: 13). As with the Schw endingers, this approach severs the links betw een crim e and crim inal law, thereby dissolving official boundaries separating crim e from non-crim e and allowing a range of non-crim inalised, or legally censured, behaviours to come under scrutiny. However, freeing analyses from official definitions o f crim e also m eans th at the pow er o f the state to crim inalise certain behaviours is rem oved from the fram e, except in the negative sense of not crim inalising, which puts it at variance with the social censure m odel o f crim e. A fu rth er issue is one o f selection: how is it to be decided which practices transgress w hat the a u thors refer to as ‘universal codes of conduct’, or create harm , and on th at basis are treated as ‘crim es’? If these are con­ strued as identifiable, objective categories, then it would seem to subvert an antiessentialist m odel.

Dispensing with crime As we saw in an earlier period o f critical crim inology’s developm ent, Steinert (1985) and H ulsm an (1986) w ished to dispense with the concept of crim e altogether, prefer­ ring to speak o f ‘tro u b les’ or ‘problem atic situ atio n s’ (we can add De H aan, 1991, and Hill and Robertson, 2003, to this list). As with the Schw endingers and H enry and Milovanovic, from this perspective the activities selected for atten tio n should no t be d ependent upon their pre-categorisation on the basis o f crim inal law. However, w hilst the challenge to com m on sense, ideologically inform ed understandings of crim e is to be recom m ended, there is, again, still the problem of deciding which activities to select for attention; whose voices are to be listened to? A lack o f decent olive oil in the neighbourhood m ight be a problem for som e people, bu t it hardly am ounts to a ‘problem atic situ atio n ’ as envisaged by Hulsm an; bu t how, or where, is the line to be draw n? Furtherm ore, we m ight ask why it is th at (critical) crim inolo­ gists should be restricted to studying only those activities deem ed to be troublesom e or problem atic.

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Dispensing with criminology W ith S m a rt’s p o stm o d e rn ist ‘d e c o n stru c tio n ’ o f crim e, crim inology as an academ ic discipline w ould d isa p p ea r as its subject m a tte r is dispersed am o n g a variety o f a lte r­ native ‘d o m a in s’: The thing that criminology cannot do is deconstruct ‘crime’. It cannot locate rape or child sexual abuse in the domain of sexuality, nor theft in the domain of economic activ­ ity, nor drug use in the domain of health. To do so would be to abandon criminology to sociology; but more importantly it would involve abandoning the idea of a unified prob­ lem which requires a unified response - at least at the theoretical level. (Smart. 1990: 7) However, w hilst this signals a rejection o f essentialism , it does n o t c o n stitu te an a rg u ­ m en t for d isp en sin g w ith ‘crim e’ as a concept - references to rape a n d th eft, etc. are references to legal categories. A ccording to S m a rt’s ‘anti-crim in o lo g y ’ perspective, though, analyses o f these p h e n o m e n a should be freed from the c o n strain ts im posed by crim inological discourses. T h u s crim e w ould be studied, b u t n o t by crim inologists as crim inologists. T here are echoes o f th is ap p ro ac h in Van H oorebeeck (1997), th o u g h th ere is no suggestion here th a t crim inology should be ab an d o n e d . For Van Iloorebeeck, the crim inologist can avoid falling into an ‘essentialist tra p ’ by recognising th a t activities defined as crim inal c an n o t be distin g u ish ed from other, n o n -crim in al activities in term s o f causal factors. P ut a n o th e r way, th ere are no special (for exam ple, psychopathological) factors specifically linked to crim inality, b u t n o t to non-crim inality.

Left realism and the ‘crime problem’ C rim inologists associated w ith left realism have, since th e m id-1990s, c o n tin u ed to develop th eir version o f critical crim inology (see, for exam ple, J. Young, 1998; Taylor, 1999; Lea, 2002). O ne d im en sio n to th is has been fu rth e r theo retical w ork on the role o f victim s o f crim e in left realist u n d e rstan d in g s o f the c rim inalisation process. Fun­ dam entally, thro u g h th eir in te rp re ta tio n o f certain events as crim e, victim s are assigned a p rim e role in this process. Jock Young (1998) argues th a t crim e is a p ro d u c t o f a dyadic rela tio n sh ip betw een ‘a c tio n ’ by an offender an d ‘re a c tio n ’ as m anifested in v ictim s’ accounts, th o u g h he acknow ledges th a t m easuring ‘re al’ a m o u n ts o f crim e is a chim era. N evertheless, draw ing on evidence from victim surveys, he is led to conclude th a t since the 1960s am o u n ts o f crim e - m eaning conventional crim e - have increased in Britain. Devel­ oping the p o in t th a t public sensitivity to crim e will vary over tim e, as well as from group to group, he in tro d u ces the idea o f a c o n tin u u m stre tc h in g from ‘to le ra te d ’ to c rim in alised ’. A ccording to Young, public sensitivity has increased since the 1960s,

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leading to m ore behaviour being situated at the ‘crim inalisation’ end o f the c ontin­ uum , as registered in victim surveys. Therefore, from this perspective, we have expe­ rienced the w orst o f both w orlds in Britain: on the one hand, rising levels o f relative deprivation coupled with an increasing em phasis on individualism have, since the 1960s, led to an increase in crim e incidents (see the discussion o f left realism in C hapter 13) and, on the oth er hand, the public is less tolerant o f crim e, leading to a greater propensity for crim e victim s to register their victim isation in surveys. One difficulty with this is th a t there is no way o f assessing the extent to which relative dep­ rivation and individualism were relevant to explanations o f crim inality p rior to the 1960s. W hilst these two factors m ight explain crim e rises since then, they are not explanations o f crim inality in general; th at is, if oth er causal factors are believed to have been at work up to the 1960s, w hat were they, and w hat role do they continue to play? And, as far as the m easurem ent of crim e is concerned, how can com parisons be m ade betw een the pre-1960s and m ore recent tim es, when no com parable data from victim surveys in the earlier period exist? A further difficulty em erges if we exam ine m ore closely the ‘a ctio n -re a ctio n ’ relationship. W hat is pu t forw ard as ‘realistic’ evidence for increases in crim e is p ro ­ vided by victim s’ accounts, and these increases are explained in term s of relative dep­ rivation and individualism - factors associated with an increasingly aggressive neo-liberal m arket econom y. At the sam e tim e, public sensitivity is said to have heightened since the 1960s and, as a consequence, m ore events have been crim i­ nalised in the sense o f being defined as crim es by victims. However, when exam ining am ounts o f crim e registered in victim surveys, there is no objective way o f quantify­ ing the relative im portance o f the ‘external’ factors (relative deprivation and individu­ alism ) and the factors associated with public perceptions and tolerance when explaining crim e rises. T hus we cannot know how m uch o f the crim e registered by victim s is ‘new ’ and how m uch is the result of increased sensitivity. A ccording to the logic of the tolerance-crim inalisation m odel proposed by Young, less tolerance is highly likely to lead to m ore crim inalisation in the above sense. In fact, in theory, less tolerance could account for the entire crim e rises referred to by Young. One is rem inded o f D urkheim ’s society o f saints, discussed earlier, where crim e as norm ally understood m ay have decreased dram atically, and yet ‘crim e’ as u n derstood w ithin th at context m ay have increased equally dram atically. D ata from the British Crime Survey (a victim survey) indicate th at crim e has been falling since the mid-1990s in Britain: is this because there has been a ‘real’ decrease due to less relative depriva­ tio n/individualism , or because the public has becom e more tolerant? A lthough a lack o f tolerance is not coterm inous with m oral panic, it is allied to it in th at each involves a n otion of heightened sensitivities. In its original form ulation (see Cohen, 1980), a m oral panic may sim ply create an illusion th at crim e has increased, or it m ay set in m otion an am plification spiral, leading eventually to actual increases in crim e. For left realists, ‘real’ am ounts o f crim e have risen (at least up until the mid-1990s) since the 1960s, due to m ore relative deprivation and individualism ,

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thus a suggestion o f any illusion on the p a rt o f victim s is rejected. Indeed, one o f the m ain criticism s aim ed at so called left idealists by left realists was th at the form er see increases in crim e as an illusion. W hat is left unexplored in Young’s analysis is the extent to which an am plification spiral is im plicated in these ‘real’ increases in crim e. The issue becom es even m ore com plex if his ‘square o f crim e’ - com prising offenders, victims, form al controls and inform al controls - is brought into the frame. The argu­ m ent th at public (or police, or m edia, etc.) intolerance is a rational response to real increases in crim e suggests th a t the public, as victims, are sim ply responding to events th at have their origins elsewhere. In fact, looked at in this way, we could equally argue th at an increase in crim e in a particular neighbourhood m ight eventu­ ally reduce people’s sensitivity, m aking them m ore tolerant, and according to the ‘toleran ce-crim in alisatio n ’ m odel, this should lead to less crim inalisation, th a t is, less crim e. A final point to m ake, one com m ented on earlier, is th a t resp o n d en ts’ views in victim surveys are m ediated by a set o f pre-given legal categories; therefore, non-crim inal harm ful activities are excluded, and so too are those crim es such as w hite-collar crim e, untouched by victim surveys.

Morality, tolerance and the ‘crime problem’ Clearly, public sensitivities regarding crim e and victim isation are central to debates about the nature o f the ‘crim e pro b lem ’. For this reason, it is w orth retu rn in g to the postm o d ern ist argum ent th a t in contem porary society individuals are relatively detached from m oral foundations, and can draw on a plurality o f m oral universes. If the social w orld is m ore fractured and fragm ented in this sense, then it will have m ajor im plications for deviantisation and crim inalisation processes. A ccording to the logic o f Young’s tolerance-crim inalisation m odel discussed above, a reduction in the influence o f previously widely accepted m oral strictures, and the em ergence o f a society characterised by cultural pluralism , as suggested by p ostm odernists, should lead to a shift in public attitudes tow ards ‘tolerance’. Yet Young argues th at public sensitivities regarding crim e have becom e m ore heightened since the 1960s, leading to a shift tow ards ‘crim inalisation’, th a t is, less tolerance. As they stand, n either of these perspectives allows for the possibility th at, since the 1960s, both processes have been at work: th a t a m ore ‘liberal’, open-m inded m oral outlook can coexist with less tolerant attitudes tow ards crim e and crim inals. There is, though, an alternative way of approaching this issue, one th a t is capable o f accom m odating the coexistence of both processes. In order to illustrate this, it is necessary to go back to the work o f the new deviancy theorists in the 1960s. A lthough there was a celebration o f cultural plu ­ ralism , and a rejection o f the notion of consensus, the types o f behaviour chosen for study tended to be based upon a perception o f w idespread societal disapproval of th at behaviour, rath er th an small-scale, sectional disapproval (for exam ple sm oking m arijuana rath er th an drinking real ale). Looking back, and applying contem porary

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sensibilities, m any o f the choices now appear passé, in the sense th a t the behaviours chosen w ould be unlikely to be defined, on th at basis, as deviant today. Some exam ples are: n aturists, gays, lesbians, green-haired punks, shaven-headed skin­ heads, topless barm aids and m arijuana users. There does seem to have been a w eak­ ening o f m oral disapprobation on a general level, suggesting a shift tow ards a m ore tolerant attitude. We can, though, be m ore specific: the shift has been tow ards a m ore tolerant attitu d e regarding w hat have been referred to as ‘crim es/deviance w ithout victim s’. In short, a whole range o f behaviours are now m uch less likely to attract a social censure o f deviance. Indeed, going back fu rth er into the tw entieth century, we can include such things as unm arried m others, divorcees and couples 'living in sin ’. At the sam e tim e, though, a m ore sensitised, less tolerant attitu d e tow ards crim es with victim s appears to have developed, partly reflecting the increasing em phasis placed upon victim s and rights. Young does no t m ake this distinction when dis­ cussing his tolerance-crim inalisation continuum , and neither does he incorporate notions o f approval and disapproval. This is retu rn ed to below w ithin the context o f a discussion o f m ore recent work from Young.

