La3025 Vle PDF

Criminology
W. Morrison
This module guide was prepared for the University of London by:
u Wayne Morrison, LLB, LLM, PHD, LLD, Professor of Law at Queen Mary University of
London and Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand.
This is one of a series of module guides published by the University. We regret that
owing to pressure of work the author is unable to enter into any correspondence
relating to, or arising from, the guide. If you have any comments on this module guide,
favourable or unfavourable, please use the form at the back of this guide.
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Criminology page i
Contents
Module descriptor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1 What is your interest in criminology: as a discipline and as a subject?
What are you expecting to study? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 Why have criminology? Do we need it? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 The syllabus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Core materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.5 Using the materials and preparing for the assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2 Crime, globalisation and the/your criminological imagination . . . . . 11

2.1 Developing a criminological imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Placing criminology in context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3 Criminology and the advent of modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.4 Other relevant characteristics of modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.5 The dilemma of criminological knowledge and personal opinion . . . . . . 17
2.6 Some fundamental concepts in criminology: crime and criminality . . . . . 20
3 Competing traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology

or the concept of crime versus that of the criminal . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.1 Modernity and the Enlightenment context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.2 Central figures of the two approaches examined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.3 The positive revolution: the imagery of science replacing the moral
discourse of crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.4 Political arithmetic and statistical analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.5 The oral-ethnographic efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.6 The Italian/positivist school . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.7 The return of classicism: populist conservative criminology and
contemporary rational action theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.8 Are the perspectives contradictory or can they be combined? . . . . . . . . 42
4 Sources of criminological data: official criminal statistics and their

limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.1 Criminal statistics and their interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.2 The dream of criminal statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.3 Durkheim: suicide as the paradigm example of positivism and statistics . . . 49
4.4 Role of NGOs and other to complement criminal statistics . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.5 Using statistics in search for criminality: the case of the Chicago
school of sociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.6 Interpreting rises or declines in official statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
5 Psychology and crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.1 Historical context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.2 ‘Nature’ versus ‘nurture’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.3 Crime and psychoanalytic theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.4 Social learning and behavioural theories of crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
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5.5 Trait-based personality theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

5.6 Cognitive theories of crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.7 Contemporary narrative approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
6 Sociological perspectives – structural and cultural foundations . . . . . 79

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Part A: Classical sociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
6.1 Foundational assumptions and the work of Emile Durkheim . . . . . . . . . 81
6.2 Sub-cultural theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
6.3 The work of David Matza: one writer analysed as an example . . . . . . . . 82
Part B: Labelling theory and moral panics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Part I: Labelling, otherwise known as symbolic, or social interactionism
or social reaction theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6.4 Howard Becker and social interactionism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6.5 Role, status and stigma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Part II Moral panic theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.6 The creation of the concept of moral panics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.7 Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Part C: Critical criminology, a different view of social structure . . . . . . . . . . . 94
6.8 The rise of critical criminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
7 Contemporary cultural criminology and existentialism . . . . . . . . . 99

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
7.1 Directions in cultural criminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
7.2 Historical, theoretical and methodological antecedents of
cultural criminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
7.3 The method(s) of cultural criminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
7.4 Jack Katz and the ‘seductions of crime’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
7.5 Mike Presdee and the ‘carnival of crime’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
7.6 Towards an existential perspective in criminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
8 Feminist criminology: the challenge of gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
8.1 From statistics to explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
8.2 The feminist critique of criminology: an overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
8.3 Women and the criminal justice system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
8.4 Reflection: what does a feminist analysis mean for criminological theory?
Is it social ideology? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
8.5 Transitions: provocation, an example of gender in question . . . . . . . . 130
8.6 Feminism, criminology, the postmodern moment and globalisation . . . . 132
9 Punishment and its institutional framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
9.1 Philosophy and aims of punishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
9.2 Understanding punishment: contrasting philosophical and
sociological accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
9.3 Why punish at all? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
9.4 Punishing as a means to an end? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
9.5 Are compromise theories possible? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
9.6 Do we live in a penal society? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
10 Conclusion: criminology under globalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

10.1 In place of a conclusion: facing globalism and post-modernism . . . . . . 163
10.2 The challenges of globalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Criminology page iii
Module descriptor
GENERAL INFORMATION
Module title
Criminology
Module code
LA3025
Module level
6
Contact email
The Undergraduate Laws Programme courses are run in collaboration with the
University of London. Enquiries may be made via the Student Advice Centre at:
https://sid.london.ac.uk
Credit
30
Courses on which this module is offered

LLB, EMFSS
Module prerequisite
None
Notional study time

300 hours
MODULE PURPOSE AND OVERVIEW

Criminology is offered as an optional subject to students on the Standard Entry and
Graduate Entry LLB programmes. It is also offered for study as an Individual Module.
Credits from Individual Modules will not count towards the requirements of the LLB.
Criminology is a wide term covering a large discipline. As a single 30 credit module

within an undergraduate course of study this module concentrates on criminological
theory as a discipline and in confronting which a way in which students diversely
located can challenge the presuppositions they have about crime and offenders.
The student is asked to think about their own situation, where they are located in the
global order and how they can use criminology to challenge their own ideas and to
better understand the formal and informal sources of knowledge about crime, the
grounds for public policy, labelling of offenders and responses to crime.
MODULE AIM
The module aims to develop a criminological imagination that enables successful
students to engage critically with both their presuppositions and acquired knowledge,
develop a global perspective, separate common sense from scholarly perspectives,
identify information needs and gaps and develop a sense of intellectual integrity that
acknowledges the limits of what we know and the need for further research.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: KNOWLEDGE

Students are expected to have knowledge and understanding of the main schools of
thought within Criminology. In particular, they should be able to:
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1. Understand the inter-disciplinary heritage of criminology and the influence this

has had on the various schools of thought;
2. Describe the different sources of information available to academics, policy-

makers and the public on crime;
3. Understand the contested nature of what is (and is not) considered to be ‘crime’;
4. Describe the main arguments of the various schools involved in explaining crime
and critically analyses their differences;
5. Describe perspectives on the role of punishment and the different functions that it
might be thought to serve.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: SKILLS

Students completing this module should be able to demonstrate the ability to:
6. Distinguish between different conceptual frames of reference and compare and

contrast their strengths and weaknesses;
7. Engage with definitional and conceptual issues relating to crime, deviance and
control;
8. Analyse popular perceptions of crime and punishment and subject these to critical
analysis;
9. Utilise a range of tools and resources available for the study of crime and its
control.
BENCHMARK FOR LEARNING OUTCOMES

The Learning Outcomes are benchmarked against the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA)
benchmark statement for Law 2019.
MODULE SYLLABUS
(a) Objectives and methods of criminology. The idea of a science of criminology. Basic
dichotomies/controversies on nature and scope of criminology, crime as a social
problem verses crime as inevitable and a reflection of social order. Developing a
criminological imagination in conditions of globalism. Defining crime (legal and
sociological conceptions, the role of the nation state and the need for different
focus, social harm and violations of human rights). Historical development of
criminology (in outline only). Classical and positivist schools. Criminology beyond
the nation state and the case of State crime. Sources of data: Official statistics and
alternatives (e.g. self-report studies and victimisation surveys); media images of
crime and offending and ‘moral panics’. Uses, defects and limitations of official data
for purposes of research. Challenges of gender, transnational crime and trafficking.
(b) Criminological Theory. Orientating perspectives in studying crime such as

correctionalism and appreciation, crime as an individual phenomenon verses
crime as a social product: legacies of classicism and positivism, rational choice,
biological, psychological and psychiatric explanations, including idea of
psychopathy, the importance of the situation. Crime as a social phenomenon:
Anomie theory, Durkheim and Merton. Social disorganisation and social ecology.
Concept of spatial justice. Matza, techniques of neutralization and ‘drift’.
Interactionist perspectives. Labelling theory. Control theories. Marxism. Feminism.
Crime as a cultural phenomenon: cultural criminology, moral panics and the
media, Katz and seductions of crime, existentialism.
(c) Institutional Framework of Law Enforcement. Philosophy and aims of punishment,

including deterrence, treatment, ‘justice’, communicative and restorative models.
Whether actual systems of punishment can be explained by philosophical
justifications or sociological approaches (in outline). Community and official
attitudes to punishment and treatment of offenders.
Criminology page v
LEARNING AND TEACHING
Module guide
Module guides are the students’ primary learning resource. The module guide covers
the entire syllabus and provides the student with the grounding to complete the
module successfully. The module guide sets out the learning outcomes that must
be achieved as well as providing advice on how to study the subject. The guide also
includes the essential reading and a series of self-test activities together with sample
examination questions, designed to enable students to test their understanding. The
module guide is supplemented each year with ‘Pre-exam updates’, made available on
the VLE.
The Laws Virtual Learning Environment

The Laws VLE provides one centralised location where the following resources are
provided:
u a module page with news and updates, provided by legal academics associated
with the Laws Programme;
u a complete version of the module guides;
u online audio presentations;
u pre-exam updates;
u past examination papers and reports;
u discussion forums where students can debate and interact with other students;
u Computer Marked Assessments – multiple choice questions with feedback

are available for some modules allowing students to test their knowledge and
understanding of the key topics.
The Online Library

The Online Library provides access to:
u the professional legal databases LexisLibrary and Westlaw;
u cases and up-to-date statutes;
u key academic law journals;
u law reports;
u links to important websites.
Core text
Students should refer to the following core text and specific reading references are
provided for this text in each chapter of the module guide:
¢ Hopkins Burke, R. An introduction to criminological theory. (Routledge: London,

2018) fifth edition [ISBN 9781138700215].
ASSESSMENT
Learning is supported through tasks in the module guide, which include self-
assessment activities with feedback. There are additional online activities in the form
of multiple choice questions. The Formative Assessment will prepare students to reach
the module learning outcomes tested in the Summative Assessment.
Summative assessment is through a three hour unseen examination. Students are

required to answer four essay questions out of a choice of eight.
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Permitted materials
No materials are permitted in the examination.
Please be aware that the format and mode of assessment may need to change in
light of extraordinary events beyond our control, for example, an outbreak such as
the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In the event of any change, students will be
informed of any new assessment arrangements via the VLE.
1 Introduction
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1 What is your interest in criminology: as a discipline and as a subject?

What are you expecting to study? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 Why have criminology? Do we need it? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 The syllabus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Core materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.5 Using the materials and preparing for the assessment . . . . . . . . . . 9

page 2 University of London
Learning outcomes
By the end of this introduction you will know more about:
u the style of the course
u the type of materials you will be provided with
u the assessment.
Introduction
The doors are opening. There are our murderers. Dressed in black. On their dirty hands
they wear white gloves. They drive us out of the synagogue in pairs. Dear sisters and
brothers, how difficult it is to take leave of such a beautiful life. You who are still alive,
never forget our innocent little Jewish street. Sisters and brothers, avenge us on our
murderers.
Murdered on September 15, 1942.
(Message left in blood on the wall of a synagogue in Eastern Europe where the Nazi forces
had herded Jewish inhabitants before taking them out to be shot. (Lawrence Langer, The
age of atrocity. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978) [ISBN 9780807063699] p.40.))
I would like to say ‘Welcome!’ with full gaiety… but of course there is our subject
matter…
Criminology – what is it?
In terms of material: there is a vast range, including, but not limited to, the deliberate
infliction of pain; unnatural death such as homicide, murder and manslaughter; sexual
offences (such as rape – and in some countries the mere fact of sexual orientation);
fraud, burglary; ‘mugging’; drug taking; police corruption; torture; terrorism; drug and
human trafficking; responding to crime via social measures, target hardening and/or
punishment, which seem ‘natural’ but which may have resulted in creating a prison
business; atrocity; ‘industrial accidents’… and institutional selectivity by governments
and the media with regard to what are relevant ‘facts’ and perspectives are presented,
and – finally, but often overlooked – ourselves…
As an academic subject:
It is part of the social or human ‘sciences’ which raises complex questions about
objectivity and subjectivity because, unlike the ‘natural’ sciences in which humans
study inanimate (or ‘soulless’) processes, in the social sciences humans study other
humans and their social and cultural institutions. The social sciences are said to be
morally charged or reflexive, normative and unavoidably political. As opposed to the
study of physical and biological processes, social science studies are more historical
and morally orientated. While adhering to notions of scientific integrity and seeking
factually based arguments, the social sciences are more sciences of persuasion; they
may be ‘researching’ a particular policy – such as reactions by police and social services
to youth offending – but the findings have an effect. They either confirm, according
to a set of criteria, the efficacy of the current policy or they seek to change the overall
policy or particular aspects.
As a practical task:
You are encountering it as part of your LLB or perhaps BSc studies as a single, stand-
alone module.
Criminology is increasingly offered as a whole degree, in which case criminology

is broken down into discrete units – presented as a range of specialised modules –
with areas such as crime and the city (perhaps under the title of social ecology) or
psychology or critical criminology as separate modules for study.
However, you are undertaking a stand-alone module and you will be asked to read
a selection of material from a wide and often conflicting array. There is a very large
amount of material that could (and often does) go into criminology courses. At its
Criminology 1 Introduction page 3
simplest the word ‘criminology’ denotes the ‘logos’, the rational discourse, associated
with crime: crimin-o-logos. As seen by many of the late 19th and early 20th century
writers who are credited with forming it as a discipline, it connects with criminal law
and with penal policy (early texts were often entitled ‘Criminology and Penology’).
Thus it connected to ‘common-sense’ arguments about the need for social control and
punishment.
But there are those – like Angela Davis (first activity: research who she is) who say we
must break the seemingly common-sense link between crime and punishment (which
in many, many, cases means being sent to prison).
Contrasts in outlooks and mood: ‘Whose side are you on?’

(To paraphrase the famous article by Howard Becker, ‘Whose side are we on?’, Social
Problems 14(3) 1967, pp.239–47)
Throughout this guide, a three-fold distinction will be made between:
1. Criminology, as ‘logos’, in other words, as the ‘scientific’ discipline aiming for

impartiality;
2. You, as the important and subjective element who is to interact with this
discipline and ultimately undergo assessment activities (primarily the summative
examinations); and
3. The world. The world is of course inescapable; it is the context of both the
discipline which seeks to be ‘truthful’ to it and you. The world always escapes being
captured fully and always surprises.
As said above, criminology involves humans commenting on other humans; unlike

doing experiments on physical substances, investigating social life is a changing and
multi-perspective endeavour, one which always involves choices about what to focus
on, where to stand and what perspective to adopt.
With criminology, for example, there are a number of basic distinctions in the
material, such as between seeing it as an applied science in which the aim is to
acquire secure knowledge that overcomes the need for political debate or choice, or
a critical imagination that reveals contingence and choice running through all human
activity; another is between ‘mainstream’ or ‘administrative’ and ‘critical’ criminology.
Mainstream criminology works with the status quo, the existing social structure and
cultural values; even if some of the individuals working as mainstream criminologists
may seek to reform it, they largely work on research agendas as set by the government
(the state) and accept the common-sense definition of a crime and an act or omission
which is subject to punishment (by the state). ‘Critical’ criminology finds the status
quo itself problematic and does not accept the state as the definer or arbiter of what
we should be concerned about as ‘crime’ or social harm.
In the USA, criminology is often taught in schools of Criminal Justice studies, and
students go on to employment in the ‘correctional service’ (such as in prisons), as
police officers and the like. In the UK, it is more commonly taught in departments
of general sociology or social policy or as a sub-set or as part of law courses and the
outlook is more generally critical.
Given that this is an individual module, it reflects choices made as to material and style
of teaching; it is also reflective. In other words it asks you to consider your taken-for-
granted assumptions, to ask you to consider your position in society and how much
do you know or analyse about the world. Do the criminal laws of your society reflect
the views of the whole population, or, in the case of at least some of them, a particular
portion? Are there circumstances in which you consider it right to break the law? More
broadly, consider the simple but also complex question: what were the real sources of
harm to humans in the 20th century? And has humanity progressed in terms of social
ordering? Are ‘we’, for example, more humane, more caring; has violence decreased or
increased and so forth. And what are our frames of reference?
Consider the historical position:
As noted before, social sciences adopt an historical and morally orientated reading or
positioning of people, societies and places. Traditionally, the writers who contributed
to building up criminology seemed to assume that we were getting more civilised,
that the future would always be better (or that we could make it better). It is a product
of the Enlightenment attempt to replace the claims of tradition, the rhetorical appeals
to passion or the privileges of the aristocracy with a commitment to ‘reason’. That
meant, in practical terms, subjecting human arrangements to rational ordering and
making social changes in light of social statistics, of evidence of what worked and of a
rational appreciation of the issues that needed to be addressed.
We now live with many of the advances of post-Enlightenment projects – fantastic

buildings, mega-cities, advanced communication technologies, the freedom to desire
and to consume goods from around the world – with many unforeseen consequences,
for example, the nuclear bomb, the Holocaust and genocides of ‘far off’ places such as
East Pakistan leading to the creation of Bangladesh), Cambodia, Rwanda and Darfur.
What does that mean for our moral picture of humans? Langer describes a lesson:
One of the most sinister and melancholy discoveries of our era is that men and nations can
kill under certain circumstances without having to face effective censure from civilisation.
The desolate heritage of Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Stalinism, fascist Spain, Algeria, Vietnam
– the length of the list grows frightening – is that torture and or atrocities have failed to
offend the sensibilities of men as one might have expected. (Langer, 1978, p.46)
He wrote that in 1978 – what of today? The message rings even more true today after
the deliberate looking the other way and withdrawal of UN peacekeeping troops in
Rwanda that allowed some 800,000-plus Tutsi to be killed, the abuses at Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq and the USA’s use of torture under President George W. Bush in the
so-called War on Terror and the massacres carried out by the so-called Islamic State in
Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.
Yet it is surely an advance to know of these things. In 2020, we live in a globalised

world where our understanding of human existence is mediated by mass media and
we have access (if we want or chose to use it) to an enormous array of information
(and interpretations of that information). This display of information and diverse
interpretations is historically very new and strange but, to those born in the last 30 or so
years, it appears so ‘natural’; we can roughly call this expansion in information a product
(and component of) globalisation and a symptom of inhabiting ‘late modernity’.
Consider language:
Academic criminology has been (and still is) largely language: it is a form of
rational representation. As a discipline it is organised in particular ways and in
your examination you will be expected to write coherently and use references and
arguments drawn from the ‘academic discipline’.
But is the subject matter capable of rational representation and do we, as consumers
or citizens of the world, deal in rational terms? Or do we distort things when we
package social reality into such a language and system of representation; are we really
wanting something other than dry reason, statistics and so forth?
Consider the issue of trust: should we trust ‘experts’, our instincts, our ‘moral
reactions’? And what of non-academic accounts of crime and motivation?
Many, many people read what could be termed ‘popular criminology’ daily, in
newspapers, in novels, and watch a form of criminology on TV and in cinema (whereas
people once thought of Sherlock Holmes as a criminologist, today many would look to
participants in one of the versions of CSI). Larry Lamb, once Editorial Director of
The Sun and News of the World (‘tabloid’ or mass circulation newspapers in the UK)
believed that ‘The basic interests of the human race are not in music, politics and
philosophy, but in things like food and football, money, sex and crime – especially
crime.’ (As quoted in Steve Chibnall, Law-and-order news an analysis of the crime
reporting in the British press. (London: Routledge, 2001; first published 1977)
[ISBN 9780415264082].)
In the literary and popular media world we encounter psychopaths, mass murderers,
detectives with heavy drinking problems, politicians who arrange homicides and
make people disappear, societies losing their moral backbone, crooked deals and
heroic deeds; sometimes (as with for example the early 20th century detective stories
of Dashiell Hammett) we encounter implicit large-scale social theories – Hammett
depicted the American dream as a jungle with human predators, yet we see great
contrasts and collisions: personal honour entangled in corruption, opportunity and
the plays of fate. In the Sweden evoked by the author Henning Mankell, his character
Inspector Kurt Wallander lives in the small town of Ystad, but this is a location that is in
the midst of global flows of trafficked women, drugs and terrorists.
Crime fiction excites and sells: much of academic criminology – particularly that of
positivist criminology in the grip of quantitative analysis – is likely to appear boring in
contrast.
Consider who speaks:
As an academic discipline, criminology has been dominated by the writings of

academics based in Europe and North America (with more recent contributions from
Australia and elsewhere). It is not context-free but represents forms of knowledge
produced in particular locations using specific methodologies; however, its scientific
ethos claimed a universal message. Writers often claimed to be creating ‘general
theory’ applicable everywhere conversely others argue that theories built up in the
conditions of the USA should not be simply applied in Hong Kong or Malaysia or
Trinidad without a deep and critical appreciation of local context and culture.
So context is important:
In light of this, as an introduction to thinking about crime, the power of the state,
punishment, and social suffering, this module is necessarily reflexive; we will not only
read about, sometimes watch (i.e. videos on the internet), human activity but try to
think about the status of the ‘secondary’ activity of writing, watching, prioritising,
relating, defining, using power. Certainly, we should not take ‘crime’ for granted as a
settled concept but also ask how it is conceptualised, what are the harms associated
with it and how we understand the social responses to it.
The specific orientation of this module is on criminological theory but this is not
context-free nor is it without links to other projects. Criminology has, for example,
a close – some say too close – relationship with criminal justice. Critics may ask
‘Why criminal justice’? Why not make the link to social justice? Criminology has
often seemed like a servant of the state, a form of discourse which gives a veneer
of legitimacy to the state’s systems of control, of repression, of classification (and
punishment).
While it will be of benefit to you to have outline knowledge of elements of criminal

justice (policing, prisons and punishment), this is not a criminal justice course.
Today – for better and for worse – the criminal justice system mediates between
the individual and the state. It can be abused, for example, in some countries forms
of policing work to ‘disappear’ political opponents. The nation state has been (and
continues to be, although losing considerable control under globalisation) the
central organising feature of modernity: it is, however, bureaucratic, hierarchical and
formalised. In earlier times, less complex social units treated occasions which we now
regard as crimes (that is, as offences that under the criminal law are specifically liable
to punishment by the agents of the state) as either normal features of life, or sins,
nuisances, or as wrongs against the victim entitling them – or the relatives if they were
murdered – to compensation. The development of the present situation (where such
wrongs are the concern of the state and where suspected offenders are processed by
police and the criminal courts and, if found guilty, are liable to a range of sanctions
ranging from discharges through to measures like probation and community service
to imprisonment, and even death [capital punishment] in some states) has a history
linked to the rise of the modern state and the various agencies of the state.
The nation state continues to be the most important entity, even in the face of
globalism and transnational law. Domestically, it provides the context for your home
(it is your homeland!) and provides a degree of physical, economic, cultural and social
borders; internationally, it is the chief agent in systems of global interdependence
(even the European Union is a union of nation states). But ease of travel, international
commerce and new forms of communication mean that not only are many of our
problems ‘global’ in reach but we are confronted by evidence of our dependency
and engagement with ‘others’ in faraway places. Some of those concerns are
acknowledged and indicated herein but this course is necessarily introductory and
more questions may be raised than answers given!
1.1 What is your interest in criminology: as a discipline and as a

subject? What are you expecting to study?
To paraphrase above: criminology is a blanket term for interrelated forms of discourse
that represent attempts to set out and critically analyse our understanding of crime
and of the state’s handling of crime and related matters (or failure to respond!). Thus
we are necessarily concerned with trying to comprehend rationally the relationship
of the individual(s) (group?) who breaks the laws of a state and the operation of the
state’s power to lay down laws and to punish for breaches of those laws (and then
we are in trouble if it is a whole state, such as the Nazi state seeking to exterminate
the entirety of the Jewish people: how do we conceptualise that situation?). Studying
criminology within a law degree may give an expectation that it is an ‘applied law’
subject; on the contrary, much of its history is a battle between those who adopted
a primarily legalist approach towards dealing with crime and those who adopted
approaches from the social sciences, namely, sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis
and so forth. Thus the criminal law (or lack of it) has given a core focus, placing
emphasis on the problem of breaches of it, and the practical questions of whose
responsibility it is to know about social harm, victimhood and so forth, and then what
to do with the offender who has breached such a law, and the general problem of how
to minimise the overall incidents of offending (the social problem of crime). But again
bigger questions emerge: how do we deal with a ‘criminal state’? What do you do with
transnational ecological disasters – are they ‘crimes’? The study of criminology is an
invitation to take a stance, to challenge your common-sense perspectives and try to
develop more complex world views.
1.2 Why have criminology? Do we need it?

There are many reasons for the existence of criminology, but there are also voices
calling for its replacement. On the one hand, crimes (and related actions) involve
social harm – some internal critics of the state-focused nature of traditional
criminology would have us replace ‘crime’ with other concepts such as ‘social harm’,
‘breaches of human rights’ – however, the state-focused core of criminology has been
difficult to move.
Activity 1.1
To see the idea of ‘social harm’ verses ‘criminology’ go to John Moore’s blog,
beginning Wednesday, 27 October 2010: Drug policy harm part one: social harm
theory v criminology at
http://whose-law.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/drug-policy-harm-part-one-social-harm.
html
Read all four parts. What do you think of his assertion that taking a social harm
perspective allows us to look at all drugs, both legal and illegal, within the same
paradigm?
On the other hand, crime has become a political and media event. While before the
1970s crime was seen more as something that ‘experts’ could deal with, during the
1970s politicians discovered that waging ‘war’ on crime, or drugs, allowed them
to take the moral high ground, identify an enemy and mobilise resources. The
consequences are often irrational, putting many people in prison who do not deserve
to be there, and wastes resources and human lives on fighting imaginary enemies
while a more rational approach to the (real) social problems is made difficult because
of the labels used such as ‘war on crime’ (note the concept of ‘moral panics’ that
will be looked at later). The media have found in crime and associated social harms
sources of fascination, titillation and money making.
Politicians play on crime as a serious social problem as well as media and social anxiety
that our modern societies are ‘out of control’ in certain key respects.
The existence of so much crime in Western societies shows the underside of

modernity’s ‘progress’. The presence of so much desperation and social unrest
complicates the notion that modernity was to create ‘good’ or ‘grand’ societies of
peaceful co-existence and economic plenty in which the conditions for harmonious
social co-existence would be achieved. And the concept of state crime serves to
turn attention on the activities of the power centres of such societies. In addition,
globalisation offers a host of opportunities for new forms of criminal activity: trafficking
of drugs, women, migrants and forms of neo-slavery, not to forget financial transactions
that are increasingly complex and trans-national. Globalisation means that we cannot
ignore issues such as environmental degradation or genocide and this has led to the
development of eco-criminology and the blurring of the boundaries between crime –
as an act internal to the nation state – and war – as the prerogative of the sovereign – as
the rise of war crimes trials and international criminal justice points to.
Activity 1.2
Over five days collect a variety of newspapers.
Perhaps you can easily distinguish newspapers in terms of popular or serious (in the
UK this distinction used to be made between tabloids and broadsheets (the second
being the more ‘serious’).
Go through each and count up the number of stories that have to do with ‘crime’.
Then look at them with the following questions in mind:
a. What are the headlines?
b. What style of language is used? Can you see any contrasts between informal or
colloquial and more formal and sophisticated?
c. What is the length of each article; is there a contrast between newspapers?
d. Are there any basic terms which are used and reused?
e. What way of describing people is apparent?
f. Do any of the ‘crime stories’ involve any notions of economic interdependency,

migration, environmental interdependency, cultural barriers/diffusion, travel
and/or, globalisation?
Take a story: how would you have presented it differently?
Feedback
I have just picked up a copy of a UK daily newspaper I have kept, the Guardian for
early August 2015; there is a two-page story analysing how immigrants are being
presented in many of the newspapers as potential criminals. Another looks at how
other newspapers seem to portray homelessness, that is sleeping in the streets, as a
crime. These are both examples of reflexive media practice where the newspaper is
commenting on other newspaper stories.
1.3 The syllabus

The governing aim of the course is to introduce some of the theoretical issues involved
with the attempts to conceptualise ‘crime’, reflecting on the basic subject matter
(whether it is crime as defined by nation state or some other concept, such as ‘harm’),
continuing controversies, the methodological and ideological issues involved in
attempting to explain ‘crime’ and justify and legitimise the state’s response, such
as policing, the legitimacy of punishment and imprisonment. Because of this wide
coverage, you will be encouraged to obtain a working knowledge of the institutions and
policies at work in the area but it is not expected that your knowledge will be equally
deep across the syllabus. You will soon realise that there are many interconnections and
a continuity of basic themes. You may wish to specialise in some issues more than others
but keep in mind that there are often general questions, which are designed to see if you
have developed a critical appreciation of the subject as a whole and are able to see how
insights from one part of the course relate to other parts.
1.4 Core materials
1.4.1 Texts
Core text
You are expected to purchase:
¢ Hopkins Burke, R. An introduction to criminological theory. (Routledge: London,
2018) fifth edition [ISBN 9781138700215] (hereafter Hopkins Burke).
This provides a readable and reasonably comprehensive introduction to

criminological theorising.
Further reading
¢ Walklate, S. Understanding criminology: current theoretical debates. (Buckingham:
Open University Press, 2007) third edition [ISBN 9780335221233].
¢ Morrison, Wayne Theoretical criminology: from modernity to post-modernism.

(London: Cavendish, 1995) [ISBN 9781859412206] (hereafter Morrison, 1995).
This text considers criminology in the changing context of modernity. It is

detailed in its reading and poses a host of questions for contemporary times.
Note this was written primarily with Master’s level students in mind, but it will
be assumed that you will read and digest this text in the course of your study.
1.4.2 VLE and web

There is an array of related materials on the web which are easily accessed by routine
searches. These vary in quality but are a quick source for information and definitions
of concepts and terms. In particular, there are numerous entries on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a freely edited source and the quality of the content varies. While it is not
recommended by many academics, it is, however, usually written in an approachable
style and individual entries have been the subject of some editing.
It is our intention to upload materials from time to time: these may include
PowerPoint presentations and podcasts.
1.4.3 Journals, government and NGO material

There are a number of academic journals that publish articles in the field, such as the
British Journal of Criminology; Theoretical Criminology Journal of Law and Society; Law and
Society Review; International Journal of Sociology of Law; New Society.
In the UK the Office of National Statistics produces official statistics and commentaries
on the official ‘state of crime’.
There are a range of NGOs that work in related areas, for example:
u Anti-Slavery International, found at www.antislavery.org
u Amnesty International, found at www.amnesty.org.uk
u Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, found at www.crimeandjustice.org.uk

1.5 Using the materials and preparing for the assessment

The key principle organising this course is alignment: we try to make the assessment
map on to the learning outcomes and reflect the activities and materials provided. To
succeed, you should note the learning outcomes in each chapter, read the chapter of
the study and then the chapters from the set texts and undertake the activities.
Formal assessment is by a three-hour unseen examination. You are expected to do four

questions out of eight. These are essay-style questions and will map on to the learning
outcomes as specified in the different chapters. Examples of actual examination
questions are found in each chapter and you can find examples of past examination
papers on the VLE.
1.5.1 The examination

If you look at several of the past Examiners’ reports, you will see the idea of the
candidate’s voice stressed. As emphasised in Chapter 2, we are looking for you to
develop your criminological imagination and that means by the time of assessment
you make arguments that cut through misleading information and opinion and are
supported by criminological knowledge and appropriately referenced. This is crucial!
To quote from the Introduction to the 2011 reports:
This examination is by essay questions only: criminology is an option in the LLB and BSc
programmes and draws upon material that has either a sociological, psychological or legal
basis.
Candidates are not expected to have achieved an in-depth immersion in particular

theoretical perspectives, but are expected to cover the material provided in the study
pack, have followed the recent developments and any new material introduced on the VLE
along with the recent developments, and the general themes of the subject guide.
To succeed in the examinations the candidates should:
• Focus their answers on the actual words of the questions asked;
• Adopt a stance towards the questions, which are often a quote followed by ‘discuss’;
• Structure their answer so that the introduction shows the examiner that they have
read the actual question and that the material that follows is organised to address
that;
• Articulate a response to the question using appropriate material and set out an
argument.
Candidates can express themselves in the subject and reflect issues debated in their own
jurisdiction. The main problem displayed in the answers is an overreliance upon common
sense and almost journalistic perspectives rather than the more considered approach that
criminological discourse hopes to achieve.
This is also reflected in later Examiners’ reports, for example, in 2012:
In many areas of law subjects candidates are used to answering examination questions
by recalling the names of cases by reference to which legal rules and principles are
introduced into law and into their answers. Criminology is not a case law subject; instead
of cases, there are standard key figures whose work is referred to. Names such as Emile
Durkheim, Karl Marx, Cesare Beccaria, Cesare Lombroso, David Matza, Howard Becker, Stan
Cohen, Jock Young, Travis Hirschi, John Braithwaite, or schools (or general approaches
with shared assumptions), such as classicism, Chicago school, left realism, critical
criminology and so forth provide focal points for the presentation of theories, hypotheses,
and perspectives on crime, social control, social reaction and punishment. In common
with case law subjects, however, good marks are obtained through the articulate and
persuasive use of language; the ability to communicate to the examiner essential points in
the voice of the student.
There were a range of good answers to this paper and features of these will be examined
in the sections on questions as follows. I hope that you can see in the extracts how
important the way the answers are expressed is and what I mean by communicating in
the voice of the student.
What of poor material? The main weakness in the scripts was a tendency (of some)
to use common sense categories or local media reports as if they were self-evident
or in no need of reinforcement or further explanation. Claims made from appeals to
common sense assumptions and media reports are, undoubtedly, part of the everyday
processes criminology relates to since many of the images and assumptions that people
and policymakers are concerned with come from the media and politicians respond to
popular sentiment. However this must be reflected upon and not uncritically accepted.’
2 Crime, globalisation and the/your criminological
imagination
Contents
2.1 Developing a criminological imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Placing criminology in context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3 Criminology and the advent of modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.4 Other relevant characteristics of modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.5 The dilemma of criminological knowledge and personal opinion . . . . 17
2.6 Some fundamental concepts in criminology: crime and criminality . . . 20

Core text
¢ Hopkins Burke, Chapter 1 ‘Introduction: crime and modernity’.
Essential reading
¢ Morrison, Wayne ‘What is crime? Contrasting definitions and perspectives’
(from Criminology third edition, Oxford University Press, 2013), available on the
VLE (specifically used in Activity 2.7).
Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter and the relevant readings, you should be able to:
u question your own assumptions about crime and the world
u appreciate some of the contexts in which criminology has been produced
u debate central issues around the definition of ‘crime’
u understand the difficulty in creating a ‘science of crime’
u recognise the need to think globally.
Criminology 2 Crime, globalisation and the/your criminological imagination page 13
2.1 Developing a criminological imagination

We are all located in situations: I am writing from London with my life experiences.
Where are you? What are your life experiences? When you or I read a criminology
text we bring different assumptions. I am, for example, conscious of the years of my
academic career immersed in the subject and of the amount of time and energy
writers have spent over the years discussing the ‘nature’ of the subject and attempting
to lay down basic concepts and methods of study. Criminology has in the main been
defined as ‘the scientific study of crime’ (Hall Williams, 1982, p.1) but this definition is
open to a whole array of qualifications; deeper questions and explanations as to the
nature of crime and what being scientific means in this area confront one.
For Hall Williams, events such as the Holocaust were to be studied in history, or
politics but not criminology. Thus it disappeared, making it in Baudrillard’s terms ‘the
perfect crime’ (as if it had never occurred). Why did he have such a narrow view of
criminology? In part because of the impact of ‘positivism’ and its link to mainstream
or administrative criminology, so criminology was the study of those things which in
everyday life the state deemed crimes. Today many criminologists refuse such narrow
boundaries!
What are the core concepts and how do they limit or extend a criminological
imagination? Should criminology study ‘crime’ or ‘deviance’ or ‘social harm’ or
‘breaches of human rights’? Or should it study not harm but ‘social solidarity (basically
how social orders hang together)? How should writers conceive of themselves?
Should they see themselves as a detached and impartial scientist or an engaged
critical social commentator? In the words of David Matza (2010), should one take a
‘correctional’ perspective (in which one assumes that the reason for studying to be to
ultimately rid ourselves of the object or phenomena) or an ‘appreciative’ perspective
(in which one wants to get close to the object in order to understand it on its own
terms). And what of the role of the state?
As an academic enterprise, criminology has been called a ‘basket’ into which is placed
writings and data from a multitude of disciplines and perspectives, framed with
different assumptions in mind, offering different images. Moreover, criminology is a
subject with a mixed reputation and a strangely ambivalent self image. Some writers
may be defined as ‘law and order’ proponents who argue for a strict defence of the
rules of law and identify any rise in recorded crime as the result of societies ‘going
soft’ on responding to deviance or failing to discipline their children and lacking moral
fibre. Others blame crime on the failure of modern societies to achieve social justice
and see crime as a consequence in failings in social solidarity. Some stay at the level
of individual interactions – interpersonal violence, for example – while others use
criminology as an entry into wider social criticism, the latter clearly adopting ‘morally
charged’ positions rather than attempting ‘value-free’ social science.
Even within any one grouping individuals differ. Some writers espouse ‘value-free’
science, for example, and see themselves as doing detached social science, while
others may see themselves as applied social engineers aiming to fix the ‘social
problem’ of crime. While they may then seek a criminology of numbers and equations,
others seem to want to provide accounts of offenders that make them out to be
exciting, humane, desperate and totally alive.
Many practitioners of what we might call ‘traditional or mainstream’ criminology

appear to see their role as providing accurate information on crime and criminals
for the administrative officials of the state. Other, more critical scholars, appear to
side with those whom the state is pursuing while possibly attacking the state for
overreaction; some even appear to want to escape the power of the modern state to
control events and replace concepts such as abuse of human rights, or causing social
harm, instead of crime as defined by the state. The enterprise of the first group, laden
with statistics and etiological studies of actual and potential ‘offenders’, assumes the
dry mantle of a social science modelled on the precepts of natural science and appears
boring and submissive from the perspective of the second. The second, revelling,
perhaps, in the grand theories of Marxism, or the micro revelations of symbolic
interactionism, or bringing out the diverse cultural meanings of action or even basing
themselves upon existentialism, appears at times politically suspect or scientifically
over-romantic to the first.
2.2 Placing criminology in context

Criminology is not static. Although some texts are recommended and readings are
supplied on the VLE, there is no possibility of finding a single set text which captures
the essence of criminology. To really appreciate it, you need an historical sensibility
and an ability to understand multiple perspectives. History is essential: the Spanish
philosopher José Ortega y Gasset once said ‘man has no nature, he has only a history’;
so it is with criminology. When one reads criminological texts one is engaged in the
self-conscious study of a history. A history that catalogues the various ways in which
members of modern societies, primarily those of the Western ‘developed’ world, have
sought to understand the nature of these processes of modern society with reference
to the problematics of social control, state power, individual socialisation, crime and
deviance.
But this is also a history of absences. What of slavery, what of war, what of imperialism,
what of colonialism…
Most criminology texts are silent on these big, big historical realities: but to appreciate
it and whether you can learn to ask questions that really matter about the world,
we need to at least consider their absence when thinking about the subject’s formal
history, its socio-political context, and its cultural context.
2.2.1 The formal history of the discipline

In the case of criminology, many criminological works provide a history section in
which a formative distinction is presented between the classical approach and the
positivist. These works present the two approaches as containing a separate set of
assumptions as to human nature and the nature of society, with corresponding sets of
policy recommendations.
The classicists (whose heyday was the 18th century and who are represented by names
such as the Italian Cesare Baccaria and the Englishman Jeremy Bentham) are labelled
as accepting the notions of the free will of the individual, of rational choice and, most
importantly, of the social contract ideal or metaphor for the structuring of the social
bond. †
Classical determinism: the
The positivists, arising in the late 19th century and represented by figures such as the theory that every event,
Italians Cesare Lombroso and Enrico Ferri, are seen as accepting human behaviour including every human action,
as being determined by causal conditions;† they interpreted the social bond as is governed by natural laws.
something to be understood ‘naturally’, as if there were natural processes that created Technically, determinism is the
social orders and forms of government. For the positivists, the government of society belief that a determinate set of
becomes akin to a technical enterprise, while for the classicists it is a moral–political conditions can only produce
activity. The classicist sees breaches of the criminal law largely as offences against one possible outcome given
fixed laws of nature.
the social contract and the rights of other members of the pact. But is a government
Many believe this rules out
really to be understood as based on a social contract? When one says this is a moral
human freedom.
approach perhaps it is better to say it is a normative approach, meaning that one is
However, there are at least
putting a particular interpretation upon the social order in which it is possible to say
three different positions:
that some things are right and some things are wrong as they conform or move away
i. Human beings have free will
from the main points of that interpretation.
because determinism is false
The positivist claims to have no direct normative interpretation but simply says how (‘libertarianism’).
things are value free! So, for example, some may say that offending against the laws of ii. Human beings do not
the society is part of social processes and may be functional in that it either created an have free will because
opportunity for a ceremonial reaffirmation of the social bond or displayed itself as a determinism is true (‘hard
‘symptom’ of social pathology. determinism’).
iii. Even though determinism is
In many criminological texts the student is presented with a progressive picture of true, human beings do have
criminological history as if criminology were gaining a closer and closer approximation free will (‘soft determinism’).
to the ‘truth’ of crime and criminality over time. As Vold, for example, put it in his
second edition:
Classical criminology represents the development and application to thinking about

crime, the ideas and intellectual frame of reference that in Europe preceded the
application of scientific methods and experimental procedure to human behaviour.
The positive school represents the first formulations and applications to the field of
criminology of the point of view, methodology, and logic of the natural sciences to the
study of human behaviour. (1979, p.18)
Thus the victory of positivism was presented as a ‘rational advance’ over the
abstractions and politics of classicism. However, the image of criminology gradually
but solidly progressing as a discipline becoming more sure of its knowledge and with
an enhanced ability to make policy recommendations, become problematic in the
1960s and 1970s. In this period, criminology was first criticised by writers such as the
American David Matza for an uncritical belief in ‘determinism’, and then splintered
into a whole series of competing ‘paradigms’ and ‘perspectives’; nevertheless,
positivism remained (and remains) a dominant theme.
The problem with the progressive picture of criminological history is that it seemed
to make criminology self-developmental – as if there was a steady objective world out
there, a set range of things to be investigated, and criminology was slowly refining its
tactics and methodologies in understanding it and coming to understand what to do
to eliminate crime. In other words, that there was an autonomous development of
the knowledges of crime and deviance, a growth which was progressive and that the
changes in fashion or degree of concentration were as a result of the correcting of false
perspectives and slowly ‘getting the correct picture’. This downplays the essentially
pragmatic link between knowledge production and socio-historical location.
2.2.2 The social-political context for the development of criminology as

an intellectual discipline
This traditionally was relatively underdeveloped as most criminological texts
underplayed the impact of politics and philosophical context for the structuring of
social theory (recent texts try to reverse this omission, for example, those of Morrison,
Lilly, Tierney, Hopkins Burke or Garland). Criminology was generally seen either as the
work of individuals, for example, Lombroso, or of groups, such as the Chicago school,
as if the development of social theory were totally responsive to the requirements of
autonomous individuals or like-minded groups facing immediate problems insulated
from broader socio-political evolution. However, one should not ignore the political–
social context in which writers work: it is an inescapable factor!
In broad outline it is possible to see that classicism was a doctrine necessarily linked
to the development of ‘rule of law states’ over feudal society, of the rights of the
bourgeoisie over aristocratic privileges, and of the creation of a more free social space
for the abstract ‘market’ to function as opposed to the settled hierarchies and status
interactions of late feudal society. Positivism, likewise, can be seen as responsive to a
different set of demands linked to the spread of political influence into lower social
classes in society. The restoring of neo-classical or ‘new right’ themes in the mid-1970s,
1980s and 1990s can also be seen, in some countries at least, as responsive to the cost
of the welfare state and the apparent paradox that crime rates were increasing at the
same time as the West appeared to be more prosperous than any time in history. Yet,
we also realise that this prosperity masked a growing gap between the richest sections
of Western societies and the poorest.
The contemporary movement beyond the nation state can be linked to post-colonial
realities and globalisation. Many feel the need to rethink crime and criminal justice but
the grip of the established systems of thought and social control – what, following Jock
Young (2011), we may call the criminological imagination – remains strong.
The institutions and organisational motifs that make up the systems of crime and
deviance control in the modern West originated in the grand transformations that
occurred from the 18th century. Thus these systems are basically the product of
‘modernity’, a term which is difficult to define concisely but which designates what is
essentially new and particular about Western societies since the Enlightenment. In the
field of criminology, these changes are both the context of criminal justice and have
also shaped the institutional form of criminal justice. We can hint at several that have
shaped criminal justice:
u first, the development of the modern nation state with its centralised state
apparatus for the formal control of crime, gathering of statistics and the provision
of ‘care’ and ‘welfare’ for its population;
u second, the typologising and differentiation of the deviant and dependent into
separate types, each with particular sets of ‘scientific’ knowledge, expertise, and
group of ‘experts’;
u third, the development of organisational outcomes that segregate the deviants,

criminals, sick and dependents into prisons, juvenile reformatories, asylums,
mental hospitals, and other closed purpose-built institutions for treatment,
punishment, and custody;
u fourth, reactions against welfare and labelling that return responsibility to

the individual and reinforce notions of blame. At the same time, others stress
restorative justice.
2.3 Criminology and the advent of modernity

The idea of modernity reflects the understanding that there is something special
and different about modern societies which demarcates them from the types and
methods of social cohesion and social control which have gone before them. Consider
this description of modernity:
There is merit in the ‘modernity’ of a society, apart from any other virtues it may have.
Being modern is being ‘advanced’ and being advanced means being rich, free of the
encumbrances of familial authority, religious authority, and deferentiality. It means being
rational and being ‘rationalised’... If such rationalisations were achieved, all traditions
except the traditions of secularity, scientism, and hedonism would be overpowered.
(Shils, 1981, pp.288–90.)
The concept of ‘modernity’ is troublesome (see Morrison, 1995, and Hopkins Burke).
[You may wish to go to the Wikipedia entry on modernity for some guidance.] Grand
theorists who have been concerned with its themes largely locate modernity in
terms of a spectrum of categorisations differentiating between oppressive and ‘false’
traditions (including religion) and empty, rootless freedom. Within criminological
texts, Durkheim is sometimes used in this way (see Vold Bernard, 1986, Chapter 9
‘Durkheim, anomie, and modernisation’). Interestingly, many social theorists refer to
a social crisis of modernism (using terms such as ontological insecurity) of which two
broad features can be mentioned. First, we can see many current social problems in
terms of a crises of power whereby modern societies find themselves immersed in a
technological ability and knowledge spiral which gives advances in certain powers, but
which outstrip mankind’s ability to assimilate its consequences and link its meanings
(need one mention the present nuclear capability? Or the vast increase in the world’s
population and the possibility of ecological destruction?). Second, the alienating and
nihilistic effects of modern culture on a humanity which has thrust itself free from a
context of traditional positioning and community structures which gave existence
meaning and which allowed people to live in ways that they assumed were natural
and ‘real’. To take a simple example, most people used to live in rural locations, now
cities dominate. Or take Bangladesh where the majority are still living in villages and
many are illiterate. For some of them, modernity means an attack on what they hold to
be natural and, for a great many, an attack on their interpretations of Islam.
The modern Western world, on the other hand, although an urban world where
mankind lives cheek-by-jowl with a multitude of ‘others’, is a place of distance which
demands newer and more complicated forms of social control than previously. For
the modern self-image and self-consciousness, the question of personal identity is
not defined by one’s position in the order of things, some embedment in localised
tradition and custom which ultimately seems some integration of self and cosmos, but
by an insulated individualism mediated by concepts such as authenticity, choice, and
the ‘rationality’ of ends–means relations.
Thus we ‘moderns’ live at a distance from those modes of comprehension and

organisation taken for granted by ‘pre-moderns’. As contrasted to the approaches
which stress the primacy of the group or community, the presuppositions of the ideal
type of our social contract political theory, for instance, is of the normalcy of isolated
individualism, of free and calculating atomistic units.
2.4 Other relevant characteristics of modernity

These include factors such as the development of industrial society, the capitalist mode
of economic organisation, urbanism and the advent of liberal democracy and utopian
socialism, but there are other features which are both basic and hard to appreciate
such as the handling of time and the notion of change. Modern society is both the
product of dramatic transformations, of immense change and itself in a continual state
of change. There appear to be no settled cannons or structures that remain stable and
fixed for a long period. Instead some of the basic canons – the notion of democracy is
a good example – are cast in such an abstract frame that the substantive content, for
example, whether women have the right to vote or whether it is fair to say an election is
democratic when a large proportion of the populace do not bother to vote (as in most
American presidential elections), can be subject to variation.
Alongside the vast increase in population growth, an inescapable feature is the urban
context of social life – the majority of the world’s population live in cities of 20,000
people or more. As a point of comparison, prior to the 19th century, even in societies
considered urbanised, probably less than 10 per cent of the population lived in towns
or cities. London’s population in the 14th century is estimated at around 30,000, and
when at the turn of the 19th century it reached 900,000 it was not only the largest city
in the world but dominated England.
The routines of this urban life are set within structures responsive to the changing
demands of economic performance. Many of the competing interpretations on social
life can be traced to defining modern society’s economic basis as either industrialisation
or capitalisation. The attitude that a theorist takes to issues such as class and the nature
of social interaction differ depending on whether they adopt a more benign functional
theory of industrial society, or engages with the (not only Marxist!) notion of capitalist
society with its relations of exploitation and domination.
2.5 The dilemma of criminological knowledge and personal

opinion
Criminology can sometimes seem like a matter of opinion, and any intelligent
person can have an opinion on the subject. Indeed, part of the pleasure of studying
criminology is to articulate your own ideas and subject them to testing.
However, there is a dilemma, because criminology is also part of the ‘knowledge

project’ of modernity. It has tried to replace opinion (even ‘educated opinion’) by
reliable facts and scientific knowledge. Its aim – as we see with Beccaria (through
classicism), Durkheim (through sociological positivism) and Lombroso (through
biological positivism) as well as openly utopian writers such as Comte and Saint-Simon
– has been to use criminological knowledge to help construct better societies.
In 19th century France, Comte attempted to develop a positive sociology which would
provide a truly scientific basis for the reorganisation of society. He made positivism
a utopian understanding and shared the optimism of such philosophers as the
Englishman Francis Bacon about the benefits of a positive approach to science for
humanity but was not blind to the extent to which this approach clashed with the
traditional hegemony of the ruling class. The very first words he had published make
this clear:
Rulers would gladly have it taken for granted that they alone can see alright in politics, and
consequently are entitled to a monopoly of opinions in such matters. They have doubtless
their own reasons for speaking in this way, while subjects have theirs for refusing assent to
a principle which, under every point of view, is wholly absurd.
(Quoted in Fletcher (ed.), 1974.)
Secure social knowledge was to provide a new basis for developing social structures
and building social relations. The opinions of the rulers would have to give way in a
new form of knowledge–power combination, a position where the organisation of
society would be the responsibility of scientists and the rationality of the knowledge
they produced. Comte proposed a law of three stages through which all human
thinking had to pass: first, the theological or fictive, then the metaphysical or abstract
and finally the scientific or positive. These stages corresponded to the development
of our knowledge of the universe and ourselves, and in the positive stage there is a
clear-cut distinction between science and morals and the operation of all features in
the universe could be gauged by the operation of the positive methodology whereby
science could in time come to control ‘moral’ dilemmas.
Clearly in Comte’s view, Europe was to be the crux of progress and of civilisation, and
the modes of life of Europe were the destiny of the world. The power of the West
has indeed spread throughout the world. But he is confident that the modes of life
which have developed in the West are intrinsically superior to those of other cultures.
Today? Of course the spread of the West has unleashed forces which have corroded
or destroyed many of the features and coherence of the other cultures it has come
in contact with. The metaphysics of progressive evolution has tended to glorify the
dominance of the West as the necessary result of a system of determinate social
evolution; this evolution is judged in terms primarily of technological growth and the
ability to control and change the material environment, and has led to the denial of
the resources of other cultures in favour of the Western solution. Thus Eurocentrism
dominates criminological history – it is almost impossible to find any criminology
from the developing world which can challenge the theories and presuppositions
of that of the West. If you come across examples of such writings, use them to your
advantage to challenge the presuppositions of mainstream criminology.
One strand of thought which opposes the Eurocentric domination is the

anthropological perspective which allows us to appreciate the diversity of modes
of human existence on the globe. Much early anthropology was also ethnocentric –
chronicling the weakness and destruction of ‘primitive’ races in comparison to the
West and, if early anthropological study had one theme in the construction project
of modernity, it can be seen as attempting to locate the ‘normal’ mode of human
existence.
The result, conversely, was to demonstrate diversity and difference rather than
uniformity. At the same time, however, the anthropological dimension to modern
thought also illustrates the essential interconnections of the modern world and
the central unity of the human race. It denies the purported ‘irrationality’ of many
primitive practices and demonstrates the richness of non-state institutions, for
example, and there are now no grounds for supposing that those who live in
‘primitive’ societies are genetically inferior to those of the advanced ‘civilisations’.
However, anthropology also demonstrates the complex processes of socialisation
and signification that go to make up the successful ‘normal’ members of any society.
Moreover, the question of ‘social order’ and conformity, of the normal and deviant, is
not placed on some purely ‘natural’ footing by anthropology. Apart from a basic few
measures, such as some protection of life in the ‘in-group’ (the protection of strangers
is certainly not a universal) or of the domain of groups, the ordering of societies differ.
A contemporary example of overturning of the previous narrative of rational

development lies in restorative justice. Instead of seeing crime as a matter for the
state’s criminal justice professionals, of law and punishment, attention is placed on
who has been hurt, what are the relationship and issues of locality and what kind of
measure and process could be undertaken that would involve the stakeholders so that
causes could be addressed and matter remedied. Zehr (1990) contrasted a ‘retributive
justice’ framework where the criminal justice agencies take ownership of the events
(the crime) and a restorative justice framework, where crime is viewed as a violation
of people and relationships. Zehr credits ‘two peoples’ as inspiring this change: ‘the
First Nations people of Canada and the U.S., and the Maori of New Zealand’, stating
that restorative justice represents a ‘validation of values and practices that were
characteristic of many indigenous groups’, but whose traditions had been ‘discounted
and repressed by western colonial powers’. He gives the example of New Zealand/
Aotearoa, where before the arrival of the Europeans, the Maori had a well-developed
system called Utu that protected individuals, social stability and the integrity of the
group. It should be noted however, that indigenous group justice often involved
physical punishments that are at odds with so-called modern ideas of human dignity –
conversely, many indigenous people find imprisonment a torment.
Thus while all societies have ideas concerning what normal and deviant behaviour
is and mechanisms for controlling social interaction, each may have particular
‘functions’ or roles in that particular context. Once we appreciate this diversity,
criminology becomes more complicated. It cannot simply be the accumulation of
knowledge to control troublesome people in society, although some criminological
knowledge may aid this. Nor can it be solely the provision of knowledge about social
processes to enable the members of the society to better understand social processes,
although this is a laudable aim. It can also be a form of inquiry about the consequences
of what is, and the possibility of what is not but could be, for human existence.
2.5.1 Reflection: labelling, responses and the boundaries of criminology:

is understanding terrorism a criminological issue, political or a
question of ‘war’?
I began this chapter by relating a distinction that used to be common, namely
between politics and criminology. By contrast, today there seem few boundaries
excluding material from a criminological analysis.
In the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center in the New York in 2001,
the authorities were faced with a choice: did they call the attacks ‘crimes’ or ‘an act
of war’? Some called it both but it ushered in what was termed a ‘war on terror’. Post
the invasion of Iraq, and after early ‘victory’, drawn out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
partial interventions in Libya and Syria, the result seems to be the creation of failed
states and the opening of spaces that defy governance providing havens for terrorists
and actions by Western powers that smell of hypocrisy.
Numerous acts have occurred against Western targets and tens of thousands of lives
have been lost in actions by the ‘so-called’ Islamic State (or Isis, Isil or Daesh, each
name having different political and cultural symbolisms) in the Middle East, while
other ‘radical Islamic’ group have engaged in terrorist attacks in Africa, Bangladesh and
even sacred sites in Saudi Arabia (for instance in Medina in July 2016).
Currently, the terrorist is the new figure of ‘evil’, the outlaw whose apparent
irrationality and rejection of modernity and civilisation makes them seem beyond
normal understanding.
Analysing the factors that contribute to this surge in ‘terrorism’ is now

multi-disciplinary.
Themes common to criminology include utilising Durkheim’s distinction between

mechanical and organic solidarity where the terrorists’ desires for simplicity and
purity all have some role. Certainly publicly, poverty (at least relative), distrust
(of institutions, of media), frustration (see anomie and status frustration), being
victimised (both by their own governments and by the West in its war on terror), being
marginalised, paranoia, social leaning and differential association theory as developed
by Edwin Sutherland (1939), who proposed that through interaction with others,
individuals can learn the particular criminal behaviour, all contribute.
If modernity was meant to be about the use of reason, education, scientific progress,
rise of humanism, then when we see the extreme cruelty practised currently by Isis
– beheading of hostages, random killings of civilians, destruction of cultural heritage,
enslaving of woman, excessive bravado – it seems difficult for many to treat this
as anything to do with the expression of valid ideas/beliefs. Some consider them
psychopaths, scum of the earth, enthused with irrational hatred and so forth. But such
labelling is in itself a subject of analysis.
In a Daily Telegraph posting by Richard Spencer, from Dohuk in northern Iraq on 4

October 2014, Isil’s reign of terror is rooted in the political culture of Iraq and Syria and,
while Isil’s extreme cruelty and filmic savagery has shocked many, he claims ‘it is not
very different from what leaders of Iraq and Syria – and to some extent their colonial
predecessors – have been doing to local people for decades’. He reminds us of colonial
imagery of atrocities, but sees the current surge in videoed killings in terms of ‘a need
to show a continuous momentum. Success, however horrific, breeds success.’ Of
course, many have made the Hobbesian point that the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq
led to a situation without a central power to impose order (as Hobbes maintained was
required) but Spencer goes on to highlight the extreme violence that the Iraqi state
has used, thus: ‘The lawlessness … is not just a product of the absence of a state, but
written into the state.’ In both Iraq and Syria ‘ordinary people routinely tell stories
of similarly pointless horrors, that served some political purpose while having little
apparent rationality, from long before the civil war’.
For others, Isis is a throwback to pre-modern religious positions and we fail to

understand if we only interpret them in terms of modern factors.
See the following article which has as its central claim that ‘Islamic State is no mere
collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs,
among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means
for its strategy – and for how to stop it.’
Read more at:
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/
See also Hopkins Burke, Chapter 21 ‘Section terrorism and state violence and terrorism
and postmodernism revisited’.
2.6 Some fundamental concepts in criminology: crime and

criminality
The concept of crime may seem common sense, but it is not. The boundaries
between war, crime and terrorism, for example, are fluid and open to the plays of
power. Criminology, broadly defined, is the ‘logos of crime’. That is to say it is ‘rational
dialogue concerning crime’.
As said before, in many texts criminology was simply assumed to be the ‘scientific
study of crime’ (Hall Williams, 1982, p.1), but why should the only kinds of discourse
considered ‘proper criminology’ be those called ‘scientific’? What are the appropriate
roles of scientific perspectives and ‘lay’ or common-sense claims? What are the limits
of each? Further, is the concept of crime a ‘scientific’ or a ‘common-sense’ category?
In the ‘common-sense’ or natural perspective, the content of criminological study is

clear: we study crime and criminals. The law defines what is illegal, people charged
with, convicted and sentenced for criminal offences are criminals, and for the most
part, there is something naturally anti-social about the kinds of acts/omissions that are
defined as criminal. An important aspect of the certainty about that approach to the
study of crime lies in the creation and affirmation of a world which appears natural, in
which the institutions seem rational and the processes reasonable, outcomes secure
and predictable. Thus we save ourselves from ambiguity, ambivalence and vagueness.
But what are the processes involved when we use the word ‘crime’ in respect to some
†
Reading You will find it
event/activity/omission/aspect of human behaviour?†
useful to consider the issues
Does the answer differ depending upon the historical and social context in which it is/ raised here in Morrison,
was asked? Theoretical criminology, Chapter
1: ‘Narrating the mood of the
Is the very reason for criminology so tied up with human fears, emotions and attitudes
times: confusion, self-doubt,
to social life (including notions of progress and trust) that it is impossible to accept
and ambivalence’.
that the understanding of crime and the policies to be used with respect to it should
be in the hands of ‘scientific’ experts?
Ask yourself what your presuppositions in beginning the study of criminology are/
were? Do you believe that ‘crime is a social problem’? If so, does that give rise to the
question ‘What causes crime?’ And is the reason for asking that question to develop
measures to ‘cure’ society of crime?
Are you assuming that there is some natural thing or sets of characteristics which
constitute(s) the essential element to all crimes? Are you also assuming that there are
‘criminals’ who are different from ‘normal’ people?
Consider what the link is between assuming that ‘crime’ is a natural entity and our
attitude to those adjudged ‘criminals’?
There has been an historical connection between criminological theorising and a

‘correctional perspective’ which saw criminology as a practical discipline, a discipline
that was defined in ‘cause-and-cure’ terms. Thus the terms crime and the criminal
were taken as standing for real, observable entities and it quickly followed that the
policy implication was to remove, or at least incapacitate, the problem. Of course, the
connection between theory and practice is essential to the enterprise but consider
the following statements from leading writers:
Criminology, in its narrow sense, is concerned with the study of the phenomenon of crime
and of the factors or circumstances ... which may have an influence on or be associated
with criminal behaviour and the state of crime in general. But this does not and should
not exhaust the whole subject matter of criminology. There remains the vitally important
problem of combating crime ... To rob it of this practical function, is to divorce criminology
from reality and render it sterile.
(Radzinowicz, 1962, p.168)
The scholarly objective of criminology is the development of a body of knowledge

regarding this process of law, crime, and reaction to crime… The practical objective
of criminology, supplementing the scientific or theoretical objective, is to reduce the
amount of pain and suffering in the world.
(Sutherland and Cressey, 1978, pp.3, 24)
Research in criminology is conducted for the purpose of understanding criminal

behaviour. If we can understand the behaviour, we will have a better chance of predicting
when it will occur and then be able to take policy steps to control, eliminate, or prevent
the behaviour.
(Reid, 1985, p.66)
Let us state quite categorically that the major task of radical criminology is to seek a
solution to the problem of crime and that of a socialist policy is to substantially reduce the
crime rate.
(Young, 1986)
Are these statements similar? Perhaps not. They also, almost certainly, were only
concerned with crime as a nation state issue, although with only a subtle, yet large,
change in emphasis, we could change the focus to ‘law, crime, and reaction to crime …
as a global concern’.
And while crime is a ‘problem’ if one is trying to understand the nature of that
problem then, for me at least, one should escape from an attitude that David Matza
once called correctionalism. Matza (1969) defined correctional perspectives as
accepting that the aim of study was to achieve the practical result of elimination of
crime and the criminal, further that a commitment to the methodological principles
of positivistic social science was appropriate. Thus one never could emphathise with
the subject, never attempt to see the world from their point of view.
2.6.1 Crime or deviancy?

