2: STATE

For a discussion similar to the foregoing, see Berard (1998). For

extended discussion of the concept of causation in the law and its
dependence on commonsense use, see Hart and Honoré (1985). And
for clear-headed articulation of the differences among the concepts
of “cause,” “intention,” “motive” and “reason” in relation to action,
see Winch (2008 [1958]: 71–77) and Sharrock and Watson (1984).

The state, crime statistics and correctionalism

The state is the ultimate owner and/or disposer of everything within

the boundaries of its territory. This includes the land upon which its
people live; the charters by which corporations, whether cities or
companies, legally exist; and the citizenship by which said people
enjoy the rights and responsibilities of living there. The state is the
arbiter of the realms of the public and the private, of the definition
and scope of criminal and civil liability, of crime and tort.The state is
the ultimate source of legitimate force. Thus may be understood the
following matters: the extent to which actual states enjoy a virtual
monopoly of the means of violence; the priority accorded in criminal
codes to actions taken against the state itself (treason, sedition, espio-
nage, leaking of secrets, deserting of armed forces); the severity of the
sentences such crimes draw and the fierce and unremitting pursuit of
those suspected of such crimes (consider the situations of Wikileaks’
founder Julian Assange, Chelsea [formerly Bradley] Manning and
Edward Snowden); the criminalization of protest, dissent and other
“offences” against public order; Bittner’s formulation of the specific
nature of police competence: “The policeman, and the policeman alone,
is equipped, entitled, and required to deal with every exigency in which force
may have to be used” (Bittner 1974: 35, emphasis in original); and the
social worker being regarded as the unarmed equivalent of the police
as an agent of the state.7
If, in democratic societies, “the people” are the ultimate source of
the state’s authority, they are at the same time its ultimate enemy (see
Chomsky 2003: chapter 1). Thus it is that many states constitution-
ally provide for the legitimacy of military coups to protect the state
against the people. From the point of view of state administration,
the people, as “the public,” is or are the population that must be
managed. Thus it is that such management in the form of public or
social administration may be regarded as the highest art, requiring the

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