Critical criminology, globalisation and neo-liberal markets In recent years, various critical crim inologists have focused on the crim inogenic fea­ tures o f globalised neo-liberal m arkets. Some examples will indicate the key argum ents. Critical crim inologists have continued to explore the area o f w hite-collar and cor­ porate crim e (as crim es o f the powerful), though now w ithin the context o f unfet­ tered, footloose, neo-liberal global m arkets (see, for exam ple, B onanno et al., 1997; Slapper and Tom bs, 1999; Snider, 2000; Cottino, 2004). To digress slightly, an im p o r­ tan t point to m ake here is th at labelling different types o f crim e as white-collar, cor­ porate, professional, organised, state and conventional is not to suggest th at these are in practice discrete categories. On the contrary, there is a significant degree o f overlap am ong all of them . Pearce and Tom bs (2004) provide a good, recent overview of m u ltinational corporations (MNCs), paying special attention to the intern atio n al oil industry, and crim e. They begin by questioning the current orthodoxy, suggesting th at globalisation has led to nation states becom ing less pow erful when com pared to MNCs. W hilst true in some respects, the reality, they say, is rather m ore complex: ‘in creating the condition w ithin which MNCs can operate m ore freely and on an increasingly international scale, advanced capitalist states have been crucial acto rs’ (ibid.: 361). The authors point out th at MNCs share three basic features: • the control o f econom ic activities in a n um ber o f countries; • they are able to take advantage o f geographical differences am ong countries; • they are in a position to move resources and functions around the w orld.

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In com bination, these lead to four im p o rta n t consequences. • First, MNCs have significant oppo rtu n ities to bypass the legal system o f a country in which they operate, and there are few bodies o f law th at are international in scope. This allows ‘regim e shop p in g ’, th at is, searching out those p arts o f the world where there are fewer regulations; usually these are in the developing world. It also allows MNCs to ‘export h aza rd ’, to use m ethods o f p roduction or sell products th at in th eir hom e country would be against the law. • Second, MNCs can th reaten to locate elsewhere if controls on their activities are not reduced. • T hird, MNCs ensure th at the com panies they establish in other countries are, from a legal p o in t o f view, o f independent status. This com plicates any situation where illegal behaviour is suspected, and lim its the liability o f the MNC as whole (the Bhopal disaster in India involving a Union Carbide p lan t is a good exam ple o f this o c c u rrin g -s e e Pearce and Tombs, 1998). • Fourth, because the crim inal law is largely based upon the individual and the concept o f mens rea - the crim inal intent o f an act - it does not easily apply to a ‘fictional individual’ in the shape o f a ‘corporate perso n ’. Currie’s (1997: 147) central thesis is th at m arket societies (seen as societies where m arket principles pervade the whole social fabric) ‘are especially likely to breed high levels o f violent crim e’. As he says, m any com m entators in the United States (and elsewhere) pointed to the increases in crim e, including violent crim e, in Russia and China when free m arket econom ies replaced state socialism , a transform ation previ­ ously applauded as a move tow ards dem ocracy and freedom . W hilst in these accounts the lawlessness was linked to the advent o f a free m arket, the sam e com m en­ tato rs saw no reason to m ake a corresponding link betw een the m arket and high levels o f violent crim e in the United States. For Currie, this link is crucial, though his analysis also takes into consideration the significant differences in am ounts o f violent crim e betw een one society and another: Are there some common features which help explain why homicide is so startlingly high in one advanced Western industrial society - the US - and also in some (but not all) developing countries and (only recently) in some parts of the former Soviet bloc? And relatedly, are there some common factors that help explain why most of the rest of the post-industrial family of nations, including even its poorer cousins, suffer so much less of it? (Currie, 1997:149-50, emphases in original) From Currie’s (left realist) perspective, then, som e m arket societies are worse than others, in th at they are m ore com petitive, m ore unequal, and provide less welfare for the poor and m arginalised and, because o f this, they are particularly prone to high

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rates o f violent crim e. A lternative form s o f capitalism - ‘com passionate’ and ‘keiretsu’ - lead to social structures and relationships th at are less harsh. C om pas­ sionate capitalism is seen to stress ‘social solidarity, equity and com m unity values . . . as in Scandinavia’ (Currie, 1997: 153), w hilst keiretsu capitalism ‘is paternalistic . . . Japan being the classic exam ple’ (ibid.: 153) (for a detailed study o f crim e and Japa­ nese society, see Leonardsen, 2004). The U nited States, on the oth er hand, argues Currie, provides a distinct exam ple o f a capitalist society where protection from the w orst excesses o f the m arket is extremely lim ited. lie identifies a n um ber of highly crim inogenic and interrelated m echanism s th at have come together in a concen­ trated form in the United States, and these provide the basis for an explanation of the com paratively high rates o f violent crim e in th at society:

• the progressive destruction o f livelihood; • the grow th o f extrem es o f econom ic inequality and m aterial deprivation; • the w ithdraw al o f public services and supports, especially for fam ilies and children; • the erosion o f inform al and com m unity netw orks o f m utual support, supervision and care; • the spread o f a m aterialistic, neglectful and ‘h a rd ’ culture; • the unregulated m arketing o f the technology o f violence; • and, not least, the w eakening o f social and political alternatives.

By the end o f the 1990s a m ore ‘E uropeanised’ critical crim inology was em erging in Britain. This was linked to such things as the political and econom ic changes occur­ ring w ithin the context o f neo-liberal m arket capitalism ; the notion o f the ‘European d ream ’ arising from the European Com m unity; cross-border crime; and the grow th in European-wide treaties relating to, for exam ple, increasing cooperation am ong law enforcem ent agencies, including the exchange o f intelligence. Ian Taylor (1999), for exam ple, discusses w hat he calls the ‘five defining features o f m arket-liberal dis­ courses on crim e in E urope’. There is, first, ‘crim e and social anxiety’. M arket-liberalism , says Taylor, encour­ ages anxiety and a sense o f risk am ong citizens. As a result, people work harder because o f job insecurities; buy m ore, because of insecurities over consum er goods; and take financial risks, such as buying on credit cards and speculating on shares. There are fu rth er anxieties concerning econom ic stability because o f the intrusion o f free m arket crim inal enterprises into the legitim ate m arket. He also notes the increases in corporate fraud th at followed the deregulation o f the m arket in the 1980s. Overall, he argues, contem porary societies are characterised by a culture o f anxiety and a psychological sense o f risk, as reflected in ‘fear o f crim e’ surveys (seen as a device by which generalised anxieties are articulated). W ith this as a backdrop, crim inal justice policy is based upon the m anagem ent o f risk.

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Second, Taylor points to ‘the nation and the state’. Persistent poverty and long­ term unem ploym ent have led to the institutionalisation o f inner-city, or outer-edge, ghettoes in older, now post-industrial European cities. The poor are seen as the m ar­ ginalised casualties of m arket-liberalism , creating problem s th at the nation state finds increasingly difficult to solve, leading, again, to a response based upon the m an ­ agem ent o f problem s. T hird, he refers to crim e and ‘the o th er’. The argum ent here is th at aggressive m ar­ kets create a situation where sections o f the population are increasingly subject to a process o f dém onisation. M edia-generated m oral panics target m ore and m ore folk devils, who are judged no t to be full m em bers o f society (for exam ple, asylum seekers, Yardies and paedophiles). This too heightens the sense o f risk and danger. Taylor’s fourth feature is ‘crim e, dislocation and social care’. Here he p oints to the reductions in welfare and social care provided by the state, as governm ents across Europe have cut taxes and social spending. U nfortunately, this has taken place w ithin the context o f deindustrialisation and the restructuring o f European econom ies. Vari­ ous social problem s, including crim e, have resulted from this intensification o f social inequality. Finally, Taylor discusses w hat he calls ‘m arket liberalism , hyperbole and critical evaluation’. By this he m eans th a t m arket societies invest huge am ounts o f energy in the ‘alm ost m essianic’ project o f convincing citizens th a t such societies provide unlim ited o pportunities for success and happiness. An extrem e em phasis on the con­ sum ption o f m aterial goods, says Taylor, intensifies a striving for success, bringing with it the inevitable losers as well as w inners, and an increase in (M ertonian) relative deprivation.

Vertiginous late modernity W hile contem porary critical crim inology contains a n um ber of unifying them es (such as a com m itm ent to critique and anti-essentialism , and a concern to challenge inequality, injustice and punitive responses to crim e), there is also fragm entation, diversity and fluidity in term s o f its ideas, concerns and m ethodologies. One crim i­ nologist who has figured prom inently in the developm ent o f critical crim inology in Britain and, indeed, around the world during the last forty years or so is Jock Young. A lthough he has not, o f course, m ade the journey alone, he has had a significant pres­ ence in the tw ists and tu rn s associated with the history o f critical crim inology: a late 1960s study o f illegal drug users guided by new deviancy theory; the ‘new crim inol­ ogy’ th at em erged in the early 1970s; the growing influence o f left realism in the 1980s; and, in the new m illennium , the incorporation o f cultural crim inology into a left realism sensitive to the profound social, econom ic and political transform ations characterising late (and, as it is som etim es called, ‘liq u id ’) m odernity. Young’s (2007)

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The Vertigo o f Late Modernity, is an invigorating, wide-ranging, erudite and polem ical statem ent o f where he now stands:

Vertigo is the malaise of late modernity: a sense of insecurity of insubstantiality, and of uncertainty, a whiff of chaos and a fear of falling. The signs of giddiness, of unsteadi­ ness, are everywhere . . . The obsession with rules, an insistence on clear uncompromis­ ing lines of demarcation between correct and incorrect behaviour, a narrowing of borders, the decreased tolerance of deviance, a disproportionate response to rulebreaking, and easy resort to punitiveness and a point at which simple punishment begins to verge on the vindictive. (Ibid.: 12) In this book, Young revisits and develops his earlier work on the them e o f social exclu­ sion (Young, 1999), in the process seeking to dissolve the binary distinction betw een exclusion and inclusion. For one com m entator, Vertigo could signal a shift away from left realism back tow ards left idealism : ‘Fam ous for his previous repudiation o f Left Idealism in favour o f Left Realism (a transform ation th at may by slowly reversing again)’ (M aruna, 2008: 534). Certainly, Young’s claim th a t ‘m oral panics a b o u n d ’ (Young, 2007: 13) does seem to depart from left realism ’s view th at public concerns about crim e and disorder should not be w ritten off as exaggerated, or d isp ro p o rtio n ­ ate, and m akes a reliance on the views o f victims, or the ‘com m unity’, problem atic. Furtherm ore, the cultural crim inology he has aligned him self with is infused with them es, ideas and intellectual influences th at em erged in the heady days o f the late 1960s under the rubric o f new deviancy theory, for exam ple (along with m oral panic) an ‘app reciatio n ’, even celebration, o f form s o f deviance, a recognition o f cultural plu ­ ralism , and a concern w ith politicising deviant behaviour. At the sam e, though, notions o f relative deprivation and equality o f opportunity, derived originally from M erton and subsequently em braced by left realists, still have an im p o rta n t presence in Young’s analysis o f the late m odern condition. In Vertigo, Young com pares and contrasts late m odernity, th at is the present, with an earlier ‘m o d ern ’ period o f the 1950s and the 1960s, noting the massive changes th at have occurred in term s o f em ploym ent, family and com m unity: Late modern society involves insecurities of economic position and of identity. A turbo­ charged capitalism shifts manufacturing industries abroad, out-sources, downsizes, deskills and automates; it undermines the social embeddedness of job, community and very often family, creating a high level of instability and a pervasive sense of unfair­ ness. Such a sense of disembeddedness is further exacerbated by the shock of the plural, an unprecedented pluralism of values, engendered by mass migration and global media.