Sociological criminologists tended to substitute the concept of ‘deviancy’ for that
of ‘crime’. Why? This was an attempt to control the subject matter: the aim was for
sociologists to talk about a ‘fact’ that sociologists could understand. As the following
extract from Paul Rock illustrates:
A sociological conception of deviancy must dwell on its peculiarly social qualities. As a

significant social entity, the ‘deviant’ is the occupant of a special role which is recognised
and ordered in a process of interaction. If a person is not assigned to this role and not
treated as deviant, he cannot be regarded sociologically as a deviant. No matter how
much he may be assumed by some to be a disturbed, disruptive or atypical individual,
his social meaning is not that of deviancy but something else. Those who would explain
his behaviour do not account for social deviancy or a deviant role, but disturbance,
disruptiveness or atypicality as they conceive it. Deviancy is a social construct (social
constructs are the interpretations which men collaboratively give to the objects and
events around them. They are rather more than interpretations, however, because they
are also the social phenomena which men create through their activities and as a result
of these interpretations) fashioned by the members of the society in which it exists. They
endow it with importance and distinctiveness and they assign it to a special place in the
organisation of their collective lives. As Quinney remarks:
‘a thing exists only when it is given a name; any phenomenon is real to us only when
we can imagine it. Without imagination there would be nothing to experience. So it
is with crime. In our relationship with others we construct a social reality of crime.
This reality is both conceptual and phenomenal, a world of meanings and events
constructed in reference to crime.’
… Deviancy is a part of the social reality which organises people’s lives, and this social
reality must be the primary material of analysis. (Rock, 1973, pp.19–20).
Activities 2.1 and 2.2

2.1 Can you identify different deviant roles in your society?
a. What are their features?
b. Why are these roles defined as deviant?
c. Whose interests are served in their definition?
2.2 What does the sociological concept of ‘role’ mean? What function does Rock
attribute to deviant roles in society?
No feedback provided.
Activity 2.3: How is the definition of crime constructed?

Read Morrison, Wayne ‘What is crime? Contrasting definitions and perspectives’
in Hale, C. et al. Criminology. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) third edition
[ISBN 9780199691296] (available on the VLE).
Activity 2.4: Interrogating your criminological imagination

Read both these short stories:
u ‘Angelic butterfly’ in Levi, P. The sixth day and other tales. (London: Simon &
Schuster, 1990) [ISBN 9780671626174] (available on the VLE).
u ‘Apocalypse at Solentiname’ Cortázar , J. A change of light and other stories. (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980 [ISBN 9780394507217] (available on the VLE).
Then watch the short film ‘Unwatchable: is your mobile phone rape free’ at www.
youtube.com/watch?v=fIePzz_CEuQ. Also read the article ‘Unwatchable: connecting
the UK and rape in the Congo’ by Marc Hawker at www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/marc-
hawker/connecting-the-uk-and-rape-in-the-congo_b_994678.html
Re ‘Angelic butterfly’:
a. What is the story about and does it help to know that Primo Levi survived the
Holocaust to understand it?
b. What is the ‘crime’ in this short story?
c. What message, if any, do you think Primo Levi is trying to send to past and
possibly future perpetrators?
Re ‘Apocalypse at Solentiname’:
Cortázar is noted as a ‘magic realist’ writer: he wrote ‘Blow-up’ about a photo he
took of a situation where he thinks a crime has occurred; this was made into a film
of the same name. ‘Apocalypse at Solentiname’ has the narrator (Cortázar) going on
a trip to Latin America to escape comments about ‘Blow-up’.
d. What is the point of the story?
e. Why do you think he never told Claudine what was in the photographs?
f. Is this connected to ideas about witnessing (a very legal concept) and silence?
Re ‘Unwatchable’:
g. What is the meaning of the project?
h. Is it similar to Cortázar’s?
i. Why did the director feel the need to film in Oxfordshire?
j. Do you consider it successful or not? You may like to read some of the blog posts
on it in the media.
References
¢ Fletcher, R. (ed.) The crisis of industrial civilisation: the early essays of Auguste
Comte. (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1974) [ISBN 9780435823030].
¢ Hall Williams, E. Criminology and criminal justice. (London: Butterworth, 1982)

[ISBN 9780406593214].
¢ Matza, D. Becoming deviant. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010; first published 1969)

[ISBN 9781412814461].
¢ Radzinowicz, L. In search of criminology. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1962).
¢ Reid, S. T. Crime and criminology. (New York: Holt McDougall, 1985)

[ISBN 9780030707520].
¢ Rock, P. Deviant behaviour. (London: Hutchinson, 1973).
¢ Shills, E. Tradition. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)

[ISBN 9780226753263].
¢ Sutherland, E.H. and D.R. Cressey Criminology. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1978)

[ISBN 9780397473847].
¢ Vold, G.B. Theoretical criminology. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979)
[ISBN 9780195025309].
¢ Vold, G.B. and T.J. Bernard, Theoretical criminology. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986) 3rd revised edition [ISBN 9780195036169].
¢ Young, J. The criminological imagination. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011)

[ISBN 9780745641072].
¢ Zehr, H. Changing lenses – A new focus for crime and justice. (Scottdale, PA: Herald
Press, 1990) [ISBN 9780836135121].
Sample examination questions

It is premature to try to answer these examination questions at this stage, since you
would need material from the whole of this course just to illustrate the concerns
raised by the questions. However, as you proceed, you may find it is useful to think
about how you would answer these questions.
Question 1 Consider whether criminology is, or should be, a science.
Question 2 ‘Criminology cannot be a science because its subject-matter – crime – is
defined by shifting moral and political concerns.’ Discuss.
Question 3 ‘Why has it proved so difficult to agree on the core concepts of
criminology study?’
3 Competing traditions? Legacies of classical and
positive criminology or the concept of crime versus
that of the criminal
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.1 Modernity and the Enlightenment context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.2 Central figures of the two approaches examined . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.3 The positive revolution: the imagery of science replacing the moral
discourse of crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.4 Political arithmetic and statistical analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.5 The oral-ethnographic efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.6 The Italian/positivist school . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.7 The return of classicism: populist conservative criminology and

contemporary rational action theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.8 Are the perspectives contradictory or can they be combined? . . . . . . 42

Introduction
In the 18th century the modern concept of crime and of criminal justice took shape.
In the late 19th century the concept of the criminal as an identifiable type capable of
identification and empirical study developed. The former is identified with classical
criminology, the latter with the development of positivism. The contrast between
classical, positivist and, later, non-positivist approaches to the study of crime underlies
much of the discussion of crime and the policy implications of such study. For David
Garland (2017) Criminology as an academic subject has been deeply shaped by a
rather contingent convergence between a ‘governmental project’ (of which classical
criminology is an important strand) and a ‘Lombrosian project’ of a science of the
‘criminal’ and ‘criminality’. The nature of these distinctions is clearly linked to the
historical development of the discipline; this chapter outlines the early history of
these approaches and provides a foundation for later study.
Core text
¢ Hopkins Burke, Chapter 2 ‘Classical criminology’, Chapter 3 ‘Populist
conservative criminology’, Chapter 4 ‘Contemporary rational actor theories’ and
Chapter 5 ‘Biological positivism’.
Essential reading
¢ Morrison, 1995, Chapter 4 ‘The problem of classical criminology’, Chapter
5 ‘Reading the texts of classical criminology’ and Chapter 6 ‘Criminological
positivism I’ (available in Dawsons via the Online Library).
¢ Beccaria, C. On crimes and punishments (first published as Dei delitti e delle pene in
1764). (Seven Treasures Publications, 2009) [ISBN 9781438299006] Chapter 16 ‘Of
torture’ (available in Cambridge Core via the Online Library).
Further reading
The list of texts that reference the classical and positivist schools is huge.
¢ Ferri, E. Criminal sociology. (HardPress Publishing, 2010) [ISNB 9781407628363].
¢ Foucault, M. Discipline and punishment: the birth of the prison. (London: Penguin,
1977) [ISBN 9780140137224].
¢ Garland, D. Punishment and welfare: history of penal strategies. (Aldershot:

Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 1985 [ISBN 9780566008559].
¢ Jenkins, P. ‘Varieties of Enlightenment criminology’ 1984 British Journal of

Criminology 24 112.
¢ Jones, D.A. History of criminology: a philosophical perspective. (Westport:

Greenwood Press, 1986) [ISBN 9780313236471].
¢ Jones, S. Criminology. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) sixth edition [ISBN
9780198768968] Chapter 4 ‘The classical and positivist traditions’.
¢ Lanier, M., S. Henry and D.J.M. Anastasia Essential criminology. (Abingdon:

Routledge, 2015) 4th edition [ISBN 9780813348858] Chapter 3 ‘Classical,
neoclassical, and rational-choice theories’.
¢ Lilly, L., F.T. Cullen and R.A. Ball Criminological theory: context and consequences.
(London: Sage, 2019) seventh edition [ISBN 9781506387307] Chapter 2 ‘The search
for the “criminal man”’.
¢ Mannheim, H. (ed.) Pioneers in criminology. (London: Stevens and Sons, 1960).
¢ Radzinowicz, L. Ideology and crime: a study of crime in its social and historical
context. (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1966) [ISBN 9780435827427].
¢ Roshier, B. Controlling crime: the classical perspective in criminology. (Maidenhead:

Open University Press, 1989) [ISBN 9780335158737].
Criminology 3 Competing traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology page 27
¢ Snipes, J.B., T.J. Bernard and A.L Gerould Vold’s theoretical criminology. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2019) 8th edition [ISBN 9780190940515] Chapter 1
‘Theory and crime’, Chapter 2 ‘Theory and policy in context’ and Chapter 3
‘Classical criminology’.
¢ Taylor, I., P. Walton and J. Young The new criminology: for a social theory of
deviance. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013; first published 1973) 40th anniversary
edition [ISNB 9780415855877].
¢ Walklate, S. Understanding criminology: theoretical debates. (Maidenhead:

McGraw-Hill, 2007) 3rd edition [ISBN 9780335221233] Chapter 2 ‘Perspectives in
criminological theory’.
Learning outcomes
u identify the main features of the classical and positive traditions in criminology
u give an account of their formation and the major figures involved
u assess their continued influence
u be aware of some of the criticisms of positivism and classicism.
3.1 Modernity and the Enlightenment context

The Enlightenment underpins modernity. It denotes replacing the medieval synthesis
with its ideas of the natural order of humankind and Christian Europe with notions
of mankind’s need to assert control, to analyse afresh and construct new practical
frameworks such as national states, sovereignty, law and ideas of the human
subject. Instead of an understanding of totality in which the world is conceived of as
being created by an outside force – namely God – and mankind as creatures of that
creation whose purpose or ‘telos’ is to serve God’s will and find ultimate happiness
in life after this in heaven, the world is to be analysed on its own basis and mankind
is to be depicted as an operating entity within this new conception of the world.
Two contrasting frameworks for gaining knowledge became clear: that between
rationalism – which held that pure reasoning and building upon foundations that
were by definition true (such as narratives of the natural condition of humans being
that of individual solitary mankind and their use of reason to form social contracts)
gave epistemological security, and empiricism – which held that the only security of
foundations was knowledge of actual substances, such as physical substances (like
rocks) or their human equivalent, with humans viewed in the same way that the
objects of the physical sciences were.
Hall Williams (1982) called classical criminology: ‘a school of criminal justice

philosophy’. It is fair to say that philosophy, in particular the rationalist methodology
of constructing intellectual systems, constitutes the procedures of classicism, while
forms of reasoning, largely empiricist in nature, developed with an image of natural
science in mind as providing the template for real science, influence positivism as the
pursuit and study of the actual criminal and criminality as the actual propensity to
engage in crime.
The chapters in Morrison (1995) should be read closely, even if they are difficult at first
reading. Hopkins Burke may be approached first. For an introductory account of the
full range of perspectives read Walklate (2007).
What does the phrase ‘the modern human subject’ mean? It denotes trying to see
humans as devoid of the religious tradition of created objects; it is a secularity that
underpins a new and secular gaze. The 18th century in Europe worked many changes
in science, religion and the mechanical arts and effectively overturned the settled
notions of the natural order of social and natural life that the medieval period had
given primacy to. However, modern secular social theory did not emerge in one
dominant form. Certainly we can agree with Foucault’s notion of the birth of the
sciences of man that the Enlightenment is characterised by placing man and the
structures of the world as the new frames of reference. But the ways in which it does
this exhibits qualities of both pessimism as well as extreme optimism and is romantic
as well as ‘realist’ on its views of the human condition. It can be either empiricist
or rationalist, indulgent of a priori reasoning and the grappling with ‘essences’ or
determined to be based only of ‘observation’ of phenomenon and inductions therein.
It can be ‘methodologically individualist’ (i.e. assume man as an analytically individual
and complete object of study) or holist (i.e. deny that man can be studied as individual
phenomena but is necessarily social) or it can lay stress on man as voluntarist or
determinate objects, to mention only some of the possible contrasts it is possible to
draw.
When we think of the classical tradition we think philosophy. It is the use of reason
to undercut previous positions and expose them as myths. Take Thomas Hobbes. In
his classic work, Leviathan (1651), he argues for the need for strong government and
so is, to that extent, against the revolutionaries and reformers, but he helped found
Enlightenment political theory by stripping government of any non-rational defence.
In particular, he sets up social contract theory; thus political authority is grounded in
an agreement (often understood as ideal, rather than real) among individuals, each
of whom aims in this agreement to advance his rational self-interest by establishing
a common political authority overall. In this general contract model (taken up with
variations by Locke and Rousseau), political authority is grounded not in conquest,
natural or divinely instituted hierarchy, or in obscure myths and traditions, but rather
in the rational consent of the governed and officials of the state perform rational tasks.
As the basis, Hobbes takes a naturalistic, scientific approach to the question of how
political society ought to be organised (constantly asking the reader to agree on the
basis that that is how the reader reads mankind – in a pessimist rationalist fashion).
Hobbes paves the way for secularisation and rationalisation in political and social
philosophy.
The early Enlightenment rejected mythology and religious belief and thereby
introduced many ethical issues and positions that remain contemporary today.
Instead of religious doctrines concerning God and mankind’s position in the afterlife
(with our highest good and thus also moral duties conceived in immediately religious
terms), we speak in terms of human desires, human wants and needs and satisfying
them in this life. Thus contexts such as industrialisation, urbanisation and the
expansion of education, turn our attention to the contexts and factors influencing
human progress in this world, rather than union with God in the next. Also, the
violent religious wars that devastated Europe in the early modern period (which end
with the Treaty of Westphalia at roughly the same time Hobbes published Leviathan)
require a secular, this-worldly ethics, insofar as they indicate the failure of religious
doctrines concerning God and the afterlife to establish a stable foundation for social
and political interaction. If the ancient Greeks had dealt with many gods (and gods
that could not be trusted) the development of monotheistic religions (Christianity,
Islam and Judaism) had surpassed classical Greek and Roman ethical systems. Now
there could be no return to the answers on nature and cosmology offered by Plato
and Aristotle. The Platonic identification of the good with the real and the Aristotelian
teleological understanding of natural things are both difficult to square with the
Enlightenment conception of nature. The general philosophical problem that emerged
in the Enlightenment was how to understand the source and grounding of ethical
duties and how to conceive the highest good for human beings, within a secular,
broadly naturalistic context, and within the context of a transformed understanding of
the natural world.
Hobbes founded social order upon individuals, their reasoning and their desires. His
reasoning was nominalisitic and relativist: what is good, as the end of human action, is
‘whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire’ and evil is ‘the object of his
hate, and aversion’, ‘there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common
rule of good and evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves’ (2017,
Chapter 6). Hobbes’ conception of human beings as fundamentally motivated by their
perception of what is in their own best interest demands that duties of justice and
benevolence relate to such individualist material. Man is reduced to basic drives; this
allows only a set of moral duties to be constructed that is demystified, and almost
mechanical.
Writers such as Beccaria and Bentham owe a large debt to Hobbes. After Hobbes, a
crime is not an evil act against God but simply an act or omission which the sovereign
has not allowed. Crime and one’s reaction to it should be understood rationally and
without reference to God. It is often said that classicism is not concerned with the
causes of crime and you may wish to see whether you agree with this. Alternatively,
some argue that classicism clearly acknowledges a link between crime and social
conditions but that writers such as Beccaria were actually conservatives (see Morrison,
1995 and Jenkins, 1984) and mostly concerned with how criminals should be dealt with
in a way that promoted social stability. Moreover, classicism gives the state the role of
defining and mediating the social conceptions of crime and the reaction and control
of it. For classicism, the state is central, the influence of positivism, conversely, is to
lower the attention given to state power.
Positivism is a subset of the growing empiricist science of man. In its critique of

the social contract theory that Beccaria assumed as the basis of social order, it
re-orientated the focus of study away from questions depicting a hypothetical
origin of society and the ideal social order. It substituted an empirically orientated
inquiry combining a sociological interest in social-cultural development and an
anthropological interest in the structure of human nature. The positivist approach
holds that ultimately science can disclose an objective reality. As Michael Gottfredson
and Travis Hirschi state in a text simply entitled Positive criminology (1987):
certainly one feature of positive criminology has always been its belief in an objective
external reality capable of measurement. Public disclosure of the understood reality, the
procedures used for its measurement, and frequent independent replication are essential
tenets of this perspective.
You should be careful not to use the term positivism in criminology as simply
denoting individualist approaches. It has also a wide sociological use influenced by
Durkheim or Marx as is apparent when looking at the way criminal statistics are often
used to denote perceived changes in social and economic conditions. However, the
individualist version of positive criminology is characterised by the search to discover,
within the composition of the individual, the causes of criminal and delinquent
behaviour. The scientific method is used to differentiate offenders from non-offenders
on a variety of characteristics. The method of positive criminology assumes that there
are identifiable factors that make people act as they do (the logic of determinism)
and that the variability to be explained is associated with the variability in the casual
agents (the logic of differentiation).
3.2 Central figures of the two approaches examined
3.2.1 Beccaria
It has been common to describe the work of Cesare Beccaria as a reaction to a time
when the criminal law and its enforcement were barbarous and arbitrary and to see
him as a humane reformer. This interpretation stresses a social context of secret
accusations, brutal executions, torture, arbitrary and inconsistent punishments and
class-linked disparities in punishments.
To depict Beccaria as a humanitarian is to simplify but neither is it sufficient, at least

without unpacking the conception to characterise the classical school as simply
‘administrative and legal criminology’ which ignored all other factors which interfered
with ease of administration.
This image of classical criminology as rationalising the operation of the criminal

justice system captures a wider range of effects than the simple humanitarian model
but we have to be aware of the cultural and political implications and effects which
the acceptance of classical criminology leads on to. Implicit in classical criminology,
for example, is the issue of the limits of criminal justice. How could a criteria of
justice be constructed which could provide legitimation for new social institutions
and withstand the sceptical/critical attitude which philosophers such as Kant had
declared all ‘modern’ institutions had to withstand. Moreover, classical criminology
should be understood within the development of philosophical radicalism and the
full consequences of the developing notion of ‘the rule of law’, the changing political
struggles where a growing middle class sought political power to accompany their
economic power and break down the political monopoly enjoyed in England, for
instance, by the landowning class, and for the hopes of progressive social engineering
epitomised here by the Englishman Jeremy Bentham.
Beccaria considered crime as an injury to society; a notion which fitted well with
the development of a rule of law ideology. It was the injury to society, rather than to
the immediate individual(s) who experienced it, that was to direct and determine
the degree of punishment. Behind this thinking was the utilitarian assumption that
all social action should be guided by the goal of achieving ‘the greatest happiness
for the greatest number’. From this viewpoint, the punishment of an individual for a
crime was justified, and justifiable only, for its contribution to the prevention of future
infringements on the happiness and well-being of others. In today’s world, these ideas
may seem common enough but they needed to be ‘constructed’ to reform the world
of Beccaria and lead on to our own. For example, Beccaria reasoned that certain and
quick, rather than severe, punishments would best accomplish the above goals:
in order for punishment not to be ... an act of violence of one or many against a private
citizen, it must be ... public, prompt, ... the least possible in the given circumstances,
proportionate to the crimes, [and] dictated by the laws. (2009 [1764])
Torture, execution and other ‘irrational’ activity must be abolished. In their place,
there were to be quick and certain trials and, in the case of convictions, carefully
calculated punishments. Beccaria went beyond this to propose that accused persons
be treated humanely before trial, with every right and facility extended to enable
them to bring evidence on their own behalf. Note, at Beccaria’s time accused and
convicted persons were detained in the same institutions, and subjected to the
same punishments and conditions. In place of this, Beccaria argued for swift and
sure punishments, to be imposed only on those found guilty, with the punishments
determined strictly in accordance with the damage to society caused by the crime.
It is often said that classical criminology has no idea of the causes of crime but Beccaria
certainly held that economic conditions and bad laws could cause crime. Additionally,
he was clear that property crimes were committed primarily by the poor and mainly
out of necessity. Moreover, he was aware of what has come to be called opportunity
transfer; that is, when putting a severe punishment on a particular crime could deter
someone from committing it, but at the same time make another crime attractive by
comparison. Beccaria was also aware of the cultural power of severe punishments to
add to the desperation of the populace and encourage them to indulge in violence.
As he put it, laws could promote crime by diminishing the human spirit. A careful
matching of the crime and its punishment, in keeping with the general interests
of society, could make punishment a rational instrument of government. Jeremy
Bentham extended this with his notion of a ‘calculus’ for realising these interests.
Activity 3.1
Read the following extract from Beccaria (2009 [1764]), Chapter 16 ‘Of torture’.
a. What are Beccaria’s arguments against torture? In particular what is the
relationship between torture and truth? Why would the innocent confess to
crimes they did not commit?
b. Are they still valid today?

The torture of a criminal during the course of his trial is a cruelty consecrated by custom in
most nations. It is used with an intent either to make him confess his crime, or to explain
some contradictions into which he had been led during his examination, or discover his
accomplices, or for some kind of metaphysical and incomprehensible purgation of infamy,
or, finally, in order to discover other crimes of which he is not accused, but of which he
may be guilty.
No man can be judged a criminal until he be found guilty; nor can society take from him
the public protection until it have been proved that he has violated the conditions on
which it was granted. What right, then, but that of power, can authorise the punishment of
a citizen so long as there remains any doubt of his guilt? This dilemma is frequent. Either
he is guilty, or not guilty. If guilty, he should only suffer the punishment ordained by the
laws, and torture becomes useless, as his confession is unnecessary, if he be not guilty, you
torture the innocent; for, in the eye of the law, every man is innocent whose crime has not
been proved. Besides, it is confounding all relations to expect that a man should be both
the accuser and accused; and that pain should be the test of truth, as if truth resided in
the muscles and fibres of a wretch in torture. By this method the robust will escape, and
the feeble be condemned. These are the inconveniences of this pretended test of truth,
worthy only of a cannibal, and which the Romans, in many respects barbarous, and whose
savage virtue has been too much admired, reserved for the slaves alone.
What is the political intention of punishments? To terrify and be an example to others.

Is this intention answered by thus privately torturing the guilty and the innocent? It
is doubtless of importance that no crime should remain unpunished; but it is useless
to make a public example of the author of a crime hid in darkness. A crime already
committed, and for which there can be no remedy, can only be punished by a political
society with an intention that no hopes of impunity should induce others to commit
the same. If it be true, that the number of those who from fear or virtue respect the laws
is greater than of those by whom they are violated, the risk of torturing an innocent
person is greater, as there is a greater probability that, cæteris paribus, an individual hath
observed, than that he hath infringed the laws.
There is another ridiculous motive for torture, namely, to purge a man from infamy. Ought
such an abuse to be tolerated in the eighteenth century? Can pain, which is a sensation,
have any connection with a moral sentiment, a matter of opinion? Perhaps the rack may
be considered as the refiner’s furnace.
It is not difficult to trace this senseless law to its origin; for an absurdity, adopted by a
whole nation, must have some affinity with other ideas established and respected by
the same nation. This custom seems to be the offspring of religion, by which mankind,
in all nations and in all ages, are so generally influenced. We are taught by our infallible
church, that those stains of sin contracted through human frailty, and which have not
deserved the eternal anger of the Almighty, are to be purged away in another life by an
incomprehensible fire. Now infamy is a stain, and if the punishments and fire of purgatory
can take away all spiritual stains, why should not the pain of torture take away those
of a civil nature? I imagine, that the confession of a criminal, which in some tribunals is
required as being essential to his condemnation, has a similar origin, and has been taken
from the mysterious tribunal of penitence, were the confession of sins is a necessary
part of the sacrament. Thus have men abused the unerring light of revelation; and, in
the times of tractable ignorance, having no other, they naturally had recourse to it on
every occasion, making the most remote and absurd applications. Moreover, infamy is a
sentiment regulated neither by the laws nor by reason, but entirely by opinion; but torture
renders the victim infamous, and therefore cannot take infamy away.
Another intention of torture is to oblige the supposed criminal to reconcile the

contradictions into which he may have fallen during his examination; as if the dread of
punishment, the uncertainty of his fate, the solemnity of the court, the majesty of the
judge, and the ignorance of the accused, were not abundantly sufficient to account for
contradictions, which are so common to men even in a state of tranquillity, and which
must necessarily be multiplied by the perturbation of the mind of a man entirely engaged
in the thoughts of saving himself from imminent danger.
This infamous test of truth is a remaining monument of that ancient and savage
legislation, in which trials by fire, by boiling water, or the uncertainty of combats, were
called judgments of God; as if the links of that eternal chain, whose beginning is in the
breast of the first cause of all things, could ever be disunited by the institutions of men.
The only difference between torture and trials by fire and boiling water is, that the event
of the first depends on the will of the accused, and of the second on a fact entirely physical
and external: but this difference is apparent only, not real. A man on the rack, in the
convulsions of torture, has it as little in his power to declare the truth, as, in former times,
to prevent without fraud the effects of fire or boiling water.
Every act of the will is invariably in proportion to the force of the impression on our
senses. The impression of pain, then, may increase to such a degree, that, occupying the
mind entirely, it will compel the sufferer to use the shortest method of freeing himself
from torment. His answer, therefore, will be an effect as necessary as that of fire or boiling
water, and he will accuse himself of crimes of which he is innocent: so that the very means
employed to distinguish the innocent from the guilty will most effectually destroy all
difference between them.
It would be superfluous to confirm these reflections by examples of innocent persons

who, from the agony of torture, have confessed themselves guilty: innumerable instances
may be found in all nations, and in every age. How amazing that mankind have always
neglected to draw the natural conclusion! Lives there a man who, if he has carried his
thoughts ever so little beyond the necessities of life, when he reflects on such cruelty, is
not tempted to fly from society, and return to his natural state of independence?
The result of torture, then, is a matter of calculation, and depends on the constitution,
which differs in every individual, and it is in proportion to his strength and sensibility;
so that to discover truth by this method, is a problem which may be better solved by a
mathematician than by a judge, and may be thus stated: The force of the muscles and the
sensibility of the nerves of an innocent person being given, it is required to find the degree
of pain necessary to make him confess himself guilty of a given crime.
The examination of the accused is intended to find out the truth; but if this be discovered
with so much difficulty in the air, gesture, and countenance of a man at case, how can
it appear in a countenance distorted by the convulsions of torture? Every violent action
destroys those small alterations in the features which sometimes disclose the sentiments
of the heart.
These truths were known to the Roman legislators, amongst whom, as I have already
observed, slaves only, who were not considered as citizens, were tortured. They are known
to the English a nation in which the progress of science, superiority in commerce, riches,
and power, its natural consequences, together with the numerous examples of virtue and
courage, leave no doubt of the excellence of its laws. They have been acknowledged in
Sweden, where torture has been abolished. They are known to one of the wisest monarchs
in Europe, who, having seated philosophy on the throne by his beneficent legislation, has
made his subjects free, though dependent on the laws; the only freedom that reasonable
men can desire in the present state of things. In short, torture has not been thought
necessary in the laws of armies, composed chiefly of the dregs of mankind, where its
use should seem most necessary. Strange phenomenon! That a set of men, hardened by
slaughter, and familiar with blood, should teach humanity to the sons of peace.
It appears also that these truths were known, though imperfectly, even to those by whom
torture has been most frequently practised; for a confession made during torture, is null,
if it be not afterwards confirmed by an oath, which if the criminal refuses, he is tortured
again. Some civilians and some nations permit this infamous petitio principii to be only
three times repeated, and others leave it to the discretion of the judge; therefore, of two
men equally innocent, or equally guilty, the most robust and resolute will be acquitted,
and the weakest and most pusillanimous will be condemned, in consequence of the
following excellent mode of reasoning. I, the judge, must find someone guilty. Thou, who
art a strong fellow, hast been able to resist the force of torment; therefore I acquit thee.
Thou, being weaker, hast yielded to it; I therefore condemn thee. I am sensible, that the
confession which was extorted from thee has no weight; but if thou dost not confirm by
oath what thou hast already confessed, I will have thee tormented again.
A very strange but necessary consequence of the use of torture is, that the case of the
innocent is worse than that of the guilty. With regard to the first, either he confesses
the crime which he has not committed, and is condemned, or he is acquitted, and has
suffered a punishment he did not deserve. On the contrary, the person who is really guilty
has the most favourable side of the question; for, if he supports the torture with firmness
and resolution, he is acquitted, and has gained, having exchanged a greater punishment
for a less.
The law by which torture is authorised, says, Men, be insensible to pain. Nature has indeed
given you an irresistible self-love, and an unalienable right of self-preservation; but I create
in you a contrary sentiment, an heroic hatred of yourselves. I command you to accuse
yourselves, and to declare the truth, amidst the tearing of your flesh, and the dislocation
of your bones.
Torture is used to discover whether the criminal be guilty of other crimes besides those of
which he is accused, which is equivalent to the following reasoning. Thou art guilty of one
crime, therefore it is possible that thou mayest have committed a thousand others; but
the affair being doubtful I must try it by my criterion of truth. The laws order thee to be
tormented because thou art guilty, because thou mayest be guilty, and because I choose
thou shouldst be guilty.
Torture is used to make the criminal discover his accomplices; but if it has been
demonstrated that it is not at a proper means of discovering truth, how can it serve to
discover the accomplices, which is one of the truths required? Will not the man who
accuses himself yet more readily accuse others? Besides, is it just to torment one man
for the crime of another? May not the accomplices be found out by the examination
of the witnesses, or of the criminal; from the evidence, or from the nature of the crime
itself; in short, by all the means that have been used to prove the guilt of the prisoner?
The accomplices commonly fly when their comrade is taken. The uncertainty of their fate
condemns them to perpetual exile, and frees society from the danger of further injury;
whilst the punishment of the criminal, by deterring others, answers the purpose for which
it was ordained.
Supplementary contemporary viewing

Watch Taxi to the dark side the 2007 documentary film which won the 2007
Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
The film positions the December 2002 killing of an Afghan taxi driver named
Dilawar, who was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in
extrajudicial detention and interrogated at the Parwan Detention Facility at Bagram
base.
The reality of a modern superpower’s (the US) policy on torture and interrogation
in general, specifically the CIA’s use of torture and their research into sensory
deprivation is examined.
a. What explains the systematic use of torture by US forces?
b. Is the Convention against torture useless?
3.2.2 Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism

The Englishman Bentham always saw himself as a reformer. He attended lectures
on law and English common law given by William Blackstone in Oxford as a young
man and rebelled against what he considered their uncritical approach. He adopted
Beccaria’s concern for achieving ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’, a
criteria of a philosophical approach called utilitarianism that Bentham attributed to
the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Bentham gave precision to this idea, in part,
through a pseudo-mathematical concept he called ‘felicity calculus’. This ‘calculus’ was
intended as a means of estimating the goodness or badness of acts, the only ‘measure
of right or wrong’. Thus Bentham declared the entire notion of indefeasible rights
and contractual limitation on the power of government to be either meaningless or
else confused references to the principle of utility. The basis of government was not
contract but human need, and the satisfaction of human need is the sole justification.
Bentham meant to make the law an efficient and economical means of preventing
crime. Like Beccaria, Bentham insisted that prevention was the only justifiable
purpose of punishment, and furthermore that punishment was too ‘expensive’
when it produced more evil than good, or when the same good could be obtained
at the ‘price’ of less suffering. His recommendation was that penalties be fixed so as
to impose an amount of pain in excess of the pleasure that might be derived from
the criminal act. It was this calculation of pain compared to pleasure that Bentham
believed would deter crime. These ideas were formulated most clearly in his
Introduction to the principles of morals and legislation:
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and
pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine
what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain
of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. (2009 [1789] Ch. 1 Sect. 1)
Is Bentham an enlightened reformer? He seeks a scientific approach to government

and this overwhelms the humane or rights-based approach – his confidence in utility
enables him to think of justice as a quantifiable conception. While Beccaria kept to
some Kantian notions as to the dignity of man, Bentham would have none of these
limitations upon the scientific reorganisation of utility. For example, Bentham argued
that capital punishment should be restricted to offences ‘which in the highest degree
shock the public feeling’. He went on to argue that if the hanging of a man’s effigy
could produce the same preventive effect as the hanging of the man himself, it would
be a folly and a cruelty not to do so (Radzinowicz, 1948, pp.381–82). He also suggested
how capital punishments might nonetheless be used to maximum effect:
A scaffold painted black, the livery of grief – the officers of justice dressed in crepe
– the executioner covered with a mask, which would serve at once to augment the
terror of his appearance, and to shield him from ill-founded indignation – emblems of
his crime placed above the head of the criminal, to the end that the witnesses of his
sufferings may know for what crimes he undergoes them; these might form a part of
the principal decorations of these legal tragedies ... Whilst all the actors in this terrible
drama might move in solemn procession – serious and religious music preparing the
hearts of the spectators for the important lesson they were about to receive ... The
judges need not consider it beneath their dignity to preside over this public scene.’
(Bentham, quoted in Radzinowicz, 1948, pp.383–84.)
The article by Douglas Hay, ‘Property, authority and the criminal law’, in Fitzgerald
et al. (1981), will give you some idea of the actual conditions which surrounded the
operation of the criminal law in England at this time. The opening chapter of Foucault
(1977) gives a graphic illustration of the spectacle of public punishment.
Bentham also attempted to radicalise imprisonment, an institution then used

mainly merely to hold persons awaiting trial or debtors. He spent much of his life
trying to convince authorities that an institution of his design, called a ‘Panopticon’,
would solve the problems of correction. For Foucault the panopticon was highly
representative of a new style of penal reason, one concerned with disciplining
individuals rather than punishing.
There were three features to the panopticon. First the architectural dimension; the
panopticon was to be a circular building with a glass roof and containing cells on every
story of the circumference. It was to be so arranged that every cell could be visible
from a central point. The omniscient prison inspector would be kept from the sight
of the prisoners by a system of ‘blinds unless ... he thinks fit to show himself’. Second,
management by contract; the manager would employ the inmates in contract labour
and he was to receive a share of the money earned by the inmates, but he was to be
financially liable if inmates who were later released re-offended, or if an excessive
number of inmates died during imprisonment. Third, the panopticon was to open
to the inspection of the world which would control the manager. Two prisons of the
panopticon design were actually built in the United States; however, the first was
rebuilt seven years after construction, and the second was redesigned before it was
finished. Foucault has used Bentham’s ideas for the panopticon as a prime example of
developing penal rationality which he believes developed into ‘disciplinary power’ in

contrast to ‘judicial power’. For Foucault, the prison became linked to the knowledges
of positivism and together they gave rise to a whole new method of social control.
This was not the control of command and obedience, which he believes is the method
of the law, but the regulation through knowledge and conceptions of normalacy,
where individuals come to internalise perceptions of appropriate behaviour and be
subjected to surveillance and accounting. It is an intriguing exercise to see whether
you can agree with Foucault, whatever your opinion is. Reading Bentham or Foucault
on imprisonment should give rise to a multiplicity of doubts as to what imprisonment
is meant to achieve.
In time several of Bentham’s ideas were picked up. He argued strongly for the
establishment of the office of public prosecutor, and he furthered the notion that
crimes are committed against society rather than against individuals. Beyond this, he
argued that many victimless crimes were imaginary rather than real offences, and he
argued for the development of official crime statistics or ‘bills… indicating the moral
health of the country’.
Self-assessment question
Is Bentham a humanitarian reformer or a ruthless servant of power?
3.3 The positive revolution: the imagery of science replacing

the moral discourse of crime
Modern science is empiricist in nature which means it relies upon observation,
description, and measurement to build up theories and create its image of the
world. Positivism broke with the classical image of free will and the self-determining
individual and suggested that man is an entity determined in the world by his
constitution and his environment and that his behaviour is the result of an array of
biological, psychological or social factors.
Crime does not therefore consist of actions rationally chosen by the offender; the
notion of free will was seen by the positivists as inhibiting the study of the causes
of crime and as diverting attention away from the real causes. Positivism shifted
study away from crime to the criminal and sought the answers in differentiating the
offender from the normal member of society.
But therein lies a danger, for it assumes that the criminal exists as some determinate
entity, or, as Gottefredson and Hirschi (1987) redefined it, that criminality as a stable
propensity of individuals exists. The search for the criminal (type, mind, etc.) and
criminality (as a stable propensity such as rates of self-control) is a constant theme
in individualistic forms of positivism. Positivism is also said to be uncritical in that its
authors often appear to assume a consensual culture where all deviation is simply
attributed to lack of socialisation or deficiency of the individual.
3.4 Political arithmetic and statistical analysis

The 18th century saw a developing interest in secular techniques of governing and
the use of statistics to gauge the makeup of the population and various factors of that
population. Foucault termed this the development of political arithmetic, and this has
intensified today with vast networks of statistical analysis on the economy, health and
social interactions.
A linkage between a technical interest in crime control and the positive approach in
criminology was first evident in the work of the so-called ‘cartographic criminologists’
of 19th century Europe, such as the Belgian Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (1842), the
Frenchman André-Michel Guerry (1833) and the Englishmen Rawson (1839), Alison
(1840) and Fletcher (1849). Their work attempted to match spatial patterns of crime
and offender rates as visible from the developing ‘criminal statistics’ with other
indices of the ‘moral’ health of the nation (including such mixed features as literacy,
population density, wealth, occupations, nationalities) and the physical environment

(such as climate). Guerry, for example found a correlation of offending rates in France
between 1825–30 with convicted criminals’ age, sex and the season of the year. Rawson
concentrated upon employment and the changing features of urban industrialisation.
Quetelet argued the effect of obvious instances of economic inequalities in small areas.
3.4.1 The work of Adolphe Jacques Quetelet

Quetelet (1796–1874) was trained in mathematics and early success in this field made
him a professor with a large reputation. He applied mathematical techniques to a
range of issues, including astronomy, meteorology, and sociology. He illustrates the
fact that so much criminological data and knowledge is the result of applied study
rather than a concentrated long-standing effort. For Quetelet, scientific evidence
resulted from, and was a reflection of, large numbers of observations rather than
individual occurrences. Quetelet highlighted a fundamental problem with crime
statistics, namely the gap between ‘known and judged offences’ and what statistics
may in commonsense be thought to measure, ‘committed offences’. He was clear that:
‘our observations can only refer to a certain number of known and tried offences, out
of the unknown sum total of crimes committed’ (Quetelet, [1842] 2013, p.82).
Quetelet argued that in well-organised societies this ratio would be close to unity
for serious crimes, and further from unity for less serious crimes. Thus we could be
relatively certain of the ‘moral statistics of crime’ within these constraints. These
statistics showed that men commit more crimes and thus we could infer that they
have a greater ‘propensity’ for crime than women, and that the young have a greater
propensity than the old. Using findings constructed out of many observations and in a
variety of times and places:
we can enumerate in advance how many individuals will soil their hands in the blood of
their fellows, how many will be frauds, how many prisoners; almost as one can enumerate
in advance the births and deaths that will take place. Society contains within itself the
seeds of all the crimes that are to be committed, and at the same time the facilities
necessary for their development. It is society that, in some way, prepares these crimes,
and the criminal is only the instrument that executes them. (ibid., p.97)
Such patterns were material to work upon to effect improvements. Statistics provided
evidence of a moral condition of society that required remedy:
there is a budget which we pay with a frightful regularity – it is that of prisons, chains, and
the scaffold: it is that which, above all, we ought to endeavour to abate. (ibid., p.96)
3.5 The oral-ethnographic efforts

Rather than seeking to determine hard scientific laws or knowledge for control, the
oral-ethnographic tradition attempts to communicate the human experience and
offer an understanding-based vision of the human consequences of social conditions,
poverty and crime. Using direct observations, life histories, unpublished documents
and a range of first-hand data sources we are offered commentaries on the effects of
socio-economic change on the structure of social relations.
3.5.1 Fredrich Engels

In The condition of the working class in England (1845) Engels used his own impressions
of Manchester to comply a radical and sensitive account of working class life. You
should note that Manchester had been called by a character in Disraeli’s Coningsby
‘the most wonderful city in Modern times’ and was the major city of England that had
come to symbolise the achievement of capitalist industrialisation in all its grandeur
and grimness. Engels used a combination of first-hand observation, economic
data, contemporary accounts, pamphlets and newspapers. The themes of relative
deprivation and of crime as a rational reaction to the visible inequalities produced by
the industrial revolution run through his account:
The worker lived in poverty and want and saw that other people were better off than he
was. The worker was not sufficiently intelligent to appreciate why he, of all people, should
be the one to suffer – for after all he contributed more to society than the idle rich, and
sheer necessity drove him to steal in spite of his traditional respect for private property.
(2009 [1845], p.242)
Crime was understandable and a taste of justice for the powerful:
Acts of violence committed by the working classes against the bourgeoisie and their
henchmen are merely frank and undisguised retaliation for the thefts and treacheries
perpetrated by the middle classes against the workers. (ibid., p.242)
Engels saw the growth of criminality not only among the deprived working class but also
in the ‘surplus population’ of casual workers, what Marx called ‘the lowest sediment’, and
others ‘the residuum’. Engels saw the position is starkly determinist terms:
Apart from over-indulgence in intoxicating liquors, the sexual immorality of many English
workers is one of their greatest failings. This too follows from the circumstances in which
this class of society is placed. The workers have been left to themselves without the moral
training necessary for the proper control of their sexual desires. While burdening the
workers with numerous hardship the middle classes have left them only the pleasures of
drink and sexual intercourse. The result is that the workers, in order to get something out
of life, are passionately devoted to these two pleasures and indulge in them to excess and
in the grossest fashion. If people are relegated to the position of animals, they are left with
the alternatives of revolting and sinking into bestiality. If the demoralisation of the worker
passes beyond a certain point then it is just as natural that he will turn into a criminal... as
inevitably as water turns into steam at boiling point. (ibid., pp.144–45)
This sounds not unlike recent American writings on the ‘underclass’ (see Morrison,
1995, Chapter 17 ‘Contemporary social stratification and the development of the
underclass’; Walklate (2007), Chapter 6 ‘Crime, politics and welfare’). The emphasis
upon faulty ‘training’ early in life is very familiar if you consider recent writings from
the control perspective. However, Engels is clearly putting this behaviour into a social
context, albeit with a reductionism to environmental determinism, which is missing
from much recent conservative writings. (See the criticisms of the conservative
position made by Elliott Currie (1988).) Furthermore, Engels located the worthy
working class as prospective radicals whose criminality was an inarticulate and
unconscious social rebellion.
In all his work, Engels did not merely describe conditions but chose to interpret his
material. In his work the author’s values are obvious, indeed self-consciously exposed.
His work is deliberately a treatise against capitalism and the absence of any concern
with the general welfare of society or of social justice on the part of the capitalists.
The weakness with his writing is the possibility that the immediacy and purity of the
experience of the subjects being communicated will be distorted and twisted by the
interpretation.
The surplus group (lumpen-proletariat or residuum, which is currently the focus of

‘underclass’ writings) became of considerable interest to social commentators of
different persuasions, for example, Charles Booth and Henry Mayhew.
3.5.2 Henry Mayhew

Downes and Rock refer to Henry Mayhew (1812–1887) as one of the ‘shadow
criminologists’ whose work
contains much that is repetitive, conjectural, and fanciful. It also contains a great deal
of valuable material and sensible observation. Properly read, it may be recognised as an
anticipation of the theorising that now passes for the sociology of deviance. (1982, p.51)
His ‘street biography’ appears as an early form of social ecology approach to the
study of crime based on observation and description of the social conditions of the
developing urban centres. His four volume London labour and the London poor offered
vivid accounts of the expanding masses which filled the growing cities of Victorian
capitalism. Mayhew was ambivalent: on the one hand, he defined criminals as ‘those
who will not work’ (the title of Vol. 4), while his descriptions captured much of the
reality of social deprivation which characterised his times.
There are thousands of neglected children loitering about the low neighbourhoods
of the metropolis, and prowling about the streets, begging and stealing for their daily
bread. They are to be found in Westminster, Whitechapel, Shoreditch, St. Giles, New Cut,
Lambeth, the Borough and other localities. Hundreds of them may be seen leaving their
parents’ homes and low lodging-houses every morning sallying forth in search of food and
plunder. (Mayhew, 2008 [1862], p.273)
Beyond the descriptions of the degradation that characterised this period Mayhew
saw the weaknesses of the human self. The problem was seen in terms of defective
socialisation, to a non-conformity ‘to civilised habits’ (Criminal prisons of London, 2008
[1862], p.386) and the policy prescription was clear.
It is far easier to train the young in virtuous and industrious habits, than to reform the
grown-up felon who has become callous in crime, and it is besides far more profitable to
the state. To neglect them or inadequately to attend to their welfare gives encouragement
to the growth of this dangerous class. (ibid., p.275)
The demand for reform flows both from fear and self-interest. It is a reaction to the
image of what this failure of socialisation could accomplish but it also reflects an
assumption that a healthy individual is an individual capable of exercising self-control
and rational calculation. The new ideal, implicitly at least, is an individual capable of
disciplining his impulses and planning his life.
But as the following analysis shows, although this was the ideal, Mayhew leads on to
the fact that some are by nature unfitted for the assumption of self-control and self-
motivation. Mayhew is clear on the need to differentiate between individual members
of the working masses:
I am anxious that the public should no longer confound the honest, independent working
men, with the vagrant beggars and pilferers of the country; and that they should see that
the one class is as respectable and worthy, as the other is degraded and vicious.
Mayhew thought that only 5 per cent of these vagrants and pilferers were ‘deserving’
and in general they constituted a ‘moral pestilence... a stream of vice and disease... a
vast heap of social refuse’. They constituted for Mayhew a ‘dangerous class’ and while
he criticised the authorities for not taking step to enable them to practise trades in his
The criminal prisons of London, he defined ‘our criminal tribes’ as ‘that portion of society
who have not yet conformed to civilized habits’. What demarcated these tribes was
that their rationality did not control the passions of their bodies and fit them for the
tasks of hard labour.
What has become known as the positivist school developed these ideas further.
An interesting addition to your reading here is:
¢ Mary S. Morgan and Iain Sinclair, Charles Booth’s London Poverty Maps. (London:
Thames & Hudson, 2019) [ISBN 9780500022290].
3.6 The Italian/positivist school

Criminological texts usually refer to a group of scholars from Italy who applied the
positive philosophy of the 19th century to the study of crime as the positivist school
of criminology. Cesare Lombroso, Raffaele Garofalo and Enrico Ferri argued that the
methods of natural science were the appropriate tools to make the study of criminals
truly scientific. They emphasised the necessity for a controlled investigation of
criminals and non-criminals and, although their own methodologies were extremely
crude and scientifically suspect, by determining that proper criminology had to be
scientific they laid the foundation for the future development of criminological theory.
3.6.1 Cesare Lombroso