(Young, 2008: 524)

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These transform ations, argues Young, have resulted in strong feelings o f resentm ent am ong m em bers o f a lower or underclass and m em bers o f an ‘insecure’ m iddle class (‘m iddle class’ is here defined as a broad tranche o f the population occupying a class position betw een an ‘underclass’ and a rich upper class, and is distinguished from a fourth strata, a ‘secure’ m iddle class). It is the insecure m iddle class who are seen as experiencing a sense o f ‘vertigo’: a fear o f falling due to an intensification o f anxieties about jobs, social status and a lack o f ontological security. According to Young, this has led to w hat he calls ‘o th erin g ’: dem onising the po o r as culturally inferior, and the source of the crim e problem . Along w ith this, he says, has been a tren d tow ards ‘defining deviancy up’, th at is, a dim inution in the tolerance o f oth er people’s behav­ iour, together with a m ore punitive stance. The end result is an increase in rules and prohibitions, as the (insecure) m iddle class a tte m p t to recapture a w orld o f security and stability. Drawing on M e rto n ’s m odel, Young argues th at for those in the lower reaches of the class structure, problem s arise because of a disjunction betw een cultural inclusion and structural exclusion. T hus the least well off are socialised into the sam e value sys­ tem as the w ider society - one stressing m aterial success and equal oppo rtu n ities and yet face the structural barriers deriving from low wages and a lack o f o p p o rtu n i­ ties for upw ard m obility. The ensuing relative deprivation intensifies the ‘transgressive anger’, and this is often directed at others in the sam e position: For the poor predate the poor, the stigma of being a ‘loser’ is countered by a hardening, an essentialist self-othering, often of machismo, race, religion, even locality and postal code; internecine splits of spurious identity striating an obscured class structure. (Ibid.: 526) There is in Young’s The Vertigo o f Late Modernity an echo o f an argum ent discussed above w ithin the context o f left realist crim inology: th at public sensitivity tow ards crim e/deviance can be located on a continuum stretching from ‘to lerated ’ to ‘crim i­ nalised’. In Vertigo, the argum ent is th at ‘o th erin g ’ on the p a rt o f an insecure m iddle class has led to less tolerance o f difference and, therefore, a ‘defining up’ of deviancy. This, it is argued, has resulted in an increase in rules and prohibitions (som ething th a t the current recession is likely to accentuate even further). As we have seen in the previous chapter, crim inal justice (and other) policies introduced by the Labour gov­ ern m en t do su p p o rt the idea o f less tolerance, and a m ore vindictive, punitive stance in relation to difference, together with an expansion o f the m eans o f surveillance. However, this does raise questions regarding the source o f these censures, as well as the linkages betw een the public, the m edia and governm ent. In oth er words, how and why does greater intolerance am ong the insecure m iddle class get translated into actual policy, and w hat role do the m edia play? If, as Young argues, late m odern soci­ ety is, from the point of view o f cultural affiliations, m uch m ore pluralistic than it was in, say the 1950s, then it w ould suggest a tren d tow ards greater, rath er than

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less, tolerance am ong the public. The problem is th at the issue is so com plicated th at it is im possible to draw up a sim ple balance sheet o f gains and losses in degrees o f tolerance (not the least because an individual’s values are necessarily inherent in any assessm ent). Furtherm ore, while the crim inalisation o f certain behaviours may reflect greater intolerance, it could be reasonably argued th at som etim es such crim i­ nalisation - for exam ple, in relation to dom estic violence and m arital rape - is som e­ thing to welcom e. In addition, and referred to in the earlier discussion of left realism , during the last fifty years or so the public have becom e m ore tolerant tow ards certain behaviours previously viewed as deviant. In som e cases, for exam ple, in relation to gam bling and alcohol consum ption, a m ore liberal attitu d e has been reflected in the state decrim inalising such behaviour. Hall et al. (2008) also discuss offending w ithin the context o f the intense individu­ alism and consum erism characterising late m odern society. This is an ethnographic study concentrating on crim inal identities am ong those ostensibly at the b ottom end o f the class structure. Here, aspirations were oriented tow ards the status, respect and sense o f achievem ent delivered by an ostentatious display o f m aterial consum ption, and crim inality - especially dealing in drugs - was seen as providing the m echanism for satisfying these aspirations. N one o f those interview ed, though, saw them selves as p a rt o f a socially excluded underclass. In fact, it was crucially im p o rta n t they were able to distance them selves from the ‘losers’ (for exam ple ‘Aldi bashers’, a label given to those who had sunk so low th at they had to shop in discount stores). Allied to this, none o f them displayed any allegiance to traditional notions o f w orking class com m u­ nity or conventional values. They were com m itted to an ethos o f individualism and consum erism , rath er th an collectivism and class-based struggle.

Green perspectives Here the concerns o f crim inology are extended to include activities th at harm the environm ent and anim als (in term s o f activism , there are links w ith the environm en­ tal m ovem ent and the anim al rights m ovem ent). At the m om ent, it is prem ature to suggest th a t a ‘g reen’ crim inological theory exists, ra th e r it is, as South (1998: 212) puts it, ‘a sensitising perspective, and encom passes such things as risk, hum an and anim al rights, and a critique o f the activities o f m u ltinational corporations (Vol. 2, No. 2, 1998, special issue o f Theoretical Criminology is devoted to the them e ‘for a green crim inology’). M ore recently, Lynch and Stretsky (2003) develop fu rth er a th e ­ oretical und erstan d in g o f green perspectives. As they say, this has been a neglected area w ithin crim inology and ‘Has allowed little room for critical exam ination o f indi­ viduals or entities w ho/w hich kills, injures and assaults other life form s (hum an, ani­ mal or plant) by poisoning the e a rth ’ (ibid.: 231). They outline three ‘guiding principles’ for a green perspective. First, the harm s done to the environm ent result from the priority given to economic interests over

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environm ental interests, and this will determ ine w hether or not these harm s are defined as crimes. Second, those harm s that im pact upon the least powerful in society, for example poorer people or m inorities, are the ones least likely to be crim inalised or subject to law enforcem ent. Third, they argue that a green perspective should seek to integrate social structural considerations with subjective understandings on the part o f those who suffer from harm s a n d /o r involve themselves in ecological m ovem ents.

The future of critical criminology The above discussion has given som e indication, albeit a b rief one, o f m ore recent developm ents and debates located in w hat is now a broad church o f critical crim inol­ ogy. In spite o f intellectual challenges from postm odernists and others, and a changed world where talk o f socialist utopias is seen as naive and totally unrealistic, the work of critical crim inologists continues to have a significant presence in crim ino­ logical discourses. Founded on a fundam ental com m itm ent to critique, it is not unreasonable to suggest th at in the present social, political and econom ic context, critical crim inology is even m ore relevant th an it was when it was on the crest o f a wave in the 1970s. It will obviously continue to evolve, and the nature o f its evolution will, o f course, be contingent upon a m ultitude o f w ider changes, internal and exter­ nal to crim inology as an academ ic field. One obvious source o f fluidity is the people involved. W ith the passage o f tim e, new galacticos with different biographies and new challenges to those discussed on the pages o f this book will em erge. However, there are a n u m b er of key agendas that, one hopes, will continue to excite the m inds o f the critical crim inologist, notably: • theoretical debates about the n ature o f crim inology and its conceptual language; • critical analyses o f the social, political and econom ic contexts, global and local, w ithin which social harm s, crim inalised or otherw ise, are situated; • a theoretical and practical engagem ent w ith issues o f social and crim inal justice policy and a com m itm ent to the eradication o f injustice; • an interest in not only crim inalisation processes, bu t also issues o f aetiology, cul­ ture and identity am ong those subjected to these processes. One also hopes th at for those involved, this is accom panied by, as Currie (2002: vii) puts it; ‘a willingness to apply a critical lens not only to the work o f their m ore con­ ventional co u n terp arts in the discipline bu t th eir own as well’.

FINAL REMARKS

This book has been about criminology as an academic discipline and the various ways in which the crim inological project has been conceived and socially organised; it has

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also b e en a b o u t c rim in o lo g ica l th e o ry a n d th e d iffe re n t w ays in w h ich issu es o f crim e, deviance a n d c o n tro l have b e en s tu d ie d . A very b ro a d a rra y o f crim in o lo g ica l th e o rie s have b e en d isc u sse d in th is tex t a n d , w h a te v e r th e ir p a rtic u la r m e rits, each d id at least fo r a p e rio d c a p tu re th e im a g in a tio n o f so m e a ca d em ic crim in o lo g ists; occasionally th ey even in flu e n ce d c rim in a l ju stic e policy. A n d th e n so m e th in g else cam e alo n g . O u t o f th e d isc ip lin e ’s in te rn a l a n d e x te rn a l h isto ry have co m e m a n y d iffere n t ty p es o f c rim ­ inology, a n d now , w ell in to th e new m ille n n iu m , in te n se , c o m p le x a n d so m e tim e s v itri­ olic d e b a te s c o n tin u e . T h a n k g o o d n e ss. W h a te v e r th e ir p e rso n a l p re fe re n ce s, it is h o p e d th a t re a d e rs o f th is b o o k w ill fin d th ese d e b a te s b o th im p o r ta n t a n d in te re s tin g . In th e fu tu re , it is fro m th e ir ra n k s th a t b o o k s su ch as th is will d ra w th e ir in sp ira tio n .

S e le c t e d f u r t h e r r e a d in g P o stm o d e rn ism an d crim inology are d iscussed by M orrison, W. (1 9 9 5 ) Theoretical Criminology: From m odernity to post-modernism, London: Cavendish Publishing, and South, N. (1 9 9 7 ) ‘Late-modern crim inology: “late” as in “dead” or “m odern” as in “n ew ”’, in O wen, D. (ed) Sociology After Postmodernism, London: Sage. A key tex t w ritte n from the perspective o f c o n stitu tiv e crim inology is Henry, S. and M ilovanovic, D. (1 9 9 6 )

Constitutive Criminology: Beyond post-modernism, London: Sage. For reviews o f fem inist perspectives, gender and crim e, see Heidensohn, F. and Gelsthorpe, L. (20 0 7 ) 'Gender and crim e’, in M. Maguire, R. M organ and R. Reiner (eds) The Oxford

Handbook o f Criminology, 4th edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Silvestri, M. and CrowtherD ow ey (20 0 8 ) Gender and Crime, London: Sage, provide an accessible in tro d u c tio n . M ore detailed analyses will be fo u n d in NafAne, N . (1 9 9 7 ) Feminism and Criminology, Cambridge: Polity, and H eidensohn, F. (2 0 0 0 ) Sexual Politics and Social Control, Buck­ ingham: Open University Press. On the re la tio n sh ip betw een g en d er a n d ju stice, see H eidensohn, F. (ed) (2 0 0 6 ) Gender and Justice: New concepts and approaches, Cullom p­ ton: W illan. Renzetti, C. (2 0 0 8 ) Feminist Criminology, Abingdon: Routledge, exam ines the in te rse ctio n o f gender, race an d class w ithin the co n tex t o f crim e an d justice. An accessible a n d up -to -d ate discussion o f m asculinities an d crim e is Collier, R. (2 0 0 4 ) ‘M asculinities and crime: Rethinking the “man q u estion ” ’, in C. Sumner (ed) The Black-

well Companion to Criminology, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. For a ‘stru c tu re d a c tio n ’ a p p ro ac h , see M esserschm idt, J. W . (1 9 9 7 ) Crime as Structured Action: Gender, race, class and crime, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, and for an iconoclastic analysis o f th is area, H ood-W illiam s, J. (2 0 0 2 ) ‘G ender, m asculinities and crime: From structures to psych es’, Theoretical Criminology, 5(1). Connell, R. (2 0 0 2 ) Gender, Cam­ bridge: Polity Press exam ines g e n d er theory, paying p a rtic u la r a tte n tio n to m asculinities. An excellent in tro d u c tio n to psycho-social crim inology (w ith o r w ith o u t th e h y p h e n ) is provided by Gadd, D . and Jefferson, T. (2 0 0 7 ) Psychosocial Criminology: A n Introduc­

tion, London: Sage.

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C on tro l th eo ry is re p re se n te d by G ottfredson, M. R. and Hirschi, T. (1 9 9 0 ) A General

Theory o f Crime, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press; a n d ‘c o n tro l b a la n ce ’ th eo ry by Tittle, C. R. (2 0 0 0 ) ‘Control balance’, in R. Paternoster and R. Bachman (eds) Explaining

Criminals and Crime: Essays in contemporary theory, Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury, w ith a ‘re fin e m e n t’ in Tittle, C. R. (2 0 0 4 ) ‘Refining control balance theory’, Theoretical Crimi­ nology, 8(4). A useful review o f Laub an d S a m p so n ’s in flu en tial 'life c o u rse ’ th e o ry is p ro ­ vided by Laub, J. H., Sam pson, R. J. and Sweeten, G. (2 0 0 6 ) ‘A ssessing Sam pson and Laub’s life-course theory o f crim e’, in F. T. Cullen, J. P. W right and K. R. Blevins (eds)

Taking Stock: The status o f criminological theory (Advances in Criminological Theory, Vol. 15, pp. 3 1 3 -3 3 ), N ew Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishing. A good, in tro d u c to ry , sta rtin g place for exploring c u ltu ral crim inology is Ferrell, J., Hayward, K. and Y oung, J. (2 0 0 8 ) Cultural Criminology: An invitation, London: Sage. A now classic text from tw enty years ago is Katz, J. (1 9 8 8 ) Seductions o f Crime, N ew York: Basic Books. For discussions o f m ore recen t d ev elo p m en ts, see Ferrell, J. and Sanders, C. (eds) (1 9 9 5 ) Cultural Criminology, Boston, MA: N ortheastern University Press; Ferrell, J., Hayward, K., M orrison, W . and Presdee, M. (2 0 0 4 ) Cultural Criminol­ ogy Unleashed, London: G lasshouse; an d Hayward, K. (2 0 0 4 ) City Limits: Crime, con­ sumer culture and the urban experience, London: G lasshouse. A sy nthesis o f stru c tu ra l a n d cu ltu ral ap p ro ac h es is Young, J. (2 0 0 3 ) ‘M erton with energy, Katz with structure’, Theoretical Criminology, 7(3). Follow ing the recen t p o p u ­ larity o f c u ltu ral crim inology, Jefferson, T. and Hall, S. (eds) (2 0 0 6 ) Resistance Through