Lombroso (1835–1909), who graduated from the same university as Beccaria exactly
100 years later (1858 as compared to 1758), is frequently called ‘the father of modern
criminology’ while these same texts reject entirely his ideas about the causes of crime.
Lombroso once referred to himself as ‘a slave to facts’. His work can be seen to reduce
human nature to the biology of the immediate post-Darwin era, specifically applying
the concept of atavism and the principles of evolution to depict criminals as biological
‘throwbacks’ to a primitive, or ‘atavistic’, stage of evolution. For Lombroso, criminals
could be distinguished from non-criminals by the presence of physical anomalies that
represented a reversion to a primitive or subhuman type of person.
Between 1859 and 1863 he served as an army physician in a variety of posts and
examined approximately 3,000 soldiers in a search for the causes of several diseases
in mental and physical deficiencies. Subsequently, he worked as a prison doctor and
conducted hundreds of post-mortems. While conducting a post-mortem examination
of a particularly famous inmate by the name of Vilella, he discovered a depression in
the interior back part of his skull that he called the ‘median occipital fossa’. Lombroso
claims to have recognised this feature as a characteristic found in inferior animals and
thought he had made the breakthrough:
This was not merely an idea, but a revelation. At the sight of that skull, I seemed to see
all of a sudden, lighted up as a vast plain under a flaming sky, the problem of the nature
of the criminal – an atavistic being who reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts
of primitive humanity and the inferior animals. Thus were explained anatomically the
enormous jaws, high cheek-bones, prominent superciliary arches, solitary lines in the
palms, extreme size of the orbits, handle-shaped or sessile ears found in criminals,
savages, and apes, insensibility to pain, extremely acute sight, tattooing, excessive
idleness, love of orgies, and the irresistible craving for evil for its own sake, the desire not
only to extinguish life in the victim, but to mutilate the corpse, tear its flesh, and drink its
blood.
Consequently, Lombroso conducted thousands of post-mortem examinations and

anthropometric studies of prison inmates and non-criminals, leading him to the
conclusion that the criminal was, in natural reality, a human subspecies, with very
distinct physical and mental characteristics (see L’Uomo delinquente, first published in
1876). Lombroso constructed a four-fold classification: 1) born criminals, those with
true atavistic features, 2) insane criminals, including idiots, imbeciles, and paranoiacs
as well as epileptics and alcoholics, 3) occasional criminals or criminaloids, whose
crimes were explained largely by opportunity, and 4) criminal of passion who commit
crime because of honour, love or anger. They were propelled by a (temporary)
irresistible force. Later additional categories gave some allowance for the influence
of social factors and he speculated somewhat as to the interaction of genetic and
environmental influences (to some extent, a precursor to modern socio-biological
schemes). Although he went some way to developing a multiple factor approach he
never seems to have moved from his contention that the true or born criminal was
responsible for a large amount of criminal behaviour.
Lombroso’s work was subjected to intensive scrutiny by Charles Goring who published
The English convict in 1913, only four years after Lombroso’s death. Goring had employed
an expert statistician to administer the computations concerning the physical
differences between criminals and non-criminals but after eight years of research and
comparing some 3,000 English convicts with various control group. Goring concluded
that there was no difference between criminals and non-criminals except for stature
and body weight. Although Goring concluded this was evidence that criminals were
biologically inferior, he failed to find a criminal type and heavily criticised Lombroso’s
work. Subsequently, the ascription of Lombroso as a founder of modern criminology is
based on the fact that his assertions reorientated modern thinking about crime from
a focus on the offence to a focus on the offender and redirected emphasis from the
crime to the criminal.
3.6.2 Raffaele Garofalo

Born a member of the Italian nobility, Raffaele Garofalo (1852–1934) went on to become
a magistrate, a professor of criminal law and a prominent member of government.
Garofalo faced up to the epistemological problem that to have a properly scientific
approach to the study of crime it was necessary to have a meaningful definition of
crime in positivistic terms, one that re-positioned crime as a natural phenomena in the
natural world. He distinguished between ‘natural crimes’, to which he attached great
importance, and ‘police crimes’, a residual category of lesser importance.
‘Natural crimes’ are those which violate two basic ‘altruistic sentiments’: pity
(revulsion against the voluntary infliction of suffering on others) and probity (respect
for the property rights of others). ‘Police offences’ are behaviours that do not offend
these altruistic sentiments but are nonetheless called ‘criminal’ by law. Natural crimes
were important both for being more serious and because the category itself provided
a unifying principle, connecting the criminal law and natural social processes.
In Criminology (1885: English translation 1914) Garofalo criticised Lombroso’s theories

as inadequate as an explanation for the ‘natural crimes’ of ‘true criminals’, although he
concluded that criminals have ‘regressive characteristics’ indicating a ‘lower degree
of advancement’. True criminals lacked basic altruistic sentiments and were thus
ill-suited for society. They were, in short an evolutionary mismatch and the solution to
this evolutionary problem is elimination.
In this way, the social power will effect an artificial selection similar to that which nature
effects by the death of individuals inassimilable to the particular conditions of the
environment in which they are born or to which they have been removed. Herein the state
will be simply following the example of nature.
While the classical theorists saw the symbolic value of punishments as offering a
means of deterring crime in the general population, Garofalo’s emphasis on Darwinian
reasoning saw society as a natural body that must adapt to the environment and be
protected against crime. The actions of the true criminals indicated their inability
to live according to the basic human sentiments necessary in the society and their
elimination served to protect society. For the lesser criminal, incapacitation – by life
imprisonment or transportation – would suffice. For Garofalo the society ruled over
the individual, and the individual represented just a cell of the social body that could
be removed without much loss.
3.6.3 Enrico Ferri

Enrico Ferri (1856–1929) had a varied career as a university professor, trial lawyer,
Member of Parliament, newspaper editor, public lecturer and author. He spent a year
studying with Lombroso and became his lifelong friend.
Ferri’s work always emphasised the interaction of social, economic and political
factors which contributed to crime, all of which worked at an individual level on
the predispositions of the person. In Ferri’s Criminal sociology crime was ‘the effect
of multiple causes’ that include anthropological, physical, and social factors. Such
factors produced criminals who were classified as: (1) born or instinctive, (2) insane, (3)
passional, (4) occasional, (5) habitual. The positive ‘science of criminality and of social
defence against it’ was easy to distinguish from the classical tradition.
The science of crimes and punishments was formerly a doctrinal exposition of the
syllogisms brought forth by the sole force of logical fantasy. Our School has made it a
science of positive observation, which, based on anthropology, psychology, and criminal
statistics as well as on criminal law and studies relative to imprisonment, becomes the
synthetic science to which I myself gave the name ‘criminal sociology’.
It is also fascinating to see the ambiguity of the relationship between knowledge

and politics which riddles positivism. While positivism claims to be value-free and
apolitical, when we see it in application, as with Ferri, we can see a structure whereby
it is claimed that this knowledge is the ‘truth’ which must therefore be applied and
the strength of this claim overrules moral-political debate. Such a structure can give
rise to dire consequences. For most of his life, Ferri was a committed Marxist and
was a Member of Parliament for many years: in fact, he actually lost a professorship
because of his Marxist leanings. But if Lombroso was a slave to facts, Ferri was in awe
of the principle of determinism as in his attempted merger of Marxian and Darwinian
principles into conclusions that today seem highly dubious:
The Marxian doctrine of historical materialism ... according to which the economic
conditions ... determine ... both the moral sentiments and the political and legal
institutions of the same group is profoundly true. It is the fundamental law of positivist
sociology. Yet I think that this theory should be supplemented by admitting in the first
place that the economic conditions of each people are in turn the natural resultant of its
racial energies.
Throughout his life, Ferri attempted to integrate his positive science with political
change – he believed wholly in the constructivist project. The various attempts to
change the penal code were rejected because they constituted too great a change
from classical legal reasoning and, disappointed in socialism, Ferri turned to fascism as
the system most likely to implement the type of reforms he thought necessary.
Thorstin Sellin once said that fascism appealed to Ferri because it affirmed the primacy
of the state’s authority over the individual and constrained the excessive individualism
he had often criticised.
3.6.4 Legacy of the positivist school

Garofalo and Ferri saw science and the opinions of scientists as the tools by which
society would change itself and rule over individuals. The decisions of panels and
similar bodies judging according to their positivist principles would not include the
opinions of those they were evaluating and judging, nor the opinion of the victim or
other members of the public. Part of their legacy was a trend towards classification
and specialised treatment, with a demand for specialised institutions. Positivism may
also be linked to a change from the classical ideas on coercive policies towards the
disreputable poor, to the development of welfare policy patterned by a deep alteration
in conceptions of human nature and social agency. Many recent critics from the
conservative side have blamed forms of positivism for a de-moralising of criminality.
The classical school helped to create the practical and administrative systems for
processing offenders. It created a system capable of handling large numbers and a
process that could adapt to changing social sensibilities. Judges were curtailed in
their ability to dispense discretionary judgments and this protected the offender
from procedural injustice. Classicism provides sets of procedures which aim to ensure
uniformity and predictability – many have argued, however, that the theory does not
really face up to the fact that the criminal laws themselves may be arbitrary and that
equal treatment of unequal circumstances may itself be unjust. Traditional positivism
also did not align the creation of criminal laws with the questions to be analysed and
it was left until the advent of more critical approaches in the 1960s and 1970s for this
issue to be raised.
3.7 The return of classicism: populist conservative criminology

and contemporary rational action theories
Core text
¢ Hopkins Burke, Chapter 3 ‘Populist conservative criminology’ and Chapter 4
‘Contemporary rational actor theories’.
Self-assessment questions
As you read, consider the meaning of:
u Routine action theory.
u Situation crime prevention.
To what extent does popularist conservativism rely on ‘stylised facts’ and good
theatre?
3.8 Are the perspectives contradictory or can they be

combined?
Classical criminology stresses agency, free will and rational calculation. Positivism
looks for factors outside of the persons’ control. One, relatively recent, attempt to
reconcile the approaches was made by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990).
In their words, the classical tradition began with a ‘general theory of human behaviour,
and quickly narrowed its attention to government crime control policy’. The positivist
tradition began as ‘a general method of research’, but without a theory of behaviour
that would define its dependent variable, it accepted the classical focus on crime. As
a result, positivism became a rather meaningless search for, and analysis of, variables
without any overriding connection. While they admitted that in pure classical theory
the people who committed criminal acts had no particular propensities, they derived
from the classical tradition an idea of crime. Crime to them were acts of force or fraud
undertaken in pursuit of self-interest; working analytically through various features
that had been connected with particular forms of crime, they decided to ascribe stable
individual differences in criminal behaviour to the central concept of self-control. Self-
control was seen as a variable propensity of individuals and the lesser the amount of
self-control an individual possessed, the more likely they would be to engage in crime.
Note, however, that their characteristics of what crimes are involved the following.
Crimes:
u provide immediate gratification desires;
u provide easy or simple gratification desires;
u involve acts which were exciting, risky, or thrilling;
u provided few or major long-term benefits;
u required little skill or planning by the perpetrator;
u often resulted in pain or discomfort for the victim.
Where did they derive these characteristics? From their analysis of criminal statistics.
From their idea of the ‘data’ of events that are recorded as crimes. We look at whether
this is trustworthy in Chapter 4.
Activity 3.2
a. What were the background conditions for the rise of classical criminology?
What were the key influences upon Beccaria and how did Beccaria use previous
writers to fashion a new legitimacy for criminal justice?
b. What assumptions concerning human nature underlie classicism? In what way

does the classical perspective believe it is possible to control human behaviour?
Does it seek to eliminate crime or simply manage it?
c. What principles of punishment are inherent in the perspective? Are these still
appropriate today?
d. What accounts for the continuing appeal of classicism? Why do you think we
have seen a redeployment of classical ideas in the last 15 or so years?
References
¢ Bentham, J. An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation. Dover
Philosophical Classics (New York: Dover Publications, 2009; first published 1789)
[ISBN 9780486454528].
¢ Currie, E. Confronting crime. An American challenge. (New York: Random House,

1988) [ISBN 9780394532196].
¢ Downes, D. and P. Rock Understanding deviance: a guide to the sociology of crime

and rule-breaking. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) sixth edition
[ISBN 9780198760870].
¢ Engels, F. The condition of the working class in England. Oxford World Classics
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009; first published 1845)
[ISBN 9780199555888].
¢ Ferri, E. Criminal sociology. (HardPress Publishing, 2010; first published 1895)

[ISBN 9781407628363].
¢ Fitzgerald, M., G. McLennan and J. Pawson (comps) Crime and society: readings in
history and theory. (Abingdon: Routledge, 1981) [ISBN 9780415027557].
¢ Garland, D. ‘Punishment and welfare: social problems and social structures’ in

Liebling, A., S. Maruna and L. McAra (eds) The Oxford handbook of criminology.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) 6th edition [ISBN 9780198719441].
¢ Garofalo, R. Criminology. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1914). Reprinted from

Criminologia. (Turino: Fratelli Bocca, 1885).
¢ Goring, C.B. The English convict. (London: Forgotten Books, 2015; first published
1913) [ISBN 9781330255193].
¢ Gottfredson, M. and T.W. Hirschi Positive criminology. (London: Sage, 1987)

[ISBN 9780803929111].
¢ Gottfredson, M. and T.W. Hirschi A general theory of crime. (Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1990) [ISBN 9780804717731].
¢ Hobbes, T. Leviathan. (London: Penguin Classics, 2017; first published 1651)

[ISBN 9780141395098].
¢ Lombroso, C. L’Uomo delinquent. (Book on Demand, 2014; first published 1876)

[ISBN 9785519112659].
¢ Mayhew, H. The criminal prisons of London. (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2008;

first published 1862) [ISBN 9781840226195].
¢ Mayhew, H. London labour and the London poor. (Ware: Wordsworth Editions,
2008; first published 1862) [ISBN 9781840226195].
¢ Radzinowicz, L. A history of English criminal law and its administration from 1750.
Vol. 1: The movement for reform. (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1948)
[ISBN 9780420374608].
¢ Quetelet, A.J. A treatise on man and the development of his faculties. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013; first published 1842) [ISBN 9781108064422].

Question 1 ‘The differences between the classical and positivist schools in
criminology are grounded not only in differing conceptions of human nature but
also different approaches to government.’
Discuss.
Question 2 ‘Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to
repeat them.’
Discuss in relation to the academic development of the classical tradition in
criminology.
Question 3 ‘The classical conception of crime as rational action is unscientific and
has survived only because of its ideological utility.’
Discuss.
Question 4 EITHER
‘Crimes need no fancy explanations: they occur whenever social control is weak and
opportunities present themselves.’
Discuss. [Note: this is a good example of a question that draws upon different
parts of the course, from social control theory, common-sense explanations and
opportunity theory.]
OR
What makes the assumptions of the classical perspective in criminology so
appealing?
Question 5 ‘Positivist criminology never escaped from the basic assumptions of
classical criminology. It remained wedded to the need to correct crime and was
thereby unable to appreciate the meaning of crime to the offender.’
Discuss.
Question 6 ‘The assumptions underlying the classical criminological conception of
crime as rational action continue to guide the criminal justice system because they
accord to a greater degree than those of positivism with our moral intuitions.’
Discuss.
4 Sources of criminological data: official criminal
statistics and their limitations
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.1 Criminal statistics and their interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.2 The dream of criminal statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.3 Durkheim: suicide as the paradigm example of positivism and statistics . 49
4.4 Role of NGOs and other to complement criminal statistics . . . . . . . . 50
4.5 Using statistics in search for criminality: the case of the Chicago
school of sociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.6 Interpreting rises or declines in official statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Introduction
The key issues for this chapter revolve around two basic questions:
1. Do we have reliable data on the extent of crime (even as officially defined by law)
and data which can be used to explain crime?
2. What is the nature of criminal statistics and alternative indices?
The issues involved in this chapter are basic to the whole enterprise of criminology.
Specifically, positive criminology assumes:
u crime is a set of ‘facts’;
u through analysing such facts, for example, as presented in criminal statistics, the
criminologist can show the extent of crime and build theories of criminal activity;
u these theories reflect underlying natural states of affairs.
Thus the resulting theory, whether written in terms of social, biological or

psychological states of affairs will involve defining new facts or causal processes
which are based on the original facts analysed. Take, as an example, the over-
representation of black citizens in the official crime statistics of the United States.
This over-representation is itself a fact. But from the over-representation in the
statistics, positivism moves to explain this as a ‘fact of criminality’, as if the statistics
unproblematically reflected an underlying reality, one to be explained in terms of
differential socialisation, body size, IQ, or involvement in subcultures of violence and
delinquency to give some examples. However, do the official statistics actually reflect
an underlying reality of crime and criminality?
Essential reading
¢ Hope, T. ‘What do crime statistics tell us?’ in Hale, C., et al. (eds) Criminology.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) third edition [ISBN 9780199691296]
Chapter 3 ‘What do crime statistics tell us?’(available on the VLE).
¢ Young, J. The criminological imagination. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011)

[ISBN 9780745641072] Chapter 6 ‘Giuliani and the New York miracle’ (available on
the VLE).
Further reading
¢ Morrison, 1995, Chapter 8 ‘Criminological positivism III: statistics, quantifying
the moral health of society and calculating nature’s laws’.
Learning outcomes
u discuss the idea of the social construction of data
u locate and understand the crime statistics in the UK and your own country (if
outside the UK)
u discuss the official criminal statistics, the problems with them and alternative
indices
u adopt a critical reading of claims that changing rates of crime in official statistics
are a true picture of the state of crime
u analyse claims made that statistics can demonstrate that particular criminal
justice strategies work or not, with particular reference to the New York
experience
u think about a global picture (that is, can we conceive of global crime?)
u understand the need for new definitions for events, such as the rise of ‘genocide’.
Criminology 4 Sources of criminological data: official criminal statistics and their limitations page 47
4.1 Criminal statistics and their interpretation

There is a distinction between two main types of criminal statistics:
u Official statistics – this reflects crime as reported to the police and then processed
by the criminal justice system.
u Victim surveys – for example, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW,
formerly the British Crime Survey, BCS). Statistics from these alternative indices are
based on interviews and can provide a better reflection of the true extent of crime.
For the crime types it covers, the crime survey can provide a better reflection
of the true extent of crime because it includes crimes that are not reported to
the police. The CSEW count also gives a better indication of trends in crime over
time because it is unaffected by changes in levels of reporting to the police and
in police recording practices. But, of course, victim surveys are focused on crimes
experienced by individuals and excludes corporate victims. Note, however, that
commercial or business victimisation surveys have begun in the UK (e.g. the 2014
Commercial Victimisation Survey).
England and Wales

Official crime statistics can be found on the Government website for the Office of
National Statistics:
https://data.gov.uk/publisher/office-for-national-statistics You can download the

current crime in England and Wales year as PDF documents from the Office of National
Statistics website.
Activity 4.1
Go to the webpage https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/
crimeandjustice/methodologies/crimeandjusticemethodology#user-guides
Open the user guide to criminal statistics.
a. What advice is given there?
b. How does the guide explain statistics are arrived at and how does this compare
with the CSEW?
Note: Following an assessment of ONS crime statistics by the UK Statistics

Authority, the statistics based on police recorded crime data were found not
to meet the required standard for designation as national statistics. The full
assessment report can be found on the UK Statistics Authority website. Data
from the Crime Survey for England and Wales continue to be badged as national
statistics but warnings as to their reliability have been issued.
c. Why do you think this might be?
Look at the 16 requirements that are to be addressed to improve the reliability

of the statistics at https://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/wp-content/
uploads/2015/12/images-assessmentreport268statisticsoncrimeinenglandandwa
le_tcm97-43508-1.pdf
d. Do you consider these to be (a) not really affecting the reliability, (b) minor
issues of a technical matter, or (c) very serious issues that must be addressed to
ensure public confidence in the crime statistics?
e. What were the two categories of ‘crime’ that the Statistics Authority was most
concerned about ‘under-reporting’?
f. What use is made of the CSEW in relation to the crime statistics?
Feedback
Since the assessment was carried out, the Criminal Justice Inspectorate has
conducted various inspections of crime recording in police forces in England and
Wales. They also concluded that the level of under-recording of reports of crime
was ‘unacceptable’ (estimating that one in five offences that should have been
recorded as crimes were not) and made a number of recommendations to improve
recording. As of mid-2015, re-assessment of crime statistics will not be conducted
until sustained and satisfactory evidence of improvements in the quality of police
recorded crime data is approved.
The HMIC (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary) inspections showed
evidence that the police have taken steps to improve recording, suggesting that
recent increases seen in the number of crimes recorded by the police reflect
improvements in police compliance with recording standards, particularly in the
categories of violence against the person and sexual offences where the level of
under-recording observed by HMIC was most pronounced.
Further evidence of improvements in police recorded crime is provided through
comparisons with the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). Previous ONS
analysis of variation in crime trends highlighted a growing gap between police
recorded crime and the CSEW between 2007/08 and 2012/13. However, more
recently the gap between the two data series has narrowed, and the release of
crime statistics for the year ending December 2014 showed a further narrowing.
(Look at section 4.2 of the User Guide to Crime Statistics in England and Wales.)
4.2 The dream of criminal statistics

To understand the impact of defects in the statistics on both public confidence and
academic use of them, it is necessary to consider their history. Early proponents of
social statistics expected them to be a powerful tool of analysis and policy. Social
technocrats saw statistics as ‘fact-gathering to aid policy’. As Paul Wiles points out,
writers such as William Petty and John Graunt hoped as early as the 17th century that
such statistics would be crucial in the making of policy decisions and in judging the
‘moral health’ of the nation. Consequently:
By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, Petty’s hope that his
‘Numbers, Weights, or Measures’ would make ‘intellectual arguments’ about the nature
of government superfluous, had become a cardinal part of the ideas of the political
economists. (Wiles, 1971.)
Bentham’s scheme for Bills of Delinquency were to be a ‘political barometer’,

‘furnishing data for the legislator to work upon’. Thus criminal statistics were part of
the empiricists’
genuine attempt[s] to go beyond the circle of our interpretations, to get beyond

subjectivity. The attempt is to reconstruct knowledge in such a way that there is no need
to make final appeal to readings or judgments which cannot be checked further… [to
obtain] a unit of information which is not the deliverance of a judgement, which has by
definition no element in it of reading or interpretation, which is a brute datum.
(Taylor, 1985.)
Writing from within a Marxist perspective, Colin Sumner has pointed to the general
weakness of crass ‘empiricism’ in the traditional development of criminological
theory:
What seems to happen is that when a phenomenon is observed spontaneously, the

observer associates its aetiology with the circumstances in which it appears. For example,
in orthodox criminology, research of an empiricist kind has observed the coexistence
of poverty, criminal behaviour, broken family ties and delinquent juvenile gangs within
working class neighbourhoods. From this sighting criminological researchers have gone
on to correlate crime with poverty, broken homes, working class values etc. Rather than
seeing all these circumstances (including crime) as normal exigencies of life for a class
for a specific position within a particular social structure (and thus comprehending the
connections between social structure and class conditions) the theory-less researchers
took the appearances and attempted to make them explain each other. (1979: 180.)
Yet many philosophers of science, such as Charles Taylor, believe that both rationalism
and empiricism fail to achieve such security for knowledge and see social theory as an
endless series of interpretative structures.
The underlying assumption of the project of securing pure statistics is that such
statistics and tables would provide an accurate reflection of real trends. That it would
be a ‘mirror of nature’, to borrow a term of the ‘pragmatic’ philosopher Richard Rorty,
and, additionally, the problem of crime could be reduced in some way to a simple
question of social engineering made easier by the feedback such statistics provided
on the effectiveness of policy. However, in his 1971 essay ‘Criminal statistics and
sociological explanations of crime’, Paul Wiles opined that the early hopes were in
vain:
In spite of comparatively full collection of officially published statistics, the brave hopes of
the nineteenth century have not been fulfilled. Crime in England has proved to be more
than a technical problem of social policy. Although some still cling to the belief that this
failure stems from technical defects in the statistics themselves, the ‘official’ figures seem
doomed to remain very imperfect as instruments of social engineering. (Wiles, 1971, p.201.)
Summary
The position we have reached is this:
u official rates of crime or deviance must be interpreted in terms of the processes

that have produced them
u this interpretation is a separate explanation from the explanation of the crime or

deviance itself.
At the least, official crime rates arise from the interaction of events that may be
labelled as criminal actions and official reactions, both of which become dependent
variables which combine in different formations to give the end result.
4.3 Durkheim: suicide as the paradigm example of positivism

and statistics
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the French theorist Emile Durkheim developed
an analysis of suicide that has become a motif in the discussions concerning
constructing positivist theories upon statistical data. Durkheim argued that suicide,
which was considered a personal act of the will of an actor, was actually highly
dependent upon a range of social factors. By measuring the rates of suicide for various
groups and correlating these with indices of social factors, Durkheim (1970) argued
he could prove the social laws of suicide. He did not regard the will of an individual
as free but heavily constrained by a set of social factors that flow through them and
these constituted ‘real laws [which] are discoverable’. The subject is constrained by
‘real, living, active forces, which, because of the way they determine the individual,
prove their independence of him’. There are types of suicide determined by their own
configurations of ‘social facts’ (e.g. the ‘egoistic’).
Durkheim built up his distinctions on the basis of treating the official rates as given.
The criticisms of Durkheim mirror those that positivist approaches to criminal
statistics suffered generally.
First, the positivist self-criticism: the data Durkheim analysed were official statistics
from the 1840s to the 1870s and this information is subject to error. Errors of collection
and reportage thus prejudice the analysis through data fault. Similarly, much of
subsequent criminological investigation can be seen as an attempt to explain the
official crime statistics – if these are suspect, then the whole analysis is also. The
positivists’ message is to correct such errors and to provide actual data as ‘true
facts’ upon which to join correlations of ‘observable occurrences’. Such alternative
measures as self-report or victim studies are relied upon to correct the picture the
official statistics give.
Secondly, a broad criticism that we term the interactionist approach. Such statistics
are never capable of conversion into independent ‘real facts’ or ‘actual empirical data’
at all since the original or basic data involve a process of interpretation and symbolic
construction of meaning which is unable to be analysed by positivist methodology
other than spuriously.
The interactionist approach came to prominence in the late 1960s and 1970s and was
a general criticism of positivism and the ‘constructionist’ approach to the way social
reality was built up. In understanding suicide, Atkinson (1971; 1978) concentrates upon
the ‘process’ of categorising deaths as ‘suicide’. He rejects the objectivity of a real rate
of suicide that would provide absolutely secure material for analysis. Instead, coroners
interact with the situations surrounding death and their courts interpret events
producing suicide rates as a result of the interaction of their ‘common-sense’ theories
of suicide with the material presented to them. Coroners bring sets of narrative
expectations, or patterns of cultural history, which if the material fits, mean that a
suicide will most likely be registered. If not then further investigation is called for or no
suicide is found. In criminological literature, Aaron V. Cicourel (1976) does a similar task
with juvenile crime.
As Harold Garfinkel (1984) argued, one ought to ‘treat social facts as interactional
accomplishments’. When common sense may lead us to see certain ‘things’, ‘givens’
or ‘facts of life’, the interactional perspective presents us with processes and we need
to understand the processes through which the perceived stable features of socially
organised environments are continually created and sustained.
Thus a general message: the categories of crime and criminal are not references
to ‘objective facts’, or mirror images of objective reality but are constructions of
meanings which come out of the interaction of certain situations. Importantly,
the question becomes ‘how do such meanings become generated? How is the
categorisation manufactured?’
Activity 4.2
a. What did Durkheim mean by the social laws of suicide? Can you think of any that
would be a contributing factor?
b. Why do you think there is such inherent trust in statistics and crime rates? Why
don’t people see them more as guides or guesstimates? What are the dangers of
this?
c. Concerning the ‘dark area of crime’, what proportion of sexual offences do

you think go unreported? Do you consider there to be any way of significantly
improving reporting rates? Can you think of other ‘dark areas’ of crime?
4.4 Role of NGOs and other to complement criminal statistics

The Global Peace Index (GPI) is only one example of the need constantly to bear in
mind the international dimensions to criminological issues. The question of the
adequacy of the official criminal statistics to correctly ‘picture’ victimisation and even
the adequacy of ‘crime’ as an indicia of victimisation and harm is a global issue. Anti-
slavery International, for example, argues that slavery continues today in one form
or another in every country in the world. Its website lists the following: from women
forced into prostitution; children and adults forced to work in agriculture, domestic
work, or factories and sweatshops producing goods for global supply chains; entire
families forced to work for nothing to pay off generational debts; or girls forced to
marry older men, the illegal practice still blights contemporary world.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), around 21 million men,

women and children around the world are in a form of slavery.
Slavery exists when people are forced to work – through mental or physical threat;
owned or controlled by an ‘employer’, usually through mental or physical abuse
or the threat of abuse; dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold
as ‘property’; physically constrained or has restrictions placed on their freedom of
movement.
The term ‘slavery’ may not be used but it is found in forced labour and bonded labour;
human trafficking; descent-based slavery; the worst forms of child labour; forced
labour in supply chains; forced and early marriage; and the exploitation of migrant
workers in conditions amounting to slavery.
Activity 4.3
Search online for the Official Criminal Statistics for your country.
a. How easy are they to obtain?
b. Now search for explanatory notes and criticisms, and make notes on particular
criticisms of your country.
c. Now search for international statistics. Where does your country rank in various
comparisons?
4.4.1 The spread of victim surveys

Victim surveys have spread around the world.
Activity 4.4
Do a web search for your country. How recent are they, i.e. when were they
introduced?
Most of these surveys demonstrate the internationalisation of the criminological
methodologies developed in Great Britain and the USA. For example, the first victim
survey in New Zealand was the New Zealand National Survey of Crime Victims 1996.
The survey drew heavily upon the techniques of the British Crime Survey. Respondents
were asked to report on, and provide detailed information about, particular forms of
criminal victimisation experienced by members of their household, or by themselves
personally, since 1 January 1995. The household offences the survey focused on were
residential burglary and vehicle offences, while the individual offences comprised
sexual offending, all forms of assault, threats, robbery, arson and wilful damage, and
other forms of theft.
Such surveys seek to ascertain the incidence of offending. The NZ survey estimated the
total number of offences committed in 1995 at more than two million, far in excess
of those officially reported. Violent offending and sexual offending, including threats,
made up almost two-thirds of total offences disclosed in the survey; damage offences,
which would usually be described as vandalism, were the next most common category.
In terms of other property offending, homes and vehicles were targeted with about an
equal degree of frequency, making up a little under 10 per cent of total offending.
One of the interesting calculations that it is possible to make is one of generalised risk;
thus the data suggest that, on average:
u one house in 14 will be burgled each year;
u one woman in 16 will be sexually violated each year;
u one person in five will be the victim of some type of assault (excluding threats)
each year.
The particular ‘individualised’ risk of a person varies with locality and lifestyle. For
grievous assaults, other assaults and threats, the survey distinguished between
violence by those known well to the victim (including family violence) and violence
inflicted by casual acquaintances or strangers. Grievous assaults were roughly evenly
divided between the two groups. Other assaults and threats, on the other hand,
were almost three times more likely to be committed by those known well to the
victim than by strangers or casual acquaintances. This is a highly significant but not
unexpected finding; it demonstrates that, despite media preoccupation with violence
by strangers, people are in fact just as likely to be seriously injured by those they know
well and are much more at risk of violence from them.
What does one make of the high incidence of offences against the person? Did that
mean that this society was a particularly violent one? It should be noted that over a
third of such offences involve threats of violence or threats of damage to property,
which clearly vary enormously in seriousness and significance. Another third involve
sexual offences that have a large sampling error. These were both omitted from the
British Crime Survey. If these are excluded from the count, then assaults, wounding
and robbery make up 24.7 per cent of total offences, only slightly above the figure of
20.8 per cent reported in the 1996 British Crime Survey.
How did that survey make the comparison between survey offences and police
statistics? One of the purposes of victim surveys is to identify what is commonly called
the ‘dark figure’ of crime – offences which are unreported or which are reported but
go unrecorded. This was achieved by a comparison of the offences disclosed by survey
respondents with the police offence statistics over the same period. It is clear that
there was a large gap between the survey’s estimated offences and adjusted police
offence statistics. Indeed, police statistics were only 12.9 per cent of the offences
revealed in the survey.
There were two reasons for the gap between police statistics and the number of
offences disclosed in the survey. First, only a little over 40 per cent of the cases in
which it was possible to collect information on reporting came to the notice of the
police, although this varied from a reporting rate of nearly 90 per cent in relation
to the theft or unlawful taking of a motor vehicle to a rate of only 33 per cent for
non-domestic assaults and 27 per cent for damage. Secondly, only about one-third of
the offences which were reported ended up being recorded, although again the rate
varied substantially from one offence to another.
How does one relate to the picture offered by such surveys? Common to these
surveys the NZ survey disclosed that while the official statistics on some offences – for
example, vehicle theft – seem to mirror the reality of offending experienced by victims
quite closely, they appear to grossly understate the incidence of other offending. In
particular, there appeared to be a vast amount of hidden sexual offending, assaults
and threats. Most of these are unreported, and even when they are reported, they
often seem to fail to get into the official statistics, either because they are not
recorded at all or because they are recorded as something different from what the
respondents’ accounts suggested to be appropriate. The sexual offending data, of
course, are subject to substantial sampling error and might be questionable on that
ground. The data on assaults and threats, however, are much more robust and cannot
be dismissed as a product of the survey methodology. Does this mean that New
Zealand is confronting a law and order crisis? Again qualifications must be made.
Each country will vary in the defining of offences and the methodology for recording
events under categories. Thus although the proportion of total offences comprising
assaults, for example, in the NZ survey is greater than in the British Crime Survey, the
NZ practice of recording some discrete incidents as multiple offences undoubtedly
resulted in the counting of some assaults which in Britain would have been
encompassed within some other more serious offence.
Again, average incidence rates such as those so far discussed imply that crime is evenly
distributed. It is not; victimisation is, in fact, very unevenly distributed. As might be
expected, some socio-demographic groups are, on average, more at risk of being
victimised than others.
Victim surveys represent all incidents that are capable of being interpreted as
involving a criminal offence. In reality, the definitions are very wide, so that an
enormous range of conduct is captured. Assaults and threats, for example, encompass
a wide range of conduct, much of which is relatively trivial or could be regarded
as a normal (albeit undesirable) feature of everyday social interaction which most
people cope with without difficulty and stress, and which they would probably not
regard as the appropriate business of the police or the criminal justice system. Even
robbery (which had a surprisingly low reporting rate) may range from something as
comparably minor as one school pupil taking some lunch from another with some
implicit threat of force involved to something as serious as armed bank robbery.
In other words, technical definitions of offences are very broad; practical limitations
upon their scope are imposed not only by the working rules of the police but
also by the common-sense definitions which members of the public apply to the
conduct of others. It is thus by no means certain that respondents would define
as criminal at least some of the behaviour that they subsequently told the later
surveyor. Sometimes, they often believe that the matter is best handled without
official intervention. The researchers interpreted this to imply that ‘there seems to
be considerable support amongst victims for alternative processes and strategies for
responding to crime; the criminal justice system is seen, at least by some, as a last
resort and the offending which comes to its notice is only a small proportion of the
behaviour which could potentially do so’.
The next survey was held in 2001 and in 2006 it was renamed and re-organised
as New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey, reflecting a growing emphasis on risk,
personal security and seeing ‘crime’ as one aspect of experiencing harm and threats
to well-being. By 2016 the emphasis on gauging the ‘harm’ of crime fitted in with a
government approach that sought data on where to engage in a social investment in
criminal justice. The statistical analysis was to fit into an Integrated Data Infrastructure
(IDI) governed by a social investment approach. The IDI linked administrative and
survey data at an individual level, giving information about the circumstances and
experiences of New Zealanders – for example, the experience of crime as victim
or perpetrator – and their use of public services, including education, health,
employment and income support. The aim was to achieve a person-centred picture
and to provide longitudinal data on individual circumstances and experiences, giving
an image over the lifetime of individuals. This, it was hoped, would enable analysis
and monitoring of well-being and harm trajectories and support identifying high-risk
groups and the factors that confer risk and in turn help to assess the impact of social
interventions. (See ‘Review of the New Zealand crime and safety survey and other
statistical information about the social impact of crime: 2016’, found at http://archive.
stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/people_and_communities/crime_and_justice/review-
nzcss-social-impact-crime-2016/data-source.aspx)
4.5 Using statistics in search for criminality: the case of the

Chicago school of sociology
4.5.1 The city of Chicago

The Chicago school of sociology has exerted a huge influence in criminology. Chicago
was a place of immense change: in 1810 it was an insignificant frontier outpost
distinguished only by the presence of the backwater military station. However, the
crude settlement was situated in the middle of the great water-highways of the mid-
continent and, consequently, Chicago played an important role in the opening up
of the west. Chicago’s prime position resulted in a staggering gravitation of people,
industry and capital to the city. Business capital steadily poured into the city as
commercial enterprises benefited from Chicago’s role both as a ‘prairie seaport’ and
as the epicentre of a vast rail and canal network. People from all walks of life rushed
to share in the city’s prosperity and, as a result, its population grew at a phenomenal
rate (the city population alone increased almost tenfold from 30,000 to 299,000
between 1850 and 1870). In just over a century Chicago had been transformed from an
insignificant trading post of some 300 people into one of the world’s greatest cities,
with a population exceeding 3 million. One of the striking features of this phenomenal
expansion was that Chicago became home to a panoply of ethnic groups: not only
was the city a point of gravitation for migrating African Americans keen to escape the
poverty and repression of the rural south, but it was also a destination point for large
numbers of European immigrants. Consequently, by 1900 Chicago was an amalgam of
disparate social worlds and conflicting identities. In this and many other ways, Chicago
came to represent the quintessential metropolis. Certainly no modern city was more
radically transformed by the processes of 19th century modernisation. Consequently,
nowhere is the rupture with the Old World more glaringly apparent.
Based at the University of Chicago, the Chicago school attempted to characterise the
modernity that was writ large in the streets of their city, and to identify the underlying
patterns and continuities that they believed were hidden amid the turmoil of urban
change. In particular, for Robert Park, Ernest Burgess and the other key members of
the school, the social effects of rapid industrialisation and population expansion were
central to the way they set about theorising the link between crime and the social
environment. (In this sense, their work always remains suspended between the social
and the environmental.)
Generally speaking, the importance of the work of the Chicago school of sociology
lies in two key features. First, their assertion that urban social problems – in particular,
crime – were largely a result of the combination of environmental factors and social
conditioning, and not a product of racial, biological or genetic predisposition, marked
a major step forward in criminological thinking. Secondly, the research methods
developed and employed by the Chicagoans mixed statistical analysis with fieldwork
and ushered in a new era of systematised ethnographic social science research.
The starting point for the Chicago school was Robert Park’s ‘theory of human ecology’.
Derived from the observations of early plant ecologists, Park postulated that human
communities were closely attuned to any natural environment in that their spatial
organisation and expansion was not the product of chance, but instead was patterned
and could be understood in terms analogous to the basic natural processes that occur
within any biological organism. Thus, Park maintained that the city could be thought
of as a super-organism; an amalgamation of a series of sub-populations differentiated
either by race, ethnicity, income group or spatial factors. Accordingly, each of these
groups acted ‘naturally’ in that they were underpinned by a collective or organic unity.
Furthermore, not only did each of these ‘natural areas’ have an integral role to play in
the city as a whole, but each community or business area was interrelated in a series
of ‘symbiotic relationships’. Close observation of these relationships enabled Park to
conclude that, just as is in any natural ecology, the sequence of ‘invasion-dominance-
succession’ was also in operation within the modern city. This bio-environmental
analogy extended to the Chicagoans’ lexicon, and phrases such as ‘symbiosis’, ‘social
ecology’ and ‘organism’ became their primary mode of expression.
To quote Robert Park:
The city may be regarded as a functional unit in which the relations among the individuals
that compose it are determined, not merely by the city’s physical structure, nor even by
the formal regulations of a local government, but rather more by the direct and indirect
interaction of the individuals upon one another. Considered from this point of view, the
urban community turns out to be something more than mere congeries of peoples and
institutions. On the contrary, its component elements, institutions, and persons are so
intimately bound up that the whole tends to assume the character of an organism, or to
use Herbert Spencer’s term a super-organism. (Park, 1952, p.118)
Park’s thoughts on the social ecology of the city were developed by his colleague,
Ernest Burgess (Park and Burgess, 1925), who contended that modern cities expanded
radially from their inner-city core in a series of concentric circles. Burgess identified
five main zones within Chicago, each two miles wide. At the centre was the business
district, an area of low population and high property values. This in turn was
encircled by the ‘zone in transition’; a place typically characterised by run-down
housing, high-speed immigration and emigration, and high rates of poverty and
disease. Surrounding that zone, in turn, were zones of working-class and middle-
class housing, and ultimately the affluent suburbs. Of greatest importance to the
Chicagoans, however, was the zone in transition. This was the oldest section of the
city and was comprised primarily of dilapidated, ghetto housing that was unlikely to
be renovated because of its proximity to the busy commercial core. The affordability
of accommodation in these neighbourhoods ensured that the zone served as a
temporary home for thousands of immigrants too poor to afford lodgings elsewhere
in Chicago. A pattern quickly emerged whereby immigrant families remained in the
zone only for as long as it took them to become sufficiently economically established
to move out and ‘invade’ an area further from the business district. Consequently, this
was an area of great flux and restlessness – a place where pre-existing communal ties
and traditional shared folkways were undermined and impersonal relations prevailed.
Such neighbourhoods were sometimes described as ‘socially disorganised’, and it
was within these unintegrated urban spaces that the members of the Chicago school
sought to unearth the substantive causes of crime and deviance.
4.5.2 Shaw and the statistical challenge

Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay (Shaw 1930; Shaw and McKay 1931; 1942; Shaw et al. 1929)
set about statistically testing the assumption that crime was greater in ‘disorganised
areas’ than elsewhere in the city by plotting juvenile delinquency court statistics
onto Burgess’s concentric circle model. Their findings had immense implications for
criminology. Simply stated, they found that delinquency rates were at their highest in
run-down inner-city zones and progressively declined the further one moved out into
the more prosperous suburbs. Of critical importance, they also identified that this spatial
patterning of juvenile crime remained remarkably stable (often over very long periods of
time) irrespective of the neighbourhood’s racial or national demographic composition.
These findings allowed Shaw and McKay to conclude that delinquency was a product
of sociological factors within the zone of transition rather than individual pathology
or any inherent ethnic or racial characteristics. This was a momentous breakthrough
that did much to dispel earlier criminological theories which located the root cause
of crime within the individual. Having established this important position, Shaw and
McKay went on to claim that socially disorganised neighbourhoods perpetuated a
situation in which delinquent behaviour patterns are ‘culturally transmitted’. In contrast
to orderly neighbourhoods where community integration is strong and ‘conventional
values’ are deeply ingrained, in disorganised environments – because of the paucity
of supervision and the collapse of community provisions – the prevailing value system
is likely to be both conducive to, and supportive of, delinquent behaviour. In other
words, criminal conventions and delinquent traditions are ‘transmitted down through
successive generations of boys much the same way that language and other social
forms are transmitted’ (Shaw and McKay, 1932, p.174). This observation, along with Edwin
Sutherland’s (1942) related theory of differential association, was an important strand in
subsequent criminological theories that attempted to account for crime by reference to
deviant subcultures.
As Finestone summarised:
Shaw was innovative. First, he had succeeded in discovering a sociological idiom for the
depiction of delinquent behaviour. The issue for sociological research was no longer
that of searching for some nebulous behavioural identity entitled delinquency, but of
describing and accounting for certain distinctive patterns of group behaviour. (1976, p.80)
Second, the innovative nature of the fieldwork methods employed by the various
members of the Chicago school ushered in a new era of social science research
practice. Not only the statistical studies but also the school’s reliance upon personal
experience and the subjective and inter-subjective dimensions of modern social life
raised the profile of ethnography and other related qualitative research practices
within the developing field of sociological inquiry.
The Chicagoans assiduously set about researching the city’s many social problems. The
initial impetus for this approach was provided by the aforementioned Robert Park, a
former newspaper journalist and advocate of first-hand data-collection. His followers
quickly took up the challenge, proceeding from the premise that the best way to
identify the root causes of social problems such as crime was by close observation
of the social processes intrinsic to urban existence. To facilitate this task the school
developed innovative new research methods such as participant-observation, the
individual case history and the focused first-hand interview. Such techniques enabled
the Chicagoans to ‘enter the world of the deviant’ and compile ethnographic data on
everything from hobos and taxi-dance girls, to racketeers and street-gang members.
The result was a series of stunning qualitative studies that not only provided great
insight into many diverse urban subcultures, but also went a long way to establishing
a theorised methodology for studying social action. This methodological approach,
initially orientated to the city environment, became generalised as the ‘appreciative’
tradition (see Matza 1969, pp.24–40, 70–73). (The influence of this method can clearly
be seen in subsequent writers of the labelling perspective, such as Howard Becker: see
Chapter 6 of this subject guide.)
Because of the strides made in these two key areas, the work of the Chicago school
has had a considerable influence on the development of criminological theory.
In particular, and as stated earlier, it helped give structure to the then fledgling
discipline of sociology. By developing innovative research methodologies, the school
laid the foundations for a new type of ‘appreciative’, reflexive qualitative analysis.
More importantly, by identifying the important relationship between environmental
factors and crime, the school greatly compromised the (then still popular) belief
that criminality was a product of innate biological or pathological factors. Vitally,
it established the importance of detailed appreciation of the social life-worlds of
individuals for understanding the meaningfulness of their behaviour. Despite its many
achievements, however, the school has not been without its critics.
4.5.3 Criticism of the ecological model

A common criticism, challenging the usefulness of the ecological model, is that the
theory of human ecology contained certain fallacious assumptions – not least that the
work of the Chicagoans (in particular that of Shaw and McKay) implied that individual
action can be explained solely by the larger environment in which that individual
resided. This later famously became known as the ‘ecological fallacy’. Similarly, the
key concept of ‘social disorganisation’ has been questioned on the grounds that it
was held by the Chicagoans to be both the cause of delinquency, and the proof that it
existed. This tautological ‘like-causes-like’ fallacy today is recognised as fundamentally
flawed.
Major reservations have also been expressed about the wisdom of basing empirical
research into juvenile delinquency upon official statistics. Aside from the obvious
criticism that Shaw and McKay consistently failed to acknowledge that crime rates are
always the product of social construction, the ‘delinquency areas’ scrutinised in their
research were often locations in which delinquents resided and thus not necessarily
the same neighbourhoods in which they committed their crimes.
A further criticism concerns the failure of the Chicagoans to place the everyday world
of crime and deviance into the wider economic or political context (see Schwendinger
and Schwendinger 1974; Snodgrass 1976; Sumner 1994). So concerned were Park and
his followers with the day-to-day processes of urban life and the ways in which these
concerns impinged upon and contributed to crime in the city that they neglected to
consider fully the underlying forces of capitalist development that also played a major
role in shaping social life and determining patterns of urban segregation in Chicago.
4.6 Interpreting rises or declines in official statistics
4.6.1 Case study: New York

Background:
After several decades of rising crime and a growing rhetoric of either ‘nothing works’
or the need to ‘get tough on criminals’, crime rates in the USA and Europe have had a
decade and more of real decline. What processes are at work?
New York City has come to stand as an indicator of broader trends.
In the late 1990s New York City recorded less than 1,000 murders in a year for the first
time in over two decades; reported crime fell more than 43 per cent in the city in the
later 1990s, and it has been noted that New York City alone, with 3 per cent of the
American population, accounts for a large part of the national plunge in crime. While
New Yorkers may not fear murder on a day-to-day basis, something they do constantly
fear — car theft — shows an equally astonishing drop from 147,000 in 1990 to 60,000 in
1996, and a further 20 per cent drop in the first quarter of 1997.
There is considerable variation in accounts for this decline. Among candidates:
u the decline of crack cocaine use;
u the economic upturn;
u a change in the policing strategy involving more aggressive policing strategies and
the rise of ‘zero tolerance’.
Economic upturn seems only to explain a small change, as the growth in the American
economy was gradual but sustained over a number of years, for most of which crime
increased. Moreover, there was not much of an economic upturn in New York City
for the unskilled and less educated who contribute most to crime. Indeed, the city’s
unemployment rates have remained persistently high, much higher than the national
average. But both the decline of usage in crack cocaine and changes in policing may
have had a large effect.
A great deal of effort was put into explaining this in terms of a new policing strategy
implemented in New York supposedly based on a theory called the ‘broken windows’
theory. First expressed by political scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist George
Kelling in an article for The Atlantic Monthly in 1982, the theory holds that if someone
breaks a window in a building and it is not quickly repaired, others will be emboldened
to break more windows. Eventually, the broken windows create a sense of disorder
that attracts criminals, who thrive in conditions of public apathy and neglect.
The theory was based on a 1969 experiment conducted by Stanford University

psychologist Philip Zimbardo. He took two identical cars, placing one on a street in a
middle-class Palo Alto neighbourhood and the other in a tougher neighbourhood in
the Bronx. The car in the Bronx which had no licence plate on it and was parked with
its bonnet up was stripped within a day. The car in Palo Alto sat untouched for a week,
until Zimbardo smashed one of its windows with a sledgehammer. Within a few hours
it was stripped.
James Q. Wilson, a professor of public policy at UCLA and leading proponent of Right
Realism presented the case thus: ‘There are two sources of disorder: offenders and
physical disorder. [Both] lead people to believe the neighbourhood is run down. The
central problem for police is to take the small signs of disorder seriously and deal
with them. That could be dealing with small-time offenders, or dealing with physical
disorder, or some combination of both.’
In the mainstream account of NY, former Commissioner Bratton used this approach
when he was commanding the New York Transit Police. Bratton wrote in an article for
the Journal of Law and Policy, in which he claimed that because subway police did not
focus on ‘low-level crimes’, ‘subway disorder and subway crime exploded in the late
1980s. Chronic fare evaders, violators of transit regulations, aggressive panhandlers,
homeless substance abusers and illegal vendors hawking goods on station platforms
all contributed to an atmosphere of disorder, even chaos, in the subways. Thus he
claimed to be ‘convinced that disorder was a key ingredient in the steeply rising
robbery rate, as criminals of opportunity, including many youthful offenders looked
upon the subway as a place where they could get away with anything’.
Bratton called on all transit police to enforce ‘quality of life’ laws and by targeting
fare-beaters – people who jump subway turnstiles without paying. It turned out that
the people who broke the law by jumping turnstiles were often the same people who
broke the law by robbing subway riders. The claimed result: a dramatic drop in crime
on the subway.
Certainly there was a real and perceived increase in feelings of security. From this
experience the task appeared to widen out the process: the claim was that you could
stop the major offences by catching minor offenders. Another expression for this was
to show ‘zero tolerance’ on minor offences so that the larger offences would not then
take place.
In January 1994, newly elected New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani put Bratton in charge of
the NYPD. Giuliani hired Bratton because of his interpretation of the broken windows
theory and NY was now seen as a social experiment in policing.
Five thousand more police were put on the street, and officers were told to enforce
nuisance laws: under this zero-tolerance campaign, ‘quality of life’ patrols snared the
drunks, drug users and taggers. Police identified ‘hot spots’ of gun violence by using
crime maps. In those areas, special teams came in to enforce nuisance laws, frisking
everyone for the slightest infractions in an effort to find the people with the guns.
There were twice-weekly strategy sessions, known as Comstat, which focused the
strategy of the department’s top command on street crime patterns. Each precinct
was questioned about its crime-fighting strategy every five weeks, and precinct
captains were grilled if their crime rates went up.
The rhetoric was for top police executives to pay attention to street-level crime and was
held to be a success. But in other cities where police departments have applied versions
of the broken windows theory – usually choosing to target physical disorder, rather than
petty criminals – it has not proven to be a great success. The resulting programmes went
by a host of names: Weed and Seed, Clean Sweep, Operation CLEAN. Typically, they share
the strategy of one-time sweeps through high-crime areas during which the obvious
drug and prostitution arrests are made. The area, having thus been ‘weeded’, is then
‘seeded’ by a range of city agencies, which fix streetlights, tear down vacant buildings
haul away abandoned cars and make other improvements to the physical environment.
The general claim is that it is a holistic approach, but others claim it only focuses on the
symptoms of social disorder without addressing basic conditions.
It is also an approach that takes the broken windows theory quite literally: by fixing
the windows, you deter crime. When the sanitation workers and the code enforcers
and the maintenance workers leave, the windows tend to get broken again. Targeted
areas tend to deteriorate quickly. Dallas police, for example, abandoned their
Operation CLEAN strategy in 1991 because crime rates in six of the seven target areas
rose inexorably after an initial, hopeful drop. Baltimore housing police have seen the
same thing happen in the city’s eight public housing high-rises since they instituted
a similar strategy. Their statistics did go down but then the housing authority put
its spruced-up buildings in the hands of a private security firm, and the drug dealers
quickly moved back in.
However, the defenders of broken windows and zero tolerance say that the basic
problems are not problems local policy can solve, but local efforts can tackle local
conditions of everyday life and in doing this also deter more serious criminals.
We can, however, be sceptical that police work alone is responsible for what the
headlines have called a ‘suddenly safer New York’; complaints against the police also
increased dramatically. Since other cities then showed similar, though less spectacular,
drops in reported crime, a general consensus formed around the notion that urban
America was going through a crime correction, much like the stock market. Driven by
the aberrant violence of the crack cocaine industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
crime just got too high, by this theory. What goes up must come down.
Other experts are critical of New York’s tactics; citizen complaints of police abuse had
drastically increased. Civil libertarians claimed that the courts became backlogged
because the NYPD was locking up unlicensed vendors and others accused of
extremely minor offences. Were they just making problems for later? As Jerome Miller,
executive director of the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives, a non-profit
organisation that opposes the nation’s rising rates of incarceration, put it: ‘This broken
window theory can quickly deteriorate into the broken head theory. And don’t kid
yourself that that’s not what’s going on. Making all these arrests is going to give a large
number of criminal records to large numbers of poor people. So you make people less
employable. And that is going to come back to haunt them later.’
Other commentators are also not impressed with the NYPD’s interpretation of the
broken window theory either. There are complaints of rigged figures, and that it has
been a self-promoting, publicity driven exercise.
To each of these arguments, New York police retorted. In 1993, one out of every 438
subway fare-beaters arrested was carrying a loaded gun. By 1998, only one out of
every 1,034 was armed – evidence, it is claimed, that the bad guys are leaving their
guns at home. Indeed, the New York strategy may have been too successful. In the end
Bratton resigned amid rumours that Giuliani forced him out because he was getting
all the credit for engineering the drop in crime. He and Maple, a top deputy, have since
accepted posts in the private sector.
Is the city they left behind really safer? The statistics say it is. And the police certainly
seem happier. Many residents also seem to be satisfied.
The local government claimed the credit for these results. Mayor Giuliani successfully
traded upon the reduction in crime when he sought reselection. However, what of
changes elsewhere?
There has been a shift nationwide to more community policing; but the strategies vary
and the broken windows idea is only one of the policing strategies. Crime rates also
fell in other cities (for example, San Francisco) where alternative strategies are used.
In general, the move to community policing with some version of broken windows
seems an attractive theory. Even if it does not reduce serious crime, it contributes to a
better environment.
But there have been other changes in policing and crime control that make it difficult
to pinpoint one cause for the lower crime rates.
And there have also been other changes, owing nothing to government but to changes
in business practice. Criminologists call this ‘routine action’ theory, such as the decline
in the use of cash and the rise of plastic money – and citizens taking more precautions
with their property (car alarms, household security).
Activity 4.5
Read Young, The criminological imagination, Chapter 6 ‘Giuliani and the New York
miracle’.
a. Do you find the broken window theory persuasive? Why?
b. Do you think a zero tolerance approach would improve crime rates or make
them worse because people who would previously not have records would
now be considered criminals and so are more likely to commit crime than they
otherwise would?
c. In the New York case study, do you believe that the city was safer, i.e. no street
prostitutes on Lexington Avenue etc., or do you think the rise in the number of
police patrols and other measures lulled people into a perceived or false sense
of security?
d. Why do you think mainstream American criminologists only look at local trends
rather than crime as a worldwide phenomenon?
e. Why does Young suggest that mainstream criminologists only use cultural
explanations as a last resort?
f. In light of the revelations made by Young on the grouping of ethnicities and

races, do you consider popular terms such as ‘black on black crime’ to be myths?
g. Why do you think the UK did not react as the USA did to its dramatic fall in crime
rates?
h. What are the dangers, in terms of accurate statistics, associated with defining
deviancy up?
i. Do you think crime rates are indeed linked to anti-social behaviour? If so, to
what extent? Is there a point at which they no longer converge?
References
u Atkinson, J.M. ‘Societal reaction to suicide’ in Cohen, S. (ed.) Images of deviance.
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971).
u Atkinson, J.M. Discovering suicide. (London: Macmillan, 1978) [ISBN
9780333219157].
u Cicourel, Aaron V. The social organization of juvenile justice. (London: Heinemann,
1976) [ISBN 9780435821715].
u Durkheim, E. Suicide: a study in sociology. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1970) [ISBN 9780710068903].
u Finestone, H. Victims of change: juvenile delinquents in American society.
(Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1976) [ISBN 9780313201585].
u Garfinkel, H. Studies in ethnomethodology. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984) 2nd
revised edition [ISBN 9780745600055].
u Matza, D. Becoming deviant. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010; first published 1969)
[ISBN 9781412814461].
u Park, R.E. and E.W. Burgess The city. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925).
u Park, R.E. Human communities: the city and human ecology. (Glencoe, Illinois: The
Free Press, 1952).
u Schwendinger, H. and J.R. Schwendinger The sociologists of the chair: a radical
analysis of the formative years of North American sociology (1883–1922). (New York:
Basic Books, 1974).
u Shaw, C.R. The jackroller: a delinquent boy’s own story. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1966; first published 1920) [ISBN 9780226751269].
u Shaw, C.R. and H.D. McKay Social factors in juvenile delinquency. (Washington DC:
Government Printing Office, 1931).
u Shaw, C.R. and H.D. McKay Juvenile delinquency and urban areas. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1969; first published 1942) 2nd revised edition [ISBN
9780226751252].
u Shaw, C.R., F.M. Zorbaugh, H.D. McKay and L.S. Cottrell Delinquency areas: a study
of the geographic distribution of school truants, juvenile delinquents, and adult
offenders in Chicago. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929).
u Snodgrass, J. ‘Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay: Chicago criminologists’ 1976
British Journal of Criminology 16 (1) 1–19.
u Sumner, C. Reading ideologies: an investigation into a Marxist theory of ideology and
law. (Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 1979) [ISBN 9780126766523].
u Sumner, C. The sociology of deviance: an obituary. (Buckingham: Open University
Press, 1994) [ISBN 9780335097807].
u Sutherland, E.H, D.R. Cressey and D.F. Luckenbill Principles of criminology.
(Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 1992) 11th edition [ISBN 9780930390693].
u Taylor, C. Philosophical papers. Vol. 2: Philosophy and the human sciences.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) [ISBN 9781139173490].
u Wiles, P. ‘Criminal statistics and sociological explanations of crime’ in Carson. W.
and P. Wiles (eds) Sociology of crime and delinquency in Britain. (London: Wiley-
Blackwell, 1971) [ISBN 9780855200022].