Rituals: Youth subcultures in post-war Britain, 2nd edn, Abingdon: Routledge (an d as a m easu re o f its c o n tin u in g influence) has been re-issued as a 2 n d e dition, 30 years a fter it was first p u b lish ed (p u b lish ed originally as Hall, S. a n d Jefferson, T. (eds) (1976)). A n u m b e r o f recen t edited collections w ritte n from a critical persp ectiv e are available, notably: Sumner, C. (ed) (2 0 0 4 ) The Blackwell Companion to Criminology, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing: Carrington, K. and Hogg, R. (eds) (2 0 0 2 ) Critical Criminology:

Issues, debates, challenges, Cullom pton: W illan; a n d , m aking links w ith the earlier New Criminology, W alton, P. and Young, J. (eds) (1 9 9 8 ) The New Criminology Revisited, Basingstoke: M acm illan. Barton, A., Corteen, K., Scott, D. and W hyte, D . (eds) (2 0 0 7 ) Expanding the Criminolog­ ical Imagination: Critical readings in criminology, Cullom pton: W illan, is a useful in tro ­ d u c tio n . Scraton, P. (2 0 0 7 ) Power, Conflict and Criminalisation, Abingdon: Routledge draw s on various ‘case stu d ie s’, such as the D u n b la n e sh o o tin g s an d the ‘w ar on te rro r’, in o rd e r to analyse the processes involved in the m a rg in alisa tio n an d c rim in alisatio n o f spe­ cific g roups. From critical c rim inologists in A ustralia an d N ew Z ealand: Anthony, T. and Cunneen, C. (eds) (2 0 0 8 ) The Critical Criminology Companion, Cullom pton: W illan. Young, J. (2 0 0 7 ) The Vertigo o f Late Modernity, London: Sage is an e ru d ite, polem ical analysis o f tran sg ressio n an d co n tro l in c o n te m p o ra ry , late m o d ern societies, a n d in co r­ p o ra te s ideas from R. K. M e rto n , left realist critical crim inology a n d c u ltu ral crim inology.

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For critical w ork on c o rp o ra te an d w hite-collar crim e, see Pearce, F. a n d T o m b s, S. (1 9 9 8 ) Toxic C apitalism : C orporate c rim e a n d th e chem ica l in d u stry , A ldershot: A shgate; and G reen, S. P. (2 0 0 7 ) L ying, C h ea tin g a n d Stealing: A m o ra l th e o r y o f w hite-collar crim e, B uckingham : O p en U niversity Press. For an in te restin g discussion on th e th em e o f sta te crim e, see W h ite , R. (2 0 0 8 b ) ‘D e p leted u ra n iu m , sta te crim e a n d th e politics o f k n o w in g ’, T heoretical C rim inology, 12(1), pp . 3 1 -5 4 . C ritical a rg u m e n ts in favour o f o rie n tin g crim inology tow ards ‘h a rm ’ ra th e r th an ‘crim e’ are g a th e red to g eth e r in H illyard, P., T o m b s, S., P an tazis, C. a n d G o rd o n , D. (eds) (2 0 0 4 ) B e y o n d C rim inology: T a k in g h a rm seriously, L ondon: P luto. For critical w ork on surveillance an d issues su rro u n d in g security, see Lyon, D. (2 0 0 7 ) Surveillance Stu d ies: A n overview , O xford: Polity; G oold, B. (2 0 0 8 ) Surveillance, A bing­ d o n : R outledge; W o o d , J. a n d S hearing, C. (2 0 0 6 ) Im a g in in g S ecu rity, C ullo m p to n : W illan; a n d Z ed n er, L. (2 0 0 7 ) S ecurity, A bingdon: R outledge. A ‘E u ro p ea n ised ’ crim inology is well re p re se n ted by T aylor, I. (1 9 9 9 ) C rim e in C o n tex t, C am bridge: Polity Press; a n d van S w aaningen, R. (1 9 9 7 ) C ritical C rim inology: V isions fro m E urope, L ondon: Sage. A useful book on social th eo ry an d crim inology is G a rlan d , D. a n d Sparks, R. (eds) (2 0 0 0 ) C rim in o lo g y a n d S ocial T heory, O xford: O xford U niversity P ress. For an in tro d u c tio n to ‘g re e n ’ crim inology, see Lynch, M . J. a n d Stretsky, P. B. (2 0 0 3 ) ‘T he m ea n in g o f green: c o n tra stin g crim in o lo g ical p e rsp ec tiv e s’, Theoretical C rim in o l­ ogy, 7(2); a n d for fu rth e r th eo re tic al e la b o ratio n : B eirne, P. a n d S outh, N . (eds) (2 0 0 7 ) Issues in G reen C rim inology: C o n fro n tin g h a rm s a gainst e n v iro n m e n ts, h u m a n ity a nd o th e r anim als, C u llo m p to n : W illan. A useful discussion o f e n v iro n m en ta l crim inology is p rovided by W h ite , R. (2 0 0 8 a ) C rim es A g a in s t N ature: E n v iro n m e n ta l c rim in o lo g y a nd ecological ju stic e , C u llo m p to n : W illan. A w ell-w ritten, up -to -d ate A m erican overview o f crim inological th eo ries o f delin q u en cy is S hoem aker, D. J. (2 0 0 5 ) T h eories o f d e lin q u e n cy : A n e xa m in a tio n o f e xp la n a tio n s o f d e lin q u e n t beh a vio r, 5 th ed n , O xford: O xford U niversity Press. T ierney, J. (2 0 0 9 ) K e y P erspectives in C rim inology, M ilto n Keynes: O p en U niversity P ress p rovides an u p -to -d ate, detailed discussion o f the m ajo r th eo re tic al p erspectives in crim inology.

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Postscript to the 2nd Edition In th e p arad ise o f p len ty all the palaces o f fun Are sta n d in g cold and em pty as you shiver in the sun In the shadow s o f a m b itio n w here you learned to buy a n d sell T he g h o sts o f all your w ishing are now lying w here they fell W hile th e felons o f th e language and the psycho-racketeers Eat th e ir b are faced sandw iches an d never taste the tears As disciples o f the m essage an d the refugees o f th o u g h t Go fleeing from th e w reckage o f th e d ream th a t they once b ought Are you w aiting for som e saviour to com e trip p in g from the train W ith p o in ts for good b eh av io u r an d som e pills to ease the pain Do you know w hat you are doing is your conscience clean and clear As you sta n d a m o n g st the ruin o f all you once held dear. 'C razy D ays’, w ritte n by, a n d re p ro d u c e d by k in d p e rm iss io n o f W illy R ussell, © W illy Russell M u sic 2003. From th e CD Hoovering the M oon,

Postscript to the 3rd Edition M e an d Javi S ho u ted slogans in Spanish Like it w as o u r w orld to win T hen they m oved the p la n t D ow n to O jeda T im e to b ite your tongue again I’ve seen the fabled city A nd its stre ets are paved w ith gold But an iron fence ru n s ro u n d it A nd its iron gate is closed W h at a in ’t rig h t a in ’t right

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He told m e But so m e th in g else passed b eh in d his eyes Now h e ’s d ow ntow n on his knees W ashing floors for som ebody A nd quietly bid in g his tim e I’ve seen the fabled city . . . At the gas statio n On S unset an d C rescent I m et an angel sad an d old She lived in th e alley B ehind the m arket In th e shadow s m aybe h id d en from th e Lord A nd for a dollar She sang a song T h at so u n d e d m ore like a prayer A w ish th a t her d ead m o th e r an d fa th e r C o u ld n ’t look dow n an d see h er th ere I’ve seen the fabled city . . . On th e w ire o u tsid e m y w indow T here sit 100 sw allows A nd I suspect th a t if one flew T hen 99 w ould follow T om M o rello : T h e N ig h tw a tc h m a n T h e Fabled C ity ’ T aken fro m th e alb u m The Fabled C ity © 2 0 0 8 T h e N ig h tw a tc h m a n M u sic (B M I).M y sp a c e .c o m /th e n ig h tw a tc h m a n

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417

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Y oung, A. (1998) ‘T he w aste land o f law, the w ordless song o f the rape v ictim ’, Melbourne University Law Review, 22(2), pp. 4 4 2 -6 5 . Y oung, J. (1971) The Dritgtakers: The social m eaning o f drug use, L ondon: M acG ibbon & K ee/P aladin. Y oung, J. (1975) ‘W orking class c rim in o lo g y ’, in I. Taylor, P. W alton an d J. Young (eds). Critical Criminology, L ondon: R outledge & Kegan Paul. Y oung, J. (1986) ‘The failure o f crim inology: the n eed for a radical re alism ’, in R. M atth ew s an d J. Young (eds), Confronting Crime, L ondon: Sage. Y oung, J. (1987) ‘The tasks facing a realist crim inology’, Contemporary Crises, 11, pp. 337-56. Y oung, J. (1988) ‘R adical crim inology in Britain: the em ergence o f a c o m p e tin g p a ra ­ d ig m ’, in P. Rock (ed), A History o f British Criminology, O xford: O xford U niversity Press. Y oung, J. (1994) ‘In c essan t c h atter: recen t p a rad ig m s in crim in o lo g y ’, in M . M aguire, R. M organ an d R. R einer (eds), The Oxford H andbook o f Criminology, 1st edn, O xford: C laren d o n Press. Y oung, J. (1997) ‘Left realist crim inology: radical in its analysis, realist in its policy’, in M . M aguire, R. M organ a n d R. R einer (eds), The Oxford Handbook o f Criminology, 2 n d edn, O xford: O xford U niversity Press. Y oung, J. (1998) ‘W ritin g on the cusp o f change: a new crim inology for an age o f late m o d e rn ity ’, in P. W alton and J. Young (eds), The New Criminology Revisted, Basingstoke: M acm illan. Y oung, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society, L ondon: Sage. Y oung, J. (2002) ‘C ritical crim inology in th e tw en ty -first century: critiq u e, irony and the alw ays u n fin is h e d ’, in K. C a rrin g to n an d R. Hogg (eds), Critical Criminology: Issues, debates, challenges, C u llom pton: W illan P ublish in g . Y oung, J. (2003a) ‘W in n in g th e fight ag ain st crim e? New L abour, po p u lism an d lost o p p o rtu n itie s ’, in R. M a tth e w s an d J. Young (eds), The New Politics o f Crime and P un­ ishment, C ullo m p to n : W illan P ublishing. Y oung, J. (2003b) ‘M e rto n w ith energy, Katz w ith s tru c tu re ’, Theoretical Criminology, 7(3), pp. 389 -4 1 4 . Y oung, J. (2007) The Vertigo o f Late M odernity, L ondon: Sage. Y oung, J. (2008) ‘Vertigo and the global M e rto n ’, Theoretical Criminology, 12(4), pp. 523-7. Y oung, J. a n d M a tth e w s, R. (eds) (1992) Rethinking Criminology: The realist debate, L on­ d o n : Sage. Y oung, J. a n d M a tth e w s, R. (2003) ‘N ew L abour, crim e co n tro l a n d social exclusion’, in R. M a tth e w s an d J. Young (eds), The New Politics o f Crime and Punishment, C u llom pton: W illan P ublishing. Y oung, M . (1993) In the Sticks: An anthropologist in a shire force, O xford: O xford U niversity Press. Z edner, L. (1991) Women, Crime and Custody in Victorian England, O xford: Blackwell. Z edner, L. (1994) ‘V ictim s’, in M . M aguire, R. M organ a n d R. R einer (eds), The Oxford H andbook o f Criminology, 1st edn, O xford: C laren d o n Press. Z edner, L. (2002) ‘V ictim s’, in M . M aguire, R. M organ and R. R einer (eds), The Oxford H andbook o f Criminology, 3rd edn, O xford: O xford U niversity Press. Z edner, L. (2007) Security, A bingdon: R outledge.