Question 1 What purposes are served by measuring crime? Do the official criminal
statistics, together with crime surveys, achieve these desired goals?
Question 2 What problems are there in using official crime statistics as a basis for
criminological explanations? Can these problems be alleviated?
Question 3 To what extent is it prudent to base criminal justice policy on the
official statistics? Do alternative measures remedy any problems with using the
official statistics?
Question 4 ‘Official crime statistics give so distorted a view of the real trends
and patterns in criminal behaviour that they can be of no use in criminological
explanation.’
Critically assess this claim.
Notes
5 Psychology and crime
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.1 Historical context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.2 ‘Nature’ versus ‘nurture’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.3 Crime and psychoanalytic theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.4 Social learning and behavioural theories of crime . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.5 Trait-based personality theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.6 Cognitive theories of crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.7 Contemporary narrative approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Introduction
In Chapter 3 we stressed that modern criminology developed in the contrasting
assumptions of the classical school and the positivist tradition. The classical school
held an image of the offender as a rational calculator: the offender was a chosen
subject of the law and therefore was able to be held responsible for their choices.
But it has been long accepted that sometimes some people simply are not in a fit
mental state. Texts on legal history point out that some form of ‘insanity’ has always
been recognised by the law as depriving individuals of the rationality required for the
system to hold them properly accountable for their actions. In his history of insanity
and the criminal law, Walker (1968) points out that in Norman times insanity was not
seen as a defence in itself but a special circumstance in which the jury would deliver
a guilty verdict and refer the defendant to the king for a pardon. (The famous work
of Bracton in the 12th century contains a plea that describes the ‘insane’ as ‘without
sense and reason’ and thus they could ‘no more commit a tort or a felony than a brute
animal’.)
Modern legal systems find no conceptual difficulty in allowing a plea of insanity

as either a defence or as a mitigation: note that while not criminally liable or only
partially liable, the person is then sent to a different regime of control, in most cases
a secure mental hospital or an institution for the criminally insane usually for an
indeterminate period.
In England, the famous case of M’Naghten (R v M’Naghten (1843) 8 ER 718) resulted in a

set of ‘rules’ that have provided – with some modifications – a test for criminal liability
in relation to mentally disordered defendants in common law jurisdictions ever
since. If satisfied, the court may return a verdict of ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ or
‘guilty but insane’ and the sentence may be a mandatory or discretionary (but usually
indeterminate) period of treatment, either in a secure hospital facility, or otherwise at
the discretion of the court.
The conditions under which such individuals are held has also been a subject of
concern for reformers. Asylums have, unfortunately, been all too often dumping
grounds for a wide range of people with mental illnesses that were hard to define or,
in some case, people who were social misfits and did not fit into ‘normal’ categories.
It is also clear that many people who end up in prison are suffering from some form of
mental illness.
In the 1960s and 1970s attention turned to the consequences of ‘labelling’ individuals
and institutionalising them. On a cultural level see, for example, the film ‘One flew over
the cuckoo’s nest’ (1975, based on a 1962 novel of the same title).
But if, academically, we accept that the boundaries between ‘normal’, ‘bad’ and
‘mad’ are difficult to rationalise and the use of concepts such as good’ and ‘evil’ is
unstable, they are thrown out and developed in public discourse in films, television
programmes, novels and newspapers, blogs and other mass media sites. Following on
from Jean Baudrillard (and others such as Umberto Eco), it has become commonplace
to refer to the present as a time of hyper reality, where it becomes difficult to
differentiate fact from fiction. Media studies of infotainment and faction demonstrate
the power of the various forms of mass media and Brown (2003, p.53) states ‘[i]t is the
televisual which has above all reduced the apparent gap between “news” and “fiction”
in its generic cross-dressing…This is a multifaceted phenomenon as the “news and
fiction” undergo a rapidly accelerating process of hybridization.’
For others, such as Richard Rorty (1989) humans have always been storytelling
creatures and social solidarity is achieved as much by the way humans and their
dilemmas are presented in stories as any academic enterprise. For Rorty, rationalising
questions such as ‘what is it to be human?’ are dangerous as they allow us to
rationalise that some people are to be considered less than human (as Aristotle
defended slavery, Hitler defined the Jews as sub-human), thus justifying cruelty to
those people. But to define a person as ‘less than human’ we need a metaphysical
Criminology 5 Psychology and crime page 65
‘yardstick’ by which to measure their prototypical humanness. Rorty seeks to

deprive us of this yardstick by destroying its claims to objectivity; instead we face a
contingency of language. Some language use dehumanises, some humanises. Rorty
deals predominantly with books which he classifies into those ‘which help us become
autonomous’ and those ‘which help us become less cruel’; the latter includes ‘books
which help us see the effects of social practices and institutions on others’ and ‘those
which help us see the effects of our private idiosyncrasies on others’. Some books (and
media generally) simply offer relaxation while some supply novel stimuli to action.
Such warnings are apt; consider the images of good and evil, victims and perpetrators
in crime fiction and television series such as ‘Law and order’. Crime fiction sells in the
hundreds of million copies a year. In the 1990s, for example, Scandinavian writers
developed a Nordic noir that went worldwide; Jo Nesbo, for example, in a relatively
short writing period has sold over 20 million copies in various languages of the Harry
Hole series. These are violent stories in which Hole, a sometimes barely functioning
detective (always battling alcoholism) of the Crime Squad and later with the National
Criminal Investigation Service (Kripos), pits his wits against serial killers, assassins and
corrupt policemen against the backdrop of a warts-and-all Oslo, with other locations
in Australia, Hong Kong and even the Republic of the Congo. Hole confronts seemingly
unconnected cases, always involving extreme violence and repressed knowledge, but
also spends a significant amount of time in introspection battling nightmares and his
own demons.
In Nordic noir, we continually confront the consequences of closed communities

obeying what might be termed a ‘law of silence’: burdens from the past from
covering up things, of not talking about things, until finally, one day, everything
unravels because of that repression. We engage with family loyalty, obsessions, harsh
environments, with violence, often seemingly coming from repressed, primitive
parts of people. The detective hero confronts the unknown, and finding the missing
links entails confronting what is missing inside him; the psychological conflicts of the
‘guilty’ are often a reflection of the psychological conflicts within the hunter. These
detectives have few friends and perhaps their only real workplace relationships are
with the forensic experts, crime scene investigators, pathologists and psychologists.
The public are fascinated by criminal psychology. Images of forensic crime analysis,
the study of psychopathic or mentally impaired serial killers and accounts of the
work of various well-known offender profilers have all served to create the image
that psychology is somehow capable of identifying and understanding ‘uniqueness’,
of recognising whom we should trust and whom we should fear. The Nordic noir
mentioned above is but a very small part of a huge industry, with best-selling
books like Thomas Harris’s Silence of the lambs and Red dragon, Bret Easton Ellis’s
American psycho (unable to be sold to anyone under the age of 18 in many countries),
films such as ‘A clockwork orange’, ‘American psycho’ or TV shows such as Robbie
Coltrane’s compelling portrayal of the forensic psychologist Fitz in the British TV
series ‘Cracker’. Each evokes a compelling mixture of fear and fascination often
around the idea of the psychopath, the serial killer, the person who may look normal
but who is truly different. But we are usually reassured that psychology holds the
key to understanding that difference. In these accounts, criminal psychology is
frequently portrayed in a very favourable light, its practitioners as capable of feats
of identification and detection that far exceed the laboured efforts of the police and
other state agencies.
But how accurate are these filmic and literary representations? Are serial killers really
that common? Is the psychopath a real entity? And what of the portrayal of forensic
psychologists: to what extent do they really reflect the role played by psychologists
in understanding and interpreting crime and deviance? What is the real relationship
between psychology and criminology?
Activity 5.1
Watch a film or read a book that has a supposed ‘psychopath’ as it central character
(for example: American psycho or A clockwork orange). Research its creation, plot
and messages.
To what extent is, for example A clockwork orange, an example of public
criminology?
Learning outcomes
u recognise and understand the main psychological theories explaining criminal
behaviour
u outline the relationship of criminal and psychology using the main psychological
explanations of criminality
u understand and discuss the ‘nature’ versus ‘nurture’ debate
u undertake a basic critique of the psychological approach to the study of crime.
Core text
¢ Hopkins Burke, Chapter 6 ‘Psychological positivism’.
Essential reading
¢ Morrison, 1995, Chapter 7 ‘Criminological positivism II: psychology and the
positivisation of the soul’.
Further reading
See the webpages Criminal psychology – everything about it at:
www.e-criminalpsychology.com/
¢ Ainsworth, P.B. Psychology and crime: myths and realities. (London: Longman,
1999) [ISBN 9780582414242].
¢ Bartol, C.R. and A.M. Bartol Criminal behaviour: a psychosocial approach. (London:
Pearson, 2002) 6th edition [ISBN 9780130918376].
¢ Blackburn, R. The psychology of criminal conduct: theory, research and practice.

(Chichester: Wiley, 1998) [ISBN 9780471961758].
¢ Einstadter, W.J. and S. Henry Criminological theory: an analysis of its underlying

assumptions. (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006) second edition
[ISBN 9780742542914] Chapter 5 ‘Individual positivism II: personality theories’.
¢ Hollin, C.R. Criminal behaviour: a psychological approach to explanation and

prevention. (Hove: Psychology Press, 1992) [ISBN 9781850009559].
¢ Hollin, C.R. ’Criminological psychology’ in Maguire, M. et al. (eds) The Oxford

handbook of criminology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) fifth edition
[ISBN 9780199590278].
¢ McGuire, J. Understanding psychology and crime: perspectives on theory and action.

(Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill Education, 2004) [ISBN 9780335211197].
5.1 Historical context

Generally speaking, psychology and criminology emerged as distinct disciplines
at a very similar historical moment – the latter half of the 19th century. Typically,
one associates the birth of modern criminology with the work of Cesare Lombroso
(1835–1909) and his fellow members of the Italian positivist school (see Chapter 4;
Lombroso would still be considered the father of criminal profiling). At this point, of
course, criminology was still preoccupied with matters relating to the individual actor,
the so-called ‘criminal person or type’. But soon it broadened its horizons to include
wider social, environmental and economic factors in accounts of crime. Psychology,
meanwhile, had begun to coalesce around the early experimental research of the
German, Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) – the first person to call himself a psychologist –
and the American, William James (1842–1940).
Such simultaneous development is perhaps not surprising for both disciplines can be
seen as clear products of modernity’s faith in enlightened science and philosophy (see
Morrison, 1995). If modernity was about anything it was about the belief that society’s
failings would be overcome or at least managed (controlled) by the careful, scientific
pursuit of relevant knowledge and the application of this knowledge to a specific set
of problems. The then fledgling disciplines of criminology and psychology exemplified
such ideals; protagonists of both ‘sciences’ steadfastly believing that rational scientific
analysis could ‘make sense’ of human behaviour by identifying flaws and categorising
traits and types. No longer would there be talk of humans possessing a ‘soul’ or a
‘spirit’ – or indeed of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Instead, the psychologist and the criminologist
would be the objective recorder of ‘personality’ and ‘criminality’ respectively.
(As you read through the rest of this chapter, you may want to keep the basic question
in mind: can either criminology or psychology truly be called a ‘science’?)
5.2 ‘Nature’ versus ‘nurture’

Perhaps the most enduring controversy within psychology has been the ‘nature
versus nurture debate’. In simple terms, the controversy revolved around the origins
of individual human behaviour and personality. Carlson et al. 1999, pp.99–100) neatly
summarised the debate, whilst also pointing out that, as with various other aspects
of psychology, what initially appeared to be clear-cut distinctions were in fact rather
blurred:
‘Is it [personality] caused by biological or social factors?’ ‘Is it innate or learned?’ ‘Is it
a result of hereditary or cultural influences?’ ‘Should we look for an explanation in the
brain or in the environment?’ Almost always, biology, innateness, heredity, and the
brain are placed on the ‘nature’ side of the equation. Society, learning, culture, and the
environment are placed on the ‘nurture’ side. Rarely, does anyone question whether these
groups of items really form a true dichotomy… most modern psychologists consider
the nature-nurture issue to be a relic of the past. That is, they believe that all behaviours,
talents, and personality traits are the products of both types of factors: biological and
social, hereditary and cultural, physiological and environmental. The task of the modern
psychologist is not to find out which one of these factors is more important but to
discover the particular roles played by each of them and to determine the ways in which
they interact.
Most workers in the field now believe that the debate should be over: ‘I believe human
behaviour has to be explained by both nature and nurture’ (Ridley, 2004). Such is also
the case with certain psychological understandings of criminality. From almost the
inception of the discipline, psychologists have been drawn to various physiological
and biological explanations of human behaviour – including biological explanations
that claim to account for individual involvement in crime in terms of their inherent
criminality. The attraction of these accounts is that they appear to offer the promise
that, if humans were examined like other animals, the ‘laws of nature’ that govern
‘human behaviour’ could be established and accounted for. Under this perspective,
human behaviour is determined by factors that, while universal to the species, reside
to a greater or lesser extent in the constitution of the individual. Prominent examples
of this – now largely discredited – approach to the study of crime include:
u the attention given to the ‘XYY Syndrome’ in the 1960s (a chromosomal abnormality
that was controversially linked to violent crime) (see Sandberg et al. 1961);
u William Sheldon’s famous (1942) attempt to link the delinquent personality with
body-build (or ‘somatotypes’);
u the German physician Johannes Lange’s work in the 1920s on ‘twin studies’, where
the criminal records of identical and fraternal twins were contrasted. Work
continues in this area today;
(Twin studies are important because monozygotic twins share all their DNA, and
are thus identical in terms of heredity. If MZ twins are brought up in different
environments (which does happen, if rarely) then it is possible to evaluate how far
their behaviour and abilities vary due to nurture differences compare with those of
MXZ twins raised together. This gives a picture of the relative impact of nature and
nurture.)
u research into biochemical and hormonal imbalances and criminality in the 1920s
and 1930s (this was very popular, now seen as also dangerous);
u the link between testosterone and aggression.
Each one of these examples, of course, should be seen as classic illustrations of the
‘nature’ dimension of the ‘nature/nurture’ debate.
Despite considerable criticism of such approaches, there are still those today who
continue to try and reinstate constitutional factors. In their controversial but well-read
work Crime and human nature (1985), Wilson and Hernstein devote several pages
to reproducing diagrams and photography used by Sheldon, and conclude that
‘wherever it has been examined, criminals on the average differ in physique from the
population at large’.
However, while, numerous psychologists have, over the years, sought to identify a
single biological (i.e. ‘nature’) explanation of crime, such attempts have born little
fruit. Simply stated, this body of work is plagued by exactly the same problems
encountered by the Italian positivists; specifically, it is constantly hampered by its
inability to control for complex and interacting environmental and social influences.
Thus, all informed scholars who claim that biology plays a strong role in criminality
now no longer talk in terms of a dominating role; rather, a picture is drawn of
behaviour resulting from the interaction of the biological makeup of the organism
with the physical and social environment. To put it more bluntly, few psychologists
still cling to the idea that certain individuals are somehow predetermined into a
life of crime. Instead, the ‘nature/nurture’ dichotomy is seen to be less an absolute
distinction and more an interacting framework for thinking about causal factors in the
commission of crime.
Activity 5.2
The idea that criminality can be inherited has appealed to many people, but why?
Draw up a list of arguments in favour of this, and another list of arguments against.
What explains this appeal?
Now consider mental states: while classical criminology assumed a coherent rational
calculator, criminal justice later had little problem in dealing with the criminally
insane, those not of sound mind who acted in the grip of that abnormal mental
state. Such persons are regarded as not truly criminally liable, while they may pose
a danger to others in society they are to be treated by medical professionals, not
correctional staff. What is more problematic is the ‘normal’ person who somehow
does not think ‘normally’, or whose criminal behaviour appears the result of a
normal leaning process. But are these categories mutually exclusive?
Further reading
¢ Wilson, J.Q. and R. Herrnstein Crime and human nature: the definitive study of the
causes of crime. (New York: The Free Press, 1985) [ISBN 9780684852669].
5.3 Crime and psychoanalytic theory

Although most have heard of the Austrian psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), few
will be aware of the impact his thinking had on criminal psychology. In reality, Freud
himself had little to say about crime; however, his ideas served as the cornerstone
for a whole host of theories that sought to understand crime and deviance by
recourse to psychoanalytic techniques – even though many of these subsequent
so-called ‘psychoanalytical theories’ of crime very often represented something of an
adulteration (or, more charitably, an augmentation) of classic Freudian psychoanalytic
theory (see Freud, 1935).
Freud’s great achievement was to highlight the way that innate desires and repressed
emotions shape individual human behaviour. To fully appreciate this perspective, one
must first understand how Freud perceived the human mind. In simple terms, Freud
argued that the mind was comprised of three provinces:
u The id represents the primitive, instinctive, animalistic portion of the ‘unconscious

mind’. It is here that primeval human desires such as innate sexual urges and the
drive for life (Eros) reside. The goal of the id is simple: to gratify instincts at all costs.
u The ego relates (primarily) to the ‘conscious mind’, and acts as a sort of ‘mediating
device’ between the two opposing mental forces of the id and the super-ego.
Because of the conscious recognition within the individual that ‘every act has a
consequence’, Freud claimed that the ego was driven by the ‘reality principle’.
u Finally, the (largely conscious) super-ego is the ‘repository of moral values’ and
the seat of guilt within the individual. Perhaps the best way to perceive the
super-ego is as a sort of internal ‘nagging parent’ or moral or ethical guardian.
Importantly, especially for psychoanalytical theories of crime, the super-ego
develops as a result of a series of early social experience(s) (and, for Freud at least,
admonishments) that serve to engender in the individual an internal ‘source of
self-criticism based on the production of guilt’.
In crude terms, Freud maintained that human behaviour should be thought of as a

‘struggle between the internalised psychic forces of the id and the super-ego’ – with
the ego constantly striving to maintain a suitable balance. It is this checking and
controlling process that is of vital importance to Freudian psychoanalysis. Over time,
and largely formed through learned behaviour, the ego strives to undertake a complex
mental balancing act between the primeval desires of the id and the internalised
conscience of the super-ego, whilst all the time seeking to work out the best way in
which to actually ‘serve’ the id by meeting some of its requirements.
But what does all this mean in terms of understanding criminal behaviour? The key
thing here is the process by which the super-ego is formed. As mentioned above, a
well-developed super-ego is the result of early social interactions with parents (or
with those acting in loco parentis). Consequently, for proponents of psychoanalytical
criminology, criminal behaviour can be understood as an expression of buried internal
(mental) conflicts that are the result of traumas or deprivations experienced during
childhood.
The first to apply such psychoanalytical models to the study of crime was the
former schoolteacher August Aichorn (1925). Aichorn postulated that traditional
environmental factors were not sufficient in and of themselves to account for
individual involvement in criminal activity. Instead, he argued that many of the
delinquent children he studied exhibited what he described as latent delinquency
– an ‘underlying predisposition’ which psychologically conditions the child ‘for a
lifetime of crime’. In other words, a failure to establish productive early emotional
relationship resulted in a breakdown in the socialisation process, ‘allowing the latent
delinquency to become dominant: a state which Aichorn describes as ‘dissocial’. The
criminal behaviour is therefore the result of a failure of psychological development,
thereby allowing the underlying, latent delinquency to govern the behaviour (Hollin
2012 [1989], p.35). Aichorn’s remedy was thus straightforward: delinquent children
must be provided with a well-supervised, pleasant social environment that will
encourage the type of emotional relationship which, in turn, will help develop a well-
established super-ego.
Perhaps the most influential figure in this field, however, was the British
developmental psychologist, John Bowlby (1907–1990). Bowlby’s achievement was
to solidify the link between maternal deprivation and antisocial behaviour (Bowlby
1944). Of central importance for Bowlby was the close, loving relationship between
mother and child. Consequently, any rejection or separation between mother and
child during early child development is likely to prove highly problematic. Indeed,
according to Bowlby’s sample groups, such ruptures in familial relations will be
disproportionately represented in serious cases of delinquency in later life.
Bowlby’s writings, along with other related research, proved extremely effective in
terms of influencing governments and generating policy initiatives. Not least, ideas
about maternal deprivation and other later so-called ‘broken home theories’ were
a central element in the rehabilitative ‘welfarist’ movement in youth justice of the
1960s and 1970s. However, these early forays into the psychology of the offender
did not sit well with everyone. Many commentators strongly objected to the lack of
scientific rigour associated with this early psychoanalytical criminology (specifically the
‘tautological’ and ‘untestable’ nature of the intra-psychic Freudian approach). Others
meanwhile questioned the extent to which the psychoanalytical approach relied upon
the interpretative expertise of the analyst in teasing out the particular link between the
criminal act and the hidden unconscious drive – a link that, for many, was simply too
convoluted and contingent. That said, the psychoanalytical approach to deviance, and
other subsequent theories derived from psychoanalysis, went on to exert considerable
influence within both psychology and criminology for many decades to come.
Further reading
¢ Bowlby, J. Attachment and loss: separation – anxiety and anger. (London: The
Hogarth Press, 1973) [ISBN 978-0712666213].
¢ Kline, P. Psychology and Freudian theory: an introduction. (London: Metheun,

1984) [ISBN 9780415058780].
5.4 Social learning and behavioural theories of crime

In contrast to theories of crime that suggest the root cause of deviance lies with
primitive instinctive drives and internal psychodynamic struggles, behavioural and
social learning theories – as the name clearly implies – assert instead that crime and
deviance are learned responses. Much of the thinking behind this work can be seen as
stemming from the work of the Chicago school (see Chapter 4) and in particular Edwin
Sutherland’s renowned sociological theory of ‘differential association’ (Sutherland et
al. 1992).
For Sutherland, behaviour – including crime – is a social product, a result of different

interactions and patterns of learning that occur in the intimate personal group and
surrounding social circumstances that encapsulate the individual. According to
Sutherland, such groups teach ‘definitions’ – including special skills, motivations,
norms and beliefs – either ‘unfavourable’ or ‘favourable’ to the violation of the law.
Despite criticisms of differential association (not least questions about why, under
shared conditions, individuals still tend to behave very differently from each other),
Sutherland’s work ushered in a whole host of subsequent theories that sought to
prove that the determinants of behaviour reside outside the individual.
While this line of thinking inevitably chimed loudly with the shift already underway
within American psychology towards ‘behaviourism’ (see e.g. Watson [1913] for an
early example), it was the research of B. F. Skinner (1904–1990), and especially his
principles of ‘operant learning’ (1938, 1953 [1965]), that was significant. Crudely stated,
operant learning suggests that ‘behaviour is determined by the environmental
consequences it produces for the individual concerned’. Put another way, behaviour
that leads to ‘awards’ will increase (i.e. is ‘positively reinforced’); behaviour that
produces an unpleasant stimulus (i.e. is ‘punished’) is avoided: ‘Any such behaviour,
driving a car, writing a letter, talking to a friend, setting fire to a house, is operant
behaviour. Behaviour does not occur at random; environmental cues signal when
certain behaviours are liable to be reinforced or punished… the Antecedent conditions
prompt the Behaviour which in turn produces the Consequences – the ABC of
behavioural theory’ (Hollin, 1989, p.40).
Note how this fits with the assumptions of classical criminology: here the offender has
learnt the benefits of crime. In this sense it is a reward-based theory.
Among the first to suggest that criminal behaviour could be understood in terms of
operant learning was C.R. Jeffrey (1965) and his theory of differential reinforcement
(see also more latterly Akers, 1973). By combining the principles of Skinner’s operant
learning with Sutherland’s differential association, Jeffrey maintained that, although
criminal behaviour might well be the result of pervasive socio-cultural norms and
attitudes within a given locality (à la Sutherland), it is also greatly affected by the
particular consequences (or ‘reinforcements’ in Skinnerian terms) that deviance
produces for the individual. For example, ‘The majority of crimes are concerned with
stealing where the consequences are clearly material and financial gain: the gains
may therefore be seen as positively reinforcing the stealing’ (Hollin, 1989, p.41). Such
an approach has the advantage of overcoming the main problem associated with
differential association. By focusing on individual learning histories (i.e. unique reward
and punishment experiences), differential reinforcement theory explains how, despite
shared environmental conditions, individual actors ultimately behave very differently.
While Skinner and Jeffrey did not wholly discount the role of internal mental processes
in their particular brand of behaviourism, neither did they feature prominently in their
analyses. The first to actively integrate ‘internal processes’ into learning theory was the
psychologist Albert Bandura (1973, 1976). Bandura’s ‘social learning theory’ hypothesis
was an uncomplicated one: individual behaviour is something learnt at the cognitive
level by observing and then imitating the actions of others. Most famously, Bandura
conducted an experiment in which a group of infants watched a film depicting an
adult violently attacking an inflatable rubber ‘Bobo’ doll. In subsequent tests, this
group were significantly more likely to repeat the aggressive behaviour towards
the doll than were the members of a control group who had not been exposed to
the film – indeed, this second group behaved more passively throughout the whole
experiment. Because of the emphasis Bandura placed on ‘learnt aggression’, his
findings quickly found support within criminological psychology.
Such experiments suggested that not only does social learning take place at the
familial and sub-cultural level, but also via the observation of cultural symbols and
media ‘role models’ (see Chapter 8 of this subject guide). ‘For example, a child may
learn to shoot a gun by imitating television characters. He or she then rehearses and
fine tunes this behavioural pattern by practicing with toy guns’ (Bartol and Bartol,
2002, p.128). Naturally, just like other operant behaviour, cognitively learned behaviour
is further ‘reinforced’ or ‘punished’ via the process of socialisation. ‘The behaviour is
likely to be maintained if peers also play with guns and reinforce one another for doing
so’ (ibid.).
While behavioural and social learning theories continued to develop by the end of the
1970s most criminal psychologists had turned their back on this approach, choosing
instead to pursue a very different course based around theories of criminal behaviour
concerned with the identification of individual personality traits.
Activity 5.3
a. Identify an everyday example of a situation where social and behavioural
learning seems to determine people’s behaviour. Are there any factors which
would prevent such learning take place?
b. Think about some of your own characteristics, traits and behaviours. To what
extent have these behaviours been learned, either via ‘positive reinforcement’,
‘differential association’ or via the observation of cultural symbols and media
‘role models’?
Further reading
¢ Skinner, B.F. Science and human behavior. (New York: The Free Press, 1965; first
published 1953) [ISBN 9780029290408].
5.5 Trait-based personality theories

‘Trait-based personality theories’ set out to identify and classify particular personality
characteristics, and to empirically measure how these traits become assembled
differently in different people. The central figure in this shift towards understanding
human behaviour via ‘psychometric’ statistical testing was Hans Eysenck (1916–1997)
(Eysenck, 1977; Eysenck and Gudjonsson, 1989).
Eysenck had little time for the ‘sociological turn’ in the study of crime and deviance.
Instead he stressed the fundamental role of inherited genetic predispositions
(especially in relation to the cortical and autonomic central nervous systems) in
determining the way each individual responds to environmental conditioning.
In other words, Eysenck subscribed to the view that an individual’s personality –
including those personality traits that he considered constitutive of the criminal
personality – was largely the product of their genetic make-up. Yet, this was no simple
return to biological determinism (see above), rather Eysenck’s theory was a fusion of
biological, socio-environmental and individual factors.
Because Eysenck spent much of his life’s work constantly retesting and augmenting his
theory of crime, his key assertions are not easily summarised. However, the following
passages by Lanier and Henry provide a succinct general synopsis (for more detailed
summaries see Eysenck, 1984; Bartol and Bartol, 2002, pp.70–85; Hollin, 2012 [1989],
pp.53–59).
Eysenck claimed to show that human personalities are made up of clusters of traits.
One cluster produces a sensitive, inhibited temperament that he called introversion.
A second cluster produces an outward-focused, cheerful, expressive temperament
that he called extroversion. A third dimension of personality, which forms emotional
stability or instability, he labelled neuroticism; to this schema he subsequently added
psychoticism, which is a predisposition to a psychotic breakdown. Normal human
personalities are emotionally stable, neither highly introvert or extrovert. In contrast,
those who are highly neurotic, highly extroverted and score high on a psychoticism
scale have a greater predisposition toward crime, forming in the extreme the
psychopathic personality. Eysenck explained that such personalities (sensation
seekers) are less sensitive to excitation by stimuli, requiring more stimulation than
normal, which they can achieve through crime, violence and drug taking. These
people, being emotionally unstable, are impulsive. They are also less easy to condition
and have a higher threshold or tolerance to pain. Low IQ can [also] affect the ability
of such personalities to learn rules, perceive punishment, or experience pain, as in
biological theory (Lanier and Henry, 2015 [1998], p.119).
Taken at face value, Eysenck’s theories seem convincing. Yet, a trawl through the
mass of empirical research undertaken in an attempt to test his propositions reveals
a more ambiguous picture – not least because many of these studies point to a
number of significant methodological and theoretical flaws. Crucially, while there
is general support for his contention that offenders will score highly on both the
psychoticism and neuroticism dimensions, there is little evidence to support the
crime–extroversion connection. Furthermore, a common charge often labelled at the
trait-based approach is that it is inherently tautological: ‘Stealing may be taken as an
indicator of impulsiveness and impulsiveness given as the reason for stealing. Thus a
recurrent criticism of trait-based theories is that they represent correlational rather
than causal connections’ (ibid, p.121). Or as Gottfredson and Hirschi put it: there is
‘an obvious conceptual overlap of the personality dimensions and in the inability to
measure them independently of the acts they are meant to produce’ (1990, p.111).
These and various other criticisms aside, the wider influence of the trait-based
approach to deviance can be seen in the continued growth of psychometric
questionnaires and other related diagnostic devices that have emerged out of
this field of research. Basically, the idea here is that specific personality traits can
be measured and assessed by asking the individual a battery of specially designed
questions (or more recently by testing responses to a series of visual scenarios). Such
assessments are then used to predict, prevent and treat future deviant behaviour.
Inevitably, many commentators have pointed out the intrinsic problems associated
with statistical attempts to measure anything as complex and multifaceted as
personality (see most famously, Taylor et al. 2013 [1973], pp.44–61) – not least, the
all-too-familiar methodological pitfalls associated with self-report studies. Yet, most
of this type of psychology has proceeded virtually oblivious to such methodological
criticism and has continued to embrace empirical psychometric methods and other
forms of quantitative analysis. This unflinching faith in psychology as a positivist
science, coupled with the continued emphasis placed by Eysenck and his followers
on the importance of biological factors in the development of personality, served
to drive a deep wedge between psychology and criminology. For almost at the same
moment that Eysenck’s influence was being felt most acutely in psychology (the late
1960s and 1970s), criminology was dramatically affected by a new wave of Marxist-
inspired research, as announced by Taylor, Walton and Young in their ground-breaking
work The new criminology. As (the majority of) criminology turned down the road
towards theories of crime couched firmly in sociological and political economic terms,
mainstream psychology continued down the experimental, empirical path. As Hollin
explains: ‘To appreciate the differences between Taylor et al. and Eysenck, is to see
that at the time, there could be no point of contact between the new criminology
and mainstream psychology (of which Eysenck was a leading figure)’ (2002 [1989],
p.155). Such disharmony between the disciplines would only intensify, as psychology
embarked on its next theoretical stage.
Activity 5.4
Could you make the argument that psychology is not really a science?
Further reading
¢ Eysenck, H.J. Crime and personality. (London: Routledge, 1977)
[ISBN 9780415842112].
5.6 Cognitive theories of crime

Cognitive theory ‘has as its major theme how mental thought processes are used
to solve problems – to interpret, evaluate, and decide on the best of actions. These
thought processes occur through mental pictures and conversations with ourselves’
(Lanier and Henry 2015 [1989], p.126). More simply, it is an attempt to understand
the way people think via investigations of such concepts as intelligence, memory
structure, visual perception and logical ability.
The first major cognitive study to make an impression on criminology was Yochelson
and Samenow’s infamous The criminal personality 2000 [1976]. In an expansive three-
volume work, Yochelson and Samenow set themselves the ambitious task of ‘mapping
the criminal mind’. The positivist zeal with which they undertook this task is made
clear in the following quote by Samenow:
I shall expose the myths about why criminals commit crimes, and I shall draw a picture
for you of the personality of the criminal just as the police artist draws a picture of his face
from the description. I shall describe how criminals think, how they defend their crimes to
others, and how they exploit programs that are developed to help them. (Samenow 2014
[1984], p.5)
All this from a sample group of only 240 offenders, each one of whom had been
adjudged ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ and who, at the time of study, were
institutionalised in a psychiatric hospital in Washington D.C. After several thousands
of hours of qualitative interviewing, Yochelson and Samenow identified ‘52 errors of
criminal thinking’ or ‘problematic thinking styles’ that, they claimed, taken together
constituted ‘the criminal personality’. These included inter alia ‘chronic lying’,
‘irresponsible decision-making’, ‘super optimism’, ‘distorted self-image’ and ‘a lack
of empathy for others’ (a trait that has since been made much of in contemporary
cognitive-behavioural programmes for sex offenders; see below). According to
Samenow, such ‘cognitive distortions’ ensure that ‘[C]riminals think differently from
responsible people’ and, moreover, that ‘Crime resides within the person and is
“caused” by the way he thinks, not by his environment’ (Samenow (2014) [1984],
p.xiv, cited in Lanier and Henry (2015) [1998], p.127, emphases added). Naturally, such
assertions have implications in terms of how one treats the offender. Indeed, it is
within the sphere of contemporary treatment programmes that the influence of
cognitive theory has been greatest. In the meantime, it is worth pausing to reflect
on some of the much-voiced criticisms of Yochelson and Samenow’s The criminal
personality, as these critiques also serve to illustrate many of the problems associated
with various other types of empirical psychology concerned with statistically
measuring or ‘mapping’ the complexities of the human criminal personality.
To start with, little distinction is made between the various types of criminal studied.
Thus their assertion that all criminals share the same thought patterns/processes is
highly problematic – does a violent offender, for example, share the same cognitive
distortions as an embezzler? Secondly, by focusing so intently on internal thought
processes and dysfunctional cognitions, Yochelson and Samenow downplay the
importance of both psychobiological and socio-environmental influences. Thirdly,
theories of crime that stress cognitive irregularities are seen as tautological in that
certain behaviours are said to be indicative of cognitive processes, while these same
cognitive processes are then used to explain away the behaviour. Fourthly, and
perhaps most obviously, Yochelson and Samenow’s sample was comprised only of
incarcerated offenders. Yet, while one cannot deny the existence of these and several
other theoretical and methodological flaws, it is hard not to be drawn to some of their
ideas about cognitive reasoning, especially in relation to interpersonal relationships.
Unsurprising, then, that many other psychologists have chosen to pursue this line of
inquiry and in doing so have developed a body of work that, not only greatly augments
Yochelson and Samenow’s research, but which has since gone on to be enthusiastically
received by practitioners working in the treatment arena.
A central assumption of The criminal personality is that a criminal’s erroneous thinking

can be corrected if they are first taught to construct a ‘moral inventory’ of their
everyday thoughts, and then, by working with a practitioner, to identify and ultimately
eradicate any dysfunctional cognitions. Although something of an over-simplification,
this is the rationale behind the majority of cognitive therapeutic interventions
that seek to correct problems experienced by offenders in their everyday lives. For
example, such programmes typically concentrate on cognitive considerations such as
insufficient levels of self-control; an inability to feel empathy for others – especially
victims; deficits in basic social problem-solving skills; problems in the interpretation
of visual and situational cues; and an inability to distinguish between which facets of
personal life are subject to internal control (i.e. are governed by one’s own actions)
and those which are subject to external control (i.e. are governed by the actions of
others).
Cognitively inspired treatment programmes are currently very popular within the
UK criminal justice system, being employed in increasing numbers both within the
prison setting and as an alternative to custody. However, while these correctional
programmes have often proved successful at reducing certain forms of persistent
offending, ultimately they remain fundamentally limited in scope – primarily in the
sense that they never really offer a full and inclusive explanation of why someone
becomes involved in criminality (or, for that matter, decides to stop). That said,
perhaps this is not really the point. These cognitively inspired programmes make
no attempt to consider traditional criminological concerns such as the inequalities
associated with class, race, gender and socio-economic deprivation. Instead, the
goal is the distillation of crime and criminality to semi-rigid ‘narratives of feeling’ and
formalised, reductionist understandings of the social world. Only when this process
is complete will the individual offender then be in a position to assume responsibility
for their actions. Such psychotherapeutic practices represent the new wave of
governmental and institutional weapons in the fight against crime, a discourse
preoccupied solely with strategies of pacification and control (see Garland 1992, 2002
for a more general introduction to criminological thinking in this area) – with the
psychologist as independent arbiter of acceptable behaviour and intention.
Activity 5.5
Is crime and deviance simply a product of ‘bad thinking’? If so, can these errant
thought processes be corrected?
Using online sources explain what ‘narrative therapy’ is?
(See also next section.)
Further reading
¢ Samenow, S.E. Inside the criminal mind. (New York: Bantam Books Inc., 2014; first
published 1984) revised edition [ISBN 9780804139908].
5.7 Contemporary narrative approaches

For an account of use of narrative therapy in forensic psychology see Dr Gwen
Adshead, ‘Their dark materials: narratives and recovery in forensic practice’ at:
www.antoniocasella.eu/archipsy/Adshead_2012-a.pdf
Narrative therapy builds on the understanding that our sense of self is very much tied
up with the stories we tell ourselves about our lives and how we see the situations
we live in. Adshead emphasises how narrative therapy has assumed a large role in the
recovery and change process in mental health. Our narratives are the stories we tell of
ourselves, our choices and experiences that make up our identities. These narratives
change and develop over the course of a lifetime, this dynamic quality means that
intervention is possible by working with the person to redevelop the way they
perceive themselves and the conditions they are in. Narratives are complex, layered,
and integrate different perspectives of the self and social roles; they acknowledge that
we may see things differently over time, and how we see ourselves may not be what
others see.
What is termed the ‘recovery movement’ in mental health services has placed
emphasis on narratives for a number of reasons. First, it emphasises the importance
of the personal lived experience of people living with mental illness or injury, as
opposed to the case history record with its emphasis on diagnostic labels and results
of observations and investigations. Secondly, telling one’s story has always been an
important part of the recovery process, as exemplified by the recovery process in the
Twelve Step programme of Alcoholics Anonymous (arguably the first example of the
use of the language of recovery in the psychological context). Finally, the concept of
recovery implies the possibility of change, as opposed to fixed or rigid categorical
ways of defining people: the story of how a person lives with schizophrenia is likely to
change over time, where the bald diagnosis does not.
Activity 5.6
In popular psychology and in many people’s estimation of what criminology is (or
should be in their eyes) the field of forensic psychology and tacking down the serial
killer predominates. And who or what is the serial killer? Here we often regard
the figure of the psychopath (or sociopath) as those without conscience, cold and
seemingly without emotion (but note that even those doctors who believe in those
who are unable to empathise with other human beings. But does the psychopath
exist?
Certainly there is a large amount of circular reasoning at play: psychopath is a broad,
not medically recognised term that usually denotes a person without a recognisable
mental illness that killed someone for no apparent reason. Popularly conceived:
Sociopaths are unable to see anything through their victims eyes. It is all about them.
To a sociopath, killing someone does not seem a bad thing if it is going to produce a
favorable result for them. Most know that it is not socially acceptable and don’t. Others
try to get away with it. They usually are unable to understand that it ends that person’s
life and instead can only see it gave them satisfaction to kill a person. Someone else
getting angry, sad, happy, etc. are completely not understandable to them. They often
have the delusion that their entire world is created by them and they are the only real
things in it. They also may suffer from delusions of grandiosity or persecution.
There is a large market for books such as Without conscience: the disturbing world of
the psychopaths among us by Robert D. Hare; The sociopath next door by Martha Stout;
Snakes in suits: when psychopaths go to work by Paul Babiak and The psychopath test by
Jon Ronson.
Consider this ‘book description’ for Without conscience:
Most people are both repelled and intrigued by the images of cold-blooded,
conscienceless murderers that increasingly populate our movies, television programs,
and newspaper headlines. With their flagrant criminal violation of society’s rules, serial
killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy are among the most dramatic examples of the
psychopath.
Individuals with this personality disorder are fully aware of the consequences of their
actions and know the difference between right and wrong, yet they are terrifyingly self-
centered, remorseless, and unable to care about the feelings of others. Perhaps most
frightening, they often seem completely normal to unsuspecting targets – and they do not
always ply their trade by killing. Presenting a compelling portrait of these dangerous men
and women based on 25 years of distinguished scientific research, Dr Robert D. Hare vividly
describes a world of con artists, hustlers, rapists, and other predators who charm, lie, and
manipulate their way through life. Are psychopaths mad, or simply bad? How can they be
recognized? And how can we protect ourselves? This book provides solid information and
surprising insights for anyone seeking to understand this devastating condition.
1. Are we really at risk? Or is this a cultural ‘fiction’?
An example: assessing Charles Manson

Charles Manson is a cultural icon and incarcerated mass killer (although he
personally never did the actual killing but directed others to do so).
Start by reading the Wikipedia entry, then watch interviews with him.
He is sometimes referred to as pure ‘evil’: is such a term useful or apt?
If so, was Manson made evil by the juvenile ‘reformatory’ system?
Does Manson make sense?
Is Manson a psychopath? If not, who is…?
2. Outline the main differences and similarities that exist between the four
psychological explanations of crime outlined above.
3. Draw up a list of diverse crimes that range in seriousness from petty street crime
through to murder. Which of the above theories do you think best accounts for
each type of crime?
Summary
Psychological research is seen by many as holding the key to explaining crime but
some claims are usually overstated. Psychology has certainly contributed to our
understanding of crime and criminality but many of the popular myths and ‘media-
created’ assumptions about criminological psychology are unfounded. The collection
of theories gathered together here is anything but exhaustive. Numerous other areas
of criminal psychological research exist that for reasons of space could not be included
here.
Finally, while this overview has focused on some of the more prominent psychological
theories that have sought to explain crime and deviance, one should bear in mind that
criminal psychology also has a central role within the sphere of criminal justice, with
psychologists playing key roles in virtually all aspects of the criminal justice system –
from assisting police forces in the creation of offender profiles, to pre-trial assessment
of mentally disordered offenders, from offender rehabilitation to psychological
research into eyewitness testimony. See Bartol and Bartol (1994); Kapardis (1997); and
Adler (2004) for general introductions.
References
u Adler, J. R. Forensic psychology: concepts, debates and practice. (Cullompton:
Willan, 2004) [ISBN 9781843920090].
u Aichorn, A. The wayward youth. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
1984) reprint edition [ISBN 9780810106604]
u Akers, R. Deviant behaviour: a social learning approach. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth,
1973) [ISBN 9780534002343].
u Babiak, P. and R.D. Hare Snakes in suits: when psychopaths go to work. (New York:
HarperCollins, 2007) [ISBN 9780061147890].
u Bandura, A. Aggression: a social learning analysis. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1973) [ISBN 9780130207432].
u Bandura, A. Social learning theory. (New York: Prentice Hall, 1976) [ISBN
9780138167448].
u Bartol, C.R. and A.M. Bartol Psychology and law: research and practice. (London:
Sage, 2019) 2nd edition [ISBN 9781544338873].
u Berman, L. The glands regulating personality. (New York: Macmillan, 1921)
(available at www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10266).
u Bowlby, J. ‘Forty-four juvenile thieves: their characters and home life’ 1944
International Journal of Psychoanalysis 25 19–53 and 107–27.
u Brown, S. Crime and law in media culture. (Milton Keynes: Open University Press,
2003) [ISBN 9780335205486].
u Carlson, N.R., W. Buskist and G.N. Martin Psychology: the science of behaviour.
(Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1999) [ISBN 9780130212283].
u Eysenck, H.J. and G.H. Gudjonsson The causes and cures of criminality. (New York:
Plenum Press, 1989) [ISBN 9780306429682].
u Freud, S. A general introduction to psychoanalysis. (New York: Liveright, 1935).
u Garland, D. Punishment and modern society: a study in social theory. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1992) [ISBN 9780198762669].
u Garland, D The culture of control: crime and social order in contemporary society.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) [ISBN 9780199258024].
u Gottfredson, M. and T.W. Hirschi A general theory of crime. (Stanford: Stanford
u Hare, Robert D. Without conscience: the disturbing world of the psychopaths among
us. (New York: Guilford Press, 1999) [ISBN 9781572304512].
u Hollin, C.R. Psychology and crime: an introduction to criminological
psychology. (London: Routledge, 2012; first published 1989) 2nd edition [ISBN
9780415497022].
u Jeffrey, C R. ‘Criminal behaviour and learning theory’ 1965 Journal of Criminal Law,
Criminology, and Police Science 56 294–300.
u Jeffrey, C.R. ‘Biological and neuropsychiatric approaches to criminal behaviour’
in Barak, G. (ed.) Varieties of criminology: readings from a dynamic discipline.
(Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1994) [ISBN 9780275947743].
u Kapardis, A. Psychology and law: a critical introduction. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014) fourth edition [ISBN 9781107650848].
u Lanier, M.M. and S. Henry Essential criminology. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
2015; first published 1998) fourth edition [ISBN 9780813348858].
u Moyer, K.E. ‘The physiology of aggression and the implication for aggression
control’ in R.G. Green and E.I. Donnerstein (eds) The control of aggression and
violence: Cognitive and physiological factors. (New York: Academic Press, 1971)
[ISBN 9780126466508].
u Ridley, M. Nature via nurture. Genes, experience and what makes us human.
(London: Harper Perennial, 2004) [ISBN 9781841157467].
u Ronson, J. The psychopath test. (London: Picador, 2011) [ISBN 9780330492270].
u Rorty, R. Contingency, irony, and solidarity. (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1989) [ISBN 9780521367813].
u Sandberg, A.A., G.F. Koepf, T. Ishiara, and T.S. Hauschka ‘An XYY human male’ 1961
Lancet 262 488–89.
u Sheldon, W.H. The varieties of temperament: a psychology of constitutional
differences. (New York: Harper, 1942).
u Skinner, B.F. The behavior of organisms. (New York: Appleton, 1938) [ISBN
9780874114874].
u Stout, M. The sociopath next door. The ruthless versus the rest of us. (New York:
Broadway Books, 2005) [ISBN 9780739456743].
u Sutherland, E.H, D.R. Cressey and D.F. Luckenbill Principles of criminology.
(Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 1992) 11th edition [ISBN 9780930390693].
u Taylor, I., P. Walton and J. Young The new criminology: for a social theory of
edition [ISNB 9780415855877].
u Watson, J. B. ’Psychology as the behaviorist views it’ 1913 Psychological Review
20(2) 158–77.
u Yochelson, S. and S.E. Samenow, The criminal personality. Volume 1: a profile
for change. (New York: Jason Aronson, 2000; first published 1976) [ISBN
9781568211053].
u Walker, N. Crime and insanity in England. Vol 1: The historical perspective.
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968).
6 Sociological perspectives – structural and cultural
foundations
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Part A: Classical sociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
6.1 Foundational assumptions and the work of Emile Durkheim . . . . . . . 81
6.2 Sub-cultural theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82
6.3 The work of David Matza: one writer analysed as an example . . . . . . . 82
Part B: Labelling theory and moral panics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87
Part I: Labelling, otherwise known as symbolic, or social interactionism

or social reaction theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6.4 Howard Becker and social interactionism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6.5 Role, status and stigma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Part II: Moral panic theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.6 The creation of the concept of moral panics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.7 Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Part C: Critical criminology, a different view of social structure . . . . . . 94
6.8 The rise of critical criminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Introduction
Sociological perspectives from Durkheim, through to Merton and labelling theory
onto radical or critical criminology has largely provided the bedrock of mainstream
criminology.
This chapter follows three ideas on the social order providing the contextual
foundation of law:
1. Relative social consensus,
2. Social interaction, and
3. Conflict. The father figures are Emile Durkheim, George Herbert Mead and
Karl Marx respectively.
Part A: Classical sociology
Core Text
¢ Hopkins Burke, Chapter 7 ‘Sociological positivism’.
Essential reading
¢ Morrison, 1995, Chapter 12 ‘Criminology and the culture of modernity’ and
Chapter 13 ‘Culture and crime in the post-modern condition’.
Further reading
¢ Extracts from Durkheim, E. The rules of sociological method (available on the VLE).
¢ Downes, D. and P. Rock Understanding deviance: a guide to the sociology of

crime and rule-breaking. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) sixth edition
[ISBN 9780199569830] Chapter 5 ‘Anomie’ (available on the VLE).
¢ Merton, R. ‘Social structure and anomie’ 1938 American Sociological Review 3 (5)
672–82 (available on the VLE).
Learning outcomes
By the end of this part and relevant reading, you should be able to:
u appreciate the dominance of sociological understandings
u be able to discuss the influence of Durkheim upon criminology and be familiar
with the work of Robert Merton and David Matza
u define and use anomie theory
u reinterpret anomie theory for contemporary conditions
u appreciate the restraining and criminogenic effects of culture.
Criminology 6 Sociological perspectives – structural and cultural foundations page 81
6.1 Foundational assumptions and the work of Emile Durkheim

There is no one sociological perspective; indeed, for much of the 20th century
sociology simply was the governing paradigm for criminology, and the question then
was ‘what kind of sociology?’ This is still largely the case. Our concentration here is
on anomie, culture and control. American literature often distinguishes between
strain theory and control theory. In strain theory, it is assumed that individuals would
normally conform to the social norms and thus their infraction is because of some
strain or pull otherwise. In control theory, it is assumed that infraction is actually
normal and naturally occurs when there is an absence of social control. As indicated
in section 4.5 of Chapter 4 on statistics and criminality, the Chicago school popularised
the notion of social disorganisation theory whereby processes internal to city growth
lead to disruptions in the processes which normally control behaviour. In attempting
to gain a precise grip on these processes, American literature in particular talked of
sub-cultural theory, of status theory and opportunity theory. The work of Matza is
associated with neutralisation theory which maintains that while most of us hold to
the norms and values of our society, some of us learn to rationalise infractions and
therefore neutralise the binding force of norms. Blending psychological studies and
social location socialisation theory concentrated upon the family situation and the
learning of roles.
In giving a foundational personality to sociological perspectives special attention can

be paid to the work of Emile Durkheim.
First, along with Karl Marx and Max Weber, he is regarded as one of the three father
figures of modern sociology. Durkheim was actually the first professor of sociology
anywhere in the world.
Secondly, he set out a framework for doing sociology (sociological positivism) which
has structured much of what has subsequently developed as sociology. In particular,
he argued for building sociological theories up from clear data.
Thirdly, his specific writings of crime, suicide and anomie have provided a great deal of
stimulus for criminology.
With a rich body of work, Durkheim was for some time regarded as out of fashion,
having committed the sociological sins of being too functionalist and having neglected
power. However, Durkheim is not such an absolutist writer as his critics have made out
and we can only scratch the surface of his work. In criminology he is famous for three
things:
i. the notion that crime is normal;
ii. the legacy of anomie theory;
iii. the argument that in conditions of advanced division of labour the basis of moral
obligation and social solidarity will become increasingly problematic.
Crime as normal. This is part of Durkheim’s functionalist account of deviance.