418

NAME INDEX

A dam son, M. 258 A delman, S. 225 Agnew, R. 106 Akers, R.L. 157-8, 174 Allen, H. 267 Allen, R. 309 Allhusser, L. 199 Amir, M. 37 A nderson, E. 219 A nderson, N. 73, 98 A nderson, S. 39, 46, 271 A ristotle 211 A sthana, A. 325 Atkin, Lord 14, 15 Atkinson, J.M. 175 Ball, R.A. 257 Barton, A. 329 Bates, J.E. 250 Baudrillard, J. 338 Bauman, 362 Baumer, E.P. 102 Beck, U. 322 Becker, H. 7-8 , 14-15, 138, 139, 148, 149-50, 151, 154, 155, 156, 157, 185, 211, 226 Beil, M. 2 5 2-3 Berlusconi, S. 31 Bernard, T.J. 102 Biderm an, A.D. 35 Black, E. 64 Blair, T. 307 Blanden, J. 315-16 Block, A. 42 Booth, C. 95 Bottomley, A.K. 28, 38, 39, 44 Bottom s, A. 80, 328 Box, S. 35-6, 41-2 , 92, 111, 174, 20 8 -9 , 213, 214-15, 217, 235, 261 Bradbury, M. 179-80

Braithwaite, J. 313 Brewer, C. 226 Brogden, M. 270 Brown, B. 258, 272 Brown, D. 294 Browne, S. 253, 262 Bulgar, j. 252, 364 Bunyan, T. 324 Burawoy, M. 329-30 Burgess, E. 9 7-8 Burm an, M. 347 Burt, C. 61, 76 Cain, M. 259 Callinicos, A. 340-1 Campbell, A. 217, 262, 263, 347 Campbell, B. 274, 2 7 6-7 Capone, A. 100 Carlen, P. 8, 169, 259, 260, 262, 263, 267, 268, 272, 293, 295-6, 340, 345 C arrington, K. 342, 346 Carter, M.P. 7 9 ,1 2 0 -1 Caudill, JI.M . 208 Cavadino, M. 314 Chadwick, K. 289 Chambliss, W.J. 42, 169, 172, 186, 187-8 Chancer, L. 330 C hapm an, J. 263-4 Chesney-Lind, M. 319, 344 Churchill, W. 71 Cicourel, A.V. 34, 175 Clarke, J. 199, 200 Clarke, K. 253 Clarke, R.V. 279 Clinard, M.B. 208 Cloward, R. 84, 86, 112-15, 116, 117, 119, 127, 330 Cohen, A.K. 84, 109-12, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 123, 124, 126, 127

419

NAME

Cohen, P. 199 Cohen, S. 12, 21, 72-5, 76, 77, 78, 80, 82, 137, 153, 166, 174, 177, 190, 202, 236, 295, 297, 336, 341, 362 Cohn-Bendit, D. 143, 144 Collier, R. 349, 350 Colvin, M . 354-5 Comte, A. 55, 89 Conklin, J.E. 159 Connell, R.W. 349, 351 C onsidine, M. 327 Cooley, C.H. 152 Cornish, D.B. 279 Corrigan, P. 200 Coulter, J. 175 Cousins, M. 259 Cowie, J. and V. 218 Crawford, A. 40, 313 Cuff, E.C. 57 Cullen, F.T. 257 Currie, E. 286, 287, 328, 330-1, 370-1 D ahrendorf, R. 186, 235 Daly, K. 267 Davis, F. 141 Deakin, J. 345 Dell, S. 219 D errida, J. 338 D ignan, J. 314 D itton, J. 20, 42,1 7 4 Dixon, M. 316 D obash, R.E. 268, 269, 271 D obash, R.P. 268, 269, 271 Douglas, J. 210 Douglas, J.VV.B. 28, 79 Dowie, M. 208 Downes, D. 75, 7 8 -9 , 81, 124-6, 130-1, 135, 144, 199, 210, 211, 215, 231, 232, 237, 260, 26 2 -3 , 277, 308, 309, 336, 360-1 D rapkin, I. 54 Durkheim , E. 52, 87-95, 96, 102, 113, 154, 210, 341 Duster, T. 64 F.agleton, T. 341 Edwards, S.S.M. 26 6 -7 Einstadter, W.J. 292 Elgin, P. 176, 210-11 Engels, F. 184, 193-5, 194, 204

420

INDEX

Erikson, R.V. 94, 139, 156 Eron, L.D. 250 Eysenck, H. 75 Farrell, S. 310 Farrington, D.P. 177, 247, 248, 249-50, 267, 329 Feeley, M. 325-6 Felson, M. 280-1 Fenwick, M. 356 Ferrell, J. 357 Ferri, E. 55 Fine, B. 15, 170, 205 Finkelhor, D. 30 Finstone, H. 101 Foucault, M. 170, 205, 238, 320, 338 Frith, S. 200 Gadd, D. 350 Galliher, J.F. 202 G alton, Francis 62 G arland, D. 51, 53-4, 55, 57, 60, 70, 71, 74, 77, 144, 231, 226-7, 281, 320, 326 Garofalo, J. 55, 280 G elslhorpe, L. 258, 265, 341-2, 343, 345 Gibbs, J.P. 155 Giddens, A. 21 Gilligan, C. 263 Gilroy, P. 289 Glueck, E. and S. 212 G oldm an, N. 166, 197 G ordon, D. 187-8 G ordon, P. 289 Goring, C. 60-1 G ottfriedson, M.R. 176, 288, 352-3 Gouldner, A. 156, 157, 160, 168, 174, 189, 192 G raham , J.M. 169-70 Gram sci, A. 167, 205 G reenw ood, V. 258 Gregory, J. 258, 265 G room bridge, N. 351 Gross, B. 292 Grosz, E.A. 274 G utteridge, S. 268 Haberm as, J. 143, 197 Hagan, J. 264 Hagel, A. 252, 254, 255, 256 Haggerty, K.D. 328

NAME

Hale, C. 261 Hall, R. 40, 270 Hall, S. 166, 167, 171, 190, 202, 207, 235, 375 Hanmer, J. 270 Hargreaves, Ü. 126-7, 137 H arris, R. 265 Hartless, J.M. 40 Hayward, K. 356 H eidensohn, F. 12, 24, 100, 104, 128, 129, 216-17, 259, 263, 343, 344 Henry, S. 42, 340, 365 H errnstein, R. 284-5 Hester, S. 176, 210-11 Hill, R, 359 Hinch, R. 196 Hirschi, T. 71, 176, 211-13, 214, 278, 288, 351, 3 52-3 H irst, P.Q. 23, 53, 168-9, 192, 194, 196, 206 Hobbs, D. 42, 297, 322, 348, 357 H obbs, T. 312 H obsbaw m , F.. 166, 197 Hogg, R. 294 Hood, C. 321 Hood-W illiams, J. 349, 350 Hooper, J. 31 Horowitz, I.L. 157, 166, 189-90, 202 Howard, M. 300, 308 Howe, A. 342 H udson, B. 246, 326 H uesm ann, L.R. 250 Hughes, G. 318 H ulsm an, L. 294, 359, 365 H unt, A. 292 H unter, G. 344 Innes, M. 311 Irvine, J. 43 Irwin, K. 344 Jam ieson, R. 347, 348 Jefferson, T. 200, 225, 233, 234-5, 236, 238, 242, 270, 273, 278, 281, 289, 297, 350 Jeffery, C. 5 7-8 Jephcott, P. 79, 120-1 Jessop, B. 322 Jones, E. 350-1 Jones, T. 40 Jowell, T. 31

INDEX

K arstedt, S. 310 Katz, J. 356, 358 Kelling, G.L. 285-6 Kelly 43 Kemshall, H. 322 Kinsey, R. 40, 289, 291, 295 Kitsuse, J.I. 1 3 9 ,1 5 1 ,1 5 6 Kolko, G. 160 Kroeber, A. 8 Lacey, N. 313 Laing, R.D. 166 Lait, J. 226 Lakotos, I. 226 Landesco, J. 100 Laub, J.H. 355 Lawrence, F. 310 Lea, J. 269, 289, 295, 335, 337, 339 Leibowitz, M. 157, 166, 189-90, 202 Leigh, D. 310 Leishm an, F. 322 Lem ert, E. 22, 149, 150, 151-2, 155, 160, 185 Leonard, E.B. 216, 262 Levi, M. 42, 232 Liazos, A. 138, 158, 159, 168, 186 Lilly, J.R. 86, 257, 284, 336, 352, 354 Lombroso, C. 55, 59, 95, 218, 274 Lyng, S. 357 Lyotard, J.F. 338, 360 McCord, J. 251 M acDonald, E. 262 McKay, H.D. 83-4, 98, 100 M cLaughlin, E. 330 McLeod, E. 262 M aguire, M. 18, 32-3, 39, 252 M aher, L. 347 M ankoff, M. 160 M annheim , H. 72, 75, 79, 80 M anning, P. 34 M arcus, J. 250 M arcuse, II. 140, 142,143 M arginson, S. 327 Marx, K. 51-3, 184, 192, 193-5, 204, 239, 338 M atthew s, J. 268 M atthew s, R. 289, 307, 310-11 M atza, D. 57 -8 , 98, 100, 116, 126, 128, 129-30, 148, 150, 180, 214-15, 355 Mawby, R.I. 271

421

NAME

Mayhew, H. 79, 95, 96 Mays, J.B. 79, 80, 82, 119, 120, 121 M ead, G.H. 148, 174 M erton, R.K. 82, 87, 88, 102-7, 109, 111, 149, 291 M esserschm idt, J.W. 275, 277, 349-50, 351 M essner, S.F. 102, 106-7 M ichalowski, R.J. 292 Miles, I. 43 Millar, R. 15 Miller, E. 263 Miller, J. 347 Miller, W. 123 Mills, D. 31 Milovanovic, D. 340, 365 Moore, D. 118, 326 M oore, M.E. 98 M organ, R. 308, 309 M orris, A. 258, 265, 267, 345 M orris, T.P. 80, 82, 121-2 M oulds, E. 259 M ugford, S. 356 M ullins, C. 62-4, 243 M urphy, D.S. 106 Naffine, N. 263, 341 Nelken, D. 42, 171, 336 N ew burn, T. 252, 254, 255, 256, 313 Nicolaus, M . 146 Nixon, R. M. 159 N orrie, S. 225 N uttall, Jeff 141 O bam a, B. 85, 323 O'Brien, M. 357 O hlin, L. 84, 86, 112-15, 116, 117, 119, 127, 330 O ’Malley, P. 356 Orwell, G. 362 Pailthorpe, G. 60 Park, R. 9 6 -7 Parker, H. 174 Parsons, G. 137 Parsons, T. 57 Parton, N. 262 Pashukanis, E. 205-6 Pavlich, G. 359-60 Paxton, VV. 316 Payne, G.C.F. 57

422

INDEX

Pearce, F. 42, 208, 369-70 Pearson, G. 62, 66, 143, 167, 197, 226, 289 Pearson, K. 61 Pease, K. 28, 38, 39, 271 Peterson, M. 350-1 Phillipson, M. 175 Pitts, J. 225, 226 Player, F.. 262, 265 Plum mer, K. 157, 174 Poliak, O. 218 Pollner, M. 155-6, 211 Poole, A. 11 Posner, R.A. 284 Poulantzas, N. 205 Quinney, R. 1 8 6 ,1 8 8 -9 , 205 Raab, D. 325 Radford, J. 270 Radzinowicz, L. 70, 73 Rafter, N.H. 293 Reiner, R. 14-15, 33, 154 Reiss, A.J. 35 Rhodes, R.A.VV. 322 Riley, D. 251, 264 R obertson, R. 359 Robinson, M.B. 106 Rock, P. 167, 202, 210, 211, 215, 228-9234, 237, 262-3, 277, 280 331, 336, 360-1 Rodger, J. 251 Rosenfeld, R. 102, 106 Roshier, B. 54, 61, 93, 94 -5 , 175, 212, 249, 277, 278-9, 288 Ruggiero, V. 296, 297 Russell, D.E.H. 270 Sainsbury, P. 79, 121 Sam pson, R.J. 355 Saunders, S. 270 Scheingold, S.A. 313 Schlossm an, S. 84 Schultz, A. 209 Schur, E.M. 160 Schwendinger, H. and J. 16, 170-1, 365 Scraton, P. 34, 235, 289, 359 Seeger, P. 140 Sellin, T. 16 Shapland, J. 225, 233, 234-5, 236, 238, 242, 278, 281

NAME

INDEX

Shaw, C.R. 83 -4 , 98, 100, 101 Shaw, M. 251 Short, J.F. 122 Sim, J. 289 Simmel, G. 89 Sim on, J. 325-6 Slater, E. 218 Sm art, C. 172, 216, 217-18, 258, 259, 261-2, 366 Sm ith, C. 198 Sm ith, H. 60 Sm ith, L.J.F. 266 Socrates 94 South, N. 232, 375 Sparks, R. 29, 37, 321 Spencer, H. 89 Spender, J. 345 Spivak, G. 250 Stanko, E. 270, 271 Stanley, L. 260 Stedman-Jones, G. 169 Steinert, H. 294, 365 Stenson, K. 283, 320 S tratton, A. 31 Straw, Jack 308, 314 Strodtbeck, F. 122 Sumner, C.S. 10, 13-14, 23, 2 4 -5 , 91, 93, 159-60, 167-9, 193, 206-7, 224, 235, 242, 289, 336, 357 S utherland, E.H. 42, 84, 98-9, 100,110, 115, 121, 171, 207 Swift, M. 250 Sykes, G.M . 116, 126, 129-30, 214 Szasz, T.S. 158

Thrasher, F.M. 98, 122 Tierney, J. 197, 285, 319, 320 Tittle, C.R. 353-4 Tombs, S. 369-70 Tonnies, F. 89 Tonry, M. 309 Townsend, M. 325 Tracy, J. 72 Turk, A. 186-7, 188

Tame, C.R. 283 T annenbaum , F. 149 Taylor, I. 23, 53, 54, 151, 155, 156, 157, 166-7, 292, 371-2 Taylor, L. 42, 104, 206 Tester, K. 362 Thatcher, M . 179, 225, 283 Thio, A. 159 T hom pson, F..P. 169, 292

Yeager, P.C. 42, 208 Young, A. 267-8, 346, 364 Young, J. 19, 23, 57, 139, 144, 166-7, 168, 174, 177-8, 190-3, 206, 277, 279, 289, 291, 293, 296, 307, 308, 309, 310-11, 331, 340, 358-9, 362, 364, 366-7, 368-9, 372-5

Valier, C. 343 Vilar, P. 239 Void, G. 55, 74, 257 Von Henlig, H. 269 Walker, N. 75 W alklake, S. 43, 270, 272, 274, 276, 296, 342 Walt, D. 11 W allets, R. 328 W alton, P. 23, 166-7, 190-1 Weber, M. 156, 186, 341, 62, 63, 71, 305, 312 W ertham , F. 269 W est, D.J. 23, 177, 249 W hyte, W.F. 98, 110, 123 W iles, P.N.P. 79, 137 W ilkins, L.T. 1 5 2 -3 ,1 7 4 W illiams, R. 339, 345 Willis, P. 199 W illm ott, P. 80, 123-4 W ilson, J.Q. 28 4 -7 W ise, S. 260 Wolfe, A. 204-5 W olfgang, M.E. 36 W orrall, A. 271

Zedner, L. 41, 268, 270

423

SUBJECT INDEX

abolitionism , and critical crim inology 240-1, 293, 295 academ ic disciplines 12, 69-70, 234 ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) 254 action-reaction relationship 367 Acts of Parliam ent 25 see also legislation actuarial justice 325-6 adaptive function o f crime 93, 94 the adjustm ent problem 126-8 adm inistrative crim inology 7 4 ,1 4 4 , 245, 257, 277-82, 299-300 and crim e control 277-82, 300-1 and governm ent 281-2 and left realism 291 and neo-posivitism 285-6 and New L abour 316 and policy 329 and rational choice theory 279-80 and routine activity theory 280-1 adult offenders, defining 25 affiliation theory 122 affirm ative postm odernism 339, 340 age and academ ic crim inologists 2 2 8-9 and conflict theory 187 o f crim inal responsibility 25, 315 and crim inality 247-8 and self-report studies 18 victims of crim e 40, 233 alcohol consum ption 344-5, 375 altruistic suicide 92 Am erican crim inology conflict theory 119, 172, 185, 186-9, 191, 203, 2 2 3-4 influences on British crim inology 116-17, 136 neo-positivism 28 4 -5

424

and ring-wing classicism 283, 284 sociological crim inology 79-80, 81, 8 2-6 victim-based surveys 281-2 see also United States anom ie D urkheim 's concept o f 87, 88, 91, 92, 93 and female offenders 216 and left realism 258, 291 and radical crim inology 289 and strain theory 102, 103, 104-5, 106-7 and subcultural theory 129 ANPR (autom atic num ber plate recognition) 323 anthropology 69 anti-crim inology perspective 366 anti-essentialism 342, 362-3, 364 anti-social behaviour 249-50, 318 Anti-Social Behaviour O rders 315 arrestable offences 25 attachm ent, and control theory 213, 215 audits 19, 40 a u thoritarian populism 179 authority, and conflict theory 186-7 aversion therapy 75 BCS see British Crime Surveys (BCS) belief, and control theory 213 bias, and policy-oriented research 230 biology 69 biom etric data 324 Birmingham Centre for C ontem porary Cultural Studies 128, 167, 171, 198-9, 200, 207 black fem inism 343 black people and actuarial justice 326 im prisonm ent rates 45 and 'm uggings’ and black youth 171, 207 and victim surveys 40, 41 boundary m aintenance function of crime 93-5

SUBJECT

British Crime Surveys (BCS) 17, 23, 37 -8 , 39, 40, 41, 47, 48, 49, 270, 367 and adm inistrative crim inology 281, 282 and 'lough on crim e’ policies 309 British crim inology early tw entieth century 59-62 late tw entieth century 239-43 post-war period 7 0-6 see also sociological crim inology British Journal o f Criminology 72, 75, 349 British Journal o f Delinquency 72 British Society of Criminology 72, 75 Bronson (film) 350-1 burglaries age and crim inality 248 and left realism 290 public reporting o f 30 recorded offences 28 -9 , 49, 246 victim surveys of 3 8-9, 40 Cam bridge Institute o f Criminology 74 Cam bridge Study in D elinquent Developm ent 247, 249-50 Cam bridge University, D epartm ent o f Criminal Science 72 capitalism and Am erican conflict theory 189 and critical crim inology 360-1 globalisation and neo-liberal m arkets 369-72 M arx and Engels on crime and 193-5 and the New Left 142 and the politicisation of deviance 196-7 and radical crim inology 139, 170 CCTV cam eras 279, 319, 323 CDRPs see Crime and D isorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRP) Chernobyl disaster 208 Chicago School 60, 82-4, 87, 88, 95-107 assessm ent of 99-101 and British sociological crim inology 119-22 criticism s o f 101 and cultural transm ission 98, 101, 117 ecological m odels o f the city 96-7, 98, 101, 116-17 and new deviancy theory 147 and policy-oriented research 233 and social disorganisation theory 99 and subcultural strain theory 112, 116-19

INDEX

and sym bolic interactionism 98, 100 and the Zone o f T ransition 97-8, 99, 115 children adult harassm ent of 271 child abuse/offenders 25, 30 child poverty in Britain 240, 316 in custody 46 and doli incapax 25 o f female prisoners 346 as victims o f crime 253 civil liberties 234, 325 class and Am erican conflict theory 188 class conflict approach to statistics 4 3 -4 and crim e as political 167 and crim inality 248-9 and critical crim inology 190, 192 the ruling class and the law 2 0 3-4 and cultural diversity theory 122-6 and delinquency 116-19, 120-2 and fem inist crim inology 263, 264, 344 and late m odernity 374 and left idealism 293 and left realism 291, 293, 294 M arx and Engels on crime and 193-4 and non-delinquent values 118-19, 119-20 and police characterisations o f the public 34 and the politicisation o f deviance 196-7 radical criticism and the m iddle classes 179-80 and research on victims o f crime 233 and right-wing classicism 283 schools and the adjustm ent problem 126-8 and subcultural strain theory 109-12, 113-14, 117-19 and subterranean values 129, 130-1 the underclass 118, 283, 309-10 and victims of crime 2 9 6-7 and youth subcultures 198-200 classical crim inology 51, 54 -5 , 5 5 -6 , 58, 241, 257 and adm inistrative crim inology 279 right-wing classicism 28 3 -4 , 310 collective conscience 90, 91, 92, 93 com m itm ent, and control theory 213, 215 com m on law 25 com m on sense 7 -8 and left realism 295-6 and New Right crim inology 226, 228, 241

425

SUBJECT

com m unities crime reduction 319-20 and left realism 97, 292 and restorative justice 312-14 com m unity safety 305, 317-20, 327 com m unity service orders/program m es 266, 314 com puter data DNA databases 324-5 m easuring crim e using 18-19 conduct norm s 16, 19, 21 conflict subcultures 115 conflict theory 119, 172, 185, 186-9, 191, 203, 2 2 3-4 Conservative Party/governm ents and adm inistrative crim inology 281 and New Labour 307, 308, 312, 317 and New Right ideology 224-6, 239-40 constitutive crim inology 10, 153, 154, 155-6, 340 consum erism 140-2, 356, 375 contagion view o f delinquency 122 control balance theory 353-4 control perspectives 351-5 control theory 92, 100, 145, 174, 184, 211-15, 334 and adm inistrative crim inology 278 criticism s o f 352-3 and feminist crim inology 263, 264 and positivism 288 conventional crim e 298-300 corporate crime and adm inistrative crim inology 281 and critical crim inology 369 and labelling theory 159 and left realism 290 and policy-oriented research 231 powerful law breakers 207-9 and radical crim inology 171-2 and self-report studies 249 and strain theory 106 unrecorded 217 and victim surveys 41-2 see also w hite-collar crime correctionalism 75 Council for N ational Academic Awards 232 counter-culture 167 and new deviancy theory 140-2, 144 and the New Left 142-3 and the politicising o f deviance 189-90

426

INDEX

crime defining 13-16, 25 and deviance 14-15 varieties o f 19-21 crim e control and adm inistrative crim inology 277-82, 300-1 and left idealism 292 left realism and crime control policies 297-8 New Labour policies 316-20 and the production of knowledge 53 research on 233, 23 4 -5 see also situational crim e control Crime and D isorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) 19, 40, 319, 321, 327-8, 329 crime m apping 19 crim e prevention see crim e control Crimewatch UK 38 criminal careers, longitudinal research on 246-56 crim inal dam age (vandalism ) 246, 248, 261 statistics 30-1 and strain theory 106, 111 and victim surveys 42 crim inal justice and actuarial justice 325-6 and left realism 297 New Labour policies 308-9, 310 and restorative justice 312-14 and positivism 58 privatisation o f 236, 284 research 234, 236 and wom en 272, 345-6 fem inist crim inology 218-19, 264-5 crim inal statistics 10, 298-9 and adm inistrative crim inology 281-2 and changes in the law 30 -1 , 3 4-5 and the police 18, 19, 31-4, 39 recent trends 4 7-9 usefulness o f 4 3 -7 see also official statistics crim inal subcultures 115 crim inology com peting agendas in 12-13 defining 11, 5 3 -4 em ergence of 7 0-6 focus of 12 critical crim inology 70, 75, 160, 168-9, 170, 184, 185, 190-3, 258, 331, 355, 358-76 and abolitionism 240-1, 293, 295

SUBJECT

agendas o f 361-2 anti-crim inology perspective 366 changing context o f 360-1 concepts o f crime and deviance 362-3 and conflict theory 188-9, 191, 203 deviance, crime and power 202-9 dispensing with crime 365 divisions w ithin 183 and fem inism 342, 343 future o f 376 globalisation and neo-liberal m arkets 369-72 green perspective 375-6 ‘ironies’ o f 358-9 and late m odernity 372-5 and left realism 206, 289, 291, 292-8, 358, 363, 373 and policy-oriented research 238-9 and postm odernism 341 and radical crim inology 298 and social censures 364 and victims 2 9 6-7 see also left realism; M arxist crim inology cultural crim inology 280, 334, 355-8 cultural diversity theory 122-6 cultural pluralism 99, 100 cultural sym bolisation 200-1 cultural transm ission 98, 101, 117, 122 culture o f poverty 241, 283 cynical rule breakers 171-2 dark figure’ o f crim e 10,17, 19, 29 and victim surveys 35, 37, 282 deconstruction 336, 338 deconstructionism 343 delegated legislation 25 delinquency and cultural diversity theory 122-6 defining 25 and sociological crim inology 81-2 and subcultures 109-15, 116-19, 120-2 see also Chicago School; youth crime determ inism 58, 59, 60, 75, 311 and critical crim inology 192 and feminism 273 m asculinities and crime 277 and subcultural theory 128, 130 deterrence 284 deviance 12, 14-15, 21-5 defining 21

INDEX

and labelling theory 2 2-3 politicisation of 189-90, 196-7 and positivism 59 and power 185-6, 202-9 and radical crim inology 2 2-5 sociology of 336 see also new deviancy theory deviancy am plification 152-3, 173-4 differential association 99, 110, 115, 117, 121 , 122 and female offenders 216 differential coercion theory 354-5 differentiation 58 discrim ination, and actuarial justice 326 displacem ent 279 DNA databases 324-5 doli incapax 25 dom estic violence 30, 217, 219, 267, 269 victim surveys of 271 drug use 42, 145 female drug-dealers 347 and gender 261 and labelling theory 149-50, 174 and left idealism 293 and persistent offenders 255 and policy-oriented research 232 and strain theory 104, 115 and surveillance 325 econom ic m arginalisation, and fem inist crim inology 263-4 econom ic recession, and corporate crim e 2 0 8-9 Economic and Social Research Council 229, 236 econom ics 69 edgework 357 egoistic suicide 92 em piricism 73 England and Wales crim e statistics 16-17, 18, 2 8-9 im prisonm ent in 45, 46 environm ental factors in crim inality 59, 60, 61, 62 environm entalism 362, 375-6 equality of opportunity and New Labour social policy 315-16 and strain theory 85, 103, 105, 107, 112, 113 ethical identity 313 ethnographic research and the Chicago School 97, 100