Deviance is required for society to work its labelling processes and demarcate the
sacred from the profane, the acceptable from the unacceptable.
Anomie. This comes from the concept of normlessness or, alternatively, valuelessness;
it is the condition of instability resulting from the breakdown of norms and values.
Note the duality of anomie.
Anomie comes out of a fundamental difference between physical and social needs.
Physical needs can become fulfilled naturally, for example, physical hunger can be
satiated and then the body itself will resist additional food. Social needs, however,
such as wealth, power and prestige, are regulated externally through the constraining
forces of society. Our social desires are therefore without natural limits or forms; they
are an ‘insatiable and bottomless abyss’. As a consequence, freed from regulation the
human experience becomes meaningless, it is social interaction that defined the limits
and forms of our humanity. ‘It is not true, then, that human activity can be released
from all restraint… Its nature and method of manifestation... depend not only on itself
but on other beings, who consequently restrain and regulate it.’
However, just as an absence of regulation can cause anomie, a pathological over-

regulation also causes anomie. Throughout all Durkheim’s work there is a concern
with the mean. Social processes span a continual tension between over-regulation
and under-regulation, between integration and isolation, between socially provided
identity and individuality.
In criminology, Robert Merton’s 1938 essay, usually referred to as the most famous
essay in the history of sociology, was a direct application of anomie theory. This lead
onto work on subcultural theory, gang studies and theories that highlighted a different
set of lower-class values to the mainstream middle class.
The source of moral obligation and social solidarity
Durkheim’s work alerts us to the more complex nature of social solidarity in modern
societies of advanced division of labour.
At its broadest, Durkheim alerts us to the problematic of modernity – to the necessity

for a public philosophy which links together the diverse ethnic and social groupings.
6.2 Sub-cultural theory

This came into prominence with American writings such as Albert Cohen’s Delinquent
boys, Cloward and Ohlin’s Delinquency and opportunity, and Walter Miller’s theory of
lower-class culture. Miller, for example, sees lower-class culture as a distinct tradition,
many centuries old and with a structure of its own. He argues six focal concerns
constitute the traditions:
u Trouble. Thus lower-class men have a preoccupation with trouble and associated
fighting, drinking and sexual conquests.
u Toughness. A macho image stressing hardness, fearlessness and skill in physical

prowess.
u Smartness. A capacity to outsmart others.
u Search for excitement. Brought on by the extreme fluctuations which characterise

lower-class work cycles.
u A resignation to fate. This enables a fatalistic outlook, with violence and perhaps
prison accepted as outcomes.
u An ambivalent desire for autonomy.
Socialisation theory. The question of whether faulty upbringing or inadequate

supervision links to delinquency has been tied in with issues of the broken home or
forced separation from the mother or father. Here we are in the interconnections of
sociology and psychology. The influence of being brought up in a one-parent family
will obviously be determined by the social context of that family. Much early literature
does not take this into account however. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990, pp.97–105)
pointed to the huge influence that the family has in child rearing through factors
such as the attachment of the parent to the child, parental supervision, recognition of
deviant behaviour, punishment of deviant acts and parental involvement in crime. In
their analysis, it was the impact on developing self-control that had the lasting effect.
Other factors lie in the young person gaining social, economic and personal capital.
6.3 The work of David Matza: one writer analysed as an

example
As we have seen when positivism became a force within criminology, a determinist
view of human nature was accepted as required in the name of science. Within
American writings of the 1960s, an anti-deterministic current surfaced. From
the control perspective came the argument that strain theories over-predicted
delinquency. If the root cause of crime was found in slum life, criminal traditions
and differential learning, lack of legitimate opportunity and the emphasis upon
property acquisition, how was it to be explained that most of the individuals living
in such situations did not appear to indulge in persistent criminal or delinquent
behaviour? David Matza replaced ‘hard determinism’ by the concepts of ‘drift’ and
‘soft determinism’.
First, at odds with the structure of doing criminology as it then was, Matza asked
criminology to begin its theories with a notion of crime which saw it as an ‘infraction’
and to take seriously the empirical features which characterised infractions (what
we might call crime). For Matza an infraction entailed going against what had been
socialised as the moral code of the society. The empirical features of crime were that
it was often transient (rather than permanent), intermittent (rather than pervasive),
characterised not by commitment or compulsion but looser factors and represented
something which most delinquents simply grew out of with age.
Secondly, Matza (2010 [1969]) drew a contrast between ‘correction’ and ‘appreciation’
as differing stances to deviant phenomenon. Matza claimed that ‘the goal of ridding
ourselves of the deviant phenomenon, however utopian, stands in sharp contrast to
an appreciative perspective and may be referred to as correctional’. The overriding
concern with causation or ‘etiology’ ‘systematically interferes with the capacity to
empathize and thus comprehend the subject of inquiry. Only through appreciation
can the texture of social patterns and the nuances of human engagement with those
patterns be understood and analyzed.’ (2010 [1969], p.15)
The appreciative attitude is on the other hand a subjective view; it demands a

commitment to render the phenomenon with fidelity and without violating its
integrity.
It delivers the analyst into the arms of the subject who renders the phenomenon, and
commits him, though not without regrets or qualifications, to the subject’s definition
of the situation. This does not mean that the analyst always concurs with the subject’s
definition of the situation; rather that his aim is to comprehend and to illuminate the
subject’s view and to interpret the world as it appears to him. (ibid., p.25)
Contrary to these two themes, Matza found that criminological positivism accounted
for too much delinquency. Taken at their terms, delinquency theories seemed to
predict far more delinquency than actually occurs. In the 1950s Sykes and Matza (1957)
had criticised the total determinism of sub-cultural theory, arguing that even the
most obvious ‘criminals’ or delinquents were not committed to an alternative set of
cultural values but were actually conventional in their beliefs. Why then were they not
restrained by that powerful instrument of self-control in the modern West, namely
the conscience and the feelings of guilt (as opposed to shame which is engendered
by considering what others feel about our actions)? Should not guilt be aroused in
the psyche of an individual when that individual contemplated the performance of an
anti-social action?
Sykes and Matza highlighted the process whereby the offender, while not invincible
against guilt, has strong avoidance mechanisms that they termed ‘techniques of
neutralisation’.
Sykes and Matza claimed that the delinquent did not live in some different or
inverted world where the norms and values were the opposite from those prevailing
in conventional society. Instead, we are told they share the values of the larger
society. Theories of delinquent subculture over-predicted crime and over-stressed
the difference between ‘delinquents’ and ‘non-delinquents’. This raised the issue to
be explained in terms of why individuals who accepted the conventional morality
and who were essentially integrated into the society and respectful of its regulations
violated its conventions? Sykes and Matza argued that while learning the conventional
values of the society, individuals could also learn certain excuses or techniques of
neutralisation which temporarily at least neutralised conventional norms and thus
permitted violations in specific cases and under certain circumstances without
necessarily rejecting the norms themselves.
Five distinct techniques are developed, all of which have some basis in the society at
large.
u Denial of responsibility. The offender has learnt to take at face value the words of
the social scientist or humane jurist or social worker who sees him as a product
of his environmental; he presents himself as the helpless object of social forces
(slum neighbourhood, bad parents and peer group pressure). Thus guilt cannot
be aroused since the deeds are not his own. They are the product of orders, of the
forces of the society, the country, the military. Ultimately he can say it wasn’t really
me that did it.
u Denial of injury. The delinquent argues that the behaviour has not really caused
any harm. Thus vandalism is only ‘mischief’, car theft is ‘borrowing’ and stealing
is ‘getting paid’ and done to those who could afford it anyway; gang fighting is
a ‘private quarrel’. Psychologically the spatial distancing of modernity aids this:
consider a computer fraud, for example.
u Denial of a victim. Like the solider who is only fighting the enemy, the delinquent is
facing a victim who is also guilty. In other words, ‘they had it coming’ so why should
the offender care about what happened? It is the victims who are the wrongdoers.
u Appeal to higher loyalties. The delinquent presents himself as torn between two
groups – those who were the victims and the smaller group to which he belongs
and owes some allegiance, demonstrates loyalty towards, defends his belonging
to. The needs of this smaller group – the army unit, the family, the gang, the
country in the hour of need – serve to change the nature of the acts he would not
otherwise normally do. What was regrettable, perhaps evil, now becomes justified,
perhaps obligatory, because it was required by loyalty to this group.
These four defences do not appear to be positive forces, they appear to have the
impact of shielding the actor from the consequences of their acts. As avoidance
mechanisms, they prevent the self-esteem of the offender being washed away
and serve to present him as someone worthy of respect and appreciation. The
fifth technique serves to deflect the shaming powers of the others who are in
communication with the offender.
u Condemnation of the condemners or rejection of the rejectors. ‘The delinquent

shifts the focus of attention from his own deviant acts to the motives and
behaviour of those who disapprove of his violations.’ This time, the other who is
to be viewed as the enemy if guilt is to be avoided is the whole class of those who
disapprove of the behaviour in question. The captors are either hypocrites, actually
deviants in disguise, or impelled by personal motives.
Sykes and Matza go on to suggest that ‘the delinquent has picked up and emphasised
one part of the dominant value system, namely, the subterranean values that coexist
with other, publicly proclaimed values possessing a more respectable air’ (1961, p.717)
These subterranean, or latent, values include a search for adventure, excitement
and thrills, and are said to exist side by side with such conformity inducing values as
security, routinisation and stability. Citing the work of Arthur Davis and Thorsten Veblen,
Sykes and Matza argue that delinquents are actually conforming to society rather than
transgressing against it when they make the desire for ‘big money’ central to their value
system. Overall, subterranean values make delinquency desirable, while the techniques
of neutralisation allow this desire to take direction and become effectual.
6.3.1 Drift theory

In Delinquency and drift, (1964) Matza specifically built an alternative picture of the
delinquent under the dictates of soft rather than hard determinism.
The image of the delinquent that I wish to convey is one of drift; an actor neither
compelled not committed to deeds nor freely choosing them; neither different in any
simple or fundamental sense from the law abiding, nor the same; conforming to certain
traditions in American life while partially unreceptive to other more conventional
traditions; and finally, an actor whose motivational system may be explored along lines
explicitly commended by classical criminology – his peculiar relation to legal institutions.
Matza’s appreciation leads not to romanticism or heroics. We are dealing not with the
sensational committed criminal of the media reports, nor the heroic fighter against the
status quo that Marxist accounts sometimes appeared to suggest. Instead, Matza stresses
the mundaneness of delinquency, its pettiness and its transitoriness. He also places
the ambiguity of the moral order in a central position. He argues that the contact and
experiences of the juvenile with the correctional system is itself a criminogenic factor.
The concept of human nature used by Matza is much more open than how the positivists
viewed it; note that neutralisation only makes delinquency possible, as Matza put it:
Those who have been granted the potentiality for freedom through the loosening of social
controls but who lack the position, capacity, or inclination to become agents in their own
behalf I call drifters, and it is in this category that I place the juvenile delinquent.
Matza did not consider delinquency as some natural or steady state that overtakes
an individual with the correct propensities once controls are relaxed but something
that is involved in processes. Two processes acted as triggering factors, namely the
combination of preparation and desperation.
u Preparation was the process whereby a person discovered that a given infraction
could be successfully accomplished by someone, and that the individual had the
ability to do it himself and that the fear or apprehension connected with the event
could be managed. Thus even if the person realised that a delinquent infraction
could be managed, it might not occur unless someone learned that it was possible,
felt confident that he or she could do it, and was courageous or stupid enough to
minimise the dangers. If these processes did not interact, the possibility would not
become a reality.
u Desperation came into play when the self experienced a form of fatalism, a feeling
that the self was overwhelmed and felt a consequent need to violate the rules of
the system so as to reassert individuality.
Where does this direction lead the criminologist? Morrison (1995) suggests that it
leads into existentialism, a perspective downplayed by traditional criminology (see
Chapter 7).
Activity 6.1
Read Merton, ‘Social structure and anomie’ (available on the VLE) and Downes and
Rock, Chapter 5 ‘Anomie’ (available on the VLE).
Assess the relationship between culture and crime, as proposed by anomie theory.
6.3.2 Merton’s theory of social structure and anomie

The tradition of anomie theory owes a lot to the contribution of Robert Merton’s
theoretical analysis of ‘Social structure and anomie’ (1938; 1957).
Durkheim analysed suicide; Merton developed a general theory based on sociological

assumptions about human nature. Durkheim gave men generally insatiable passions
and appetites (from Hobbes); Merton assumes human needs and desires are primarily
the product of a social process (i.e. cultural socialisation). Relativism is the theory
that particular societies have particular cultural values. In the USA cultural values
emphasise material goals thus individuals will learn to strive for economic success.
Merton builds on Durkheim but takes us back to Hobbes and a reinterpretation of

‘felicity’, the constant striving to satisfy desires that are in their nature ongoing. For
Merton, all Americans, irrespective of their position in society, are exposed to the
dominant materialistic values; moreover, the cultural beliefs sustain a myth that
anyone can succeed in the pursuit of economic goals.
Anomie, for Durkheim, referred to the failure of society to regulate or constrain the ends
or goals of human desire. Merton, on the other hand, is more concerned with social
regulation of the means people use to obtain material goals. First, Merton perceives a
‘strain toward anomie’ in the relative lack of cultural emphasis on institutional norms
– the established rules of the game – that regulate the legitimate means for obtaining
success in American society. Secondly, structural blockages that limit access to legitimate
means for many members of American society also contribute to its anomic tendencies.
Under such conditions, behaviour tends to be governed solely by considerations of
expediency or effectiveness in obtaining the goal rather than by a concern with whether
or not the behaviour conforms to institutional norms.
Together, the various elements in Merton’s theoretical model of American society add
up to a social environment that generates strong pressures toward deviant behavior
(1957, p.146, emphasis in original):
[W]hen a system of cultural values extols, virtually above all else, certain common success-
goals for the population at large while the social structure rigorously restricts or completely
closes access to approved modes of reaching these goals for a considerable part of the same
population,…deviant behavior ensues on a large scale.
This chronic discrepancy between cultural promises and structural realities not only
undermines social support for institutional norms but also promotes violations of
those norms. Blocked in their pursuit of economic success, many members of society
are forced to adapt in deviant ways to this frustrating environmental condition.
Activity 6.2
a. How does Merton’s theory of anomie differ from Durkheim’s?
b. To what extent does Merton consider society to be in constant flux and what
role does that play in the causation of deviancy?
c. Explain how the following table positions adaptations to these environmental

pressures. Discuss fully the analytical typology of individual adaptations to the
discrepancy between culture and social structure in American society.
Merton’s typology of individual adaptations to environmental pressures

Type of adaptation Cultural goal Institutionalised means
I. Conformity + +
II. Innovation + –
III. Ritualism – +
IV. Retreatism – –
V. Rebellion + +
Note: + signifies acceptance, – signifies rejection, and + signifies rejection of prevailing
goal or means and substitution of new goal or means.
Further reading
¢ Morrison, 1995, Chapter 12 ‘Criminology and the culture of modernity’, especially
pp.273–81 and Chapter 13 ‘Crime and culture in the post-modern condition’.
1. Why does Durkheim speak of crime and being ‘normal’ in society? What does he
mean by ‘anomie’? Do you agree that human desires are essentially insatiable
and regulated only by cultural messages?
2. In what way(s) is Merton’s adaptation of anomie theory different from

Durkheim’s? What have been the main criticisms of Merton’s work? Are these
justified?
3. Do you accept that there are overriding cultural messages of success in modern
society? Do all people share or accept these messages?
4. Are the cultural messages of contemporary conditions much more complex

than Merton allowed for? What are they? Does it make any sense to talk in terms
of individuals having a different location in social structure? Do some people
feel ‘strain’ more than others, or are contemporary cultural messages so mixed
that strain occurs across the social ‘order’?
Part B: Labelling theory and moral panics
Part I: Labelling, otherwise known as symbolic, or social

interactionism or social reaction theory
Core text
¢ Hopkins Burke, Chapter 8 ‘Labelling theories’.
Essential reading
All criminological texts contain a section on labelling theory. In some texts, it is
referred to as social process theories.
¢ Morrison, 1995, Chapter 14 ‘Labelling theory and the work of David Matza’.
Further reading
¢ Cohen, S. Folk devils and moral panics: the creation of Mods and Rockers. (London:
Routledge, 2002; first published 1973) [ISBN 9780415610162].
¢ Lemert, E.M. Human deviance, social problems and social control. (Upper
Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1972) second revised edition
[ISBN 9780134448855].
¢ Plummer, K. ‘Misunderstanding labelling perspectives’ in Downes, D. and P. Rock

(eds) Deviant interpretations: problems in criminological theory. (Oxford: Wiley-
Blackwell, 1979) [ISBN 9780855202651].
Introduction
Secular modernity freed humans from the notion that they had been created by
a creator’s will and had a telos in finding happiness in doing what the creator had
willed for them. The self was free, free to follow their own desires. But what is the
self? In radical forms, the modern self is empty or, as existential perspectives claim,
pure possibility and no given content. In the late 1880s, the American theorist George
Herbert Mead developed a theory of the social-self using the concepts of ‘self’, ‘me’
and ‘I’. Mead pushed forward this idea of a social-self arising from social interactions,
such as observing and interacting with others, responding to others’ opinions about
oneself and internalising external opinions and internal feelings about oneself. The self
was therefore not the slave of biological factors or inherited traits but a relatively open
possibility developed over time from social experiences and activities. Language, play
and games are important areas in which roles, opinions, attitudes and responses to
others are developed.
In 1938 Frank Tannenbaum – himself once an imprisoned radical – wrote on the

‘dramatization of evil’ in his great text Community and crime:
The process of making the criminal, therefore, is a process of tagging, defining, identifying,
segregating, describing, emphasizing, making conscious and self-conscious; it becomes
a way of stimulating, suggesting, emphasizing and evoking the very traits that are
complained of...The person becomes the thing he is described as being...
The criminal was the product of social interactions, not a destined being.
6.4 Howard Becker and social interactionism

In the 1960s a famous quotation from Howard Becker shows how this was picked up:
The central fact about deviance [is that] it is created by society. I do not mean this is the
way it is ordinarily understood, in which the causes of deviance are located in the social
situation of the deviant or in ‘social factors’ which prompt his action. I mean, rather, that
social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance
and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders. 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 successfully been applied; deviant behaviour is
behaviour that people so label. (1963, pp.8–9.)
6.4.1 The overall context

By the 1960s sociology as a discipline was said to be free from social philosophy.
It claimed to be a science and there was no doubt about its dedication to scientific
methods and objectivity: sociology, it was said, was value-free. This was now disputed.
To those who wanted to break away from a social consensus view, sociology, they
argued, was still contaminated by the bias and subjectivity of particular interest group
in society. The claim to the cool neutrality of science was a sham.
To recap on the three contrasting views on social structure and power (including the
power to make the laws):
1. Functionalism and consensus: here the criminal law reflected the social consensus
and institutions were analysed in terms of the functions they were said to play in
the overall operation of the social body.
2. Diverse social group and power: here people in positions of power were seen as
motivated largely by their own selfish interests.
3. Conflict and class struggle: here the social structure was viewed in terms of
historical development driven by contradictions – as between technology and
ideology – and society divided into social classes opposed in interests and power
relations.
In terms of scientific methodology, there was scepticism towards any individualistic

theory of crime causation: not merely biological theories and psychological theories
of personality maladjustment but also sociological theories that were dependent
on notions of the individual’s ‘defects’ due to inadequate socialisation or peer group
pressures. Labelling theory asked why some persons and not others are stigmatised
with the label of ‘criminal’ in a social process. The American theorist Austin Turk
voiced this disquiet: ‘If preconceptions are to be avoided, a criminal is most accurately
defined as any individual who is identified as such.’ The criminal self could be any of us,
and a variety of self-report studies showed most people had engaged in activities that
if caught could have involved criminal prosecution.
A developing ‘critical’ take on criminal justice asked for attention to be placed on

the agencies of social control: what were the motives behind the actions of the
agencies that deal with crime? Classical criminology with its images of due process
accepted that the criminal justice system, or as social dynamic approaches termed it
the criminal-processing system, was often harsh and unfair. It was clear that the poor
and members of minority groups suffered from an acute disadvantage (the revolving
door analysis of prisons, for example). The critical approach when aligned with Marxist
analysis looked at the criminal law and its enforcement as instruments deliberately
designed for the control of one social class by another.
What of data? Radicals questioned whether official criminal statistics showing the
real picture of crime. Instead, attention was paid to unseen crime, such as soft and
hard corruption, white collar crime, etc. Both interactionists and radicals could accept
that the crime rate was, in part at least, a construction of police activities, and the
actual amount of crime was unknown and other measures to get a better picture
were required. But an emerging critical take went further: Richard Quinney changed
the question to ‘why societies and their agencies report, manufacture, or produce
the volume of crime that they do’ (1991, p.122). This was both methodologically
reflective and a reflection of a loss of trust in authority: while the legitimacy of the
rules embedded in the criminal law was no longer taken for granted, neither was
the credibility of the government that reported on their violation. Legal realists and
interactionists could continue to look for inaccuracy in terms of system mistakes,
chance error or simple bias, but radicals claimed there was a systematic distortion that
is part of the machinery for social control.
Criminology and criminal justice contributed to the social understandings of ‘ideology’

that kept the coercive aspects of this arrangement hidden through claims of value-free
science and accepting the labelling of those who challenged the system as ‘deviants’
or ‘criminals’ when such labels carry connotations of social pathology, psychiatric
illness and so on. Criminal justice and criminology contributed to social processes
which aroused distaste for the rule-breaker as ‘bad’, anti-social, enemies of society
and so forth while the official statistics can serve to create a sense of a more direct and
personal danger in the form of a crime wave that will convince many people (including
many of the people in the lower classes) that draconian measures are justified (crises
of law and order).
All of this was part of a wider questioning of the relationship between the political
order and nonconformity, thus revitalising one of sociology’s most profound themes –
the relationship between the individual and the state.
The consequences of the above position range from potentially devastating to the
whole positivist tradition of investigating ‘crime’ and the ‘criminal’, to merely adding
another area of study.
The attack on positivism flows from the reinterpretation of language which the
philosophical perspective underlying the labelling approach gives. Words such as the
offender, the criminal, dangerousness, indeed all ‘naming words’, are now seen not as
a reflection of a natural reality, but as a snapshot of a social process. Let us, however,
be clear. The radical analysis of labelling is not dominant, it has been accommodated
within the mainstream sociology of deviancy without, it seems, upsetting the
confidence of empirical work.
Remember the confidence of positivism: a belief in a determinate external reality out

there that it is possible to measure accurately. The labelling perspective is part of an
alternative position, a perspective that states we can never get to this reality. It claims
reality is linguistically constituted, therefore, we can say that the limits of our world
are the limits of our language.
What is the self in a non-positivist conception? It is an existential self. A self that

owes its character to no innate ‘human nature’, no given or fixed biological character
is recognised. Instead, for us, as Pascal said, ‘there is nothing that cannot be made
natural; there is nothing natural that cannot be lost’. As we construct our own
selves, society constructs human nature. The role of instinct, or natural drives, is
lessened through the inescapable sociality of mankind. The structure of socialisation,
of learning, is the structure of the human self. Our ability to be plastic, to learn
throughout life, enables our culture also to learn, to hold a cumulative technological
power that transforms the environment we live in as a species. The ability to socially
label, to create typologies, categories and, in turn, to use the definitional power of
laws is part of this cultural technology. Culture replaces ‘natural instinct’ as the means
of human survival.
The reality humans face is a cultural one; our descriptive terms, our arrangement, the
divisions we find ourselves thrust into, constitute our cultural heritage. Culture – the
tool by which humanity surmounts natural reality – becomes the world; humanity
confronts and becomes the reality which creates the pressures and demands of social
human existence. Thus the crude empiricist image of reality, a presence out there
which we can safely perceive through our senses, gives way to the realisation that
all senses of reality are culturally channelled and induced. Freed from nature, man
becomes the subject of culture. Dependence on nature is replaced by dependence on
culture. As the anthropologist Geertz put it, a person abstracted from culture would be:
functionally incomplete, not merely a talented ape who had, like some underprivileged
child, unfortunately been prevented from realizing his full potentialities, but a kind of
formless monster with neither sense of direction nor power of self control, a chaos of
spasmodic impulses and vague emotions. (1973, p.99)
The reality of social life is therefore a linguistic reality. And, since language is one kind
of symbolic system, a set of conventionalised sounds and signs, we can say that our
reality is primarily based on symbols. The external world is for us a world clothed in
symbols. These symbols identify or indicate certain aspects of the environment to us
and structure our responses to them. All objects can wear several sets of identifiers,
different meanings and, therefore, be different objects. Social objects may be viewed
in incompatible ways. One thing can be given different meanings or one concept can
refer to a variety of things (just think of the variety of things that are called ‘law’). We
create our social world as a bonded whole since things only exist socially in so far as
they have meaning, interest, value, purpose, function for us. For the social world we
can say that the only way we recognise things in the world is by conferring meaning
or value on them. We endow the world with symbols and respond to the meanings
contained in them. So there are as many things in the world, and only such things, as
we have meanings for at any one time.
Language and other symbolic systems codify these meanings. In using language,
or other kinds of signs such as gestures, we impose a sort of grid on reality. Since
language and other symbolic systems are social products, this is a socially constructed
grid. Thus Alasdair MacIntyre has said that ‘the limits of action are the limits of
description… the delineation of a society’s concepts is therefore the crucial step in the
delineation of its life’ (MacIntyre, 1962).
6.5 Role, status and stigma

I have claimed language is a major determinant of reality for a culture. Age, sex, race
and class subdivide this reality into a series of smaller realities setting up a series of
subcultural realities. But on an everyday level even these sub-cultural realities tend
to become too large for most individuals. The working-class Conservative for instance
is someone who appears to have stepped out of a confusion of status; as a worker he
‘should’, in class terms, vote Labour, the party of the worker. But class status is only one
element in the structuring of an individual’s self-position. His relation to the kind of
job he has and aspires to, his schooling, the home life he enjoys, the life lived among
friends and neighbours, his sporting contacts – all provide a range of role-playing in
which various and perhaps conflicting experiences are possible. Various statuses are
engaged.
Being young or old or being a woman is to have a particular social status. So is being
married or unmarried; being a teacher or parent, a neighbour or taxpayer, a prisoner,
an offender, a mental patient or a disabled person. Each status carries with it a set of
expectations and reactions, an ensemble of rights and obligations, a package of social
relations, which both carry stress and which constitutes the performance of a role. A
role is the dynamic aspect of status – it tells us how to think, feel and behave in ways
appropriate to a given status. Thus a set of behaviours appropriate for sets of status
has been prepared – a mother is caring and exhibits the behaviour of care, a soldier
is brave and performs bravely, a patient is submissive and obedient to the doctor. To
occupy a particular status is to slip into a role as into a suit of clothes tailored for the
occasion. The role is binding on both actor and audience. It is a reciprocal relationship.
It can constrain behaviour more directly and more forcibly than either language or
class.
6.5.1 Labelling and the ascription of roles

This is a process which you may wish to think about. Where do you get your own sense
of self-identity and your image of the roles available to you? We do not invent our
roles but find them latent in the statuses we occupy, waiting to be actualised by our
performance. The script has been largely written for us before we appear. As opposed
to a stage actor, however, we largely learn our parts unconsciously, unaware of the
social script. Yet the most apparently spontaneous and personal behaviour, when we
feel most ourselves, often turns out to be a replaying of the lines of a symbolic script
written long ago.
6.5.2 Focusing attention onto the power of the authorities to ascribe

criminal identities
As well as the quotation of Becker consider the flavour of:
I propose to shift the focus of theory and research from the forms of deviant behaviour
to the processes by which people come to be defined as deviant by others. Such a shift
requires that the sociologist view as problematic what he generally assumes as given
– namely, that certain forms of behaviour are per se deviant and are so defined by the
‘conventional’ or conforming members of a group (Kitsuse, 1968, pp.19–20).
The critical variable in the study of deviance is the social audience rather than the
individual actor, since it is the audience which eventually determines whether or not an
episode of behaviour or any class of episodes is labelled deviant (Erikson, 1964, p.11).
6.5.3 Important terms of labelling theory

The labelling or symbolic interactionalist approach was taken as resting upon three
simple premises:
u Human beings act towards things on the basis of the meanings that the things have
for them.
u The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction
that one has with one’s fellows.
u These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process
used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters (Blumer, 1969, p.2).
6.5.4 Criticisms
u To those on the left or radicals, it seemed a halfway house and was not critical
enough of the state and the class motivations behind applying the labels.
u To those on the right, it seemed to accept the deviant as one who was just being
normal until some label was forced on them.
u Methodologically, although it seemed to fit common-sense understanding of social

interaction, how was it to be ruthlessly tested?
u While it seemed to explain secondary deviance – that is, actions taken as a

consequence of the label – it did not explain the initial actions that the individual
engaged in and which led to the labels being applied in the first instance.

Question 1 How adequate is labelling theory as a general account of crime?
Question 2 Is labelling theory only applicable to marginal forms of deviance?
Question 3 ‘The irony of formal state intervention in social control is that labelling
offenders as criminals leads to more crime being committed but society needs this
labelling in order to affirm its central values.’ What assumptions lie behind this
statement and do you agree with its analysis?
Question 4 Critically assess the legacy of the labelling perspective.
Question 5 ‘The theoretical implications of labelling theory undercut the rationale
for much of the official criminal justice system. Either labelling theory was wrong or
it had to be ignored for the criminal justice system to continue to expand.’ Discuss.
Question 6 ‘Labelling theory was a reflection of the anti-establishment mood of the
1960s and left no lasting theoretical legacy.’ Do you agree?
Part II: Moral panic theory
6.6 The creation of the concept of moral panics

It is now 30 years since the publication of the classic text that made the concept
‘moral panics’ part of the sociological cannon by Stanley Cohen. In an often quoted
passage he stated:
Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A
condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as
a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and
stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors,
bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people. (2002 [1973], p.9)
The term had been first used by his friend Jock Young in his study of drug takers in
Notting Hill (now an extremely expensive part of London but then very much a
transitional area with many immigrants). Those panics are apparent in contemporary
society and in the past, occasioning the historian Macaulay’s remark that there is ‘no
spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality’.
Perhaps the classic case was witchcraft in the Middle Ages in Europe (and later in
what is now the USA). In modern times they have centred on entities and activities
as diverse as the perceived threat to social values and social order said to arise from
reading comics, online paedophiles (or offline paedophilic clergy and policemen),
Satanists in kindergartens, 1950s rock and roll, pachinko, ‘mods and rockers’, 1920s
jazz, engineers and other ‘wreckers’ in the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet Russia and the
communist threat, homosexuality, fin de siècle hooligans, ‘white slavery’, electronic
games or the addictive internet (many refer the perceived threat of Muslim extremists
post 9/11 as a moral panic).
In Policing the crisis: mugging, the state and law and order (1978), Stuart Hall and his
colleagues studied the reaction to the importation of the previously American
phenomenon of mugging into the United Kingdom. Employing Cohen’s definition
of moral panic, Hall et al. theorised that the ‘rising crime rate equation’ performs an
ideological function relating to social control. Crime statistics, in Hall’s view, are often
manipulated for political and economic purposes. Moral panics (e.g. over mugging)
could thereby be ignited to create public support for the need to ‘police the crisis’. The
media play a central role in the ‘social production of news’ to reap the rewards of lurid
crime stories.
Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) give moral panics the following features:
1. Concern: there must be awareness that the behaviour of the group or category in
question is likely to have a negative impact on society.
2. Hostility: hostility towards the group in question increases, and they become ‘folk
devils’. A clear division forms between ‘them’ and ‘us’.
3. Consensus: though concern does not have to be nationwide, there must be

widespread acceptance that the group in question poses a very real threat to
society. It is important at this stage that the ‘moral entrepreneurs’ are vocal and
the ‘folk devils’ appear weak and disorganised.
4. Disproportionality: the action taken is disproportionate to the actual threat posed

by the accused group.
5. Volatility: moral panics are highly volatile and tend to disappear as quickly as they
appeared due to a wane in public interest or news reports changing to another
topic.
Moral panics are often accompanied by a number of institutional processes:
1. Official inquiries (including reports by royal commissions and parliamentary

committees in Australia, New Zealand and Canada).
2. Denunciations of the stigmatised activity and representatives by ‘community
guardians’ such as senior police, clergy, pundits and journalists.
3. Passage of new legislation and strengthening of existing legislation – sometimes

implemented with inadequate regard for legal protections or notions of human
rights exemplary investigations and prosecutions, which are often protracted and
do not uncover evidence of substantial abuse or other ills but may destroy the
careers, lives or health of targets such as schoolteachers.
4. Diversion of public and private resources from action that provides a substantive
response to real problems.
The Australian commentator Margaret Talbot identified a moral panic over sex
offences (which among other things resulted in a proliferation of offender registers)
which included:
1. Inflated statistics;
2. Dismissal of countervailing evidence;
3. Dubious research;
4. Indiscriminate merging of crime categories;
5. Diversion of attention and resources from more prevalent forms of child abuse
(e.g. emotional and physical neglect, physical abuse, abandonment and poverty).
In the UK, Kenneth Gagne’s 2001 dissertation Moral panics over youth culture and video
games noted that moral panics are usually expressed as expressions of outrage rather
than unadulterated fear and framed in terms of a dominant morality threatened by
the activities of a stereotyped group (children, migrants, schismatics).
One consequence is that consumption of stigmatised commodities (such as comics

and electronic games) may be reified, with attention by the mass media and by
authority figures demonstrating to consumers that what they are doing is noteworthy.
Leaders in the community address the group from a supposed moral high ground,
‘treating’ the panic with solutions that more often than not reinforce the stereotype
and fail to produce any real resolution. Eventually, the stereotype fades of its own
volition, to be replaced in a few years by another moral panic, perhaps when the
original entertainment form and the response to it change, creating a panic that is a
variation on the original.
A moral panic is a panic over what is seen as deviant. The subject of the panic is usually
not a suddenly new phenomenon, but something which has been in existence for
many years, and suddenly comes to society’s and the media’s attention.
6.7 Studies
Essential reading
¢ Ben-Yehuda, N. ‘Moral panics – 36 years on’ 2009 The British Journal of Criminology.
49(1). The whole issue is devoted to articles considering moral panics.
¢ Cohen, S. Folk devils and moral panics: the creation of the mods and rockers.
(Abingdon: Routledge Classics, 2011) ISBN 9780415610162].
¢ Goode, E. and N. Ben-Yehuda Moral panics: the social construction of deviance.

(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) second edition [ISBN 9781405189330] Chapter 2
‘The moral panic: an introduction’ (available on the VLE).
¢ Thompson, K. Moral panics. (Abingdon: Routledge, 1998) [ISBN 9780415119771]

Chapter 3 ‘Moral panics about youth’.
Further reading
¢ Goode, E. and N. Ben-Yehuda Moral panics: the social construction of deviance.
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1994) first edition [ISBN 9780631189053 ] Chapter 12
‘The American drug panic of the 1980s’.
Part C: Critical criminology, a different view of social structure
Core text
¢ Hopkins Burke, Chapter 10 ‘Conflict and radical theories’, Chapter 12 ‘Critical
criminology’ and Chapter 18 Left realism’.
Further reading
There is discussion of critical or radical criminology in any criminology textbook,
such as:
¢ Downes and Rock, Chapter 10 ‘Radical criminology’.
The classic British texts were very much a product of the 1970s and full of idealist
critique and hope:
edition [ISBN 9780415034470].
¢ Taylor, I., P. Walton and J. Young Critical criminology. (Abingdon: Routledge, 1975
[ISBN 9780415519939].
Later texts largely focus on the criminogenic effects of mass consumerism and
the international market-place.
¢ Taylor, I. Crime in context: a critical criminology of market societies. (Cambridge:

Polity Press, 1999) [ISBN 9780745606675].
Taylor structured his last book before his death by placing ‘crime and fear’ in the
context of the massive social transformations of the late 20th century.
¢ Young, J. The exclusive society: social exclusion, crime and difference in late
modernity. (London: Sage, 1999) [ISBN 9780803981515] analyses the rise of a
society of plenty in which a significant portion is excluded. Young’s work is the
culmination of an intellectual journey from the neo-Marxism of his The new
criminology (1973) through ‘left realism’ into this pragmatic but committed
analysis of the complexity of late modernity and the need for social justice.
Perhaps his thesis can be summed up by his final paragraph:
Crime and intolerance occur when citizenship is thwarted; their causes lie in injustice, yet
their effect is, inevitably, further injustice and violation of citizenship. The solution is to
be found not in the resurrection of past stabilities, based on a nostalgia and a world that
will never return, but on a new citizenship…which will tackle the problem of justice and
community, of reward and individualism, which dwell at the heart of liberal democracy.
6.8 The rise of critical criminology

As stated earlier, the 1960s and 1970s saw a dramatic change in the study of crime. For
critical voices, it was a movement from accepting a consensus view of social order to
one where social order was riven by conflict. You may find it interesting that the first
edition of Vold published in 1958 was regarded as radical in that it openly espoused a
‘conflict’ perspective. Therein Vold stated that he saw social order as
congeries of groups held together in a dynamic equilibrium of opposing group interests

and efforts. The continuity of group interaction, the endless series of moves and
countermoves, of checks and cross-checks… in an immediate and dynamically maintained
equilibrium… provides opportunities for a continuous possibility of shifting positions,
of gaining or losing status, with the consequent need to maintain an alert defense of
one’s position… Conflict is viewed, therefore, as one of the principal and essential social
processes upon which the continuing on-going society depends. (Snipes, et al., 2019)
It drew on a variety of roots, from Marxism to labelling. For most of the 20th
century, a positivist approach dominated criminological development, focusing on
‘criminal behaviour’ rather than criminal law, on the supposed determining causes
of such behaviour and on the differentiating of criminals from non-criminals. The
1960s labelling theory movement placed focus on the role of the criminal law in
generating legal labels that constitute the demarcation between the criminal and the
non-criminal.
In part, the drive behind the new or critical approach in criminology was an attempt to
expose the background assumptions and structural biases in the traditional research
which leave unproblematic the definition and meaning of crime. As Campbell and
Wiles put it:
Laws and rules, rather than defining the boundaries of criminology, now have to be
included within criminological explanations. Criminology was forced to encompass the
political nature of deviance and its control, and so examine the relationship between
theory and ideology. (1976, p.17)
This developed aspects of the interactionists, labelling theories (see Part B). However,
one of the consequences of radical interactionism is an invitation into an existentialist
world, a world where many realities are acknowledged and no monopoly on anyone
is claimed. The world of radical interactionism is emergent and capricious, defined
and structured through direct experience and is essentially a human creation, thus, it
is said only humans can understand it. But in the late-modern world the multiplicity
of life experiences and images threatens to overwhelm the individuals’ ability to
comprehend, with the alienating result of creating a domain of abstracted individuals.
Critical criminology, however, seizes upon a deep structural analysis, a holistic
approach which attempts to go beyond experience and tells us of the foundational
pressures which constrain and produce the bedrock conditions of possible knowledge
and of law-making processes. The usual mode of analysis here is Marxist in derivation.
In general, the new criminology stepped outside of the traditional boundaries of

criminology, refusing to accept the products of the legal enforcement mechanism
as its data. Instead, the processes of criminalisation, of state power, of historical
development, of the development of legal ideologies are brought directly into the
picture. We are asked to consider the human price of modernity and to face up to the
radical disparities beneath the formal equality and liberty of the liberal subject. The
rule of law is seen in the Marxist tradition as an ideology hiding the ‘alienation of man
in modern bourgeois (or industrial) society’. The separation of men and women from
humanity via technology, via visions of worth according to property, via ethnicity,
via gender is at issue. Formal legal and political equality concealed, and even made
greater, real social and economic inequality. Behind the operation of the free market
lies the rule of the productive system (the factory); behind the freedom of trade
lies the subjection of colonies and now the developing world; behind the freedom
to be yourself lies the ideological packaging of what it means to be a desirable and
successful ‘modern’.
The now ‘classical’ British text of the new criminology is The new criminology: for a
social theory of deviance by Taylor, Walton and Young. Their approach to knowledge is
expressly one of ‘praxis’, a combination of theory and practice. The criminologist is a
committed member of their society, a person who lives the struggle to create a more
human and free society:
...one of the central purposes of this critique has been to assert the possibility – not only
of a fully social theory – but also of a society in which men are able to assert themselves
in a fully social fashion. With Marx, we have been concerned with the social arrangements
that have obstructed, and the social contradictions that enhance, man’s chances of
achieving full solidarity – a state of freedom from material necessity, and (therefore) of
material incentive, a release from the constraints of forced production, an abolition of
the forced division of labour, and a set of social arrangements, therefore, in which there
would be no politically, economically, and socially induced need to criminalize deviance.
(2013 [1973], p.270)
The authors of The new criminology are clear as to their values, a normative
commitment to the abolition of inequalities in wealth and power, and the creation of
the kind of society in which the facts of human diversity are not subject to the power
to criminalise (1973, p.282; see also Young et al., p.44).
We can see that this perspective differs fundamentally from the view of human nature
which underlies the pessimistic liberalism of 18th-century writers such as Thomas
Hobbes. As H. Collins summarises it, Marxist philosophy contains an image of moving
beyond the institutions of law:
The supposition that law will always be necessary rests upon beliefs about certain
constant qualities of human nature such as greed and selfishness. The theory of alienation
includes the assertion that the materially determined constant of the human psyche may
be fundamentally transformed; under the communist relations of production a novel
type of personality will emerge which will be exempt from egocentric lusts for power and
wealth. Accordingly the usual reason given by liberal political philosophy for the existence
of coercive systems of behavioral control like law will be no longer be extant. Men will
naturally agree about the proper standards of behaviour and conform to them without
the need for sanctions. (1982, p.120)
This line of thinking has been labelled left idealism. Here the law is viewed as an
expression of ruling class interests and working class behaviour necessarily violates
these interests, expressing a set of requirements of the working class or ‘proletariat’.
The existence of crime is not the normal state of society and a never-to-be-overcome
phenomena but the positive result of the current structures of capitalism, in particular
the emphasis on property:
a society which is predicated on the unequal right to the accumulation of property

gives rise to the legal and illegal desire to accumulate property as rapidly as possible.
(Taylor et al., 1975, p.34)
The British writers Taylor, Walton and Young were not specifically advocating a naive
socialism but capitalism was clearly represented as criminogenic. Richard Quinney
stated that ‘crime control and criminality’ were to be ‘understood in terms of the
conditions resulting from the capitalist appropriation of labour’. Thus:
The only lasting solution to the crisis of capitalism is socialism. Under late, advanced
capitalism, socialism will be achieved in the struggle of all people who are oppressed by
the capitalist mode of production. (Quinney, 1978)
The essential meaning of crime in the development of capitalism is the need for a
socialist society. When, however, what would appear a natural empirical assumption
of this approach (i.e. that crime is a form of class warfare and largely inter-class) is
subjected to empirical analysis it appears open to doubts. Crime is largely intra-class,
committed by people of similar socio-economic background on others largely as
opportunity arises (true even of white collar fraud). Left idealism turns to complex
notions of ideology and the division of working class perceptions to account for this
at the expense of making their position untestable, unfalsifiable and thus regarded as
unscientific by many. Its optimistic position is also out of touch with the late modern
times which has witnessed the ‘end of communism’ in Eastern Europe and new
positions of reformism and left realism have gained currency.
For some commentators, while it is essential that critical criminology raises the issues
of power, exploitation and human subjection, the task is to face up to some of the
empirical issues about what is actually to be done to increase the life chances of the
powerless. This is what the new left realism attempts to do on a local pragmatic level.
(On left realism, see Roger Burke, 2018 [2001], Chapter 18 ‘Left realism’).
6.8.1 An illustrative text: Jock Young, The exclusive society

Our present times certainly no longer believe that it is sufficient to follow Marx and
place private property at the root of all evil. Instead a more complex and greater
appreciation of the problems are to see alienation as rooted in the technological
foundations, organisations and scale of modern society. Left realists try to confront
the huge inequalities of the present in a pragmatic but focused manner. One theme of
recent discussions in the UK concerns the idea of the exclusive society. Young (1999) is
the topical text.
Young’s thesis is that the last third of the 20th century witnessed a transformation in
the lives of citizens in the advanced industrial societies. The golden age of the post-war
settlement, with high unemployment, stable family structures and consensual values
underpinned by the safety net of the welfare state gave way to a new world. This social
ordering is characterised by structural unemployment, economic precariousness,
a systematic cutting of welfare provisions and a growing instability of family life
and interpersonal relations. Pluralism and individualism replaced a social order
displaying a relative consensus of values. A world of material and ontological security
from cradle to grave is replaced by precariousness and uncertainty. Whereas social
commentators in the 1950s berated the complacency of a comfortable ‘never had it
so good’ generation, those of today talk of a risk society where social change becomes
the central dynamic of existence where anything might happen. Key driving factors
are changes in market forces that have transformed both the spheres of production
and of consumption. The move from Fordism to post-Fordism involves the unravelling
of the world of work where the primary labour market of secure employment and
safe careers shrinks, the secondary labour market of short-term contracts, flexibility
and insecurity increases as does the growth of an underclass of the structurally
unemployed.
For Young, a criminogenic culture is generated in that market values that encourage
an ethos of every person for themselves fits on top of a more unequal and less
meritocratic society. At the same time, the force of informal social control weakens as
communities are disintegrated by social mobility or left to decay as capital finds more
profitable areas to invest and develop. Families are stressed and fragmented by the
decline of communities and systems of support, the reduction of state support and
the more diverse pressures of changing patterns of work. As the pressures that lead to
crime increase, the informal forces, which control it, decrease.
The very nature of order is problematised in that rules are both more readily broken
and their status questioned. Exclusion in the market gives rise to exclusion and
divisions within civil society, but the responses of the state have repercussions in
reinforcing and exacerbating the exclusions of civil society and the market place.
Highlighting the downside of contemporary capitalism is not enough for the realist;
one must seek at least to identify some aspects which can be used to build new
communities. The rise of neoliberal economics in the 1990s and 2000s reflects
and further contributes to global flows of capital and results in the destruction of
traditional working-class jobs and communities. In the face of this there is a need to
rebuild face-to-face solidarity, refashion organic communities of living social bonds
and commonly shared beliefs and interests. Although this is also dangerous: in the
face of growing complexity and loss of control by governments over the economy,
various forms of populism and ‘othering’ rise and new enemies, such as migrants, are
seen as fit to label. Many of the left recognise the bondage of family, status and religion
that prevailed in these ‘simpler’ societies. The new right in current social theory wishes
a return to traditional deference of authority, of socialisation into the need to work,
into the image of secure societies.
The issue is not to return to some simple traditional social ordering of the supposed
past but to think creatively for the future, to construct vibrant perceptions for
pluralist, multi-ethnic and participatory societies of the future.
References
u Becker, H. The outsiders. Studies in sociology of deviance. (New York: Free Press of
Glencoe, 1963).
u Blumer, H. Symbolic interactionism. Perspective and method. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1969).
u Burke, R. Introduction to criminology theory. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018; first
published 2001) 5th edition [ISBN 9781138700192].
u Campbell, C.M. and P. Wiles, ‘The study of law in society in Britain’ 1976 Law &
Society Review 10 (4) 547–78.
u Cohen, A. Delinquent boys. (New York: Macmillan, 1971) [ISBN 9780029057704].
u Collins, H. Marxism and law. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) [ISBN
9780198760931].
u Cloward, R.A. and L.E. Ohlin, Delinquency and opportunity. A theory of delinquent
gangs. (Glencoe, Ill: The Free Press, 1960).
u Erikson, K., ‘Notes on the sociology of deviance’ in Becker, H. (ed.) The other side.
(New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964).
u Gagne, K. ‘Moral panics over youth culture and video games’, 2001 dissertation,
Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
u Geertz, C. The interpretation of cultures. (New York, Basic Books, 1973) [ISBN
9780465097197].
u Gottfredson, M. and T.W. Hirschi A general theory of crime. (Stanford: Stanford
u Hall, S. et al. Policing the crisis: mugging, the state and law and order. (London:
Macmillan, 1978) [ISBN 9780333220610].
u Kitsuse, J., ‘Societal reaction to deviant behavior’ in Rubington, E. and M.
Weinberg (eds) Deviance: the interactionist perspective. (New York: Macmillan,
1968).
u MacIntyre, A., ‘A mistake about causality in social science’ in Laslett, P. and W.G.
Runciman (eds) Philosophy, politics, and society. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962).
u Matza, D. Delinquency and drift. (New York: Wiley, 1964).
u Matza, D. Becoming deviant. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010; first published 1969)
[ISBN 9781412814461].
u Matza, D. and G.M. Sykes ‘Juvenile delinquency and subterranean values’ 1961
American Sociological Review 26 (5) 712–19.
u Merton, R.K. Social theory and social structure. (Glencoe, Ill: The Free Press, 1957).
u Quinney, R. Class, state and crime: on the theory and practice of criminal justice.
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall Press, 1978) [ISBN 9780582280618].
u Quinney, R. The problem of crime: a peace and justice perspective. (Mountain View,
CA: Mayfield, 1991) [ISBN 9780874849080].
u Snipes, J.B., T.J. Bernard and A.L Gerould Vold’s theoretical criminology. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2019) eighth edition [ISBN 9780190940515].
u Sykes, G. and D. Matza ‘Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency’,
1957 American Sociological Review 22 664–70.
u Tannenbaum, F. Community and crime. (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1938).

Question 1 Radical criminologists have disputed the assumptions of the positivist
theorists. What new insights or perspectives, if any, have emerged from their
theorising about the causes and distribution of crime in society?
Question 2 ‘Modern capitalist society is inherently criminogenic.’ Do you agree?
7 Contemporary cultural criminology and
existentialism
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
7.1 Directions in cultural criminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

cultural criminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
7.3 The method(s) of cultural criminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
7.4 Jack Katz and the ‘seductions of crime’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
7.5 Mike Presdee and the ‘carnival of crime’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
7.6 Towards an existential perspective in criminology . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Criminology 7 Contemporary cultural criminology and existentialism page 101
Introduction
Criminology, as has been emphasised, is a contested space. In Chapter 6 we saw
that David Matza introduced a key contrast between a correctional attitude and an
appreciative stance. To restate a quote therein used:
the goal of ridding ourselves of the deviant phenomenon, however utopian, stands in
sharp contrast to an appreciative perspective and may be referred to as ‘correctional’. The
overriding concern with causation or ‘etiology’: systematically interferes with the capacity
to empathize and thus comprehend the subject of inquiry. Only through appreciation can
the texture of social patterns and the nuances of human engagement with those patterns
be understood and analyzed. (Matza, 2010 [1969], p.15)
What is at stake?
Consider the German 19th century writer Fredrick Nietzsche, who in Thus spake
Zarathustra (1997 [1883]) has a challenging section called ‘On the pale criminal’.
Here Nietzsche confronts the institutions of justice and self-governance. Zarathustra

speaks of the pale criminal, a man brought before the court charged with robbery and
murder. While the court ends up with a normal exchange Nietzsche evokes layers of
meaning, the thinking before the act, the doing of the act and later the image of the act:
But thought is one thing, the deed is another, and the image of the deed still another: the
wheel of causality does not roll between them. An image made this pale man pale. He was
equal to his deed when he did it; but he could not bear its image after it was done. …
If this appears ambiguous, Nietzsche calls to the judge not to dwell with the
superficial, but the judge cannot:
Listen, O judges: there is yet madness, and that comes before the deed. Alas, you have not
yet crept deep enough into this soul.
Thus speaks the red judge, ‘Why did this criminal murder? He wanted to rob.’ But I say
unto you: his soul wanted blood, not robbery; he thirsted after the bliss of the knife. His
poor reason, however, did not comprehend this madness and persuaded him: ‘What
matters blood?’ it asked; ‘don’t you want at least to commit a robbery with it? To take
revenge?’…
The judges decide he is a robber who committed murder as a factor in the main crime;
in other words, they ignore the motivations of the body and rationalise them away.
They do not, they cannot, enter into the world of the man who thirsted for the thrill of
the knife. And yet, speaks Zarathustra, the reality of the man’s situation is chaos:
What is this man? A heap of diseases, which, through his spirit, reach out into the world:
there they want to catch their prey.
What is this man? A ball of wild snakes, which rarely enjoy rest from each other: so they go
forth singly and seek prey in the world.
Behold this poor body! What is suffered and coveted this poor soul interpreted for itself: it
interpreted it as murderous lust and greed for the bliss of the knife.
We must interpret, not only for academic reasons but as social actors. When we
confront the victims of crime – particularly major crimes – we try to provide some
meaning amid the sorrow. We overlook what Jack Katz has called the foreground
feature of crime, its thrill, its emotions and its transgressive dynamics. (Read Morrison,
1995, Chapter 15 ‘Crime and the existential dilemma’ and note the contingency of the
interactions in the extracts from the extreme crimes recounted.) Everyday life involves
emotions of shame, rage, humiliation and what Nietzsche called resentment where
feelings of failure in oneself lead to blaming external forces and others.
In ‘On the pale criminal’ Zarathustra is not happy with the failure to look at the appeal
or thirst for the knife, he condemns the state of denial of both the pale criminal and
the judge because the judge believes himself to be good based on the old laws of
religion and morality and the criminal cannot be true to himself. Zarathustra actually
prefers the ‘heap of disease’ to the judge for the criminal has at least separated himself
from the prevailing traditional teaching and sought to do a now act, even if he is
incapable of understanding his real position. For Katz, the offender often has worked
through ‘a dialectic processes through which a person empowers the world to seduce
him to criminality’ (1988, p.7).
To some criminalists, this ignores the greater social and economic context as we
encounter the sheer positivity of the act: emotions, projections of the self, anxiety,
fears: all of these are in motion – a ‘ball of wild snakes’. What of the revenge Nietzsche
has Zarathustra speak of? If traditional criminology discounted this as a mere
subjective feeling of little consequence in appreciating the actuality of the offender’s
world, is anything now beyond being included in factors that criminology may
consider?
A ‘post’ or ‘late’ modern theory of crime (see Henry and Milovanovic, 1996; O’Malley
and Mugford, 1994; Morrison, 1995; Stanley, 1996; Ferrell et al., 2004) implies that one
grand narrative of theorising will not suffice: now we must elude the parameters and
limitations of dry definition, break free of some of the constraints of the discipline
and capture the living reality of offending. Currently, a revised cultural criminology
attempts to do this alongside consideration of emotions, of the lived experiences of
crime (as victims and perpetrators) and of existential perspectives.
Learning outcomes
u understand some of the main interfaces that exist between certain forms of
crime/criminality and contemporary culture
u recognise and understand the main theories and ideas associated with cultural
criminology
u recognise and understand the key methodological approaches of cultural
criminology
u discuss Jack Katz’s ideas concerning ‘the phenomenology of transgression’
u debate the notion of crime as ‘carnival’
u relate the idea of an existentialist perspective in criminology.
Essential reading
¢ Ferrell, J., K. Hayward and J. Young Cultural criminology: an invitation. (London:
Sage, 2008) [ISBN 9781446259153] Chapter 1 ‘Cultural criminology: an invitation’.
¢ Morrison, 1995, Chapter 13 ‘Culture and crime in the postmodern condition’ and
Chapter 15 ‘Crime and the existentialist dilemma’.
¢ Presdee, M. ‘Cultural criminology: the long and winding road’ 2004 Theoretical
Criminology 8 (3) 275–83.
Further reading
¢ Katz, J. Seductions of crime: moral and sensual attractions of doing evil. (New York:
Basic Books, 1988) [ISBN 9780465076161].
¢ Ferrell, J. and C.R.S. Sanders Cultural criminology. (Boston: Northeastern

¢ Ferrell, J. ‘Cultural criminology’ 1999 American Review of Sociology 25 395–418.
¢ Ferrell, J. ‘Crime and culture’ in Hale, C., K.J. Hayward, A. Wahidin and E. Wincup
Criminology. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) [ISBN 9780199270361].
¢ Ferrell, J., K. Hayward, W. Morrison and M. Presdee Cultural criminology

unleashed. (London: Routledge-Cavendish, 2004) [ISBN 9781904385370].
¢ Hayward, K. City limits: crime, consumer culture and the urban experience.
(London: Routledge, 2004) [ISBN 9781904385035].
¢ Hayward, K. and J. Young ‘Cultural criminology: some notes on the script’ 2004
Theoretical criminology 8 (3) 259–73.
7.1 Directions in cultural criminology

The American criminologist, Jeff Ferrell (1999, p.396) stressed that contemporary
cultural criminology was ‘less a definitive paradigm than an emergent array of
perspectives linked by sensitivities to image, meaning, and representation in the study
of crime and crime control’.
As an emergent orientation in sociology, criminology, and criminal justice,

cultural criminology explores the convergence of cultural and criminal processes
in contemporary social life. Drawing on perspectives from cultural studies,
postmodern theory, critical theory, and interactionist sociology, and on ethnographic
methodologies and media textual analysis, this orientation highlights issues of image,
meaning, and representation in the interplay of crime and crime control. Specifically,
cultural criminology investigates stylised frameworks and experiential dynamics of
illicit subcultures; the symbolic criminalisation of popular cultural forms; and the
mediated construction of crime and crime control issues. In addition, emerging areas
of inquiry within cultural criminology include the development of situated media and
situated audiences for crime; the media and culture of policing; the links between
crime, crime control, and cultural space, and the collectively embodied emotions that
shape the meaning of crime. (ibid., p.395; see also Ferrell et al., 2005)
Put more simply, its remit is to keep ‘turning the kaleidoscope’ on the way we think
about crime and, importantly, the legal and societal responses to crime.
More recently, cultural criminology has been picked up in the United Kingdom where
writers such as Keith Hayward and the late Jock Young were keen to add a more critical
dimension to the field. They sought to stress the following five themes – many of
which, of course, cut across with the kind of ideas outlined by Ferrell above:
1. To bring back sociological theory to criminology; that is to integrate the role of

culture, social construction, human meaning and creativity to the criminological
project;
2. To introduce notions of passion, anger, joy and amusement as well as tedium,

boredom, repression and elective conformity to the overly cognitive account of
human action and rationality;
3. To re-energise aetiological questions of crime by replacing the bias toward rational

choice and sociological determinism with an emphasis upon the ‘lived experience’
of everyday life and existential parameters of choice within a ‘winner-loser’
consumer society’;
4. To seek to understand the ways in which mediated processes of cultural

reproduction and exchange ‘constitute’ the experience of crime, self and society
under conditions of late modernity;
5. To confront the posturing of value and political neutrality within much

contemporary criminology, with a critical emphasis on the ideological
commitments of the terms by which we frame problems of crime, inequality
and criminal justice. Such themes we hope, when elucidated, will serve to
further define the arrival of cultural criminology as a major development within
contemporary criminology.
A third key definitional principle associated with cultural criminology is its strong
emphasis on the relationship between crime and everyday life within late modern
society (see Section 7.4), a point made clearly by the late British criminologist, Mike
Presdee, in a quote that also nicely captures cultural criminology’s considerable
scepticism about crime statistics and dry empirical data.
Cultural criminology uses the ‘evidence’ of everyday existence, wherever it is found and
in whatever form it can be found; the debris of everyday life is its ‘data’. It uses cultural
artefacts whenever and wherever they present themselves, examining the cultural ‘trail’
they leave behind. Life histories, images, music and dance, all have a story to tell in the
unravelling of crime. Such stories tell us more about the nature of crime than a report full
of statistics... (Presdee, 2000, p.15).
In sum, then, one might say that within cultural criminology the phenomenology
of transgression (see Section 7.4 on Jack Katz) is fused with a sociological analysis of
‘post’ or ‘late’ modern culture to reposition thinking about crime (both the act itself
and the way it is represented), transgression and crime control. Furthermore, criminal
behaviour is reinterpreted as a technique for resolving certain psychic conflicts, and
these conflicts are regarded as indelibly linked to various features of contemporary
life (Morrison, 1995; Presdee, 2000; Hayward, 2004). While it is undoubtedly the case
that many of these themes can be found elsewhere in the criminological tradition
(most notably in the writings of Robert Merton and David Matza (see Chapter 6),
and, to a lesser extent, in the work of Tony Jefferson and the fellow members of the
so-called ‘British school’ in their various attempts to develop ‘imaginary solutions’ to
the contradictions and conflicts of capitalist society (see Section 7.2), it is clear that
this new body of work offers something new, not least because of its engagement with
debates on the transition into postmodernity.
Finally, cultural criminology should not be thought of as simply oppositional to the

more mainstream criminological enterprise. Rather it should be seen as a means of
reinvigorating the study of crime. As Ferrell and Sanders have commented: ‘bending
or breaking the boundaries of criminology... does not undermine contemporary
criminology as much as it expands it and enlivens it’ (1995, p.17).