427

SUBJECT

ethnographic research (continued) and labelling theory 174 and new deviancy theory 146 and phenom enology 175 and policy-oriented research 231 ethnom ethology 175-6, 184, 210-11 eugenics 62-4 Europe im prisonm ent rates in European countries 45 m arket-liberalism in 371-2 security issues and the European Union 324 European C om m unity 25, 371 European C ourt of H um an Rights 325 experim ental m ethod 57 ‘expose crim inology 207-8 external history of crim inology 226-8 facial recognition technology 323 family context, and crim inality 25 0 -1 , 255 fear o f crime and adm inistrative crim inology 282 data relating to 19 and gender 274-5 and left realism 291 and local crim e surveys 4 6 -7 and New L abour 318 and radical criticism 181-2 feminist perspectives 2, 24, 37, 172-3, 184, 216-19, 242, 258-71, 334, 341-8 and the causes o f crime 274 core elem ents o f 258-9 and crim inal justice 218-19, 26 4 -5 distortion 217-18, 262-4 fem inism s 258, 341-4 on im prisonm ent 268 invisibility 216-17, 260-2 and m asculinities 2 7 2-3 on offending and punishm ent 344-6 and the police 26 5 -6 and power 2 7 5-7 and research 233, 261 on sentencing 26 6 -8 standpointism 260, 343 and victim isation 173, 219, 268-71 see also gender Ford M otor Com pany 208 forensic science 74 Frankfurt School 142-3, 188

428

INDEX

free will, and neo-positivism 2 8 7-8 functionalism 22, 52, 56-7, 88 gangs 98, 122 Gay Liberation M ovem ent 166, 190 gender 271-7 and academ ic crim inologists 228, 229 and alcohol consum ption 344-5 and the causes of crime 2 7 3 -5 and conflict theory 187 and crim e rates 261 and fem inist crim inology 263 m asculinities and crim e 272-3, 274, 275-6, 348-51 offenders 173 persistent 255 and power 2 7 5 -7 and research on victims o f crime 233 and subcultural theory 128 and victim surveys 40, 261 see also fem inist perspectives; m en; women General Household Surveys 38-9 globalisation 320-2, 338, 362, 369-72 governm ental project 70 green perspectives 375-6 G reenham Com m on peace cam p wom en 267-8 hegem onic m asculinity 349, 350 hereditary factors in crim inality 59, 6 0 -1 , 62 and eugenics 62-4 higher education, courses in crim inology 326-7 Home Office classification of offences 30-1 crim inal statistics 16-17 Offending, Crime and Justice Survey 18 and orthodox crim inology 176 and the police 31, 32 re-fashioned 306 and recent crim e trends 4 7 -8 Research and Planning Unit 72, 74, 229, 236, 254 research projects 233 and sociological crim inology 78 see also British Crime Surveys (BCS) hom eless people 42 hum an nature and crim inality 287 hum an rights 16, 170-1, 259, 325, 341, 362, 365

SUBJECT

iceberg analogy 19-20, 29 ID cards 324 ideological violence 145 illegitimate children 6 3-4 im perialism 16 individual delinquents 76, 77 individuation 90-1 industrial sabotage 145 innovation, and strain theory 103-4 Institute o f Criminology 72 Institute for the Scientific T reatm ent of Delinquency (ISTD) 72, 74 institutional roots o f crim inology 72 institutional-anom ie theory 107 institutionist view of crim e 10 insurance fraud 42 interactionism 136, 145, 147-8, 173-5, 257, 355 and the constitutive m odel o f deviance 153 and control theory 215 and critical crim inology 190, 258, 360 criticism s o f 185 and labelling theory 148-9 and New Right crim inology 242 and radical crim inology 289 see also labelling theory; new deviancy theory interdisciplinary conception 7 4-5 international terrorism 323 interpretive sociology 97 Islington Victim Survey 4 0 -1 , 46, 47, 271 ISTD (Institute for the Scientific T reatm ent of Delinquency) 72, 74 Italian school o f crim inology 55 ju st deserts 58, 182 juveniles see delinquency; youth crime; youth justice labelling theory 22 -3 , 119, 136, 146, 147, 148-9 and conflict theory 186, 223-4 and control theory 213 and critical crim inology 168, 170, 191, 360 criticism s o f 185 deviance and power 185-6 and deviancy am plification 153-4 and deviant acts 154-6 divisions w ithin 183 and Durkheim 88 and ethnographic research 174 and ethnom ethodology 211

INDEX

and female offenders 216 ‘nuts, sluts and preverts' 138, 156, 1 5 8 -6 0 ,1 6 8 and policy-oriented research 230 and the politicisation o f deviance 189 and politics 165-7 and prim ary and secondary deviation 151-2 and radical crim inology 170, 171 and the reality and fear o f crime 181-2 and society 173 underdog critique 156-8, 165, 168 see also new deviancy theory Labour P arty/governm ent and juvenile justice 225 and left realism T i l , 228 and policy-oriented research 238 post-war 71-2, 311 and radical crim inology 178, 179 see also New Labour governm ent late m odernity 372-5 law 25 changes in 3 0 -1 , 34-5 and consensus on deviant behaviour 23 and crim e 9, 14-16, 19 and crim inal behaviour 365 and crim inology 12 and critical crim inology 203-6 ethnom ethology and law m aking 176 powerful law breakers 207-9 sociology of 167-72 law and order and adm inistrative crim inology 281 and left realism 290, 291-2 and New Right ideology 22 4 -5 and risk 323 left idealism 183, 206, 223, 289, 358, 373 left realist criticism o f 292-8, 368 left realism 78, 183, 223, 227, 228, 258 and crim e control policies 297-8 and the ‘crim e problem ' 366-8 and critical crim inology 206, 289, 291, 292-8, 358, 363, 373 and deviance 2 3 -4 and late m odernity 372-5 and local crime surveys 4 6 -7 and neo-liberal m arkets 370-1 and policies 291-2 and policy-oriented research 237-8, 239

429

SUBJECT

INDEX

left realism (continued) and radical crim inology 2 89-92, 294-5 and victims of crim e 38, 41, 233, 296-7, 364, 366-8 legislation Children and Young Persons Act (1969) 182, 225 com m unication data bill 323-4 Crime and Disorder Act (1998) 19, 40, 310, 315, 319, 328 Criminal Justice Act (1948) 72 Crim inal Justice Act (1991) 232 Criminal Justice Act (2003) 315 Crim inal Justice and Public O rder Act 240, 253, 256, 295 Education Act (1944) 61 Police and Crim inal Evidence Act (1984) 232 Police and Justice Act (2006) 19 Regulation o f Investigatory Powers Act 323-4 Terrorism Act (2000) 308 Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act (1999) 312 leisure and delinquency 125-6 liberal crim inology 241, 242 liberal fem inism 342 libertarianism , right-w ing 28 3 -4 Liberty 234 ‘life history' approach 84 life-course theory 355 local crim e surveys 39-41, 4 6 -7 Lom brosian project 70, 78 London School of Economics 72, 75 lone-parent families 250-1 longitudinal research and crim inal careers 246-56 and orthodox crim inology 177 and self-report studies 18 ‘looking glass self' 152

and critical crim inology 24, 168-9, 190-3, 203-7, 358, 360-1 neo-M arxism 257, 258, 289, 360-1, 362 and new deviancy theory 145, 165, 166 and policy-oriented research 238 structuralism Marxism 2 0 4 -6 , 207 see also critical crim inology; left idealism m asculinities and crim e 348-51 M audsley Hospital 75 m easuring crime 16-19, 27-49 changes in the law 30-1 com puter-based data 18-19 the 'd a rk figure’ of crime 10, 17, 19, 29, 35 iceberg analogy 19-20, 29 official statistics 16-17, 2 7-9 and the police 18, 31-3 public reporting 29-30 self-report studies 17-18 victim surveys 17, 29, 30, 35-43, 4 6 -7 see also crim inal statistics m echanical solidarity 89-92 m edia and cultural crim inology 355-6 and the Frankfurt School 188 and gender 273 and labelling theory 173 m oral panics 153, 171, 251-4 and non-delinquent values 118-19 m edicine and crim inology 74 men and female crim inals 262 m ale offenders 173 m ale sexuality 351 m asculinities and crime 27 2 -3 , 2 7 4-5 and power 2 7 5-7 and victim surveys 40 as victim s o f crim e 276 violence against wom en 270-1 MFY (M obilization for Youth) program m e 86

m agistrates’ courts 15, 17 m ainstream crim inology 245-6 and gender 272, 273 m an fighting-back image o f deviancy 189,192 m anagerialism 321-2 M arxist crim inology 22, 23, 166-7, 168-9, 170, 172, 174, 331 Dan postm odernism 341 and conflict theory 185, 187, 188-9

m iners’ strike (1984-85) 15 m isfit sociology 137,166 m itigation, neoclassical principle o f 58 MNCs (m ultinational corporations) 369-70 M obilization for Youth (MFY) program m e 86 m odernity globalisation and social change 320-2 late m odernity 372-5 and postm odernity 337, 338 m oral absolutism /relativism 321

430

SUBJECT

m oral panics 153, 171, 292, 367-8, 372, 373 and crim inality 251-4 m oral standards, and crim inal law 15-16, 19 M organ Report (Standing Conference on Crime Prevention) 316-17, 318 m otoring offences 17 m ultinational corporations (MNCs) 369-70 NACRO (N ational Association for the Care and Resettlem ent o f Offenders) 234 NAPO (N ational Association o f Probation Officers) 254 N ational Crime Reduction Strategy 319 N ational Deviancy Conference (NDC) 144-5, 167, 170, 174, 190 N ational e-Borders Scheme 324 National Identity Register 324 Nazi Germ any 295 NDC (N ational Deviancy Conference) 144-5, 167, 170, 174, 190 neighbourhood decay, and right realism 286 N eighbourhood W atch schem es 30, 274, 282, 300, 319, 326 neo-liberal m arkets 369-72 neo-liberalism 231, 285, 328 neo-M arxism 257, 258, 289, 360-1, 362 neo-positivism 257, 2 8 4-8 neoclassical principle o f m itigation 58 neutralisation techniques 129, 130 new crim inology see critical crim inology new deviancy theory 21-2, 23, 79, 81, 135, 136-42, 147-60, 223 and anti-essentialism 363 conceptualising deviance 153-4 and the counter-culture 140-2 criticism s o f 154-60 and cultural crim inology 358 deviancy am plification 152-3 divisions and disputes within 145-6 and left-wing crim inologists 139-40 and orthodox crim inology 136-8, 147, 177 and policy-oriented research 231 and positivism 59, 136-7, 138 prim ary and secondary deviation 149, 151-2 and radical crim inology 144-6 see also labelling New Labour governm ent 305, 306-20 and changes in the law 30

INDEX

creation o fN ew L abour 306-7 crim e control policies 316-20 and expenditure on policing 33 and im prisonm ent 314-15 and m anagerialism 321-2 and restorative justice 312-14 social policy 315-16 ‘tough on crim e’ policies 307-10 New Left 135, 138, 140, 142-3, 167 and new deviancy theory 139 and the politicising o f deviance 189-90 New Public M anagem ent 321 new realism 285 New Right 178-9, 223, 224-6, 228, 239-40, 243 classicism 257 neo-positivism 257, 28 4 -8 positivism 246 and radical crim inology 289 and radical criticism 179-81, 182 right realism 257 and ring-wing classicism 283-4 non-arrestable offences 25 non-delinquent values, and subcultures 118-19, 119-20, 129-30 norm ative crim inology 191-2 norm s o f conduct 16, 19, 21 N orthern Ireland 233 official crim e statistics 16 N orw ood Report (1943) 61 notifiable offences 16-17, 19, 47 -8 ‘nuts, sluts and preverts’ label 138, 156, 1 5 8 -6 0 ,1 6 8 official statistics 16-17, 27 -9 , 41, 246 and youth crime 252 ontology 358, 363 organic solidarity 89-92 organised crime and American conflict theory 188 and the Chicago School 100-1 and globalisation 322 and powerful law breakers 208 and victim surveys 4 1-2 orthodox crim inology in the 1970s 176-8 and critical crim inology 193 and new deviancy 136-8, 147, 177 othering 374