cultural criminology
As mentioned above, although a recent development that ‘turns’ around many of
the shifts and transformations underway within contemporary society, cultural
criminology actually draws heavily on a rich tradition of criminological work, from
the early ideas of the Chicago school (see Chapter 4) to the more critical Marxist
criminology of the 1970s (see Hayward and Young, 2004, pp.260–61; Ferrell, 1999,
pp.396–99). The following is a very brief (and rather schematic) sketch of some
the more important theoretical frameworks that underpin contemporary cultural
criminology.
7.2.1 The Chicago school

Much of the thinking that inspired the Chicagoans has obviously had an influence on
contemporary cultural criminology. In particular, the emphasis placed by the Chicago
school on early socio-cultural explanations of crime (such as cultural transmission
and differentiation association) and their pioneering ‘appreciative’ research methods
that stressed the importance of entering ‘inside’ the lifeworld of the deviant while
also locating this life-world in social context (see, for example, Cressey, 1932); and
later works such as Anderson, 1923. This point will not be developed in any detail here;
instead the major influence played by sub-cultural theory on cultural criminology
should be noted – sub-cultural theory, of course, having originally been developed by
early Chicago school researchers.
7.2.2 Sub-cultural theory

Cultural criminologists draw heavily on the subtle, situated dynamics of deviant and
criminal sub-cultures, and the importance of style in shaping sub-cultural meaning
and identity. In this respect, much contemporary cultural criminology can be seen as
an extension of both early sub-cultural studies such as Cohen (1971) and Cloward and
Ohlin (1966) and the later work of the British Birmingham school of cultural studies
(e.g. Hall and Jefferson, 2006; Willis, 1990, 2000; Hebdidge, 1979, 1988; McRobbie,
1980). Cohen’s study of delinquent youth had taken us into a mixture of emotions,
feelings and sub-culture where working-class young males worked out their ‘status
frustrations’, their humiliations and rejected the class-based traditional morality.
In the British studies, youth culture is seen as a hive of creativity, an arena of magical
solutions where symbols are bricolaged into lifestyles, a place of identity and
discovery and, above all, a site of resistance. Deviance is an inappropriate label when a
contingent mix.
7.2.3 The radical phenomenological tradition

Theorists like Kitsuse and Lemert supplemented by the social constructionist work
of writers such as Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann can also be seen as having an
influence on cultural criminology. Especially insofar as this body of work involved a
stress upon the existential freedoms of those ‘curtailed’ and ‘oppressed’ by the labels
and essentialism(s) of the powerful. This was never truer than in David Matza’s book,
Becoming deviant (2010 [1969]), with its concepts of ‘naturalism’, ‘drift’, pluralism,
ambiguity and irony, on the one hand, and crime as transgression on the other (see
Chapter 6 and Section 7.4 on Jack Katz).
7.2.4 Critical criminology

Cultural criminology also emerges in many ways out of the rich tradition of radical
and critical British criminology (e.g. Taylor et al. 2013 [1973], 1975). Of particular
importance in this body of work was the research undertaken by such figures as Stan
Cohen (1972), Jock Young (Cohen and Young, 1973), Phil Cohen (2002 [1973]), Ian Taylor
(1971) and Geoff Pearson (1975) into how deviant sub-cultures were both created by
the actors involved, and mediated and constructed through the mass media and
the interventions of the powerful. Hence cultural criminology’s enduring interest in
symbolic interactionism.
7.2.5 Symbolic interactionism

One of the key sociological orientations to underpin cultural criminology is the
interactionist tradition within the sociology of deviance and criminology (e.g. Becker,
1963: Pfohl, 1993). Jeff Ferrell (1999, p.398) explains:
Cultural criminologists also trace the manifold interactions through which criminals,
control agents, media producers, and others, collectively construct the meaning of crime.
In so doing, cultural criminologist attempt to elaborate on the ‘symbolic’ in ‘symbolic
interaction’ by highlighting the popular prevalence of mediated crime imagery, the
interpersonal negotiation of style within criminal and deviant subcultures, and the
emergence of larger symbolic universes within which crime takes on political meaning.
7.2.6 Postmodern theorisation

With its emphasis on the insights of cultural studies and on current explorations
of identity, sexuality, and social space, along with its commitment to understand
and account for the ongoing transformations and fluctuations associated with
hypercapitalism, cultural criminology should very much be seen as an attempt to
create a ‘post’ or ‘late’ modern theory of crime (see Henry and Milovanovic, 1996;
O’Malley and Mugford, 1994; Morrison, 1995; Stanley, 1996; Ferrell et al., 2004). Clearly,
this is a something of a sweeping statement, and one that bears greater examination
than can be offered in the space provided here (for more on this point see Morrison,
1995, Chapters 13 and 18 and Hayward, 2004, Chapter 2). However, in a bid to illustrate
this point, at least in one specific area – postmodern mass mediated (re)presentations
of crime and criminality (see Greer, 2004; Cunneen and Stubbs, 2004; Schofield,
2004) – the following quote by Jeff Ferrell is useful in that it attempts to highlight how
postmodern intellectual orientations infuse much cultural criminology:
In place of the modernist duality of form and content, and the modernist hierarchy that
proposes that form must be stripped away to get to the meaningful core of content,
cultural criminology operates from the postmodern proposition that form is content,
that style is substance, that meaning thus resides in presentation and re-presentation.
From this view, the study of crime necessitates not simply the examination of individual
criminals and criminal events, not even the straightforward examination of media
‘coverage’ of criminals and criminal events, but rather a journey into the spectacle and
carnival of crime, a walk down an infinite hall of mirrors where images created and
consumed by criminals, criminal subcultures, control agents, media institutions, and
audiences bounce endlessly off one another. Increasingly, then, cultural criminologists
explore the ‘networks… of connections, contact, contiguity, feedback and generalised
interface’ (Baudrillard, 1985: 127: see Pfohl, 1993) out of which crime and crime control
are constructed, the intertextual ‘media loops’ (Manning, 1998) through which these
constructions circulate, and the discursive interconnections that emerge between media
institutions, crime control agents, and criminal subcultures (1999, p.397).
Activity 7.1
Why do many of its critics state that there is nothing inherently new about cultural
criminology? How would you cultural criminologist challenge such criticism?
7.3 The method(s) of cultural criminology

Jeff Ferrell suggests, ‘cultural criminology’s melange of intellectual and disciplinary
influences also surfaces in the methodologies that cultural criminologists employ’
(ibid., p.399). The most commonly utilised methods have been infused in recent years
by developments in postmodern theorisation, existentialist thought, and the practices
associated with cultural and critical studies.
First, there is a significant tradition of ethnographic research within cultural

criminology, reflecting a long-standing attentiveness to ‘precise nuances of meaning
within particular cultural (and sub-cultural) milieu’. In this sense, the inspiration for
much ethnographic cultural criminology can be seen as stemming from the rich
history of symbolic interactionism (see section 7.2.5), and such classic studies as Becker
(1963), Polsky (1967) and Willis (2000 [1977]). This, then, is an ethnography immersed
in culture and interested in lifestyle(s), the symbolic, the aesthetic, and the visual. Yet,
cultural criminology is anything but a simple rehash of these classic ethnographies.
Instead, it adds a considerable extra range of ingredients to the mix, including recent
reconsiderations of field method from such disciplines as anthropology (Kane, 1998,
2004), feminist methodology (Fonow and Cook, 1991), cultural studies (Denzin,
1992, 1997) and social psychology (Nightingale, 1995). Ferrell explains: ‘together,
these works suggest that field research operates as an inherently personal and
political endeavour, profoundly engaging researchers with situations and subjects
of study. These works thus call for reflexive reporting on the research process, for an
“ethnography of ethnography”, which accounts for the researcher’s own role in the
construction of meaning’ (ibid., p.400). Thus, Jeff Ferrell and Mark Hamm (1998) talk of
the methodology of attentiveness, of a criminological verstehen where the researcher
is deeply immersed within a culture. (This phrase ‘attentiveness’, of course, reminds
us of David Matza’s (2010 [1969]) ‘naturalism’, the invocation to be true to subject –
without either romanticism or the generation of pathology; see Chapter 6.)
A second major methodological strand associated with cultural criminology concerns

the scholarly reading of the various mediated texts that circulate images of crime and
crime control within late modern society, including (from Ferrell 1999, p.400):
u local and national newspaper coverage of crime and crime control
u filmic depictions of criminals, criminal violence, and criminal justice
u television portrayals of crime and criminals
u images of crime in popular music
u comic books, crime and juvenile delinquency

u crime depictions in cyberspace
u the broader presence of crime and crime control imagery throughout popular
culture texts.
Many of these studies utilise conventional content analysis techniques to measure the
degree of crime coverage, the distribution of source material or the relative presence
of crime imagery. Others incorporate les formal, descriptive accounts of prominent
media constructions or illustrative case-by-case comparisons among media texts.
Still others, often influenced by feminist methodology and epistemology, develop
imaginative readings, counter-readings and sociological deconstructions of crime and
criminal justice formations (Ferrell 1999, pp.400–01).
Importantly, however, one should not see these two key methods of cultural
criminological research as antithetical – quite the contrary. Rather, ‘a number of
scholars have in fact begun to produce works that usefully integrate these two
methodological orientations’ (ibid.). As Hayward and Young have stated, one
of the great strengths of cultural criminology is its ability to meld together the
methodologies of ethnography and media analysis, often in the very same moment.
Indeed, they argue that this is the best way to ‘make sense of a world in which the
street scripts the screen and the screen scripts the street’ (2004, p.259): ‘cultural
criminology stresses the mediated nature of reality in late modernity; subcultures
cannot be studied apart from their representation, and ethnography and textual
analysis cannot be separated. Because of this, the orthodox sequence of first the mass
media and then its effects cannot be maintained’ (ibid., p.268).
Criminal events, identities take life within a media-saturated environment and thus exist
from the start as a moment in a mediated spiral of presentation and representation …
Criminal subcultures reinvent mediated images as situated styles, but are at the same
time themselves reinvented time and time again as they are displayed within the daily
swarm of mediated presentations. In every case, as cultural criminologists we study
not only images but images of images, an infinite hall of mediated mirrors. (Ferrell and
Sanders, 1995, p.14)
Finally, it is important to point out that, from a methodological perspective,

cultural criminology is meant to run counter to the methods and research practices
associated with much mainstream contemporary criminology, which increasingly
appears ‘shaped toward scientific efficiency in such a way as to dehumanise both its
practitioners and those it is designed to investigate and control’ (see Ferrell, 2004). As
Patricia and Freda Adler (1998, p.xiii) make clear, while much of the classic criminology
of the 20th century ‘emerged out of an idiosyncratic, impressionistic approach to
ethnographic inquiry’, the situation today is very different, with the majority of
criminologists being trained in what Jeff Ferrell wryly describes as a tradition of survey
research and related ‘methodologies designed, again quite explicitly, to exclude
ambiguity, surprise, and “human error” from the process of criminological research’
(Ferrell 2004, p.297). In this sense, cultural criminology’s attitude to quantitative
analysis invokes Feyerabend’s (1982) methodological injunction ‘anything goes’ (see
also Young, 2004, and relatedly Hayward, 2004, Chapter 3):
quantative data must be dislodged from claims of scientific objectivity, precision, and
certainty. Such data must be reconceptualised as an imperfect human construction and
carefully situated in time and place. And, in a significant inversion of orthodoxy, it is noted
that ‘they can perhaps sketch a faint outline of [deviance and criminality] but they can
never fill that outline with essential dimensions of meaningful understanding (Ferrell and
Hamm, 1998, p.11) (Hayward and Young, 2004, p.268).
Activity 7.2
In what ways are the methods employed by cultural criminologists different from
more mainstream empirical criminological research?
Having discussed both the theoretical and methodological basis of cultural
criminology, let us now turn to two prominent examples of this approach in action.
7.4 Jack Katz and the ‘seductions of crime’

One of the central texts in the recent reconstruction of aetiology is Jack Katz’s
Seductions of crime (1988). As the title of his book suggests, the central contention of
Katz’s theory of crime is that there are ‘moral and sensual attractions in doing evil’ and
that a truly inclusive account of ‘anti-social behaviour’ has to start from this premise.
However, as Katz stresses from the outset, while the subject of crime has been
approached from numerous perspectives, very few of these explanatory accounts
have focused on the varied emotional dynamics and experiential attractions that are
an integral element of much crime. Consequently, the ‘lived experience of criminality’
rarely features in traditional criminological and sociological explanations of crime and
deviance:
Somehow in the psychological and sociological disciplines, the lived mysticism and
magic in the foreground of criminal experience became unseeable, while the abstractions
hypothesised by ‘empirical theory’ as the determining background causes, especially
those conveniently quantified by state agencies, became the stuff of ‘scientific’ thought
and ‘rigorous’ method. (ibid., pp.311–12).
For Katz, causal explanations of criminality that stress the importance of structural,
environmental, genetic or rational choice factors, over and above the emotional and
interpretative qualities of crime, are often guilty of stripping away and repressing
key individual emotions such as humiliation, arrogance, ridicule, cynicism (and
importantly) pleasure and excitement; emotions that, in many cases, are central to
the criminal event. In doing so they ‘turn the direction of inquiry’ around, so that the
focus of criminological attention falls on the ‘background’ rather then the ‘foreground’
of the criminal act (ibid., p.9). Thus, Katz poses a fundamental question that many
criminologists either take for granted or completely ignore: namely ‘why are people
who were not determined to commit a crime one moment determined to do so
the next?’ (ibid., p.4). The solution, he claims, can be found only by going beyond
background factors and delving deeper into the criminal act itself. He argues that the
various mechanisms which move actors between ‘background factors and subsequent
acts’ have been a kind of ‘black box’, assumed to have some motivational force but
left essentially unexamined (ibid., p.5). Katz proposes to retrieve and prise open the
contents of this ‘black box’. In short, one might say that Katz’s work can be seen as
an attempt to reclaim the ‘unexamined spaces in criminological theory’ (Henry and
Milovanovic, 1996, p.60).
Using an eclectic array of sources, Katz builds up a picture of the sensual, magical
and creative appeals of crime. Evoking the notion of the Nietzschean superman, Katz
asserts that deviance offers the perpetrator a means of ‘self transcendence’, a way of
overcoming the conventionality and mundanity typically associated with the banal
routines and practicalities of everyday ‘regular life’. At the subjective level, crime is
stimulating, exciting and liberating. To think of crime as either another form of rational
activity or as the result of some innate or social pathology is to totally miss the point.
If emotions are major contingencies in the ‘lived contours of crime’, Katz’s broad
cross-section of crimes offers many resonances for anyone attempting to devise a
theory of youth crime. The ‘sneaky thrills’ of juvenile shop-lifting are discussed, from
the ‘sensual metaphysics’, pleasure and ‘ludic’ quality of the act itself, to the shame
and embarrassment felt on apprehension. Robbery is also discussed at length. Katz
builds up a picture of robbery as a spontaneous, chaotic and often hedonistic act. Also
emphasised is the ‘sense of superiority’ involved in the act of ‘stickup and the pride
that robbers take in their defiant reputation as “badmen”’. Katz even examines the
lived sensuality behind events of cold-blooded, ‘senseless’ murder. In particular, he
charts the role of ‘defilement’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘righteous rage’, ‘vengeance’ and ‘hedonism’
– emotions that are frequently at the root of most ‘non modal homicides’. Katz’s
work on the thrill of transgression can easily be extended to include a range of other
criminal activities, especially those perpetrated by young people, and to oppose any
simplistic diagnosis in terms of immediate financial or practical benefits. Teenage
criminal practices such as vandalism, theft and destruction of cars, fire starting,
hoax emergency service call-outs, car ‘cruising’, peer group violence and drug use –
probably the most prevalent of all youthful criminal transgressions – have much to do
with youth expression and the search for exhilaration (see Hayward, 2004, Chapter
5). Such examples serve to illustrate that, in many cases, individuals are seduced by
the existential possibilities offered by criminal acts – by the pleasure of transgression.
And hence, a key advantage of this approach is that it help us to understand why it
is that criminality is not the sole preserve of those groups who are economically and
socially disadvantaged. These groups may well be over-represented in the criminal
justice system but – to make a familiar point – this may have more to do with the social
construction of criminality than higher actual rates of criminal participation (see
Chapter 2).
Activity 7.3
Draw up a random list of crimes and identify the emotions that are integral to each.
How does each crime differ in terms of specific emotions?
7.5 Mike Presdee and the ‘carnival of crime’

Despite drawing closely on Katz’s ideas about the inherent pleasure and excitement
involved in many forms of transgressive behaviour, Mike Presdee’s work – in
particular his monograph Cultural criminology and the carnival of crime (2000) – is
more concerned with ‘the social context in which crime comes into being and is
played out’. In particular, his concern is with the ways in which, and the reasons why,
culture and certain forms of ‘oppositional’ cultural practice are both censured and
regulated by state agencies and society in general. In this sense, Presdee can be seen
as representing a somewhat more critical brand of cultural criminology than that
proffered by Katz.
Evoking Weber’s modernist ideas on the ‘iron cage’ of bureaucracy and rationalisation,
Presdee asserts that, in an effort to curb the apparent increase in youth crime, Western
governments have enacted a series of measures that add up to what he describes as
‘the creeping criminalisation of everyday life’ (on this point see also Ferrell, 2001 and
Hayward, 2002). The result, he argues, is that, in certain social settings, ours is a world
in which ‘dominant and seemingly rational logics’ act upon us and constrain us: ‘As the
individual becomes more and more trapped by applied science and the rational, so
we become more and more enmeshed and oppressed within the so-called scientific
measurement of our lives’ (Presdee, 2000, p.159). Such a situation inevitably provokes
a response. According to Presdee, this response comes in the form of ‘a widespread
desire for extreme, oppositional forms of popular and personal pleasure’. It is at this
point that Presdee evokes Mikhail Bakhtin’s (2009) notion of ‘carnival’, and the way in
which carnival-related practices contribute to what Bakhtin calls the cathartic ‘second
life’ of illicit pleasure.
It is from the second life of the people that the majority of ‘transgressions’ emanate.
It is here that we find the genesis and rationale for behaviours that anticipate the
ability to destroy, disrupt and dissent. The second life of the people is that part that
is inaccessible and untouchable to the ‘official’ world of the scientific rationality of
modernity and its politics, parties and politicians. It is the realm of resentment and
irrationality par excellence and also the realm of much crime. It is the part of social
life that is unknowable to those in power and which therefore stands outside their
consciousness and their understanding. They cannot understand it or indeed even
‘read’ it as a realm of life, but only as immoral, uncivilised, obscene and unfathomable
social behaviour (Presdee, 2000, p.8).
Presdee draws together a wide variety of examples of postmodern carnival, including:

‘the living out of carnival desires on the streets through joyriding, street crime and
antisocial behaviour, and in private via the internet’, the commodification of hate,
hurt and humiliation in various forms of popular culture and high art, and, in a truly
memorable account, ‘the popularisation and criminalisation of sadomasochism and
dance music culture’. In each case, his aim is to further emphasise the paradox that the
more the state imposes rationalising rubrics, the more it provokes in its citizens/subjects
not compliant rationality, but rather heightened emotionality: ‘…we respond with
irrational emotions derived from desire, pleasure and the sensualness of a postmodern
commodity culture’ (ibid., p.29). Hence a spiral in which this ‘irrational response’
provokes further punitive/rationalising moves from the state. Culture, therefore,
becomes at once the site of excitement and social contestation, of experimentation and
dissonance: ‘It is a world full of contradictions, inequalities and struggle, yet it is a world
where... the pursuit of pleasure is potentially antagonistic to the state’ (ibid.).
Activity 7.4
What does Mike Presdee mean when he talks about the ‘carnival’ of crime? Provide
some examples.
Essential reading
u Hayward, K. ‘The vilification and pleasures of youthful transgression’ in Muncie,
J., G. Hughes and E. McLaughlin (eds) Youth justice: critical readings. (London: Sage,
2002) [ISBN 9780761949145].
u Presdee, M. Cultural criminology and the carnival of crime. (London: Routledge,
2000) [ISBN 9780415239103].
7.6 Towards an existential perspective in criminology

Is existentialism a cultural movement or an identifiable philosophical position?
By an existential perspective I am not tying myself to any one figure (such as Sartre
or Nietzsche) but am claiming that there is a relatively discernible and distinctive
family of problems and issues about thinking (or living) through ‘existence’ in general
that asks for more than science, that states that our – human – existence requires
categories and concepts that are not found in the historical cannon of philosophy
or social science. We are humans; this means we cannot be reduced to substances
with fixed properties, nor are we just subjects interacting with a world of objects.
We are more; indeed, the religious traditions claim this but always in relations to a
god or gods. One can be a religious existentialist or a secular one: what is common is
the contention that to understand ourselves, all the ‘truths’ that the natural sciences
and much of the social science (such as psychology) could tell us are insufficient.
Whether the ‘truths’ come from a dualist who holds that human beings are composed
of independent substances – ‘mind’ and ‘body’ – or the physicalist, who holds that
human existence can be adequately explained in terms of the fundamental physical
constituents of the universe (the mind is just chemicals, etc.). To be an existentialist
is not to deny the validity of the basic categories of physics, biology, psychology and
the other sciences (categories such as matter, causality, force, function, organism,
development, motivation and so on). No, it is to say that we human beings cannot
be fully understood in terms of them. Nor can such an understanding be gained by
supplementing our scientific picture with a moral one. Categories of moral theory
such as intention, blame, responsibility, character, duty, virtue and the like do capture
important aspects of the human condition, but neither moral thinking (governed by
the norms of the good and the right) nor scientific thinking (governed by the norm of
truth) suffices.
No, a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary

to grasp human existence. We, and I cast myself as one, are against the reductionist
implications of natural science, against determinist, against the a priori structure
of moral reasoning, against Weber’s ‘iron cage’ of reason. We espouse passion and
urgency, deny that one write in a disinterested manner and emphasise themes
of living life – dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom, commitment,
nothingness, and so forth. Contingency, openness, always the ability to escape…and
dread…
Activity 7.5
Read the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101.
u Hopkins Burke, Chapter 16 ‘Situational action theories’.
u Browning, C.R. ‘One day in Józefów: initiation to mass murder’ in Crew, D. Nazism
and German society. (London: Routledge, 1994) [ISBN 9780415082402] (available
on the VLE).
a. What factor do you consider contributed most to the participation of so many?
b. Is this different to other types of massacres; if so, how?
c. Many stated that during the operation, their nerves did not last. Many were
concerned about their own wellbeing and yet still did not feel remorse towards
their victims. What do you believe this reflects in regard to their sense of
morality?
d. Do you believe Browning when he states; ‘After Jozefow, nothing else seemed so
terrible’?
e. Were you surprised to know that many of the participants were offered a way to
avoid committing these acts? Why do you think more did not take up the offer?
f. Many perpetrators explained that the reason they carried on was for fear of not
wanting to look cowardly. How would their definition compare to your own
definition of cowardly?
g. Do you believe those who managed to avoid committing the shooting by

volunteering as transport or hiding in the forest felt less guilt?
h. In the section where one perpetrator describes how he always shot the children
after someone else had shot the mother as he knew that a child would not
survive without its mother, what do you believe this reflects in terms of choice?
Was it a case of making the best out of a bad situation? Or was it more a case of
making a choice first and then justifying it ex post facto?
i. Why do you think there is such a discrepancy when asked about the shooting of
infants?
j. In the section where one participant describes the effects of his neighbour
incorrectly positioning his bayonet, why do you think this had such a profound
effect? Do you think it brought the repercussions of his actions too close? Is it
easier to choose to kill if it is a ‘clean’ kill?
Summary
This chapter has introduced cultural criminology and discussed both its theoretical
antecedents and some of its main methodological approaches. It has also introduced
more formally the idea of existentialism. In doing so, the aim is to enable you to
understand or at least think through some of the complex interfaces that exist
between contemporary culture and the current crime problem. Such work, then,
represents some of the ways in which cultural criminology seeks to counter
mainstream criminology’s modern (allegedly) ‘scientific methods’. Although in no way
a comprehensive summary of cultural criminology’s diverse alternative and exciting
approaches, this chapter – it is hoped – does provide a forceful account of the rationale
and ethos underpinning the ‘cultural approach’.
1. Using a series of examples, assess the ways in which it can reasonably be
suggested that social deviance is a cultural phenomenon.
2. Consider the connections between violence and culture.
3. What does Jack Katz mean when he suggests that much criminality can be
understood as an ‘array of reactions against mundane, secular, society’?
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¢ McRobbie, A. ‘Settling accounts with subcultures: a feminist critique’ 1980 Screen

Education 34 37–49.
¢ Manning, P.K. ‘Media loops’ in Bailey, F. and D. Hale (eds) Popular culture, crime
and justice. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998) [ISBN 9780534519759].
¢ Matza, D. Becoming deviant. (London: Routledge, 2010; first published 1969) new
edition [ISBN 9781412814461].
¢ Muzzati, S. ‘Criminalising marginality and resistance: Marilyn Manson,

Columbine and cultural criminology’ in Ferrell, J., K. Hayward, W. Morrison
and M. Presdee Cultural criminology unleashed. (London: Cavendish Publishing
Limited, 2004) [ISBN 9781904385370].
¢ Nietzsche, F. Thus spake Zarathustra. Classics of World Literature. (Ware:

Wordsworth Editions, 1997; first published in 1883) [ISBN 9781853267765].
¢ Nightingale, C. On the edge: a history of poor black kids and their American dreams.
(New York: NY: Basic Books, 1995) reprint edition [ISBN 9780465052196].
¢ O’Brien, M., R. Tzanelli and M. Yar ‘“The spectacle of fearsome acts”: crime in the
melting (p)lot in gangs of New York’ 2005 Critical Criminology 13 17–35.
¢ O’Malley, P. and S. Mugford ‘Crime, excitement and modernity’ in Barak, G. (ed.)

Varieties of criminology: readings from a dynamic discipline. (Westport: Praeger,
1994) [ISBN 9780275947743].
¢ Pearson, G. The deviant imagination: psychiatry, social work and social change.
(London: Macmillan, 1975) [ISBN 9780333180921].
¢ Pfohl, S. ‘Twilight of the parasites: ultra-modern capital and the new world
order’ 1993 Social Problems 40 125–51.
¢ Polsky, N. Hustlers, beats and others. (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers,

1967) [ISBN 9780202308876].
¢ Presdee, M. ‘Young people, culture and the construction of crime: doing wrong
versus doing crime’ in Barak, G. (ed.) Varieties of criminology readings from a
dynamic discipline. (London: Praeger, 1994) [ISBN 9780275947743].
¢ Pfukl, E.H. and S. Henry The deviance process. (Piscataway, NJ: Aldine Transaction,
1993) third edition [ISBN 9780202304700].
¢ Rafter, N. Shots in the mirror: crime films and society. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2006) second edition [ISBN 9780195175066].
¢ Redhead, S. Unpopular cultures: the birth of law and popular culture. (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1995) [ISBN 9780719036521].
¢ Schofield, K. ‘Collisions of culture and crime: the commodification of child sexual

abuse’ in Ferrell, J., K. Hayward, W. Morrison and M. Presdee Cultural criminology
unleashed. (London: Cavendish Publishing Limited, 2004) [ISBN 9781904385370].
¢ Stanley, C. Urban excess and the law: capital, culture and desire. (London:
Cavendish, 1996) [ISBN 9781859412091].
¢ Taylor, I. ‘Social consciousness and soccer hooliganism’ in Cohen, S. (ed.) Images

of deviance. (London: Penguin, 1973) [ISBN 9780140212938].
edition [ISNB 9780415855877].
¢ Taylor, I., P. Walton and J. Young Critical criminology. (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1975) [ISBN 9780415519939].
¢ Tunnell, K. ‘A cultural approach to crime and punishment, bluegrass style’

in Ferrell, J. and Sanders, C.R.S. Cultural criminology. (Boston: Northeastern
¢ Tunnell, K. ‘Cultural constructions of the hillbilly heroin and crime problem’

in Ferrell, J., K. Hayward, W. Morrison and M. Presdee Cultural criminology
unleashed. (London: Cavendish Publishing Limited, 2004) [ISBN 9781904385370].
¢ Willis, P. Common culture: symbolic work at play in the everyday cultures of the
young. (London: McGraw-Hill Education, 1990) [ISBN 9780335094318].
¢ Willis, P. Learning to labour. (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2000; first published

1977) [ISBN 9781857421705].
¢ Young, A. Imagining crime: textual outlaws and criminal conversations. (London:
Sage, 1996) [ISBN 9780803986237].
¢ Young, J. ‘Merton with energy, Katz with structure: the sociology of

vindictiveness and the criminology of transgression’ 2003 Theoretical
¢ Young, J. ‘Voodoo criminology and the numbers game’ in Ferrell, J., K. Hayward,
W. Morrison and M. Presdee Cultural criminology unleashed. (London: Cavendish
Publishing Limited, 2004) [ISBN 9781904385370].
Notes
8 Feminist criminology: the challenge of gender
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
8.1 From statistics to explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
8.2 The feminist critique of criminology: an overview . . . . . . . . . . . 123
8.3 Women and the criminal justice system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
8.4 Reflection: what does a feminist analysis mean for criminological theory?
Is it social ideology? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
8.5 Transitions: provocation, an example of gender in question . . . . . . 130
8.6 Feminism, criminology, the postmodern moment and globalisation . . 132

Introduction
Feminism was (and is) not a ‘perspective’ but a movement, perhaps the only successful
social revolution of the 20th century. If modernity was about self-assertion, about
freeing up the ‘individual’ to pursue his desires and wants for a long time it was indeed
a ‘his’. Women were the secondary, the male was privileged. If the modern world was
one of male power plays, of male writings, what was the role of women subject or
object – to be yet included or permanently secondary?
Are there significant correlations between gender and crime? This has been the
narrowly posed criminological question at stake in looking at crime rates: why do
women seemingly commit so much less crime than men? For a long time this question
was dealt with by male criminologists in a traditional, administrative criminological
fashion. The arrival of feminism changed not only the questions but how to view the
terrain. Sometimes the results were reflexive: is masculinity at stake in particular
sorts of crime, or crime in general? These questions and others will be examined in
this chapter. However, far more is at stake. What is radical about feminist criminology
is what is also radical about class-based and race-based interrogations – they all
put the criminal justice system within the context of wider systems of power and
they all understand criminological theorising as itself linked into such systems. This
means that feminist criminology is part of critical criminology, critical in the sense of
political but also in the sense of being reflective about how knowledge comes to be
constructed – that is reflexive about the process of knowledge production – and how
different parts of social ordering are connected.
The feminism of this chapter – as is the majority of this guide – is Western; for many,
feminism has been an especially Western movement and yet the demand for feminism
may be most felt in the rest of the globe. To really interrogate that question is
another project, herein we will remain somewhat narrow – although you are free to
extrapolate to your location. The work herein is of course time related: Smart writes in
the 1970s, Morrison’s chapter is 1995 and Kathleen Daly in 2010.
This chapter will use a classic article by Smart to describe the birth of feminist
criminology in the 1970s (continuing into the 1980s) in the form of a critique and then
go on to outline where the debates and areas of focus developed subsequently.
The point here is not merely to know about the range of information and perspectives
but also to understand how the critique shaped what happened subsequently. Finally,
we then consider if we are in a post-feminist era.
However, first, this chapter asks you to investigate the gender and crime question in a
way that draws on the lessons of earlier chapters about how criminology constructs its
knowledge: the ‘positivities’ that are produced as facts in need of explanation.
Learning outcomes
u explain how statistics on gender differentiated patterns of crime have generated
competing explanations of male and female criminality
u critically engage with official statistics on woman and crime/criminal justice
system
u assess the feminist critique of traditional criminology
u critically analyse the impact of feminist perspectives in criminology and
methodologies used
u explain how feminist approaches changed our understanding of masculinity and
crime.
Core text
¢ Hopkins Burke, Chapter 8 ‘Women and positivism’ and Chapter 11 ‘The gendered
criminal’.
Criminology 8 Feminist criminology: the challenge of gender page 119
Further reading
¢ Morrison, 1995, Chapter 16 ‘Modernity, gender and crime: from the biological
paradigm into feminist interpretations’ pp.383–416.
¢ Smart, C. ‘Criminological theory, its ideology and implications concerning

women’ 1977 British Journal of Sociology 28 (1) (available on the VLE).
When you read, remember it was written in 1977; this is a famous article (in part
summarising the book the author published a year earlier) putting forward in
large part a critique of ‘malestream’ criminology (i.e. traditional criminology,
written by men).
¢ Daly, K.‘Feminist perspectives in criminology: a review with Gen Y in mind’,

McLaughlin, E. and T. Newburn (eds) The Sage handbook of criminal theory.
(London: Sage, 2010) [ISBN 9781446270530]. Read this second; note that Daly is
writing with generation Y (post-feminist) in mind. If you are aged less than 30
then it is you she has in mind!
Internet resources
Feminism is a movement with many perspectives. It is united in the idea that
previously the social world has been dominated by men and in strategies that seek to
make women’s oppression visible and to look to strategies to combat that. Feminist
criminology is a site of discourse and action where individuals make criticisms
of traditional criminology, propose new approaches and seek to make practical
interjections into social life. There are a considerable number of relevant websites:
¢ Feminist Majority Foundation – www.feminist.org/rrights/index.asp
¢ UK Feminista – http://ukfeminista.org.uk/
¢ IGC Women’s Net – www.womensnet.org.za/
¢ Meda Chesney-Lind’s home page – http://chesneylind.com/
¢ National Organization for Women – http://now.org/
¢ Rutger’s Center for American Women and Politics – www.cawp.rutgers.edu/
¢ U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report: Women

offenders (pdf) – www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/wo.pdf
Other webpages/online PDFs on feminist criminology include:
¢ Feminist Criminology – http://fcx.sagepub.com/
¢ ‘Feminism in criminology: engendering the law’ – http://m.jthomasniu.org/

class/781/Assigs/fem-crim.pdf
8.1 From statistics to explanations

There is no gender ‘question’ in criminology until some actual questions are posed.
Equally, there is no point in out-of-context examinations of theories about women
and crime: theories in the abstract are meaningless until they are used to answer
specific questions. Being aware of both questions and answers is a key methodological
rubric for a sound critical-reflexive understanding of criminology, and it certainly
applies to issues concerning gender and crime. At the same time, it is important to
remain acutely conscious that neither questions nor answers come ‘out of the air’,
from random ideas or inspirations. Rather they are produced through standardised
practices of the discipline, the specific methodologies that criminology has adopted as
distinctive. (By the same token, challenges to such methodologies are what keeps the
discipline alive and helps it to evolve.)
Gender and crime issues have been (and remain) framed to a large extent by
criminology’s dominant mode of question-formation: looking at crime statistics or
other measurements associated with criminality. Taking such ‘positivities’ of crime –
‘facts’/‘phenomena’/‘data’/‘given’) – is standard, including endless disputes about the
accuracy of the facts that constitute the starting point. This was a central point in
Chapter 3. But here, let us start from that conventional starting point: official crime
statistics.
England and Wales, Number of offenders (thousands)

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
INDICTABLE OFFENCES
Violence against the person
Males 35.5 33.9 26.4 27.3 31.3 33.3 32.1 31.6 31.9 33.9 34.2
Females 3.4 3.7 2.8 2.8 3.3 3.7 3.6 3.7 3.4 3.8 3.9
Sexual offences
Males 4.3 4.4 4.6 4.4 4.5 4.5 4.3 3.9 4.0. 4.3 4.3
Females 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.1
Burglary
Males 39.2 37.0 34.4 31.3 30.7 2 28.2 25.2 23.7 25.4 24.4
Females 1.0 1.0 1.0 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.1 1.0 1.1 1.3 1.3
Robbery
Males 4.8 4.5 4.8 5.5 5.1 5.1 5.2 5.4 6.2 6.9 6.5
Females 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.8 0.8
Theft and handling stolen goods
Males 99.5 99.1 94.9 93.6 96.1 101.2 105.1 102.1 101.2 100.7 93.6
Females 22.1 22.5 21.2 20.9 22.3 24.5 26.1 25.9 25.8 26.6 25.5
Fraud and forgery
Males 13.6 14.2 13.4 12.6 12.9 14.5 14.7 13.8 13.1 12.9 12.9
Females 3.9 4.2 3.8 3.7 4.1 5.3 5.6 5.4 5.2 5.3 5.1
Criminal damage
Males 8.6 9.2 8.8 9.0 9.6 10.0 9.9 9.3 9.6 9.8 10.1
Females 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.9 0.9 0.9 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.2 1.2
Drug offences
Males 19.9 25.3 28.5 30.4 36.3 43.7 43.5 40.1 41.2 44.3 46.1
Females 2.0 2.5 3.1 3.7 4.4 5.1 5.2 4.6 4.5 4.7 5.1
Other (excluding motoring offences)
Males 34.2 35.5 38.2 39.2 42.4 43.9 42.4 39.3 38.7 42.1 44.6
Females 3.6 3.8 4.0 4.3 5.1 5.7 5.5 5.3 5.3 5.9 6.8
Motoring offences
Males 10.3 11.4 10.7 9.4 8.9 8.5 7.6 7.2 7.3 7.8 8.2
Females 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.5
TOTAL
Males 269.8 274.6 264.7 262.5 277.8 294.4 293.0 277.8 276.8 288.3 284.9
Females 37.8 39.5 37.5 38.0 42.2 47.3 49.0 47.7 47.4 50.0 50.2
SUMMARY OFFENCES(2)
Offences (excluding motoring offences)
Males 307.0 308.4 295.2 335.0 315.4 353.2 339.2 359.2 325.5 356.8 370.6
Females 146.1 146.3 114.8 153.4 101.2 109.6 94.4 131.6 116.6 130.4 122.9
Motoring offences
Males 597.5 573.6 576.7 579 575.5 586.6 556.2 530.7 509.7 517.5 575.0
Females 67.2 65.2 65.7 69.5 73.7 78.6 76.6 76.8 73.7 78.3 87.5
TOTAL
Males 904.4 882.0 871.9 914.5 890.9 939.7 895.5 889.9 835.2 874.3 945.7
Females 213.3 211.5 180.5 222.9 174.9 188.3 171.0 208.3 190.2 208.7 210.5
England and Wales, Number of offenders (thousands)

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
ALL OFFENCES
Males 1,174.3 1,156.6 1,136.6 1,177.0 1,168.7 1,234.2 1,188.5 1,167.7 1,112.1 1,162.5 1,230.5
Females 251.1 251.0 218.0 261.0 217.1 235.6 220.0 256.0 237.6 258.8 260.7
Table 8.1 Offenders found guilty at all courts by sex and type of offence, 1993–2003
Source: This table is adapted (i.e .the information is identical but the presentation has been
rearranged to make males and females more directly comparable) from Criminal statistics
England and Wales 2003.
Activities 8.1 – 8.3

a. Read the table.
1. Do you notice any trends over the years?
2. What body collects these statistics?
3. Do these figures give all crime committed in England and Wales in those
years?
4. What alternative sources provide crime figures for this jurisdiction?
b. Male:female crime ‘ratios’
1. Based on this table but without calculating, what is your sense of the
broad proportion male:female crime – re all offences? Indictable offences?
Summary offences?
2. Now you need to calculate these proportions more accurately.
i. The easiest and most generally comparable form of expression is to

state what percentage each contributes to the overall crime rate (i.e.
comparing each part to the whole), for example, women contributed
X per cent to the overall number of criminal convictions, while men
contributed Y per cent. So calculate now what these percentages are
in relation to the 2003 figures for all offences, indictable offences and
summary offences.
ii. Alternatively, the ratio male:female crime can be expressed as an

‘internal’ relation (i.e. comparing part to part), for example, the
male:female crime rate is A times B.
Is there any crime category where women outnumber male offenders? Or

where the ratio is significantly different from the overall ratios?
c. A key exercise: track down comparable official statistics for a different

jurisdiction and perform the same calculations.
Following these methods, conventional criminology thus had a prima facie starting
point: the huge gap in the crime rate between male and female crime rates. However,
there were two mainstream responses to this statistical gender differential: (1) accept
the statistics and move onto the next stage – explanation (i.e. answers) or (2) reject the
statistics.
Option 1: take the statistics as correct
On this basis, the key question facing criminologists was: what could explain this major
difference between male and female crime rates? There were secondary questions as
well, relating to those areas where women had comparable or higher rates of crime
than men but the overall gap has been the primary issue. Is there something about
women that makes them predisposed against crime?
It was this question that drove Cesare Lombroso (with Guglielmo Ferrero) in the
(infamous) text La donnna delinquente, la prostituta e la donna normale (1893),
translated into English under the title The female offender in 1895. As with his
previous work on men (see Chapter 4 of this guide), it was based on extensive bodily
measurements (criminal anthropometry) ‘revealing’, in the case of women, no
significant differences between ‘normal’ women (i.e. without any criminal convictions)
and ordinarily delinquent women but huge differences between these and women
who were prostitutes.
Lombroso’s answer was that women were by nature conformist: their passivity and
domestic life meant that they more less cut off from the external influences that led
men to evolve – for better and for worse. By now he had abandoned his earlier theories
of atavism – criminals as ‘throwbacks’ to an earlier evolutionary period and moved
on – to accept that degenerate pathological adaptation was the source of criminality.
However, he considered that prostitutes were linked to degeneracy and in a sense
were doubly deviant.
Is The female offender just a late 19th century theory, typical of its times – or did it lay
down precedents for later criminologists who would express the same views in more
modern dress? In addressing this below, we must consider not only the explanations
offered but the questions asked: for the ‘gender differential’ has remained perhaps
the key question, not only for conventional criminology but for many feminist
criminologists as well.
Option 2: query the statistics
A small number of criminological writers (the minority stance), notably Otto Pollak in
The criminality of women (1950), argued that women were actually just as numerically
significant lawbreakers as men but that this was hidden from public visibility by a mix
of factors, beginning with a powerful ideology that saw women as pure, innocent,
dutiful, loving, etc.
Pollak’s key claim was that at all stages from crime reporting to police processing to
prosecutorial decision-making about the seriousness of the crime or even proceeding
with prosecution through to sentencing, there is a tendency to minimise, dismiss or
evade the facts of female crime. Even convicted women were less likely to receive
custodial sentences (far less the death penalty where available); indeed, women’s
prisons were said to be far ‘softer’ than men’s; when women go wrong, they are
treated as objects of compassion (mercy/emotion) rather than judgement and blame.
Secondly, women’s domain was the home, treated as a separate and private realm,
and so it was claimed that the legal system was reluctant to intervene, thus providing
a realm of scrutiny-free opportunities for crime. Finally, women had a deceitful
nature. Consequently, official criminal statistics were totally unreliable – with the key
exception of crimes perceived to go against women’s nature (e.g. child abuse) where
women were likely to be treated more harshly (an echo of Lombroso here: the double
deviance of women who do commit crime).
What is your reaction to these claims?
Certainly, Pollak was, and still is, not alone in querying the accuracy of criminal
statistics. Also, the view that women who commit crimes are treated more ‘leniently’
by the criminal justice system than male law breakers – often called the ‘chivalry
thesis’ – is a popular belief that has given rise to numerous studies. But what is
important here is how his arguments constitute a structure of criminological
questions and answers. Rejecting the accuracy of the statistics, he thus totally
rejects the gender–crime differential as a significant question. As far as frequency of
committing crime goes, he assumes that men and women probably commit crime
at equal rates, although the nature of the crime will vary with the opportunities
typically available to them (public versus private). So, what is his question? What is
it that he sets out to explain? His question simply is, what masks the true crime rate?
His explanations are essentially devoted to positing and explaining the ‘dark figure’ of
female crime.
The second (minority) criminological stance on the gender question disputes the facts
as provided by criminal statistics on conviction rates; the gender differential is not the
key starting point; women commit just as many offences as men (although they may
be more localised in the home).
Activities 8.4 and 8.5

8.4. Referring back to earlier chapters in this subject guide – why might official
criminal statistics on conviction rates be a poor basis for establishing the
overall facts about crime? How do these arguments relate to Pollak’s?
8.5. Reversing the hypothesis: what aspects of male crime might be

underreported?
8.2 The feminist critique of criminology: an overview

What was traditional criminology?
In Burke (2018 [2001]), Chapter 8 ‘Women and positivism’, note the way that he begins
– with the statistical difference. His chapter then is rather strange – at least to me! To
me, it reads as if he has never accepted the feminist critique of positivism!
In the UK, Smart’s book Women, crime and criminology (2012 [1976]) may be taken as
the key point of reference. Smart (1977) was published only a year later and is a good
summary of many of the points of her book.
The feminist critique of criminology was very much a product of its times. On the
one hand, in academic criminology, the British National Deviancy annual conference
(NDC, starting in 1968) was a gathering point for radicals mobilised around social
interactionism and labelling perspectives, soon to be channelled into debates about
Marxism – the perspectives that converged in Taylor, Walton and Young (2013 [1973]).
On the other hand, feminist pressure was mounting, not least in pressure for legal
reforms. The 1970s saw the passing of the Equal Pay Act (1970) and Sex Discrimination
Act (1975). Yet between these two movements there seemed almost no connection.
The NDC was almost totally focused on male activities; so the supreme irony was
the fact that the NDC, so self-consciously radical, and embodying many of the above
ideals for criminology, was so deeply indifferent to the question of women. While the
dominant areas of feminist activities were either focused on the civil sphere of jobs
and services, the ‘private’ domain of sexuality or the overarching domain of theorising:
women’s crime and deviancy did not appear on the agenda – although there was a
growing emphasis on women as victims of crime, especially the paradigmatic crime of
rape.
What the feminist critique of criminology did was to bring these movements together
in a ‘symptomatic’ critique. (‘Symptomatic’, by analogy with medical diagnosis, means
a critique that operates at different levels – immediate presenting symptoms and an
underlying cause or pathology.) A range of factors were criticised:
u ‘Neglect and distortion’: women were hardly visible in criminology and, where they
were discussed, it was in stereotypical and denigrating stereotypes, ‘mythologies’
about women. Women were presented as variously: less evolved, irrational,
deceitful, child-like, neurotic, driven by their hormones, divided into two extreme
types: ‘Madonna or whore’ (i.e. chaste virgin/mother or degenerate prostitute);
similarly, women’s deviancy or dissent was classed as ‘unfeminine’.
u Criminological theory and the criminal justice system has thus served as an
ideological relay, recycling popular clichés and biased images of women – but
lending them weight and legitimation by being repeated in the context of
scientific theory and legal authority. Criminology and criminal justice thus
contribute to the broad pattern of beliefs that support gender injustice across the
social world.
u Judgmentalism/censure: where criminological theory, as ‘science’, claimed to be

morally neutral or as, committed criminology, on the side of the ‘underdog’, by
contrast subjected women to moral scrutiny. It can be seen as a manifestation of
sexist double standards, and also of social controls applied to women.
u Discredited criminological theory good enough for women: approaches that had
long since been rejected in the study of male criminality – especially biologically
based theories – lived on in the study of women. Here criminology showed
marked sexist double standards – and also was complicit with the pathologisation-
individualisation-sexualisation complex (see immediately below).
u Biologistic/psychologistic explanations.
u Pathologisation of women/‘mad not bad’ (or bad because mad): by contrast to the
significant silence in criminological theory, much was to be found about female
criminality in medical journals. This was also true institutionally: women’s prisons
often had psychiatric wings or approaches, while sentencing often involved not
prison but parole with psychiatric social work supervision. A significant indicator of
social controls applied to women.
u Sexualisation of women, especially young women: delinquent girls were typically

scrutinised for promiscuity where delinquent boys were not. Again, sexist double
standards were in operation plus a significant indicator of social controls applied
to women.
u ‘Individualisation’ of female criminality: radical trends in criminology condemned

the pathologisation (of males) as ‘individualising’ criminality, thereby denying
broad social factors as criminogenic. Hence the emphasis on ‘society must change,
not the individual’. Yet when it came to women this was ignored – another instance
of sexist double standards as well as a significant indicator of social controls
applied to women.
u Female victims of crime, especially of rape, were also subject to the same routines:
judged and divided by their sexual lives, regarded as unstable and prone to lying.
Sexist double standards and a significant indicator of social controls applied to
women.
u Re female victims – domestic violence was not taken seriously enough, it was
hidden behind the veil of the private realm.
Summary
The feminist critique of traditional criminology provides:
u An effective indictment of criminology and the criminal justice system as sexist:

operating with double standards and circulating myths about women, rather than
portraying the actuality of women’s lives and experiences.
u It also gives very strong indications that criminology and criminal justice
participate in wider social control regimes for women that appear to be different
from those applied to men – an important sociological insight.
A note on categories of feminism