431

SUBJECT

paralogy 360 parental influences on crim inality 250-1 parenting orders 315 p articipant observation, and the Chicago School 100 pathology and positivism 58 patriarchy 263 and the crim inal justice system 264-5 perm issiveness, and right realism 287 persistent offenders 2 5 4-6 phenom enology 175, 184, 209-10, 355 and Am erican conflict theory 188 and critical crim inology 192 and new deviancy theory 137, 145, 148 Piper Alpha oil rig 208 police and actuarial justice 326 characterisations o f the public 33 -4 and crim e reduction policies 320 and dom estic violence 269 expenditure on policing 33 and female offenders 265-6 gatekeeping role 31-3 num ber of police officers 33 and rape/sexual assault 269-70 recorded crim e figures 18, 19, 39, 48 research on policing 232, 234 zero-tolerance policing 286 policy-oriented research 230-3, 242, 328-9, 330 and critical crim inology 363 and radical crim inology 237-9 political orientations of crim inology 13 political revolutionaries, and strain theory 104 politicisation of deviance 189-90, 196-7 politics 184 and labelling theory 165-7 and youth subcultures 198-202 positivism 51, 54, 55, 56-60, 79, 223, 257, 299 and adm inistrative crim inology 277, 278 and the Chicago School 95, 96, 97, 100 and the concept o f crime 58-9 and critical crim inology 192 and cultural crim inology 356 and Durkheim 87 and free will 2 8 7-8 and interactionism 174 and m ainstream crim inology 246 neo-positivism 257, 2 8 4-8 and new deviancy theory 59, 136-7, 138

432

INDEX

and New L abour 310, 311, 312 New Right 246 and orthodox crim inology 176-7, 178 the positivist trap 75 and postm odernism 337 and radical criticism 182 and sociological crim inology 79, 82 post-new deviance theory 24 post-structuralism 338, 342, 350 postm odern fem inism 342-3 postm odernism 243, 320, 334, 335, 336-41, 342, 355, 356, 376 poverty 16 and American conflict theory 189 child poverty in Britain 240, 316 culture of 241, 283 and delinquency 121 and fem inist crim inology 264 and gender 273 and liberal m arkets 372 and New Labour policies 311, 316 poverty program m es, and strain theory 11, 85-6, 105, 112, 113 power and conflict theory 186-7 and crim e control 301 crime and power relations 365 and deviance 185-6, 202-9 and gender 27 5 -7 pragm atism , in post-war British crim inology 73-4, 77-8, 79 prediction of crim inality 76 prescriptive policies 182 prim ary deviation 149, 151-2, 155 Prison D epartm ent, and orthodox crim inology 176 prisons and abolitionism 241 crim inal statistics on im prisonm ent 4 5-6 im prisonm ent rates and crim e rates 287 New Labour and im prisonm ent 314-15, 318 prison populations in Britain 240, 305, 314, 315 and gender 173, 266, 345-6 privatisation 315 sentencing policies and gender 26 7 -8 privatisation 180 crim inal justice system 236, 284 prisons 315

SUBJECT

proactive policing 31-2 probation orders 266 productivity, M arx on crime and 51-3 progressive m ovem ent 83 property crime and crim inal subcultures 115 and crim inality 250 and gender 262, 263-4 persistent offenders 255 and strain theory 104 prostitutes, and police officers 266 PSI (Policy Studies Institute), report on the M etropolitan Police 34 psychiatry 12, 60, 74 anti-psychiatry m ovem ent 166 psychoanalytical crim inology 72, 7 4-5 psychogenic factors in delinquency 110 psychology 12, 60, 69, 72, 74 and scientific crim inology 55, 59 public crim inologies 329-30 public opinion 22, 329, 330 public reporting o f crime 2 9 -30 Quality Assurance Agency 76 queer theory 351 race/ethnicity and conflict theory 187 and crime as political 167 and fem inist crim inology 264, 265, 343, 344 and im prisonm ent rates 45 in late tw entieth-century Britain 240 Paki-bashing studies 197, 202 policy-oriented research on 232, 2333 racially m otivated violence 38 racism 16, 64 and strain theory 85 and victim surveys 40, 41 see also black people radical crim inology 169-72, 174, 223, 243, 258, 289-92, 331 and Am erican conflict theory 186, 188 and critical crim inology 298, 358 cynical rule breakers 171-2 and deviance 22 -5 , 167, 202 divisions w ithin 183 features o f 289 and left realism 289-92, 294-5

INDEX

and new deviancy theory 144-6, 165 and New Labour 307 and orthodox crim inology 177-8 and policy-oriented research 237-9 the politicisation o f deviance 189-90 self-interested rule m akers 169-71, 238 see also left realism radical criticism 179-83 radical fem inism 342 rape and fem inist crim inology 269-71, 346 and strain theory 106 and victim surveys 40 and victim isation 37, 219 rational choice and adm inistrative crim inology 279-80 and right-wing classicism 284 reaction form ation 111-12, 120 reactive policing 31 realism and crim inal statistics 10 victim surveys 35-6 rebellion, and strain theory 103, 104 recidivism, and scientific crim inology 75 recorded crim e see crim inal statistics; official statistics rehabilitation 182, 316, 318 reintegrative sham ing 313 relative deprivation 85 relativism 59, 363 Research Assessm ent Exercise (RAE) 327 restorative justice 305, 312-14 retreatism 103, 104, 115 retribution 58, 257, 313 right realism 257, 2 8 4-8 right-wing classicism 283-4, 310 see also New Right risk assessm ent, actuarial justice 325-6 risk avoidance 275, 300-1 risk society 322-3 risky behaviour 35 6 -7 ritualism , and strain theory 103,104 routine activity theory 280-1 rule-breaking behaviour 155 Rwanda 347 sceptical postm odernism 339, 340 schools, and the adjustm ent problem 126-8 scientific crim inology 55, 56-9, 75

433

SUBJECT

Scientific G roup for the Discussion of Delinquency Problem s 72 Scotland, official crim e statistics 16 secondary deviation 151-2 selectivity, and subcultural theory 128 self-control theory 352, 353 self-fulfilling prophecy, labelling theory as 149 self-interested rule m akers 169-71, 238 self-report studies and control theory 212-13, 215 o f crim inality and age 247-8 and gender 261 persistent offenders 254 and socio-economic status 248-9 o f female offenders 344 and fem inist crim inology 217 sentencing and children in custody 46 disparities in 45 female offenders 266-8 New Labour and im prisonm ent 314-15 see also restorative justice sex offenders 248, 253 sexism 16, 265-6 sexual assaults 269-71 and victim surveys 40, 42, 43 sexual offences, reporting 30 sexuality, male 351 sham e m anagem ent 313 situational crime control 233, 234-5, 300-1 and adm inistrative crim inology 280, 281, 282, 329 and New L abour 316 social capital 311 social censures 364 social change 320-2 social class see class social constructionism 10, 11, 48, 356 social Darw inism 96 social democracy 72 social exclusion 311, 318, 373 Social Exclusion Unit 319 social harm s 335, 359 social m arginalisation, and fem inist crim inology 264 social order, Durkheim on 89-92 social reaction theory 136 social security fraud 42

434

INDEX

social welfare program m es 71-2, 80-1 socialisation 285, 352, 359 socialism 191-2, 360, 361, 362 and left realism 291-2 socialist feminism 342 socio-economic status see class sociological crim inology 13, 74, 75, 7 7 -8 6 , 224 in Britain 77, 78-82, 119-31, 326 American influences on 116, 119-22, 136 developm ent of 135-6 and New Labour 305-12 and orthodox crim inology 177 teaching and research in 234 in the United States 79-80, 81, 8 2-6 sociology and crim inology 12, 60, 69, 72, 74 and Durkheim 8 8-9 Soviet Union (form er) 190, 2 89-90, 331, 360 Spens Report (1938) 61 Standing Conference on Crime Prevention (M organ Report) 316-17, 318 statistics see crim inal statistics; official statistics sterilisation policies 63, 64 strain theory 82, 84 -6 , 87, 102-7, 330 and anom ie 102,103, 104-5 criticism s o f 105-7 and m odes o f individual adaptation 103-4, 105, 106 subcultural 109-15 and the Chicago School 112,116-19 structuralist M arxism 204-6, 207 structured action theory 349, 350 style, and youth subcultures 200-1 subcultural strain theory 109-15 and the Chicago School 112, 116-19 and sociological crim inology in Britain 118-20 subcultural theory 128-31, 258, 355 and fem inist crim inology 263 and radical crim inology 289 subcultures and cultural crim inology 357-8 and cultural diversity theory 122-6 and left realism 291 and policy-oriented research 231 schools and the adjustm ent problem 126-8 youth subcultures and policy-oriented research 231 and politics 198-202

SUBJECT

radical theory o f 167 subordinated m asculinity 349 subterranean values 129, 130-1 suicide 121, 145 D urkheim ’s study o f 88 -9 , 91-2, 102, 210 and phenom enology 210 sum m ary offences 17 surveillance 323-5, 374 suspended sentences 315 sym bolic interactionism 98, 100, 174 targeted offences 32 Tavistock Institute 75 tax fraud 42 techniques o f neutralisation 129, 130 terrorism 323, 325 T hatcherism 178-9, 225-6, 227, 228, 237 theft 42, 246 recorded offences 2 8-9 Theoretical Criminology (journal) 363, 375 tolerance-crim inalisation m odel 367, 368-9 'tough on crim e’ policies 307-10 transactionalism 136 treatm ent program m es, individually tailored 76 trea tm e n t/p u n ish m en t regimes, com m on sense 8-9 Tree of Knowledge 5 3-4 Tree o f Sin 53, 239 Tyson (film) 351 underclass in m odern Britain 118, 309-10 and ring-wing classicism 283 underdog critique of deviance 156-8, 160, 165, 168 unem ploym ent 277, 291, 309 and liberal m arkets 372 United States eugenics m ovem ent 64 Kennedy adm inistration 85, 113 M obilization for Youth (MFY) program m e 86 and neo-liberal m arkets 371 progressive m ovem ent 83 Reagan adm inistration 178, 285 security issues 324 Vietnam W ar 159, 186 see also Am erican crim inology; strain theory

INDEX

vagrancy laws 187 vandalism see crim inal dam age (vandalism ) Victim Support 269 victim surveys 17, 29, 30, 35-43 and adm inistrative crim inology 281-2 and critical crim inology 2 9 6-7 and fem inist crim inology 270, 271 findings 38-9 and gender 40, 261, 274 lim itations and problem s of 4 1-3 local 39-41, 4 6 -7 see also British Crime Surveys (BCS) victim isation and gender 173, 219, 268-71, 276, 348 and New Labour policies 318 and risk 323 victimology 17, 36 -7 , 224, 269 victims of crime children as 253 and left realism 38, 41, 2 9 6 -7 , 364, 366-8 research on 232-3 wom en as 266, 268-71, 346 victims, crim es w ithout 42 Vietnam W ar 159, 186 violence and conflict subcultures 115 ideological 145 and m asculinity 350-1 violent crime and crim inality 248, 250 female offenders 347-8 female victim s o f 346 and m asculinity 173 ‘m uggings’ 171, 207 notifiable assaults 4 7-8 persistent offenders 255 policy-oriented research on 232 recorded offences 29 white-collar crime and adm inistrative crim inology 281 and the Chicago School 100-1 and critical crim inology 369 and left realism 290 and policy-oriented research 231 powerful law breakers 207-9 and radical crim inology 171-2 and self-report studies 249 and strain theory 105, 106

435

SUBJECT

w hite-collar crime (continued) studies o f 145 and victims of 296 see also corporate crime wom en and crim e 271-2 and power 275 and the crim inal justice system 218-19, 264-5, 272 female crim inality 172-3, 216-19, 260-8, 2 7 2 ,3 4 4 -8 female prisoners 345-6 and victim surveys 40 as victims o f crime 266, 268-71, 346 Women, Crime and Criminology (Sm art) 172, 216 work record and crim inality 249 W orld W ar II 61-2, 71, 77

436

INDEX

youth crime age and crim inality 247-8 and the Chicago School 98 defining 25 and im prisonm ent 314, 315 and m oral panics 251-4 and policy-oriented research 231, 232 and post-war British crim inology 76 and sociological crim inology 81 and welfarism 62 see also delinquency; subcultures youth justice and m oral panics 251-4 and New Labour 314 and New Right ideology 225 and restorative justice 312-14 Zone o f T ransition 9 7 -8 , 99, 115