Sometimes textbooks and websites list different feminist positions under headings
such as ‘liberal feminism’, ‘radical feminism’, ‘Marxist feminism’, ‘psychoanalytical
feminism’, etc. Although these categorisations are genuine political and theoretical
positions, it is dangerous to try to understand everything through this classification.
To take the example of legal reform, although associated with ‘liberal feminism’,
anti-discrimination legislation was supported by all schools of feminism although
they differed significantly in how sceptically or optimistically they backed it. To take
another, more complex example: some of the types of analysis that would come to be
seen as ‘postmodern’ were first advanced through radical feminists who in many ways
oppose postmodernism.
At the risk of generalising, feminist approaches reject the idea of law as a neutral
system of regulation and dispute resolution or that its rules reflect social consensus;
they attack its concepts of ‘universalism’, ‘objectivity’, ‘neutrality’ and ‘rationality’.
They differ in their background assumptions and their policy implications.
Liberal feminism: This tradition is usually traced back to the suffragettes who fought
for votes for women in the 19th and early 20th century and are labelled ‘middle class’.
(The UK was notably backward in as compared to the ex-colonies of New Zealand
and Australia.) Liberal feminists strove for equality in the public domain through law:
women had not been treated equally with men and the solution was to establish
equality. Anti-discrimination provisions were the starting point but it may not be
sufficient merely to put in place formal equality – what of the whole underlying social
structure? And what of oppression in the ‘private realm’?
Radical feminism: This tradition can be traced back to philanthropists and radical
campaigners in England who focused on prostitutes and sexual issues concerning
working class women; women’s suffrage campaigners often sought to dissociate
themselves from such sensationalist sexual issues but it must also be remembered
that these ‘radical’ campaigners largely wanted to reform prostitutes. In the late 20th
century, radical feminism retained the focus on sexuality but now in a more systematic
way – this was the central cause and locus of women’s oppressed, disadvantaged
position, and therefore the private domain rather than the ‘public’ world of
employment or citizenship is the key to women’s oppression. Sexuality in turn was
understood largely in terms of violence, with rape the paradigm of heterosexuality
and prostitution. Also violence is emphasised as the way to understand sexual offences
against women and also women’s sex work: this is increasingly important today in
terms of how to understand global sex work trafficking.
A well know writer in this area is Catharine MacKinnon. Among her themes are those
of dominance and power, the attempt to situate women’s struggles in a grand theory
of social order and the role of sex/sexual violence/rape. She is often confrontational in
her writings as in the following quote: ‘instead of asking, what is the violation of rape,
what if we ask, what is the non-violation of intercourse?... Perhaps the wrong of rape
has proven so difficult to articulate because the unquestionable starting point has
been that rape is definable as distinct from intercourse, when for women it is difficult
to distinguish them under conditions of male dominance’ (MacKinnon, 1983, p.646).
One of her themes is the construction of sexual difference to women’s disadvantage:

thus:
when law is most neutral and objective, it is most male, speaking from the viewpoint of
POWER.
The law is most male [patriarchal] when it is at the height of its aperspectivity – or
allegedly most neutral…Male dominance is perhaps the most pervasive and tenacious
system of power in history, … it is metaphysically nearly perfect. Its point of view is the
standard for point-of-viewlessness, its particularity the meaning if universality.
She champions the consciousness raising: ‘the collective critical reconstitution of the
meaning of women’s social experience as women live through it’ (MacKinnon, 1991,
p.83).
Marxist feminism: On the one hand, this has always been a minority voice, although in
terms of gender and criminology, it is quite powerful. On the other hand, to the extent
that ‘Marxism’ stands for an emphasis on power and powerlessness, and economic
analysis, women are in a different position than men. This often needs to be analysed
in more depth than assumptions made about men.
Postmodern feminism moves against essentialism and questions the idea of any
one truth, including that of women’s oppression. All fixed categories and universal
concepts are rejected; instead, multiple truths and the effects of discourse and
symbolic representations are called on to be examined. So such concepts as
crime, justice, deviance, the public and the private are all socially constructed.
Deconstruction, a technique borrowed from Derrida, works to reveal internal
contradictions of apparently coherent system of thoughts. Postmodern feminism
is open to the criticism that it is better at destroying theories than building them,
which many see as not useful to feminism in a long run. Also, as postmodern feminists
are highly sceptical about the category of ‘women’ as a basis of grounding theory or
political action, many feminists have attacked postmodern feminists as precluding
political action and reaching the goal of ending women’s oppression.
In addition, new perspectives under the names of black feminism and critical race
theory brought the experiences of black woman and woman of colour into focus.
Intersections of race and class show that woman occupy many, many differentiated
positions.
A comment on essentialism
Essentialism is a common term evoked in feminist research. My own understanding
is this: once (Plato) there was an image where every word had a pure form, so the
word woman/women was shorthand for referring to a form that a certain set of
characteristics that defined it. Thus the task of science and philosophy was the
uncovering of those characteristics and their expression; conversely, as I hope has
been apparent in this guide, I am more pragmatic. For me, it is a question of social
existence and the opportunities and resources social position allows. Essentialism,
conversely, states that it is simply the case that categories of people, such as men/
women and heterosexual/homosexual, are as they are. Their essence is timeless,
and socially indeterminate. Categories of people just have intrinsically different and
characteristic natures or dispositions.
Do women have a fixed essence? (For me, personally, as a pragmatist, the question
is wrongly put; however, this is how the question is usually put.) In much traditional
thought – and a lot of common sense! – women’s essence is assumed to be given and
universal, and is intrinsically linked to her biology and natural traits. Of course, this
restricts the possibilities of change and basically ignores development. It seems to
imply that it is ‘wrong’ for a woman to act in a manner contrary to her ‘essence’. In
criminology, the implication was that the good woman is pure and moral, the bad
woman is biologically defective, or more male than female.
Essentialism thereby was conservative: fixed characteristics, given attributes and

ahistorical functions meant that change and social re-organisation produced ‘images’
of women that were actually wrong! (Thus women could not escape their essence.)
There are also instances where women’s essence is seen to reside in psychological
characteristics such as nurturance, empathy, support and non-competitiveness (see
the tradition of cultural difference, particularly note the work of Carol Gilligan). Within
the prison setting, such psychological characteristics are highly desirable and valued
by correctional professionals and are at the core of rehabilitative programmes.
The cultural difference position also attributed intuitiveness, emotional responses,

concern and commitment to helping others as features of women’s moral voice. Thus
radicals considered them as retreating to essentialism! What of offending? When
viewed through essentialist lenses, women’s offending (action?) was viewed in such a
way that agency was ignored. Instead, women’s ‘offending’ (social resistance?) was put
into a physiological and/or psychological profile that cast her as abnormal, a victim of
her feminine form.
8.3 Women and the criminal justice system
Activity 8.6
Download the document ‘Statistics on women and the criminal justice system 2017’.
This is published by the Ministry of Justice at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.
uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/759770/women-
criminal-justice-system-2017..pdf
This is a substantial document – the executive summary on pp.3–7 should be
enough for our purposes, but note that the first paragraph of the Introduction
proper on p.8:
Section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 states that:
The Secretary of State shall in each year publish such information as he
considers expedient for the purpose... of facilitating the performance of those
engaged in the administration of justice to avoid discriminating against any persons
on the ground of race or sex or any other improper ground...[emphasis added].
How does this document differ from the more ‘traditional’ presentation of statistics
we have used earlier in this chapter?
Hint: look at p.37, Figure 5.02 ‘Proportions of individuals dealt with who are dealt
with through prosecutions and out of court disposals, by sex, 2007, 2012 and 2017’.
Feedback
The presentation tries to put a general picture forward. The document is produced
with advice from several organisations over time, including an independent
women’s organisation.
In part, the Ministry of Justice have tried to take on board an array of feminist-
inspired empirical studies of how the criminal justice system (both in the UK but
especially the USA) dealt with women accused of crime. Their studies covered the
whole process from crime reporting to police response to charging by the state
prosecutor through to the trial process, sentencing and the nature of the different
‘disposals’ from fines to probation to imprisonment. A variety of methodologies
were used, from statistical studies to interviews with criminal justice officials and
women charged and convicted to court observation of trials.
The outcomes of many of these studies were concentrated in offering an answer to
the ‘chivalry thesis’/‘leniency thesis’ which was introduced above; in other words,
‘discriminatory practices’.
8.3.1 Feminist responses to the ‘chivalry thesis’
Essential reading
paradigm into feminist interpretations’, pp.390–94 (available in Dawsons via the
Online Library).
Morrison takes us through a number of quantitative statistically based studies of

women and crime statistics that have been offered in relation to the provocatively
named ‘chivalry thesis’ or (equally provocative) ‘leniency thesis’ which asserts that
women receive less severe sentences when they commit the same crimes as men. This
theme has not only been repeated by some criminologists (see Pollak above) but is
also a popularly held view.
Investigating this claim actually involves some difficult methodological questions

about how to compare like with like – and also some sociological questions about
whether ‘like with like’ comparisons are always appropriate. Morrison’s array of studies
can thus be ordered more systematically and a more in-depth study would lead
you to follow through many of the studies. In general, however, even when a gross
comparison in studies would seem to indicate that women received lighter sentences
than men for the same offences, it appeared that this method of comparison was
inadequate because it did not include all the factors that sentencers normally and
legitimately (i.e. per sentencing guidelines) take into account: notably (i) seriousness
of the offence, and (ii) past convictions.
Note: any comparison of sentencing must consider the standard elements taken into
account by sentencers. It is a major mistake – although this does relate very strongly to
populist views – to assume that we have a simple tariff-based system.
Comparing unlike with unlike: ‘leniency’. Where women were differentially tracked
through alternatives to custody, such as social work supervision, especially with a
medical/psychiatric component, is this really more ‘lenient’ as it involves more intense
surveillance and more intrusive demands to ‘open up’ psychologically?
u Although women’s prisons were depicted as generally ‘less severe’ than men’s, in
fact they were found to be either: (a) old, overcrowded and bleak; (b) organised in
terms of tighter disciplinary control than men’s and/or (c) highly psychiatric and/or
(d) newer and based on ‘family’ models.
u A classic work is Hillary Allen Justice unbalanced (1987).
Studies which did attempt to quantify sentencing differences (but ignored interaction
in the courtroom) came up with somewhat conflicting results.
Roger Hood’s study (1992) was one of the few to have compared the sentencing of
men and women at the Crown Court using multivariate techniques. He found that
women were less likely to be sentenced to custody than men when purely legal factors
were taken into account and when socio-demographic factors (e.g. unemployment)
were controlled.
Hood also succinctly explains why various authors, such as Seear and Player (1986), Carlen
(1988) and NACRO (1991), have misinterpreted prison statistics when they argue that
women are more likely to receive custody than men. He points out that these statistics,
which show that the sentenced female prison population contains proportionately
more first offenders than the male population, are an inappropriate basis from which
to draw conclusions about sentencing as they concern those in prison, not those being
imprisoned. In fact, more recently, analysis of an Offenders Index sample of 21,000
offenders convicted of a serious offence in 1991 showed that women first offenders were
half as likely to be given a sentence of immediate custody as male first offenders – 4 per
cent compared with 8 per cent. Those with previous convictions were also less likely to
go to prison than equivalent men (Hedderman and Hough, 1994).
Sentencing outcomes
On the issues of sentencing and chivalry, the research question pivots around whether
women offenders receive more lenient treatment than their male counterparts. Earlier
studies found that women were treated preferentially in court; yet other research
counters these findings, suggesting that women are in fact treated more harshly. Still
other researchers conclude that women offenders receive equal treatment or that
disparities in sentencing are diminishing.
Even when the data are controlled for offence type and prior convictions, the results
are unclear, so it may be apt to conclude with Morris (1987) that it is difficult to
ascertain whether sexual discrimination occurs in the criminal justice system and that
simple allegations of chivalry or sexism can obscure our understanding of the complex
nature of the sentencing of both male and female defendants.
Various manifestations of essentialism can be seen in explanations of female offending

over the last century. Thus the masculinity hypothesis fed into later discourses of
pathology, sexuality and familial control. The chivalry thesis shifts focus but holds
fast to the principles of the female as the weaker sex, in need of male protection
and lenient treatment from police and the courts. Aberrant women were flawed
biologically, mad and abnormal. The liberation theory espouses women’s changed
role within the domestic sphere and blames feminism for the new breed of female
offender. What these accounts share is an unquestioned framing of women as either
victims or offenders. Women offended due to circumstances beyond their control.
Women’s aberrance was never perceived as a deliberate act of agency, rather an
anomaly of the true essence of woman.
More specifically, a number of studies identify clear gender stereotypes in sentencing

when exploring the category of ‘woman offender’. Some researchers have observed
that women may be treated more leniently than men when they act in an approved
feminine role, but that they seem to receive no advantage, and may in fact be treated
more severely, if engaging in ‘unfeminine’ crimes (i.e. crimes of violence) or in
untraditional roles. For example, Wilczynski’s (1995) study demonstrates that gender
plays an important role in determining the nature of the criminal justice response
to those who kill. The criminal justice system views men as bad and normal and to
be treated in accordance with the legal/punishment model. Women, on the other
hand, are constructed as mad and abnormal and in need of the welfare/treatment
model. Further, Wilczynski states that while criminal justice processes predicated on
traditional gender stereotypes can be oppressive to women, at times women benefit
from them (Wilczynski, 1995).
Women as victims
Another moment of the feminist critique of criminology was to make connections
between how women were treated as lawbreakers and how they were treated
as victims of crime: the key finding was that, even though these would seem to
be opposite poles of the criminal justice system, the determinants were actually
identical: namely how far women complied with stereotypes.
Rape, the media and courtroom

Many studies have commented on how the media divides rape victims into ‘innocent’
victims and others. ‘Innocent’ victims are definitely not prostitutes and ideally are
virgins although they may also be monogamous, faithful partners. Similarly, wearing
‘provocative’ clothing or engaging in risky activities such as hitchhiking are explicitly
or implicitly deemed ‘asking for it’, to use a colloquial way of speaking. For the feminist
critique, such categorisations amount to a form of policing women’s conduct, an
informal social control mechanism.
How far are these stereotypes and social control mechanisms reproduced in the
formal criminal justice system? This is a hard question to pose, requiring a certain
understanding of the legal process. For example, it is often said rhetorically that
‘the rape victim is on trial’ – and yet is that not due to the general structures of the
adversarial system in which all ‘victims’ occupy the category of witnesses – as if
witnesses to something external to you and you have an abstract, objective view.
To paraphrase Katherine Barlett, asking the ‘Woman question’ means looking for
gender implications of rules and practices that otherwise appear to be neutral. Relevant
questions include: why and how women have been omitted or misrepresented in
the legal rule or practice; whether, why and how legal rules and practice perpetuate
subordination of women; and how to change rules and practices so to include women’s
experiences and not to perpetuate women’s subordination (see Barlett, 1997).
Standpoint epistemology encourages legal storytelling, that is, woman expressing

their situation(s) as outsiders in and outside the courts (see Graycar, 2002), Chapter 4,
pp.74–76).
Nils Christie (1986, pp.17–30) includes rape victims in his essay.
For a more current perspective, see Hohl and Stanko (2015), pp.324–42.
Domestic violence, rape and policing

Here the gender question has not been focused directly on women’s behaviour or
even men’s but how gender is implicated in cultural constructions of privacy and the
public/domestic distinction.
Feminism has had a very significant impact in the field of women’s victimisation. Rape
and intimate violence have been central concerns; women’s victimisation is more
likely to be personal; in other words, they are closely connected to their victimiser.
Women face specifically gendered violence. Most texts now routinely contain sections
on rape and intimate violence – the domestic arena is no longer a private realm of
domination.
8.4 Reflection: what does a feminist analysis mean for

criminological theory? Is it social ideology?
What does criminological theory seek to explain? How free is it from presuppositions?
Under the feminist critique, the heritage of criminology as biologistic and
psychologistic was clear, as these were very much linked in with social control.
8.4.1 The after-effects of critique

The obvious question in the light of the feminist critique was: what would a non-sexist
criminology look like? Where should we go from here? The key themes of the feminist
critique were:
1. ‘redressing the balance’, including feminist empiricism;
2. social constructionism versus ‘biologism’;
3. ‘not the individual but society must change’; and
4. making visible the webs of social control.
Activity 8.7
Read Daly, K.‘Feminist perspectives in criminology: a review with Gen Y in mind’,
McLaughlin, E. and T. Newburn (eds) The Sage handbook of criminal theory. (London:
Sage, 2010) [ISBN 9781446270530].
Are you Generation Y? Does feminism have any relevance for you?
Feedback
We need to recognise that ‘feminist’ is a political term. One of its catchphrases is
that the personal is political. In other words, there was and is no hiding from the
political nature of being. Feminism opened up space for a critical stance on gender
relations, and behind the birth of feminist criminology in the 1970s was both
wider theoretical analysis of the role that women had been assigned in modern
(and indeed traditional) society and a sense of injustice very much fuelled by the
politics of inequality, sex discrimination and ‘redressing the balance’. Thus, when
considering if it has done its task and we should move on, remember it was a wider
social critique beyond the specific terms of criminology. Feminist criminology
was never purely criminological: the claims – and they were correct – of failings
of theory, the separate biological vision when that of male offenders had moved
on was biased. However, the claims of unfairness in the criminal justice system,
put forward as examples of the sexism of society at large mediated by ideational
artefacts – images of women, stereotypes – that allowed gender injustice to
be operationalised may have been overdone and disingenuous. Did it move
criminology on? Certainly the underpinnings of theory were shown up, the need to
find redress was made apparent and questions were opened that have not yet been
answered.
Moreover, it showed the need for radical reflexivity. To develop criminology thus
requires a reflective stance, being able to think about how arguments get put
together and why.
8.5 Transitions: provocation, an example of gender in question

In rethinking gender and justice, the second phase of feminism was one that sought
to put forward not only a critique but to put forward the woman’s point of view/
standpoint epistemology; thus criminal law had been built on the male standpoint.
One task was to have it recognise the specificity of women’s’ position.
The defence of provocation has been subject to much feminist analysis and pressure
for reform where this has been attempted as a defence for women who have killed
their husbands after years of physical abuse (‘cumulative provocation’). Provocation
is one of three defences to murder, the other two being diminished responsibility
and self-defence. Whereas the effect of a successful provocation defence is that the
accused person is found guilty of manslaughter and hence is eligible for (although
will not necessarily receive) a non-custodial sentence. (A murder conviction carries a
mandatory life sentence.)
Provocation is legally defined in terms of a ‘sudden and temporary loss of self-control’

caused by an action of the victim and it must be of a quality that would have made
‘the reasonable man’ lose self-control. ‘Reasonable’ is often glossed as meaning in
the first instance not what would make a highly irascible and bad-tempered person
(i.e. a person with weak self-control) lash out in response. Since the famous case of
Camplin (the so-called ‘reasonable boy’ case, DPP v Camplin [1978] AC 705), there have
been issues raised has to how far one can assume a universal reasonable person. It is
important to realise that there are two aspects of this question: 1) what degree of self-
control can be expected – in the case of ‘battered women’: can it be legally accepted
that their capacity for self-control has been eroded after years of suffering violence?;
2) what counts as a provocative act (which includes words spoken) for one person may
not be for another. Usually what is discussed are cultural variations, with the (absurd)
example often given of throwing a pigskin slipper at a Muslim, whereas the more
real-life instance would be a Muslim father who kills the non-Muslim boyfriend of his
daughter. In the case of battered women, the issue tends to focus around gender and
power inequality in the relationships.
The instance of battered women also comes up against the fact that ‘sudden’ is taken
to mean that the response to the provoking words or actions must be immediate,
whereas in some of these cases there has been a delay. Finally, the whole defence is
governed by a ‘proportionality’ requirement, that is, that the response (killing the
person) is not too excessive in scale to what provoked it (there is a line of commentary
on the incoherence of this with the idea of ‘loss of control’ but that is not central here).
Provocation has traditionally been a defence that is more successful when raised by
men. Why is that? Feminist critical analysis argues this is because it is an implicitly
masculine defence. This is an important type of analysis that belongs ultimately to
the wider critique of enlightenment values and their modern day successors such as
universal human rights. It consists of a scepticism about abstraction, emphasising that
abstraction is a process whose product will always ‘betray’ (here meaning contain
elements of/still be orientated by) its concrete origin and point of view. Thus: what are
the fact situations in which the defence of provocation first started being recognised
by law?
u Male strangers ‘meeting at the crossroads’;
u The rise of the code of honour in 17th century England;
u Men coming across their wives committing adultery in flagrante delicto.
The third instance might seem the most relevant one from a feminist point of view
because it is clearly about men and women/husbands and wives and what is taken as
‘naturally’, causing a man to lose self-control. Focusing on this, the question would
be: is the same understanding applied to wives in the parallel situation? (In relation
to cumulative provocation, certainly there are striking discrepancies: ‘nagging’.)
However, for this line of analysis it is really the first two examples that are more
relevant or are equally relevant – one can quickly see how provocation reflected a
purely male social experience.
Case study: Kiranjit Ahluwalia (born 1955) is an Indian woman who came to England in
an arranged marriage. In 1989 she set fire to her husband who died. Her claim was that
her actions were in response to 10 years of physical, psychological and sexual abuse.
Her English was poor and she was initially convicted of murder and sentenced to life in
prison.
Her case was taken up by the Southall Black Sisters (SBS), a non-profit, all-Asian
women’s’ group based in Southall in London. Originally established in 1979 in the
aftermath of the death of anti-fascist activist Blair Peach, the group aids the struggle
of Asian women in the fight against racism, but became increasingly involved in
defending the human rights of Asian women who are the victims of domestic violence
and in campaigning against religious fundamentalism.
Ahluwalia’s conviction was later overturned on grounds of inadequate counsel and

replaced with voluntary manslaughter. Although her submission of provocation failed
(under R v Duffy [1949] 1 All ER 932 the loss of control needed to be sudden, which this
was not), she successfully pleaded the partial defence of diminished responsibility
under s.2 Homicide Act 1957 on the grounds that fresh medical evidence (which was
not available at her original trial) may have indicated diminished mental responsibility.
The film ‘Provoked’ (2006) is a fictionalised account of Ahluwalia’s life. Discussion of

the film and sections are on the internet.
8.5.1 Reflection: masculinity and crime
Core text
¢ Hopkins Burke, Chapter 11 ‘The gendered criminal’.
Essential reading
paradigm into feminist interpretations’, pp.409–12 (available in Dawsons via the
Online Library).
The feminist critique provoked a reflection of masculinity itself. In the work of Collier
(1998) and Tony Jefferson, masculinity became a question rather than an assumption.
Although it would seem that the maleness of criminology was a relentless focus of
feminist critique, suddenly it seemed that what this ‘masculinity’ involved had been
taken as given. Hence, the alleged masculinity of systems of authority: the existing
critiques of law and the criminal justice system began to seem too crude, sometimes
even conspiracy theories but, when presented in terms of ideology, the mechanism of
the effect of ‘images’ and what seemed to be institutional masculinity required analysis.
Collier (1998) examined criminological, media and political interpretations of the

relationship between men, masculinities and crime. Rejecting the widely held idea
that masculinity is ‘in crisis’, he argued for an alternative approach to theorising the
‘maleness’ of crime and calls for a reappraisal of the conceptual tools with which the
relationship between masculinities and crime has traditionally been understood.
His ideas were corporeality, sexed subjectivity and the materiality of men’s crimes,
focused on the sexed bodies and subjectivities of men – as offenders, victims, agents
working within the criminal justice system as well as criminologists seeking to explain
crime.
He highlighted the limitations of the concept of masculinity, called for a reassessment

of the crimes of men based on a critical re-focusing on questions of heterosexuality,
childhood, the family and the ‘social’.
8.6 Feminism, criminology, the postmodern moment and

globalisation
Hopkins Burke asks – and this has been an examination question in the past – is there a
feminist criminology?
What he means by this is that, to feminists, criminology was so compromised that a

feminist criminology was a contradiction in terms.
However, globalisation and postmodernism, to some extent, renders such a question

redundant. The future cannot be one of theoretical isolation but confrontation with
global issues and corresponding local issues in which the local and the global are
intermixed.
This was, perhaps, recognised by many feminist writers, for example, consider the
following from Patricia Smith (1993):
We don’t need a final unified vision of society and gender to argue against oppression,
disadvantage, domination, and discrimination. We do not need to know beforehand
the nature of good society or ideal person so long as we know what prevents a society
from being minimally good or prevents individual from realizing the basic potentials of
personhood. We do not need an ultimate vision when we have not yet met threshold
conditions for minimally just society. The commitment to foster open dialogue that allows
the expression of diverse views and gives particular attention to eliciting views not usually
heard is a unifying thread among feminists that attempt and represent the commonality
of fundamental values without misrepresenting the plurality of experience.
The complex conditions of contemporary globalisation intensify the need for

contextual analysis. It is not only that theoretical understandings need constant
positioning and re-positioning but that both the position of women and the nature
of criminal justice have radically altered. For instance, there are now far, far more
women in English prisons (not only absolutely but as a proportion of convicted female
lawbreakers) than there have ever been before. Does this reflect a form of ‘equality’?
Is it an instance of the ‘new punitiveness’? Who are these women? Issues such as
international drug trafficking and sex trafficking come to the fore.
We will consider these issues briefly in our concluding chapter.
References
u Allen, H. Justice unbalanced. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987) [ISBN 9780335155200].
u Barlett, K. ‘Feminist legal method’ in Barnett, Hilaire (ed.) Sourcebook on feminist
jurisprudence. (London: Cavendish Publishing, 1997) [ISBN 9781859411131].
u Burke, R. Introduction to criminology theory. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018; first
published 2001) 5th edition [ISBN 9781138700192].
u Carlen, P. Women, crime and poverty. (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1988)
[ISBN 9780335158690].
u Christie, N. ‘The ideal victim’ in Ezzat A. Fattah (ed.) From crime policy to victim
policy. Reorienting the justice system. (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1986)
[ISBN 9781349083077].
u Collier, R. Masculinities, crime, and criminology. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998).
[ISBN 9780803979963].
u Graycar, R. and J. Morgan, The hidden gender of law. (Sydney: Federation Press,
2002) 2nd edition [ISBN 9781862873407].
u Hedderman, C. and M. Hough Does the criminal justice system treat men and
women differently? (London: Home Office Research and Statistics Department,
1994).
u Hohl, K. and E. Stanko ‘Complaints of rape and the criminal justice system: fresh
evidence on the attrition problem in England and Wales’ 2015 European Journal of
u Hood, R. Race and sentencing. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) [ISBN
9780198258407].
u Lombroso, C. and G. Ferrero The female offender. (Rare Books, 2012; first published
1895) [ISBN 9781152906532].
u MacKinnon, C. ‘Feminism, Marxism, method, and the state: toward feminist
jurisprudence’ 1983 Signs 8 (4) 635–58.
u MacKinnon, C.A. Toward a feminist theory of the state. (Cambridge: Harvard
u Nacro A fresh start for women prisoners. (London: Nacro, 1991)
[ISBN 9780850690699].
u Pollak, O. The criminality of women. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1950).
u Smart, C. Women, crime and criminology. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012; first
published 1976) [ISBN 9780415644174].
u Smith, P. ‘Introduction: feminist jurisprudence and the nature of law’ in Smith,
P. (ed.) Feminist jurisprudence. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) [ISBN
9780195073973].
u Seear, B.N. and E. Player Women in the penal system. (London: Howard League for
Penal Reform, 1986).
u Smart, C. ‘Criminological theory its ideology and implications concerning
women’ 1977 British Journal of Sociology 28 (1).
u Taylor, I., P. Walton and J. Young The new criminology: for a social theory of
edition [ISBN 9780415855877].
u Wilczynski, A. ‘Risk factors for parental child homicide. Results of an English
study’ 1995 Current Issues in Criminal Justice 35 193–222.
9 Punishment and its institutional framework
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
9.1 Philosophy and aims of punishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

sociological accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
9.3 Why punish at all? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
9.4 Punishing as a means to an end? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
9.5 Are compromise theories possible? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
9.6 Do we live in a penal society? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Introduction
Once there was a very close relationship between criminology and ideas on
punishment; most early texts in criminology had titles such as ‘Criminology and
penology’. It seemed a natural connection, for, as has been stated at the early
part of this guide, criminology began with a ‘correctional’ attitude and thus the
institutional structures and frameworks associated with punishment seemed another
branch of criminology and was termed ‘penology’ which combined the Latin poena,
‘punishment’ and the Greek suffix -logia, to give the study of punishment both
theoretical and applied.
Criminology, however, lost that close connection. In part, because in the 1970s
the critique of what institutions were actually doing in the name of reform and
rehabilitation showed not only that little worked (the ‘nothing works’ cry was always
overdone) but that the claims of humanitarian progress in penology obscured new
and often unaccountable plays of power.
If you can, watch ‘ A clockwork orange’ (the 1971 film based on the 1962 novel) or
‘One flew over the cuckoo’s nest’ (a 1975 film based on a 1962 novel) for somewhat
anti-establishment critiques of the hidden power of institutions supposedly based on
rehabilitation and reform. (An earlier and disturbing film is ‘Shock corridor’ in which a
journalist gets himself committed to a mental institution in order to track down the
truth about a murder, he does so but goes insane in the process and stays indefinitely.)
Criminology also developed in diverse ways, such as appreciative, that were far
removed from the correctional beginnings. In fact, within criminology, the rise of a
penal society, or vast network of disciplinary or imprisoning institutions is feared.
This chapter will focus on the coherence or otherwise of the idea of punishment and
its justification. We will read one chapter form the recommended textbook
Core text
¢ Hopkins Burke, Chapter 23 ‘Living in penal society’.
further reading
There is a vast reading on the philosophy of punishment; it has been a much discussed
issue since writing began (some references are given later in the case study section of
this chapter). This is the outstanding book on social theory and punishment, but we
will use it for background material only.
¢ Garland, D. Punishment and modern society: a study in social theory. (Oxford:

¢ Carrabine, E. et al. Criminology: a sociological introduction. (London: Routledge,

2019) fourth edition [ISBN 9781138566262] Chapter 17 ‘Thinking about
punishment’ and Chapter 20 ‘Prisons and imprisonment’.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter and the relevant reading, you should be able to:
u discuss the philosophical justifications for punishment’
u juxtapose justifications and consider issues of coherence and contradiction
u differentiate the philosophical accounts of punishment from sociological
accounts
u discuss in outline the relationship between punishment and the institutional
framework that operates in its name
u discuss in outline the use of prisons and ideas of imprisonment
u discuss the idea of the penal society and hold an opinion as to the future role of
punishment in our different societies.
Criminology 9 Punishment and its institutional framework page 137
9.1 Philosophy and aims of punishment

The philosophy of punishment attempts to propose rational justifications and logical
structures that will provide normative direction to the power to punish.
Punishment is clearly defined by classical writers such as Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy
Bentham as an evil. They are clear that it is pain, moreover that it is pain deliberately
inflicted upon a person adjudged by courts of the nation to be an offender and
provided under the institution of the law. For utilitarians, punishment is one of the
instruments of government to be applied for the greater good. Critics of liberal
capitalist modernity, such as Karl Marx, have sometimes denied absolutely that there
is any moral right to punish in contemporary societies. For them only in an absolutely
just society would a moral right exist.
The philosophical approach that underlined the period of classical criminology mixed
ideas of retribution and deterrence. Punishment was either required as a form of
‘just desert’, a suitable form of retribution for a crime regardless of future outcomes
(and thus required simply to do ‘justice’) or was an instrument of deterrence (where
the future outcome was to be the factor guiding). Positivism, with its notions of
differentiation and determinism (or pathology and the illness model), introduced
notions of reform and rehabilitation that were viewed as the most progressive
justification for most of the 20th century. In fact, we should not actually talk of
rehabilitation or reform as a justification of punishment since these perspectives
sought to make punishment redundant in favour of corrective measures of treatment
of the offender, sometimes on the model of crime as a sickness.
It is possible to list at least seven official purposes of sanctions imposed on offenders:
u restraint or incapacitation: to stop the particular behaviour at issue;
u individual or specific deterrence: using punishment to reduce the likelihood that

the particular offender will repeat the offence in the future;
u general deterrence: punishing one person to reduce the likelihood that others will
commit a similar offence;
u reform or rehabilitation: imposing a sanction (which may be exactly the same

thing as a punishment) called a corrective measure or treatment to correct what
was wrong with the individual who committed the crime;
u moral affirmation or symbolic action: punishment is used to affirm certain social

values and to demarcate the acceptable from the unacceptable, so drawing the
moral boundaries of the society;
u retribution: the punishment is expected to match the harm done, to return justice
to a balance;
u restitution or compensation: where the sanction seeks to regain a balance

through restoring the value of goods taken or compensating the owner for the
loss.
It is a debatable point whether the actual things done in the name of these
justifications actually achieve them. For example, were prisons ever ‘treatment
institutions’?

sociological accounts
The questions or issues you should bear in mind here are:
u What is the role of the philosophy of punishment?
u Is it to rationalise and justify social activities so that they have the appearance of
legitimacy?
u Or does the philosophy of punishment guide social action and put acceptable
limits on our activities?
u How do we understand punishment socially?
Perhaps we can distinguish between punishment as a philosophical concern and

punishment as a concern of social theory (i.e. of sociology). The general idea I suggest
would be that a philosophy of punishment is one of the mechanisms whereby a
normative framework is established for how society is governed, while sociology is a
means by which society is understood. In this way the philosophy of punishment is a
part of the process of providing a philosophical foundation for the domestication of
power. Legitimacy is essential.
As Bauman puts it:
In all order-building and order-maintenance endeavours legitimacy is, by necessity, the

prime stake of the game and the most hotly contested concept. The fight is conducted
around the borderline dividing proper (that is, unpunishable) from improper (that is,
punishable) coercion and enforcement. The ‘war against violence’ is waged in the name of
the monopoly of coercion. (Bauman, 2001, p.201)
9.2.1 The backdrop to the discussions on punishment: the development

of modern society
Shall we question whether societies progress in moral as well in technical terms? At
least until recently this was the accepted explanation of penal change. Our societies,
we were told, had moved from times where the criminal law was an instrument of
repression and arbitrary power to a time where the operation of the criminal law and
the power to punish was rational, humane and just. But there is widespread doubt
over the issue of whether human societies always progress in moral as well as in
technical terms.
In the first two chapters it was stressed that reflection and developing a criminological
imagination are sought for. Some of you may have actual criminal justice experience
– for many, however, the actual reality of what is done in the name of punishment
may be an abstraction. Personally, I (WJM) was for a brief time a part-time educational
officer in two UK prisons and my PhD was intended to be on prions but developed
into an analysis of the philosophy and institutions of punishment instead. I have been
fascinated and repelled by prison.
Consider this statement about capital punishment: ‘Capital punishment is the most
premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated, can be
compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a
criminal who had warned his victim of the date on which he would inflict a horrible
death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for
months. Such a monster is not to be encountered in private life.’
What do you make of this? Do you consider this a rational comment or emotive?
It was made by the rather existential French writer Albert Camus – termed once ‘the
conscience of the West’ and awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature in part for
illuminating ‘the problems of the human conscience in our times’ in his 1957 essay
‘Reflections on the guillotine’ (Réflexions sur la Guillotine, which can be found online
and in Camus, 2004).
The guillotine had been produced in the Enlightenment as an effective, clean method
of execution and was used up until the death penalty was abolished in France in 1981.
Camus opens with a personal reflection concerning his father who goes to see the
execution of a murderer...
Shortly before World War I, a murderer whose crime was particularly shocking (he had
killed a family of farmers, children and all) was condemned to death in Algiers.
He was an agricultural worker who had slaughtered in a bloody delirium, and had
rendered his offense still more serious by robbing his victims. The case was widely
publicized, and it was generally agreed that decapitation was altogether too mild a
punishment for such a monster. I have been told this was the opinion of my father, who
was particularly outraged by the murder of the children. One of the few things I know
about him is that this was the first time in his life he wanted to attend an execution. He
got up while it was still dark, for the place where the guillotine was set up was at the other
end of the city, and once there, found himself among a great crowd of spectators. He
never told what he saw that morning. My mother could only report that he rushed wildly
into the house, refused to speak, threw himself on the bed, and suddenly began to vomit.
He had just discovered the reality concealed beneath the great formulas that ordinarily
serve to mask it. Instead of thinking of the murdered children, he could recall only the
trembling body he had seen thrown on a board to have its head chopped off.
For Camus ‘Justice of this kind is obviously no less shocking than the crime itself, and
the new “official” murder, far from offering redress for the offense committed against
society, adds instead a second defilement to the first’.
Camus is angry at our – humans generally – acquiescence in forces that dehumanise,

humiliate and ultimately destroy us, and the biggest fear is that we do not recognise
when we acquiesce. We are in systems of thought that obscures ‘reality’. Is Camus
correct or is his sort of outburst that of an estranged person? (Alternatively, it could be
both. The estranged person is the one who can see through the obscurity.)
The 20th and 21st centuries have seen vast technical progress but not only has the
connection between technical and moral progress become untenable, further we have
seen clear examples of moral regression (the Nazi regimes stand as an obvious example).
Furthermore, the scale of some of the problems the human race faces currently are so
vast that any assertion that we have progressed morally seems somewhat doubtful. The
imperfection of human society and of the international order are painfully obvious at a
time where we appear to have gone full circle in terms of a risk society. Having moved
from the naturally precarious existence of primitive life through the growth of nations,
the ‘civilizing process’ and the development of modernity to a stage of new threats to the
survival of the human race that owe their foundation to our own cultural creations (for
example, ecological disaster, nuclear proliferation, the state of the developing world on a
supranational level and the state of the inner cities and the crime problem on a national
level).
In the face of this, one tendency is to foreclose on the possibility of progress. Give
up the notion of the perfect society or the utopian order of things. But it seems
dangerous to give up on the notion of progress, for the image of the possibility of
progress is both an important rallying banner and also instinctively plausible.
In a world of uncertainty, where nobody knows all the answers and where all claims
to truth may be considered contingent or methodological, it is important to preserve
both the critical perspective and the conditions of change. Put another way, it is
important to keep our societies open (as a group of liberal writers are fond of saying).
The possibility of progress, therefore, implies the necessity of social and political
change. And change is strongly driven by the phenomena of hope, that is, by the spark
of a new vision of possibility, the encountering of a new opportunity, the realisation
that old boundaries were not as impenetrable as had been thought. That is, a vision of
the different: of new and improved life chances which turns latent desire into action
and thus into change. The banishing of hope amounts to a weakening of the critical
attitude and lowers the possibility of change, for whoever has given up hope has in
actuality accepted the conditions around him.
9.2.2 Identifying opposing views on the philosophy of punishment

It is important to be able to define in general terms what punishment means to us.
Consider a representative quotation:
Punishment is viewed as a social act. That is, it takes place in the context of, and with the
active and passive participation of, communities of people. Punishment has a symbolic
character which is oriented toward denouncing what are deemed to be harmful or socially
repugnant activities. It thus has the function of establishing what is ‘right’ and what is
‘wrong’ behaviour by providing a public disapproval of an offender and/or their offensive
behaviour. Punishment has been said to resonate at a psychological and emotional
level in that the administration and rituals associated with punishment provide a focal
point for the expression of deeply felt emotions. A feature of punishment therefore is
symbolically to draw the lines in terms of acceptable behaviour or conduct, and following
of appropriate rules. Furthermore, it functions to reaffirm certain forms of authority and
belief. That is, the authority of any particular governing regime is in part based upon how
punishment is organised and carried out in practice (White and Perrone, 2005, p.138).
Punishment involves the infliction of some unpleasantness on the offender, or

deprives the offender of something valued. ‘But punishment is not just the infliction of
something unpleasant on the offender: the imposition is made to express disapproval
or condemnation of the offender’s conduct which is in breach of what is regarded as a
desirable and obligatory standard of conduct’ (Ten, 1987, p.2).
As Golding explains, philosophical discussions differentiate levels of questions:
u What is the general justification of punishment?
u Who may justifiably be punished?
u How – or how much – may someone be punished?
(Golding in Cederblom and Blizek (eds), 1977, p.89.)
Particular approaches may be more relevant to one or other question. Retributivism,

for example, may be more relevant to the second question than to the first. To
the question: ‘on whom may punishment justifiably be imposed?’ a relevant and
retributivist answer would be ‘only on deserving offenders’. But retributivism may
have little, and perhaps next to nothing, of relevance to say about the general
justification of punishment (Golding, 1977). This particular question is concerned
with why a society should have the institution of punishment in the first place, why it
should have penal laws at all (i.e. laws that prescribe or forbid various kinds of conduct
and that threaten punishment for violations). On this issue, deterrence answers appear
more apt: a society has penal laws because it wants to deter people from doing, or not
doing, certain things. But deterrence may have a lesser relevance to the question ‘who
may justifiably be punished?’ than it has to the general justification of punishment.
Many writers recognise this (Golding, for example, states that the classical theories of
punishment should be construed as answers to different questions rather than as rival
answers to the same question).
The philosophical debate on punishment has traditionally been broken up into two
main camps. On the one side are those who adopt a deontological approach (that
something simply is right to do in itself, for example, the retributionists, where
punishment is right to inflict because it is required in order to do justice). On the
other are those who adopt a consequentialist approach (for example, utilitarianism,
or deterrence theories where punishment is a lesser evil required because the
consequences of inflicting it are better than the consequences of not inflicting it).
Activity 9.1
Ask what the emotions associated with punishment are. Are they capable of being
fitted into the justifications? Or is the philosophy of punishment a way of achieving
a reasoned approach without emotions?
Can you see links? For example, retributionism is often said to reflect the desire for
vengeance.
9.2.3 Consequentialist or utilitarian philosophy

In classic Greece, Plato had Protagoras state:
In punishing wrongdoers, no one concentrates on the fact that a man has done wrong
in the past, or punishes him on that account, unless taking blind vengeance like a beast.
No, punishment is not inflicted by a rational man for the sake of the crime that has been
committed (after all one cannot undo what is past), but for the sake of the future, to
prevent either the same man or, by some spectacle of his punishment, someone else from
doing wrong again. (Plato, Protagorus)
In the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes set out a sentiment picked up in classical
criminology:
In revenges or punishments, men ought not look at the greatness of the evil past, but the
greatness of the good to follow, whereby we are forbidden to inflict punishment with any
other design than for the correction of the offender and the admonition of others. (Farrar,
1980).

In this approach, since punishment is itself an unpleasant experience for the offender
who is punished, the infliction of punishment can only be justified if it prevents
greater suffering.
The deterrence model was developed by the classical school of criminology during
the 18th and 19th centuries. Taking a rationalist view of man as a pleasure-seeking,
pain-avoiding creature, the objective is to construct and depict the institutions that
deal with crime in such a way that they give a strong message to potential offenders of
the consequences of offending. The appropriate penalty will deter potential offenders
from committing crimes (Grupp, 1971, p.7). As Bentham states:
When we consider that an unpunished crime leaves the path of crime open, not only to
the same delinquent but also to all those ... entering upon it, we perceive that punishment
inflicted on the individual becomes a source of security to all. That punishment which
considered in itself appeared base and repugnant to all ... is elevated to the first rank of
benefits – not as vengeance but rather, as an indispensable sacrifice to the common safety.
(Bentham, 2000, p.396)
Bentham suggests that punishment may prevent the occurrence of offences in three
ways: by making it impossible or difficult for the offender to break the law again,
at least in certain ways; by deterring both offenders and others; by providing an
opportunity for the reforming of offenders. Emphasis placed on potential offenders
is secondary deterrence and deterrence of the offender themselves is primary
deterrence (ibid.).
The utilitarian theory therefore, is based on the premise that it justifies punishment
solely in terms of its beneficial effects or consequences. Many utilitarians subscribe
to the idea that the main beneficial effects of punishment is to be viewed in terms of
the reduction of crime, and believe that punishing offenders will have the following
benefits:
u punishment acts as a deterrent to crime;
u deterrent effects can be both individual and general; punishment deters the
offender who is punished from committing similar offences in the future, and it
also deters other potential offenders; this is achieved by first
u the offender who is punished is supposed to be deterred by his experience

of punishment and the threat of being punished again if he re-offends and is
convicted (the individual deterrent effect) and second
u general deterrent effect works through the threat of their being subjected to
the same kind of punishment that was meted out to the convicted offender.
In addition, punishment may have reformative or rehabilitative effects. The offender

who is punished will be ‘reformed in the sense that the effect of punishment is to
change his values so that he will not commit similar offences in the future because
he believes such offences to be wrong. But if he abstains from criminal acts simply
because he is afraid of being caught and punished again, then he is deterred
rather than reformed and rehabilitated by punishment. So the effects of individual
deterrence and rehabilitation are the same; however, the distinguishing feature lies in
terms of the difference in motivation’ (ibid.).
The incapacitate effect provides a third consequence. Simply put, the offender
cannot reoffend if dead or under penal restraint, for example, in prison, irrespective of
whether the person is at all deterred or reformed by punishment.
Incapacitation appears justified particularly for those who are not deterred or ‘beyond
treatment’. However, on a general level, consequentialist arguments appear best
able to support the whole structure of law enforcement. Regardless of the prevailing
crime rates, it is assumed that many persons are in fact deterred; were it not for the
operation of the deterrent machinery, the crime rates would still be higher. In this
case, punishment of many offenders is morally justified on grounds of deterrence
alone. While there are some that argue against this position, it can be argued that
deterrence is the primary purpose of the state’s sanctions (Grupp, 1971, p.7).
Thus for the deterrence theory, the minimal aim of punishment is the protection of
society. It would achieve this purpose in two ways: by preventing the offender from
repeating his offence and by demonstrating to other potential offenders what will
happen to them if they follow his example.
9.3 Why punish at all?
9.3.1 De we need the threat of punishment?

For the 20th century liberal philosopher H.L.A. Hart, the case for punishment as a
general social practice or institution rested on the prevention of crime. People are
punished because we thereby deter potential offenders from becoming actual
offenders, and therefore it is not to be found either in the inherent appropriateness
of punishing wrongdoing or in the continently ‘corrective’ or rehabilitative powers of
fines or imprisonments on some criminals.
Note Wasserstrom’s argument:
a view such as Hart’s is less a justification for punishment than a justification of the threat
of punishment. For it is clear that if we could somehow convince the rest of society
that we were in fact punishing offenders, we would accomplish all that the deterrent
theory would have us achieve though our somewhat more visible punishments. This is
so because it is the belief that punishment will follow the commission of an offence that
deters potential offenders. The actual punishment of persons is necessary only to keep the
threat of punishment credible. (Wasserstrom in Cederblom and Blizek (eds), 1977, p.186.)
Is it the threat of punishment and not the punishment itself that deters? If so, while
deterrence seems to depend on actual punishment, to implement the threat, it really
depends on publication and may be achieved if people believe that punishment has
occurred even if in fact it has not. Bentham apparently said this clearly: ‘for a Utilitarian
apparent justice is everything, real justice is irrelevant’ (Mabbott, 1971, p.41).
Punishment is therefore to be conceived of as a necessary evil rather than a positive

good, a means to an end rather than an end in itself. It follows that we ought to
minimise if not eradicate punishment. Wasserstrom (1977) concluded that two
extreme positions emerge in considering the effects of the threat of punishment:
u On one side of the spectrum are those like Jeremy Bentham, who considered man
to be a rational being choosing between two possible modes of action on the
basis of a calculation of risks of pain and pleasure before deciding upon his actions.
Benthamites believe that we always act in accordance with our own enlightened
self-interest. The consequence of this model is stated as follows: if we make the
risk of punishment sufficient to outweigh the prospective gain, the potential law
breaker will, as a rational being, choose to stay within the limits of the law.
u The other side of the spectrum are those who state that this model is unrealistic
and subscribe to the view that:
When people remain law abiding, it is not because of fear of the criminal law, but because
of moral inhibitions or internalised norms. If an internal restraint is lacking, the threat of
punishment does not make much difference since criminals do not make rational choices,
calculating gain against the risk of punishment; they act out of emotional instability,
lack of self-control, or because they have acquired the values of a criminal subculture.
(Andenaes, 1974, p.111)
Is it the fear of punishment – a belief in the reality of the threat – rather than beliefs
about its type or amount that deters? If so, the nature of the potential offender’s
beliefs about the likelihood of apprehension will be crucial to the efficiency of the
system (Lacey, 1988, p.28). Moreover, the general deterrent value of punishment might
be dependent on the publicity it receives (Golding, p.96). The threat of punishment is
seen to be justified simply by its necessity as a means of making the standards of the
criminal law real: as a way of stating that the meeting of those standards is a matter of
duty or obligation (Lacey, 1988, p.182).
Activity 9.2
Can you summarise the utilitarian position?
Feedback
u The only acceptable reason for punishing a person is that punishing him/her will
help prevent or reduce crime, thereby reducing the amount of suffering in the
future.
u The only acceptable reason for punishing a person in a given manner or degree is
that this is the manner or degree most likely to reduce or prevent crime.
u People should be punished only if the act of punishing produces the best
consequences by way of preventing or reducing crime as a consequence.
(Morrison, 1997, p.147)
9.3.2 What of punishing the innocent? Who may rightly be punished?

The general deterrence argument for punishing the guilty also seems to justify
inflicting unpleasant treatment on those who have not in fact committed offences.
Note how Ten (1987, p.13) states the proposition:
Let us now assume that the beneficial consequences of punishment outweigh the
suffering that it inflicts on offenders. Critics of the utilitarian theory argue that if
punishment is to be justified solely in terms of its good consequences, then punishment
cannot be confined to offenders. There might be situations in which punishing an
innocent person would produce better consequences than alternative courses of action.
The Utilitarian is therefore committed to punishing the innocent person.
How can utilitarians respond?
u Punishing the innocent is a logical contradiction because punishment implies

guilt’. This response replaces argument by a mere appeal to definition:
‘Punishment, it is said is something we do to an offender for an offence. Thus,
punishment of the innocent is simply a contradiction in terms – it is not
punishment at all’ (Lacey, 1988, p.38).
u The premises of the objection are challenged by utilitarians. It is suggested that

punishing the innocent man will not in fact produce the best consequences if
we take into account all the consequences of such punishment of the innocent,
including the long-term and less obvious consequences. Here the utilitarian
response to the charge that they are committed to punishing the innocent is,
they say, that on balance the punishment of the innocent will always produce
worse consequences than otherwise. For example, it is claimed that the fact
that an innocent man has been punished would soon leak out and what would
then follow would be a loss of confidence in the legal system (Ten, 1987, p.17).
Similar sentiments have been expressed by Bentham (Bentham, 1982, pp.158–164,
in Lacey, 1988, p.39). He stated that punishing the innocent would not always
maximise utility because of the extra suffering caused to the victim by reason
of his innocence and of the risk of damage to the general respect for the legal
system should the travesty of justice ever be discovered. Therefore, the utilitarian
response to the point that they allegedly approve of the deliberate punishment
of the innocent is to respond in the negative and assert that such an action would
have more harmful consequences than beneficial results. Duff states that this
misses the point – the crucial charge is not that a consequentialist will in fact
punish the innocent, but that he is ready to contemplate it as an open moral
possibility (Duff, 1986, p.160).
u It is claimed that the only situations in which punishing the innocent is optimistic
are hypothetical and fantastic situations rather than situations which arise, or are
likely to occur, in the real world (Ten, 1987, p.17).
u On another level, one can argue that one cannot object to a consequentialist
account of punishment merely on the grounds that it would sanction the
punishment of the innocent. ‘No practicable system of punishment can hope to
punish only the guilty; in ensuring that we punish a reasonable proportion of the
guilty, we will inevitably punish some who are in fact innocent’ (Schedler, 1980,
pp.158–59).
But for Duff (1986, p.154):
u A system of punishment is most obviously defective if it involves the deliberate

punishment of the innocent.
u Punishment of the innocent is objectionable not merely because it does not

give the victims a fair chance to avoid it, but because it is a perversion of law and
punishment.
u The aim of deterring potential offenders does not by itself require a system that
inflicts suffering only on offenders for their offences: ‘We might deter potential
offenders by punishing an innocent scapegoat under the pretence that he is guilty’.
But if so then:
Having threatened to impose punishment on offenders, we are then committed to

punishing actual offenders not only by the need to make the threat believable, but also
because we have in effect promised to do so; thus, in stating this, we are entitled to
punish only those who have voluntarily broken the law ... To punish an innocent is to deny
him the respect which is his due, because instead of responding as we have legitimately
threatened to respond to his own voluntary actions, we simply use him as a means to our
further social ends. (ibid., p.172)
9.4 Punishing as a means to an end?

Considerations of general deterrence have proved popular rhetoric, but punishment
on this ground has been attacked as unjust. Bittner and Platt (in Andenaes, 1974,
p.129), contend that ‘Punishment on the basis of deterrence is inherently unjust. For
if an example is made of a person to induce others to avoid criminal actions then
he suffers not for what he has done but on account of other people’s tendency to
do likewise’. This is a frequently raised criticism for Kant’s moral principle that man
should always be treated as an end in himself, not only as a means for some other end
is often quoted in support (Kant in Andenaes, 1974, p.129). Bitter and Platt suggest that
‘Punishment is essential to the law’s effectiveness and that without its application
the law would be meaningless. Thus if it is ethically justifiable to issue penal laws in
order to regulate human conduct, it cannot be ethically unjust to apply the law in
the individual case. It cannot be said that the offender ‘suffers not for what he has
done but on account of other people’s tendency to do likewise. He suffers for what
he has done in the measure prescribed by the legislature (1974, p.131). As H.L.A. Hart
has put it, the primary operation of the criminal punishment consists of announcing
certain standards of behaviour and attaching penalties for deviation, and then leaving
individuals to choose. This, he asserts is the method of social control which maximises
individual freedom within the framework of the law (Hart in Andenaes, 1974, p.23).
Thus, the decisive point does not seem to be whether the law is based on
considerations of deterrence, but rather whether it can be accepted as a reasonable
means to a legitimate end.
From the abolitionist point of view, the notion of controlling crime by penal intervention is
ethically problematic as people are used for the purpose of deterrence, by demonstrating
power and domination. Punishment is seen as a self-reproducing form of crime. (De Haan
in Stenson and Cowell (eds), 1993, p.205).
De Haan states that the penal practice of blaming people for their supposed
intentions:
u is dangerous because the social conditions for recidivism are thus reproduced;
u is irrational in that it assumes that crime is a result of the individual themselves;
u is irrational in making us believe that punishment is the appropriate means of

crime control, rather
u we should not seek to isolate the criminal act, but view it in its overall
environmental context.
Abolitionists deny the utility of punishment and claim that there is no valid
justification for it.
They criticise deterrence theory for its sloppy definitions of concepts, its immunity
to challenge, and for the fact that it gives the routine process of punishment a false
legitimacy in an epoch where the infliction of pain might otherwise have appeared
problematic. (ibid., p.209)
9.4.1 Retributive theories: the complete opposite of consequentialist

views?
In the late 19th century, Judge Stephen offered a view characteristic of the Victorian
ethos:
I think it is highly desirable that criminals should be hated, that the punishment inflicted
on them should be so contrived as to give expression to that hatred, and to justify it so far
as the public provision of means for expressing and gratifying a healthy natural sentiment
can justify and encourage it. (Stephen 1883, in Rubin, 1963, p.654)
Retributive theories require the features of punishment to be shaped by reference to

the features of the offence for which it is meted.
Thus, a retributive theory is necessarily backward looking in its orientation to

punishment. Its focus is on the offence and nothing else, especially not any social cost/
benefit or individual eugenics that can be calculated to result from punishments.
The typical concerns of forward looking, consequentialist theories of punishment,
have no place in a retributive theory. Hence, retribution in punishment ignores
all features of the offender’s character, the victim’s situation, all the effects of the
threat or infliction of punishment insofar as these are distinct from the nature and
gravity of the offence and whatever else is central to characterizing the offence itself.
(Bedau in Cedarblom and Blizek (eds), 1977, p.51)
For retributivists:
u the offender’s wrongdoing is deserving of punishment;

u the amount of punishment should be as proportionate as possible to the extent of
the wrongdoing;
u it is the offender’s desert, and not the beneficial consequences of punishment, that
justifies punishment.
Retributivists differ in their details of their explanation of how punishment is supposed

to give the moral wrongdoer what they deserve. Some regard the punishment of
wrongdoers as derivative from a fundamental axiom of justice that ‘wrongdoers
deserve to suffer’. Braithwaite and Pettit state:
Retributivism, as part of a deontological theory will give an axiomatic, underived status to

some constraint or set of constraints (the relevant constraints being in relation to giving
offenders deserved punishments). It will assess systems of criminal justice by reference to
whether or not they satisfy those ultimate demands. Since the constraints are axiomatic
the requirement to satisfy them is prime. It does not turn on the assumption that
satisfaction promotes some independent target. (1990, p.33)
Some retributivists try to connect punishment with broader issues of distributive

justice, or justice in the distribution of the benefits and burdens of social life. The
offender is viewed as someone who has taken an unfair advantage of others in society,
and thus the meting out of punishment is then needed to restore fairness and equality
among its citizens (Ten, 1987, p.5).
9.4.2 Punishment and ‘desert’

Immanuel Kant appears to be the definitive retributionist: the criminal must be paid
back in kind because he must not be allowed to profit from his wrongdoing. To profit
would be unjust to his victim, to civil society and indeed to the criminal himself. Kant
is clear:
But what kind and what amount of punishment is it that public justice makes its principle
and measure? None other than the principle of equality (in the position of the needle on
the scale of justice), to incline no more to one side than the other. Accordingly, whatever
undeserved evil you inflict on another within the people, that you inflict on yourself. If you
insult him, you insult yourself; if you steal from him, you steal from yourself; if you strike
him, you strike yourself; if you kill him, you kill yourself. But only the law of retribution
(ius talionis) – it being understood, of course, that this is applied by a court (not by your
private judgment) – can specify definitely the quality and quantity of punishment; all
other principles are fluctuating and unsuited for a sentence of pure and strict justice
because extraneous considerations are mixed into them. (Kant, 1996, 6, p.332)
If the offender commits an offence then he should suffer the penalty, and that penalty
should be proportionate to the amount of his wrongdoing. Garland summarises:
‘Utilitarian argument and reformative purposes have given way to an emphasis upon
desert, denunciation and punishment ... what was originally intended as a liberal
critique of modernist reasoning in favour of classic Enlightenment restraints has been
taken up by a more punitive anti-modernism, which emphasizes the importance
of punishment as a symbol of sovereign power and social authority’ (Garland in
Blomberg and Cohen (eds), 2003, p.192).
The retributivist appears to defend the desirability of a punitive response to the

offender: ‘the punitive reaction is the pain the criminal deserves, and that it is highly
desirable to provide for an orderly, collective expression of society’s natural feeling
of revulsion toward and disapproval of criminal acts. It is argued that this expression
vindicates the criminal law and in so doing help to unify society against crime and
criminals’ (Grupp, 1971, p.7).
Hart (2008, p.231) put forward a model of the retributive theory of punishment:
u a person may be punished if, and only if, he has voluntarily done something morally
wrong (i.e. committed a crime);
u the punishment must in some way match, or be the equivalent of, the wickedness
of his offence; and
u the justification for punishing men under such conditions is that the return of
suffering for moral evil voluntarily done, is itself just or morally good.
If punishment is the deliberate infliction of pain and legal punishment, the infliction
of pain on a duly convicted criminal, the right to punish can rest only on the
retributive principle so understood (Berns in Baumann and Jensen, 1989, p.1). Under
retributionism:
u the punishment should be made as analogous as possible to the nature of the

crime or to create a proportionate relationship between the offence and the
punishment (Middendorff, 1968, p.51).
This implies that:
u the punishment must not be excessive. It must not exceed what is appropriate
to the crime. We must always be able to say of the person punished that he
deserved to be punished as he was punished: this is the reason why one views
the punishment of the innocent as unjust punishment, as is punishment that is
disproportionate with the crime. Furthermore:
u the person punished must deserve the pain inflicted on him.
u To be deserved, punishment must be of an offender who is guilty of an offence

in the morally relevant sense of ‘offence’ (McCloskey in Ezorsky (ed.), 1972,
p.121). To assert that someone deserves to be punished is to look to his past
wrongdoing as reason for having him penalised.
u This orientation to the past distinguishes desert from deterrence theory,

which seeks to justify the criminal sanction by its prospective usefulness in
preventing crime (Von Hirsch, 1976, p.46).
In brief, for punishment to be just it must be merited by the committing of an offence.

It follows from this that punishment, to be justly administered, must involve:
u care in determining whether the offending person is really a responsible agent,

that is, ‘autonomous individuals who are assumed to have the capacity to
determine their own ends as free and rational creatures.’ (Morrison, 1997, p.148.)
Thus:
u if he has done nothing wrong for which he deserves to suffer, he ought not be
made to suffer (e.g. he ought not be punished solely to deter others from doing
something). Kant espoused the following view: ‘Judicial punishment can never
be used merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself
or for civil society, but instead it must, in all cases be imposed on him only on the
ground that he has committed a crime’ (Kant in ibid.). Further:
Even if a civil society were to dissolve itself by common agreement of all its members (for
example, if the people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse themselves
around the world), the last murderer remaining in prison must first be executed, so
that everyone will duly receive what his actions are worth and so that the blood-guilt
thereof will not be fixed on the people because they failed to insist on carrying out the
punishment; for if they fail to do so, they may be regarded as accomplices in this public
violation of legal justice. (ibid.)
Honderich (2006, pp.12–13) suggests two propositions arising from these passages of
Kant:
u Kant’s words, that we punish a man only because he ‘has committed a crime’
require another interpretation if it is to be meaningful. ‘In part, we do support the
man’s punishment because it is his desert for his deeds. [And] in part, the point
is that he acted wrongly or immorally, as distinct from only illegally. He has done
something of a sufficient wrongfulness to be prohibited by the law.’
u In the second passage, Kant states that we have an absolute and categorical
obligation to impose a certain penalty. A person must be punished if he has
performed an act for which he deserves a penalty. Since the individual was seen
as a rational, responsible and autonomous agent, retributivists make strong
assumptions of voluntariness and responsibility. The agent’s free and informed
choice to commit an offence means that they deserve to be punished; the deepest
rationality of the offender as agent would allow him to see that he should be
punished in the given circumstances. As commentators such as Lacy recognise,
punishment under these circumstances does thus not violate the autonomy of
the offender as a person, it rather respects him as such’ (Lacey, 1988, p.154). As Duff
states ‘we accord him the respect which is his due as a responsible moral agent ...
He may therefore claim a right to be ... punished, for his wrong-doing; a right to be
treated, respected and cared for as a moral agent’ (1986, p.70).
The notion of desert is central and punishment is justified in terms of the desert of the
offender. Retributivists base their assessments of desert both on the harm done by the
act, and on the mental state of the offender as a further element which determines
his culpability. To be deserving of punishment, the offender must be morally culpable
in that his act was done in the absence of one of the accepted excuses. One can then
formulate retributive theories of punishment as those theories that maintain that
punishment is justified because the offender has voluntarily committed a morally
wrong act (Ten, 1987, p.46).
Bedau (in Cederblom and Blizek (eds), 1977, p.51–73), in his critique of retributionism
examines certain features of an ideally just society to ascertain what would be the
rationale for punishment in such a society, namely, who would be punished and for
what conduct and what their punishment ought to be. He argues that the rationale for
imposing a system of punishment in a just society would be to secure compliance with
rules that are just. This he states is not a retributivist rationale for imposing a system of
punishment in a just society would be to secure compliance; its reasons for punishing
a violator is not that he ‘deserves’ it because of his guilt, but rather that society meant
what it said when it threatened the punishment in the first place and that, he claims, is
why this view is not reconcilable with the retributivist viewpoint.
Honderich (2006, p.23) puts forth an explanation of the assertion that a man ‘deserves
a particular penalty’, when we say this we imply:
u that he behaved culpably and ought therefore to be punished;
u that the penalty imposed will give satisfactions equivalent to the grievance that
was caused by his actions;
u that similar penalties have been and will be, imposed for similar offences;
u that he was responsible for his action and performed it with a knowledge of the
possible consequences that would arise in the penalty system;
u that, unlike non-offenders, he gained satisfactions attendant on the commission of

the offence.
The fifth point concerns the idea of unfair advantage.
The idea of unfair advantage
One particular version of the retributive theory justifies punishment in terms of the
claim that the offender has taken an unfair advantage of law-abiding citizens.
Finnis’ modified natural law theory (Braithwaite and Pettit, 1990, p.158) stated that we
currently have a distribution of certain freedoms, a freedom to do certain things under
the law and that these have been distributed in accordance with the rule of law. He
then poses the question: What happens when someone breaks the law by committing
a murder or robbery? He states that what this person has done is to gain for himself a
greater quantity of social goods than what he would ordinarily be entitled to, that he
has assumed certain freedoms that the rest of us simply do not have. In this case, we
need to punish the offender in order to restore the balance.
Herbert Morris displayed similar sentiments. In ‘Persons and punishment’ (Ten, 1987,
p.52) Morris envisaged a general justifying aim of punishment. He saw this as restoring
the balance which the offence disturbed. He declared that there were benefits and
burdens in society: where the benefits consisted of the non-interference by others, he
stated that this benefit was only possible if there was a burden of self-restraint. When
the criminal violated the rules of the criminal law, they were seen to have renounced
the burden that other law-abiding citizens had accepted. The criminal was then seen
as assuming an unfair advantage over the law-abiding citizens who had accepted this
restraint on them. Punishment was therefore justified as it prevented the weakening
of the disposition to obey the law among the law-abiding citizens.
Retributive punishment is thus perceived as ‘restoring the balance’ by cancelling out

this advantage with a commensurate disadvantage. It thus ensures that lawbreakers
do not gain from their wrong-doing and punishment is justified because, if we failed
to punish lawbreakers, it would lead to an unfairness for the law-abiding citizen
(Cavadino and Dignan, 2007).
Retributionism appears to rationally reconstruct something close to our normal sense

of the concept of the punishment fitting the crime. The amount that the offender
is punished in order to bring about the just distribution of freedoms within society
would be proportional to the amount of freedom that he had taken for himself
unjustly.
However, there are theoretical difficulties inherent in such a theory.
First, Ten (1987) states that ‘the scope of Morris’s theory should only extend to the
punishment of those who violate the rules which are necessary for the survival of society,
for it is only those rules which can confer equal benefits on all. The scope of this theory
does not therefore cover all cases in which punishment is thought to be justified.’
Similarly, in his text he states that it is dubious to imagine that this theory can justify
our present practices of punishment or anything of the sort. He suggests that this
theory only applies if our society is a just one in which all citizens are genuinely equal,
otherwise there is no equilibrium of equality for punishment to restore. For example,
most detected that offenders begin from a point of disadvantage socially, and thus
punishment would only serve to increase that inequality.
Secondly, there is no practical guidance about the fair measure of punishment in

any particular case. Lacey (1988) asks what actual punishment would forfeit a set of
rights equivalent to those violated by, say, a rapist or murderer. It would be difficult
to quantify the level of punishment in order to ensure that it reflected the amount of
freedom that the offender had assumed for himself.
Thirdly, the view presupposes that there is an independent account of what counts as
an unfair advantage and a just equilibrium (Cavadino and Dignan, 2007).
Finally, Braithwaite (ibid.) states that the theory which holds up the achievement of
an equilibrium between benefits and burdens as the point of the system, by imposing
a counterbalancing disadvantage over his non-violated fellows. Braithwaite suggests
that for all this characterisation tells us, the theory fits a consequentialist mould just as
comfortably as deontological one.
9.5 Are compromise theories possible?

The strength of both utilitarian and retributivist rationales of punishment leaves many
people uneasy as to what really justifies punishment.
9.5.1 Hart: valid justification of punishment

Hart (2008, pp.1–27) offers the reader another way of considering the problem. He
argues that the justification of punishment raises a number of different issues, and
that any account which seeks to provide a single answer – whether it be the pursuit
of a single value or a plurality of values – to a single question is inadequate. We
have instead to look for different answers to different questions. Hart distinguishes
between three such questions that must be answered in order to produce a valid
justification of punishment (see also p.5):
u what justifies the general practice of punishment? That is, what is it that makes
it necessary and right to have institutions of punishment in the first place? (Hart,
2008, pp.1–27);
u who may be punished? That is, concerning the liability to punishment; and
u how severely may we punish? That is, of the amount of punishment which may be
justifiably imposed in the particular case.
Hart maintains that the general justifying aim of punishment (Braithwaite and Pettit,
1990, p.48) is the utilitarian one of deterrence, protecting society from the harm
caused by the crime, and which therefore leads to beneficial consequences and not
the retributive aim of inflicting pain on offenders who are morally guilty. But the
pursuit of the general justifying aim has to be qualified by principles of ‘distribution’
which restrict the application of punishment to only those who have voluntarily
broken the law (Hart, 2008, pp.1–27).
As to the question: who may rightly be punished? Here, a principle of ‘retribution in

distribution’ is espoused, and thus only offenders may be punished for their offences
(Lacey, 1988, pp.1–27).
9.5.2 Punishment as a socio-cultural paradigm

In order to appreciate the impact of punishment in society, one needs to consider the
sociological account of punishment. From this perspective, it is argued that methods,
justifications and ramifications of punishment are neither obvious nor rationally
self-evident. To fully understand the various dimensions of punishment, it is therefore
necessary to acknowledge its social foundations and purposes; that is, to accept that
punishment is a microcosm of wider social processes (White and Perrone, 2005, p.148).
As Garland states: punishment is ‘a social artefact serving a variety of purposes and
premised upon an ensemble of social forces’ (Garland, 1992, p.20). Drawing on Marcel
Mausee, Garland described punishment as a ‘total social fact’ (ibid., p.274). It is an area
of social life which spills over into other areas and which takes its social meaning as
much from these associations as from itself, thus accumulating a symbolic depth of
meaning which go beyond its immediate functioning. Therefore, according to Garland,
‘punishment does not just restrain or discipline society, punishment helps create it’
(ibid., p.276 (original quote from Michel Foucault)).
9.5.3 Is punishment a necessary condition for social order?
Activity 9.3
Read Carrabine, E. et al. Criminology: a sociological introduction. (London: Routledge,
2019) fourth edition [ISBN 9781138566262] Chapter 17 ‘Thinking about punishment’
(available on the VLE).
Emile Durkheim looked to the non-instrumental aspects of punishment – its emotional
aspect, its social origins, its expression of values and cultures (Howe, 1994, p.116) and its
effect beyond the relationship of controlled and controlling. Punishment was not for
Durkheim mere vindictiveness. Durkheim saw punishment playing an important role in
the creation and maintenance of the solidarity that was a necessary condition for social
order and the continued existence of society (Cavadino and Dignan, 2007, p.68).
Garland states that for Durkheim
the rituals of criminal justice – the courtroom trial, the passing of sentence, the execution
of punishment – are, in effect, the formalised embodiment of the conscience collective.
In doing justice, and in prosecuting criminals, these procedures are also giving formal
expression to the feelings of the community – and by being expressed in this way those
feelings of both strengthened and gratified. (Garland, 1990, p.67)
Punishment ‘is a social occasion which simultaneously structures individual sentiment

and gives it cathartic release’. (ibid., p.68)
Without punishment, Durkheim anticipated the demoralisation of the upright people

in the face of defiance of the collective conscience: ‘Criminal acts call forth a collective
hostile response in the shape of punishment, and the punishment serves to restore
and reinforce the outrage of the conscience collective.’
Durkheim saw punishment as not primarily deterrent or reformative, rather it was

produced by collective retributive emotions that then had a useful denunciatory
effect. Its true function was to maintain social cohesion. He felt that if an emotional
response did not come to compensate the loss that this would result in the
breakdown of social solidarity.
For Durkheim, social solidarity was a necessary precondition for collective social
existence, punishment being regarded as important because it was functionally linked
to the maintenance and preservation of social solidarity (White and Perrone, 2005,
p.149).
Braithwaite and Pettit call this rationale for punishment one of ‘moral education’. He
quotes Durkheim (Braithwaite and Pettit, 1990, p.126):
Since punishment is reproaching, the best punishment is that which puts the blame –
which is the essence of punishment – in the most expressive ... way possible ... It is not
a matter of making him suffer ... rather it is a matter of reaffirming the obligation at the
moment when it is violated, in order to strengthen the sense of duty, both for the guilty
party and for those witnessing the offence – those whom the offence tends to demoralize.
Durkheim thus saw the role of punishment as re-affirming and perpetuating society’s
core values and in this sense punishment had an educative effect. Punishment was
depicted as a group phenomenon of great intensity. It was supposedly propelled by
irrational, emotive forces, which swept society’s members into a passion or moral
outrage (Garland, 1990, p.26.). Punishment would then have the function of limiting
the ‘demoralizing effects’ of deviance and disobedience. Punishment did not give
moral discipline its authority; rather it prevented discipline from losing its authority.
Punishment, here, had the role of preventing the collapse of moral authority. It
ensured that, once established, the moral order would not be destroyed by individual
violations that robbed others of their confidence in authority (Garland, 1990, p.43).
In this view, punishment is a straightforward embodiment of society’s moral order

and provides an instance of how that order represents and sustains itself (Garland,
1990, p.26.). For Durkheim, crime is in one sense a creation of punishment rather than
an instigator of punishment. Punishment has a broader role than simply responding
to specific types of crime. Punishment is not just a negative response to crime, rather,
punishment actually constituted crime in the sense that it defined what was criminal
and had positive social effects such as reinforcing social solidarity (Howe, 1994, p.8).
9.5.4 Punishment as an element of culture

Punishment has deep cultural significance. In Punishment and modern society (Garland,
1990, p.3), Garland sets out a sociological account of punishment and its role in
modern society. He emphasises the significance of punishment as an element of
cultural history, and he claimed that one cannot understand punishment and its
evolution without understanding changing sensibilities. Further, that one cannot
understand a culture without taking account of the role of punishment in its social
order and formation (Finnane, 1997, p.5). Garland advocates a move beyond the
social control framework. He felt that what was required was ‘a wider, more flexible
and more multi-dimensional framework’ which allowed for the impact of cultural
sensibilities on the punishment processes (Howe, 1994, p.116). Punishment is viewed
not simply as an exercise of power, it expressed social sentiments, notably passion.
Indeed, the ‘essence of punishment’ was for Garland, ‘an irrational, unthinking
emotion’. Thus punishment needed to be conceptualised not only in terms of the
power to punish, but also as an ‘urge to punish’ – as an emotional reaction which
flared up at the violation of cherished social sentiments (Howe, 1994, p.116).
Garland attempted to describe punishment as a cultural artefact, which embodied and

expressed society’s cultural forms (Garland, 1990, p.193). A sociology of punishment
requires an analytical account of the cultural forces and values which shaped and
influenced the idea and the organisation of punishment – in particular, an account
of the patterns that were imposed upon punishment, which involved complex,
moral, religious and emotional forces that historians had identified as part of the
motivational dynamic of penal reform. At the same time, these cultural forces must
be considered against the background of social relations and historical change which
had made it possible for people to reason in terms of this sociological setting and in
methodologies that would enable them to promote policies in accordance with their
own sensitivities. Morals and sensibilities needed to be located within the grid of
social interests and positions in a way that reflected the complex realities of cultural
life. Thus Garland considered punishment as a complex cultural artefact, encoding the
signs and symbols of the wider culture in its own practices (1990, p.198).
In this sense, Garland sought to demonstrate how society’s cultural patterns had come
to be imprinted upon its penal institutions in a way that made punishment a practical
embodiment of some of the symbolic themes. He stated that any phenomenological
account of punishment:
Should never lose sight of the fact that punishment is also, and simultaneously, a network
of material social practices in which symbolic forms are sanctioned by brute force as well
as by chains of reference and cultural agreement. Penal institutions form a functioning
part of a structure of social action and a system of power, as well as being a signifying
element within a symbolic realm, and in reality, neither aspect ever exists without the
other. Penal practices are shaped by the symbolic grammar of cultural forms as well as
by the more instrumental dynamics of social action, so that in analysing punishment, we
should look for patterns of cultural expression as well as for logics of material interest or
social control. (1990, p.199)
Penal culture, which Garland meant as being ‘the loose amalgam of penological
theory, experience, institutional and professional wisdom’ (1990, p.198) was an
evolving concept – ‘that cultural patterns changed over time and that these cultural
developments tended to exert a direct influence over patterns of punishment’ (ibid.,
p.201). Penal agents (the professionals involved in the penal process) and penal
ideology were seen to work within a broader cultural context, reflecting the climate of
public opinion and the mores of governmental direction. As a consequence, Garland
suggested that the specific culture of punishment in any society would have its roots
in the broader context of prevailing social attitudes and traditions (ibid., p.210).
Culture is a determinant of punishment. The converse of this statement is also true:

that punishment and penal institutions help shape the overarching culture and
contribute to the generation and regeneration of its terms. It is a two way process – an
interactive relationship (Garland, 1990, p.249).
In this sense, punishment, like any social institution is modelled by broad cultural
patterns that have their origins elsewhere. However, it also generates its own local
meanings, values and sensibilities, which then contribute to the bricolage of the
dominant culture (Garland, 1990, p.193) As Garland states:
Instead of thinking of punishment as a passive ‘expression’ or ‘reflection’ of cultural

patterns established elsewhere, we must strive to think of it as an active generator
of cultural relations and sensibilities. The idea is to indicate just how penal practices
contribute to the making of the larger culture, and to suggest the nature and significance
of that contribution. (1990, p.250)
Punishment is therefore one of the many institutions that help support the social
world by producing shared categories and authoritative classifications through which
individuals understand each other and themselves. For Garland, this is achieved by
way of an understanding of penal culture. In turn, contemporary society and culture
have a resounding influence on penal culture.
Contemporary penality (what Garland referred to as ‘penal modernism’: 1990, p.250)

claims to be based upon rationalised practices, and upon a utilitarian and rationalist
orientation (Garland in Blomberg and Cohen (eds), 2003, p.188). Further, utilitarians
may argue thus that retributive principles are to be considered as an irrational
disutility – a pre-modern tradition based upon emotion and instinct (ibid., p.187) and
thus should be afforded no place in considerations of punishment.
In a sociological account of punishment, we may observe that the justifications

and consequences of punishment are not self-evident. Therefore, it is necessary to
acknowledge its social foundations and purposes. It is through a study of punishment
and penal culture that one may gain an understanding of the intrinsic nature
of the concept. It has been observed that the concept of punishment does not
exist in philosophical isolation, rather it is reflective of the dominant culture and
contemporary sensibilities. The idea of punishment is thus to be considered as a
microcosm of wider social processes.
9.6 Do we live in a penal society?
9.6.1 The strengthening of the politics of formal social control and the
analysis of David Garland
Since the late 1970s there has been a dramatic increase in the use of imprisonment in
both the UK and the USA.
In the face of the decline of informal social control, reinforcement of formal social
control – through the police and punishment – becomes more important and
politically defensible.
One favourite examination question has been whether prison works and how to
explain the recourse to imprisonment in the face of questions as to its legitimacy of its
effectiveness.
Two key texts of the early 1990s highlighting this trend were Nils Christie’s Crime
control as industry: towards gulags western style (2000) which was a devastating
analysis of the growth of a crime control industry, and Thomas Mathiesen’s Prison on
trial (1990). Mathiesen took the accepted justifications of punishment and applied
them to the operation of the prison. He argued that the prison was unable to operate
in a way that proved itself legitimate by all of the supposed rationalisations.
What of contemporary conditions? Prisons, policing and crime control are daily news
items. In January 2016 the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick, who stepped
down in April 2016, said the former justice secretary, Chris Grayling, ‘disagreed
strongly’ with independent report findings and tried to have them changed. Nick
Hardwick said that Grayling did not want him to publish documents suggesting
changes introduced by his department had contributed to poor outcomes in prisons.
His general concern was that ‘I had said the lack of staff, overcrowding and some of the
policy changes that he had introduced had contributed to poor outcomes in prisons. I
was very clear about that, and he disagreed very strongly with that conclusion.’
Hardwick said that prisons were getting worse and that he could not stay in post
as it meant getting used to the unacceptable (The Guardian, ‘Chris Grayling tried to
interfere with prison report, says Chief Inspector’, Friday 29 January 2016).
In the 1990s (under the last Labour government), for mainstream criminologists – such
as David Faulkner (who was also for some time chair of the Howard League for Penal
Reform) – it became obvious that a ‘political revival of imprisonment’ was taking place
in the USA and the UK. In the UK, instead of considering imprisonment a measure of
last resort, both Labour and the Conservatives presented prison as an instrument of
individual reform and public protection, with an enthusiasm not seen since the middle
of the 19th century.
In Faulkner’s opinion, the movement appeared to come from diverse directions.

One was the development of training and rehabilitative courses within prisons – for
offending behaviour, drug abuse, for sex offenders – which made ambitious claims for
their success in terms of the prisoner’s return to ‘normal life’ and the prevention of re-
offending. But proposals quickly changed: the Labour government announced another
2,660 prison places while also supporting a ‘custody to work’ programme, aiming to
double the proportion of prisoners going directly into jobs on release.
Under this approach, the aim was to increase by 50 per cent the number of national
qualifications which prisoners achieve in prison. They had been rising and the
government’s strategy for women offenders was also full of similarly good intentions,
while the Conservatives (before being in power) went further, proposing financially
self-supporting industrial prisons, where prisoners earn wages from which they will
pay for their keep and support their families. The thesis here is that prisons ‘work’ not
only in preventing offenders from committing further offences against the public, but
also in reforming their characters.
The other direction that deliberately increased the use of imprisonment – not only for
dangerous or persistent offenders – was for failure to comply with orders or conditions.
It becomes more acceptable to send more people to prison if it is thought they will
benefit from their experience. This also applies upward pressure on the length of
sentences: there is no point in sending people to prison unless they stay long enough
to get that benefit.
It is difficult to achieve anything lasting, certainly anything positive, in prison.

Whatever the programme, nothing is done to change the offender’s family and
social environment, over which the prison has no control. The continually increasing
prison population means that any training and rehabilitation programmes cannot be
sustained.
In the 1990s Faulkner suggested three conditions for legitimacy of prison programmes:
u Programmes must be monitored and evaluated. Programmes should be subject

to checking and part of a wider assessment of the prison experience and its social
effects.
u The prison population must be stabilised at a level that matches the capacity of
the system to fulfil the promises being made. There should be no new laws on
sentencing until the government and judiciary come to an understanding on
its purpose and principles; on the intended size, composition and geographical
distribution of the prison population; and on the sentencing practices and
procedures for release by which that optimum size of the prison population
is to be achieved. That is to say, assumptions about sentencing and the prison
population must be turned into policies. By contrast, there is no longer any other
area of the public sector where it is acceptable just to ‘predict and provide’.
u There must be reform of the prison service itself – of its relationship with other
services and with the communities which it serves and from which it will need
commitment and support; of the composition and skills of its staff; and of its values
and culture.
Faulkner proposed then that there was need for human rights standards to be
established and maintained in prison. This would be of benefit both to the inmates
and aid the professional integrity of the process. Racism, for example, where it
exists, shows a more general lack of professional integrity. The various reviews and
reorganisations that the prison institution had experienced over the past 40 years had
been in response to an immediate political demand or operational crisis; none has
delivered a lasting solution nor examined the system from first principles, although
Lord Woolf’s report in 1991 came closest to doing so.
So Faulkner, and he certainly was not a lone voice, stated that the time had come
to reexamine the foundations of the prison system’s authority and legitimacy and
proposed that the Human Rights Act provided a special opportunity and a point of
reference: it may in time provide an imperative.
For Faulkner and others, the UK needed a public debate in which everyone takes part
– through articles in journals, attending conferences and seminars, by contributions
to official rethinking. The state of policing and recourse to imprisonment poses a
challenge to NGOs – for example, the Howard League, the Prison Reform Trust, the
crime reduction charity NACRO, Justice and the International Centre for Prison Studies
– and the media, to help shape the process of penal reform.
9.6.2 Garland and the analysis of the culture of control

David Garland, has produced a masterful overview of criminology and crime control in
The culture of control: crime and social order in contemporary society (2002).
Garland’s book was premised on a supposition of surprise. Specifically, that a

criminological commentator writing in the 1960s and 1970s could never have
predicted the rise of what he calls ‘the culture of control’:
…recent developments in crime control and criminal justice are puzzling because they
appear to involve a sudden and startling reversal of the settled historical pattern. They
display a sharp discontinuity that demands to be explained. The modernising processes
that, until recently, seemed so well established in this realm – above all the long term
tendencies towards ‘rationalisation’ and ‘civilisation’ – now look as if they have been
thrown into reverse. The re-appearance in official policy of punitive sentiments and
expressive gestures that appear oddly archaic and downright anti-modern tend to
confound the standard social theories of punishment and its historical development. Not
even the most inventive reading of Foucault, Marx, Durkheim, and Elias on punishment
could have predicted these recent developments – and certainly no such predictions ever
appeared. (ibid., p.3)
One may find Garland’s supposition of a complete reversal overstated but there is no
denying the development of a new complex of fashionable theories depicting the self
as a rational calculator and control practices that maximise surveillance and depict the
offender as someone other. Garland’s narrative was sophisticated and wide-ranging.
He asserted that up until the late 1970s, crime control had an established institutional
structure and established intellectual framework. Its characteristic practices, and
the organisations and assumptions that supported them, had emerged from a long
process of development. First, the modern structures of criminal justice had been
assembled in their classic liberal form and then increasingly orientated towards a
more correctional programme of action. All this changed dramatically in the 1980s and
1990s. Now Garland asked, why is it that for both the UK and the USA, countries that
view themselves as liberal, non-oppressive states committed to individual liberty and
market freedom, finding new and effective ways of controlling their citizens become
such a high priority for their governments?
Garland focused on the UK and the USA to point out what he took to be important
similarities in the recent experience of these two countries. He suggested that these
similarities stem not merely from political imitation and policy transfer but from a
process of social and cultural change that has altered social relations in both societies.
He called these developments ‘late modernity’, which has transformed the experience
of crime, insecurity, and social order by bringing in a new and powerful cluster of
risks, insecurities, and control problems. Similar processes have been filtered through
the different social, institutional and cultural characteristics of the two nations. The
particular combination of racial division, economic inequality and lethal violence
which marks the contemporary USA has given its penal response a scale and intensity
that often seems wholly exceptional. The USA is a Western, liberal democracy that
routinely executes offenders and incarcerates its citizens at a rate that is 6 to 10 times
higher than comparable nations. Garland argued that while the scale is different in
the UK, there are strong similarities with the USA in the patterns of penal responses
and in the focal points of public concerns, political debates and policy developments.
Moreover, that there are important similarities in the problems to which actors in both
nations appear to be responding. Specifically, the same kinds of risks and insecurities,
the same perceived problems of effective social control, the same critiques of
traditional criminal justice and the same recurring anxieties about social change and
social order.
In this climate, the most important currents of change are:
u the decline of the rehabilitative ideal;
u the re-emergence of punitive sanctions and expressive justice;
u changes in the emotional tone of crime policy;
u the return of the victim;
u above all, the public must be protected;
u politicisation of crime control and a new populism;
u the reinvention of the prison;
u the transformation of criminological thought;
u the expanding infrastructure of crime prevention and community safety;
u civil society and the commercialisation of crime control;
u new management styles and working practices;
u a perpetual sense of crisis.
In short, the orthodoxies that prevailed for most of the last century (the 20th) – what
he called ‘penal welfarism’ – have been replaced by a new field. For many practitioners
and theorists, there has been an ‘alarming sense of the unravelling of a conceptual
fabric that, for most of the best part of a century, had bound together the institutions
of criminal justice and given them meaning’. By contrast, ‘today, for better or for
worse, we lack any such agreement, any settled culture, or any clear sense of the
big picture… ideological lines are far from clear and … the old assumptions are an
unreliable guide’ (ibid., p.4).
For most of the 20th century, the UK and US governments (largely, albeit with
opposing elements) viewed the direction in which social change was going as an
achievement rather than as a problem. Continuing prosperity and full employment
were to be delivered through a regulated economy, while at the same time a social
agenda extended welfare and civil rights and enhanced personal freedoms. But
this dichotomy of economic control and social liberation was transformed as a
new consumer capitalism revolutionised individual tastes and fitted with a new
commercial service culture that made welfare agencies appear rigidly bureaucratic
and unresponsive to client needs and preferences. A new complex of theories, a
criminology of everyday life and contradictory theories of the criminology of the self
(which depict offenders as normal, rational consumers, just like us) and criminology
of the other (which offers images of a threatening outcast, the fearsome stranger, the
excluded and the bitter).
The first type of criminology routinises crime, allays disproportionate fears and
promotes preventative action. The second demonises the criminal, acts out popular
fears and resentments, and provides support for massive state punishment. They
exclude a middle ground that was previously the terrain of welfarist criminology (that
depicted the offender as disadvantaged or poorly socialised and made it the state’s
responsibility, in social and penal policy, to take positive steps of a remedial kind). A
new complex is accompanied by process of adaptation, denial and acting out.
What are the costs of the new complex? Garland lists the following: a hardening of
social and racial divisions; the reinforcement of criminogenic processes; the alienation
of large social groups; the discrediting of legal authority; a reduction of civic tolerance;
a tendency towards authoritarianism. Garland suggests that mass imprisonment and
private fortification may be feasible solutions to the problem of social order but they
are deeply unattractive – at odds with the ideals of liberal democracy.
Ultimately Garland’s text is a criticism of the governing assumptions deeply built into
modernity that the sovereign state can successfully ‘govern by means of sovereign
commands issued to obedient subjects’. Yet the state continually tries to convince us
that it can. The result is a culture of crime control that intensifies as it fails. What else
could it do? Garland suggests: ‘In the complex, differentiated world of late modernity,
effective legitimate government must devolve power and share the work of social
control with local organisations and communities. It can no longer rely upon “state
knowledge”, on unresponsive bureaucratic agencies, and upon universal solutions,
imposed from above’ (ibid., p.205).
Activity 9.4
Read Hopkins Burke, Chapter 23 ‘Living in penal society’.
Burke starts from the same premise as this chapter, namely that the social progress
model was assumed and then undercut. In what ways does he say it was criticised?
a. Outline what he means by the carceral surveillance model.
b. What is his favoured left realist hybrid model?
c. What are his policy implications?
d. You may live in the UK, Europe or the USA, if so do you recognise this as the
society you live in? If not, why?
e. If you live elsewhere, to what extent, if any, does this description fit your
society?
Activity 9.5
Read Carrabine, E. et al. Criminology: a sociological introduction. (London: Routledge,
2019) fourth edition [ISBN 9781138566262] Chapter 20 ‘Prisons and imprisonment’
a. What were the origins of imprisonment and how does today’s use differ?
b. Why does prison have such a major symbolic role?
c. Does prison work? What does it mean to ask that question?

References
¢ Andenæs, J. Punishment and deterrence. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1974) [ISBN 9780472080137].
¢ Bauman, Z. The individualized society. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001)

[ISBN 9780745625072].
¢ Baumann, F.E. and K.M. Jensen (eds) Crime and punishment: issues in criminal
justice. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989) [ISBN 9780813911915].
¢ Beccaria, C. On crimes and punishments (first published as Dei delitti e delle pene
in 1764). (Seven Treasures Publications, 2009) [ISBN 9781438299006] (available in
Cambridge Core via the Online Library).
¢ Blomberg, T. G. and S. Cohen (eds) Punishment and social control. (New York:
Aldine De Gruyter, 2003) second edition [ISBN 9780202307022].
¢ Braithwaite, J. and P. Pettit Not just deserts: a republican theory of criminal justice.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) [ISBN 9780198240563].
¢ Camus, A. Réflexions sur la Guillotine in The plague, the fall, exile and the kingdom
and selected essays. (London: Everyman’s Library, 2004) [ISBN 9781400042555].
¢ Cavadino, M. and J. Dignan The penal system: an introduction. (London: Sage

Publications, 2007) fourth edition [ISBN 9781412929479].
¢ Cederblom, J.B. and W.L. Blizek (eds) Justice and punishment. (Pensacola:
Ballinger Publishing Company, 1977) [ISBN 9780884107521].
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Routledge, 2000) 3rd edition [ISBN 9780415234870].
¢ Duff, R.A. Trials and punishments. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)
[ISBN 9780521308182].
¢ Ezorsky, G. (ed.) Philosophical perspectives on punishment. (New York: State

University of New York Press, 1972) [ISBN 9780873952132].
¢ Farrer, J.A. (ed.) Crime and punishments. (London: Chatto & Windus Publishers,
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Gaunt & Sons, 1988) [ISBN 9780455207759].
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Press, 1998) [ISBN 9780195537321].
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Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1985) [ISBN 9780566008559].
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¢ Garland, D. The culture of control: crime and social order in contemporary society.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) [ISBN 9780199258024].
¢ Grupp S.E. Theories of punishment. (London: Indiana University Press, 1971)

[ISBN 9780253359261].
¢ Hart, H.L.A. Punishment and responsibility: essays in the philosophy of law. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008) second edition [ISBN 9780199534784].
¢ Honderich, T. Punishment: the supposed justifications. (London: Pluto Press, 2006)

revised edition [ISBN 9780745321318].
¢ Howe, A. Punish and critique: towards a feminist analysis of penality. (London:

Routledge, 1994) [ISBN 9780415051910].
¢ Kant, I. Metaphysics of morals. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy.

¢ Lacey, N. State punishment: political principles and community values. (London:
Routledge, 1988) [ISBN 9780415109383].
¢ Mathiesen, T. Prison on trial. (New York: Sage, 1990) [ISBN 9780803982253].
¢ McMahon, M.W. The persistent prison? Rethinking decarceration and penal reform.
(University of Toronto Press, 1989) [ISBN 9780802076892].
¢ Michael, J. and M.J. Adler Crime, law and social science. (New Jersey: Patterson
Smith, 1971).
¢ Middendorf, W. The effectiveness of punishment. (New Jersey: Fred. B. Rothman &

Company, 1968).
¢ Mill, J.S. and J. Bentham Utilitarianism and other essays. (London: Penguin
Classics, 2000) revised edition [ISBN 9780140432725].
¢ Morrison, W. Jurisprudence: from the Greeks to post-modernism. (London:

Cavendish Publishing Limited, 1997) [ISBN 9781859411346].
¢ Newburn, T. Crime and criminal justice policy. (Harlow: Pearson Education

Limited, 2003) second edition [ISBN 9780582369559].
¢ Pakenham, F. The idea of punishment. (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1961).
¢ Rubin, S. The law of criminal correction. (Minnesota: West Publishing Company,

1963).
¢ Saleilles, R. The individualization of punishment. (Memphis, Tennessee: General

Books LLC, 2012) [ISBN 9780217331289].
¢ Stenson, K. and D. Cowell (eds) The politics of crime control. (New York: Sage
Publications, 1993) [ISBN 9780803983427].
¢ Sykes, G.M. Crime and society. (New York: Random House, 1967)
[ISBN 9780394307541].
¢ Ten, C.L. Crime, guilt, and punishment: a philosophical introduction. (Oxford:

¢ Snipes, J.B., T.J. Bernard and A.L Gerould Vold’s theoretical criminology. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2019) eighth edition [ISBN 9780190940515].
¢ von Hirsch, A. Doing justice: the choice of punishments. (New York: Hill and Wang,
1976). [ISBN 9780930350833].
¢ Walker, N. Sentencing in a rational society. (London: Penguin, 1972) new edition

[ISBN 9780140211085].
¢ White, R. and S. Perrone Crime and social control: an introduction. (Melbourne:

Oxford University Press, 2005) 2nd edition [ISBN 9780195514193].
¢ Zimring, F.E. and G. Hawkins The scale of imprisonment. (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1993) new edition [ISBN 9780226983547].

Question 1 Why punish?
‘We do not have a settled philosophy of punishment: instead we have inconsistent
and contradictory accounts.’ Discuss.
Question 2 ‘While the philosophy of punishment may appear rational when
compared to what is done in its name, the result is irrational.’ Discuss.
10 Conclusion: criminology under globalisation
Contents
10.1 In place of a conclusion: facing globalism and post-modernism . . . . . 163
10.2 The challenges of globalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Learning outcomes
u reflect back on the course
u reflect on the ambiguities of contemporary existence (including having an
opinion on the profundity or otherwise of this question)
u understand how globalism and post-modernism impact on criminology.
Core text
¢ Hopkins Burke, Chapter 19 ‘Crime and the postmodern condition’, Chapter
21 ‘Crime, globalisation and the risk society’ and Chapter 22 ‘Radical moral
communitarian criminology’.
Essential reading
¢ Franko, K. Globalization and crime. (London: Sage, 2019) third edition
[ISBN 9781526445230] Chapter 2 ‘Global mobility and human traffic’ (available on
the VLE).
¢ Morrison, W. Criminology, civilisation and the new world order (Abingdon:

Routledge-Cavendish, 2006) [ISBN 9781904385127] Chapter 3 ‘Criminal statistics,
sovereignty and the control of death: representations from Quetelet to
Auschwitz’ (available on the VLE).
Criminology 10 Conclusion: criminology under globalisation page 163
10.1 In place of a conclusion: facing globalism and post-

modernism
‘The Aleph?’ I repeated.
Yes, the only place on earth where all places are -- seen from every angle, each standing
clear, without any confusion or blending….
… Then I saw the Aleph. … And here begins my despair as a writer. All language is a set of
symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I translate
into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass?
Really, what I want to do is impossible, for any listing of an endless series is doomed to be
infinitesimal. In that single gigantic instant I saw millions of acts both delightful and awful;
not one of them occupied the same point in space, without overlapping or transparency.
What my eyes beheld was simultaneous, but what I shall now write down will be
successive, because language is successive. Nonetheless, I’ll try to recollect what I can.
… I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was
revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world
it bounded. (Borges, 2000, pp.10–13)
‘The Aleph’: the possible/impossibility of seeing all. This guide began with a quote
from the Holocaust. It made an appeal to transcend mundane concerns. Over different
chapters it asked: what is crime? And what is the discipline of criminology? In Chapter
2 we encountered a short story by the South American writer Julio Cortázar. He reflects
the differing political and economic experiences of Argentina and demonstrates the
strangeness of ‘reality’. Often termed a magical realist, like Jorge Luis Borges, Cortázar
confronts our accepted view of the normal by imposing the fantastic within it but this
not to escape ‘reality’: ‘When we write about the fantastic we are trying to get away
from time to write about everlasting things’ (Borges, 2000).
What is the fantastic and what is the normal?
Criminology once assumed that the normal was good and the deviant was bad but any
hope that it could uncover a secure, civilised world where good people did the normal
things and bad people did the deviant things has been lost.
This guide has tried to show both the limitations and the necessity for criminology
but not criminology as a narrow discipline rather as an imagination: a criminological
imagination.
As such any conclusion is only a temporary pause in thinking.
The three Hopkins Burke chapters listed in the Core text pull in different directions,
point to different difficulties.
If criminology were meant to be a science that gave clear answers then it has become
deconstructed and scattered. The boundaries, not to mention the foundational
certainties, of the discipline are being undercut (new books appear with new topics,
such as Criminology and war: transgressing the borders (Walklate and McGary, 2015);
Invisible crimes and social harms (Davies, Francis and Wyatt (eds) 2014). Nothing, it
seems, is now beyond the gaze of a new criminological gaze.
It is common to describe the problems and challenges of this as a mixture of post-

modernism and globalism.
Until recently, criminological texts were developed with local concerns: even the
attempt by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) to develop A general theory of crime
described crimes as mundane acts committed by people with low rates of self-control.
But if we consider genocide – and the many millions of people killed by the state either
directly or by deliberate neglect (as in Mao’s Great Leap Forward) – we face people like
Eichmann who has great personal drive and self-control.
Post-modernism is defined by people such as Leytord as the collapse of belief in the

great meta-narratives of social progress, a post-Auschwitz coming to grip with history.
Globalisation in one sense refers to our confronting the world with knowledge
of history – the history of colonialism, imperialism and the Holocaust. If we think
of Nazism as an expression of bureaucratic objectivity, we see it as part of the
secularisation of the rational universe. If we understand the Holocaust within
the normal categories of social scientific explanation, we also understand it as an
expression of legality and the ethos of criminology. It is not beyond time and place,
it is not a place outside of law, it is not a place undetermined, but over determined
by law (see David Fraser, Law after Auschwitz, 2005) and the problem-solving ethos
of the administrative criminological imagination of the time. For Rubinstein (After
Auschwitz, 1966), the Holocaust shows us that we live in a cold, unfeeling cosmos.
What modern science has shown us is that nature functioned without any sensitivity
to human concerns, but that realisation (which of course Hobbes had) was now linked
to the understanding that history revealed distinctly anti-human capacities in which
extermination was a very real strategy for human waste disposal. The Nazis destroyed
the rubric: they showed that there was no limit to the governmental use of violence
and organisation being employed in a way to tackle any political, social or economic
problem. They should, in that criminology was predicated on the idea of solving the
problem of crime, have destroyed traditional criminology. Perhaps it is the dialectical
realisation of that which ensured the Holocaust did not appear within mainstream
criminological texts.
10.1.1 The reality of continuing genocide
Further reading
¢ Feierstein, D. Genocide as social practice: Reorganizing society under the Nazis
and Argentina’s military juntas. (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2014)
[ISBN 9780813563176] Chapter 6 ‘Reshaping social relations through genocide’.
¢ Green, P., T. MacManus and A. De La Cour Venning ‘Genocide achieved, genocide

continues: Myanmar’s annihilation of the Rohingya’. (London: International
State Crime Initiative, 2018) http://statecrime.org/genocide-achieved-genocide-
continues-myanmars-annihilation-of-the-rohingya-isci-report/
Activity 10.1
As you read these works, reflect on the following questions:
a. Why are warnings of genocide ignored or disregarded?
b. What does the Rohingya experience say about the prevention elements of the
Genocide Convention?
Feierstein considers genocide a social process with a range of effects but most notably
a process of construction, destruction and reorganisation of the social fabric. He also
points to the legal framework as implicit in the continuation of genocide. See the
assertion by the Myanmar state that the Human Rights Convention is not applicable to
the Rohingya as they are ‘not humans, they are intolerant demons which spill blood.
We must resist them.’
Genocide has been occurring for over three decades in Myanmar, beginning in 1977
when the Myanmar Rohingya were branded as ‘illegal Bengalis’, through to 2017 when
the UN Human Rights Council Fact-finding Mission was barred from entering Myanmar,
to the position in late 2018, described by the International State Crime Initiative at
Queen Mary University of London as ‘Genocide achieved, genocide continues’.
Since 2016, over ‘800,000 women, men and children have streamed into Bangladesh
from Myanmar…with over 1 million…living in the sprawling, fetid, under-resourced,
temporary camps in Bangladesh’ (Green et al., 2018). How has this been allowed to
occur? Many have hidden behind the language and refused to recognise the events/
processes as genocide, stating instead that it was merely ‘ethnic cleansing’ (www.
reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya/myanmars-ethnic-cleansing-of-rohingya-
continues-u-n-rights-official-says-idUSKCN1GI0C2).
Tomas Ojea Quintana, Special Rapporteur of Human Rights in Myanmar, tried to put it
in blunt human terms of empathy:
If we could for one moment imagine how it feels to be a young Rohingya woman,
we would see the real face of our civilization: denial of their existence, health
deprivation, limited access to food, confinement, the fear of rape, torture and violent
death. To offer them an alternative, is a legal and moral obligation we all have.
(Green et al., Foreword, 2015)
The International State Crime Initiative (ISCI, 2015, 2018) claim that genocide
prevention must take a human rights based approach and extend far beyond the
bounds of the Genocide Convention.
Applying Feierstein (2014), we can see:
u Stigmatisation and dehumanisation: this refers to destroying cooperative

relations within or between social groups. The Rohingya have been destroyed as
they have no citizenship, no nationality. They have been confined to detention
camps, prison villages, excluded from all aspects of public life. The Myanmar
government does not even recognise the name Rohingya, completely banning
the use of the word in 2012. A clear separation has been made by the Rakhine state
between ‘them’ and ‘us’. Rohingyas have been dehumanised based on their skin
colour. Myanmar’s senior official described them as ‘dark brown and ugly as ogres’
(www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-myanmar-rohingya-hate-20171225-story.html)
u Harassment: this tests society’s readiness to engage in violence and reinforces

the societal acceptance of the political regime. In 2015 the Rohingya were under
constant state surveillance. The Rakhine state’s use of propaganda engaged wide
support. There were 1.2 million Rohingya in Rakhine in 2012, as compared to
roughly 200,000 by October 2018.
u Isolation: this refers to the geographical, political, social, economic and cultural
demarcation of spaces of separation. This was clear when, in 2012, 138,000
Rohingya were forcibly moved to detention camps after a scheme of ‘organised
massacres’ involving the destruction of their villages. The local police, military and
political elite all approved of this violence. Isolated from their previous cultural
communities, the Rohingya were terrorised.
u Systematic weakening: this refers to the weakening of the targeted ‘others’ to

the extent that they cannot resist oppression. Thus, systematically the Rohingya
were totally deprived of healthcare from February 2014 when their only healthcare
service was expelled. They experience a form of social death as they are stripped of
their agency and human dignity.
u Annihilation: then follows actual physical disappearances, mass killings, mass

forced evictions, rape, gendered violence and further burning of villages. In August
2017, up to 2,000 people were killed by the Myanmar army with 750 buildings
destroyed. The Queen Mary team assert that rape was not only condoned but
purposively directed by the Myanmar state (see www.kaladanpress.org/images/
document/2018/RapebyCommandWeb3.pdf). In 2016, the Myanmar army forced
90,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. The UN determined ‘more than 364 Muslim
villages are destroyed’. In October 2018 over 800,000 fled to Bangladesh as mass
killings, rape and systematic destruction of villages became common place.
u Symbolic enactment: this changes the parameters of society and creates the
official state-sponsored history. The goal of the genocidal process is to transform
society, destroying the Rohingya and replacing it with another. Thus, the final
phase of social reconstruction is evident in Myanmar as the Northern Rakhine
state is reshaping the land upon which the Rohingya once lived, establishing new
military, residential and economic infrastructure (see www.amnesty.org/en/latest/
news/2018/03/myanmar-military-land-grab-as-security-forces-build-bases-on-
torched-rohingya-villages/). According to Feierstein, symbolic enactment means
that ‘not only do the victims no longer exist, but they allegedly never existed’.
The government denial

The authorities have denied perpetrating genocide but, at the same time, they deny
the Rohingya existence, seeking to repopulate the demographic balance in Rakhine
state by removing all evidence of Rohingya culture. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing
declared, ‘There is no oppression or intimidation against Bengalis in Rakhine region.’
Their denial represents an Orwellian-style distortion of reality. The state claimed
that people were fleeing via their own free will, notwithstanding the fact they were
‘fleeing to escape knives, bullets, rape’. The state declared on Facebook that mass
rapes were ‘fake news’ and that the Rohingya were setting fire to their own homes
and fleeing in panic, in fear of being arrested for their own involvement, or to seek
‘aid’ in Bangladesh. The state further denies the burning of bodies, use of fire and acid.
Yet residents in camps asserted during an interview with the ISCI that the ‘military
collected bodies, threw them in a pit. At this point, some were not dead’.
The ISCI report concludes that the Rohingya voices go unheard, they have lost all
social vitality and are actively being written out of history. If the only legal mechanism
available is not willing to help, what hope do the Rohingya really have?
Another theme of globalisation is an expanding economic process in which the free

market plays an important role, either seen as a perverse fiscal discipline or as a
developing liberating power. The difference between the former and the latter is not
simply reducible to a specific political stance but reflects views on the consequences
and gauges winners and losers (on this see Stiglitz, 2002). Certainly capitalist
expansion has enveloped every country (even those who are supposedly communist).
In this sense, globalisation is mostly described by means of the three major official
advocates of liberal democracy: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) and is usually described as a neo-liberal
world order.
Post-modernism refers to the consequences of the modernist (Enlightenment)

drive to uncover the world and subject it to objective reason: modern transport and
communication technologies, new forms of data gathering and expansion of historical
archives simply makes the world visible and knowable yet contradictory and diverse.
The contemporary world, the globalised world, is a combination of the discovering
of the world, together with the expansion of a neoliberal ideology. What matters,
is the pervasive interdependency resulting from the expansion of the neoliberal
economic world. In this sense, the world becomes known but through a particular
set of ideologies (Western) and for some it is a new imperialism (e.g. Harvey, 2005). In
other words, the globe is undeniably neoliberal, modernist and suffused with Western
notions of self-worth and consumerism. At the same time, new risks arise (Beck, 2000)
along with violent struggles with reactionary forces (e.g. anti-secular and totalitarian
Islamic extremism) and the costs of its economic model become more apparent
(e.g. climate change and biological threats such as pandemics), so that globalism has
severe human consequences (Bauman, 1998).
Globalisation – and indeed post-modernism – are complex concepts/phenomena that

operate both as:
1. an empirical description, and
2. a normative principle for living in the world.
Regarding (1): among the empirical referents we are told that state sovereignty,
the legitimate definer of crime in a territory, is being undercut. At its strongest, the
argument is that the state can no longer produce sovereignty – if so, this impacts
on all aspects of the state’s performance. In the field of crime control, this results in
ambivalent tactics. State sovereignty asserts itself even when it lacks control over the
economy by a wave of popularism in the arena of security-seeking public support of
its power displays in war or crime sometimes by declaring ‘war on drugs’ or ‘war on
terror’. Different states play the sovereignty games differently and what is crime in
one area may not be crime in another; the efforts of one state to fight crime or drugs
may actively cause crime in another. In this negative argument, the decline of the state
as the body that lays out the conditions of territorial security means that the state is
increasingly part of the ‘crime problem’ and not the solution. The need then is to go
beyond the state in the process of locating the foundations for defining what is crime
and what are proper and legitimate responses to it.
Regarding (2): globalisation, as a normative principle, implies that we need to view

humanity and our common environment as a form of praxis, as a life, as our global
living together. As such, globalisation demands we reconceive the contours and the
limits of the way in which we think, understand, act upon and relate to the world. It
is not just an account of reality but a demand that this reality requires a new, more
globally just, mode of existence.
There are a range of dualities or counter-positions: there is a globalisation of hope

(displayed, for example in Arvanitakis, 2012) and there is a globalisation of crisis; what is
common to both is that we live in a time where the normative structures of the ‘nation
state’ and ‘international society’ are being refashioned, will normative structures of
the global be the result? Some hold out the promise (or dream) of a peaceful and just
global order and talk of an emerging global code of legality focused around human
rights and their defence (and institutions such as the International Criminal Court)
while some are sceptical of the results, such as Douzinas (2005). Others note the
destruction of the nation state, failed states, increasing chaos and increasing difficulties
in grasping reality (see US President Donald Trump’s campaigning comment that
‘until our authorities can tell us what the hell is going on, we should ban Muslims from
entering the US’).
10.2 The challenges of globalisation

What are some of the current criminological features?
Activity 10.2
Read Franko, K. Globalization and crime. (London: Sage, 2019) third edition
[ISBN 9781526445230] Chapter 2 ‘Global mobility and human traffic’ (available on
the VLE).
As you read, make your own notes on the features Franko identifies as criminogenic
in the greater global mobility that globalism brings/denotes.
Her chapter relates, among other things, to:
1. Border crossing: here we see issues of transnational crime and the rise of issues of
crime control and criminal justice responses that go beyond the nation state. The
types of crimes involve:
u ‘trafficking’ and illegal migration: the focus is on drugs, human trafficking (sex
workers, illegal immigrants);
u ‘new forms of organised crime’ – pretty well the same types of crime as
trafficking but focused more on the organisations and what is ‘new’ about
them;
u international fraud, money laundering (overlap with organised crime) and

failures of regulatory systems in dealing with these;
u terrorism – to what extent is this a criminological issue? Has the rhetoric of the
war on terror been a huge mistake? The war on terror and global terrorism has
become a kind of catch-all which takes in attacks from ISIS to issues of money
laundering;
u security and risk – includes terrorism, migration – re-theorisation security

sometimes posed as a correlate of mobility;
u the rise of internet – allows for new forms of communication which impacts on
all of the above, but the internet furthers a privileged set of crimes (trafficking,
etc.) – as used by organisations and/or as way of luring victims.
This bundle has seemingly emerged in an ad hoc fashion – existing crimes

deemed to have taken on a new cross-border dimension with globalisation – or
even been ‘revived’ (compare the rhetoric of ‘trafficking’ with slavery). This also
links into the study of criminal organisations. Our concern in the syllabus has not
been institutional – we do not focus on trans-border/international/transnational
policing/INTERPOL, etc. But gender-orientated work has also focused on this
territory, especially re sex ‘slavery’ but also re drug mules (i.e. here the emphasis is
more victim orientated – yes, they are illegal immigrants often but also victims).
Although these new cross-border developments are often just presented as

empirically given effects of globalisation, there is some commentary/theorisation:
u Decline of the nation state – national state boundaries as increasingly

irrelevant and/or porous – weakness of the state as incapable of controlling
cross-boundary phenomena – all sometimes posed in grander terms as the
‘end of Westphalia era’ (i.e. international law as inter-state agreements, etc). In
this mode, mention is also made of the new importance of sub-state levels, e.g.
regions, see what Burke calls radical moral communitarian criminology.
u Globalisation identified with transnational flows of people, things and ideas.

A criminological imagination confronting globalisation must necessarily be
post-colonial.
2. Harms that are ‘global by definition’ or transnational harms:
u Environmental – toxic waste, pollution and so forth. These are linked to

corporate crime and state collusion (see crimes of the state). Why exactly is
this global in nature? For the first time, we see that harm against the earth may
render human life impossible. Remedies have to be undertaken globally.
u Also transnational environmental activism (which leads on to eco- and

animal rights-terrorism as well as new forms of criminology)
u Crime and the internet: because the internet knows no jurisdictional

boundaries – is everywhere – key examples in this mode are identity theft,
computer hacking and ‘modern day pirates’.
u War crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity– crime that is internationally

recognised.
Activity 10.3
Read Morrison, W. Criminology, civilisation and the new world order (Abingdon:
Routledge-Cavendish, 2006) [ISBN 9781904385127] Chapter 3 ‘Criminal statistics,
sovereignty and the control of death: representations from Quetelet to Auschwitz’
a. Why does Morrison relate the measuring of crime to ‘the power of the nation
state?
b. In what ways did the Nazis misuse statistics?
c. If we are concerned to raise the level of the ‘average individual’ does this mean
we should eliminate the inferior?
d. Did criminology contribute to the Holocaust?
e. What is ‘genocide’? Why was it necessary to come up with this definition for a
‘crime’?
f. Why is there little agreement on actual events in the world as to whether they
are ‘genocides’ or not?
g. If the statistics mentioned by scholars looking at genocide in the 20th century

are correct, does that mean that the state was the biggest killer of humans, if so,
why has criminology traditionally not studied this?
Criminology has been very weak on theorising this – rather there has been a call for
expansionist understandings of harm not limited to classic legal definitions of crime or
indeed crime at all.
10.2.1 Crimes of the state and state agents

These include:
u state collusion with corporate crime and environmental crime;
u state power and corruption by state elites;
u crimes of international peacekeepers/higher power holders – e.g. torture at Abu

Ghraib
u domestic police: e.g. Tahrir Square as protest re Egyptian police.
All of this fits with the theme of the breakdown of the nation state and Westphalian
order – we face a loss of faith in those officers and people who previously were
assumed to be responsible. And, of course, a loss of faith in traditional criminology.
Was traditional criminology just an agent of the state? Perhaps you can go back to an
earlier question, who are you and why are you doing this subject? Think about this
amidst the appeal of the spread of the market with associated liberal cosmopolitanism
and mass consumerism, in the face of prospects of a world (dis) order, institutional
instability, and political violence… the future is, as always, what we individually and
collectively make it.
References
¢ Arvanitakis, J. The cultural commons of hope. The attempt to commodify the final
frontier of the human experience. (Saarbruücken: AV Akademikerverlag, 2012)
[ISBN 9783639419184].
¢ Bauman, Z. Globalization. The human consequences. (Cambridge: Polity Press,

1998) [ISBN 9780745620138].
¢ Beck, U. What is globalization? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000) new edition

[ISBN 9780745621265].
¢ Borges, J.L. The Aleph. (London: Penguin Modern Classics, 2000)

[ISBN 9780141183831].
¢ Davies, P., P. Francis and T. Wyatt (eds) Invisible crimes and social harms
(Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) [ISBN 9781349467501].
¢ Douzinas, C. Human rights and empire. The political philosophy of cosmopolitanism.

¢ Fraser, D. Law after Auschwitz. (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2005)
[ISBN 9780890892435].
¢ Gottfredson, M. and T.W. Hirschi, A general theory of crime. (Stanford: Stanford

¢ Green, P., T. MacManus and A. De La Cour Venning ‘Countdown to annihilation:

genocide in Myanmar’ (London: International State Crime Initiative, 2015).
¢ Harvey, D. The new imperialism. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)

[ISBN 9780199278084].
¢ Held, D. and A. McGrew Globalization/anti-globalization: beyond the great divide.

(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007) second edition [ISBN 9780745639116].
¢ Hertz, N. The silent takeover: global capitalism and the death of democracy.
(London: William Heinemann, 2001) [ISBN 9780434009336].
¢ Mertes, T. (ed.) The movement of movements: is another world really possible?

(London: Verso, 2004) [ISBN 9781859844687].
¢ Pleyers, G. Alter-globalization: becoming actors in the global age. (Cambridge:

Polity Press, 2013) [ISBN 9780745655086].
¢ Rosenberg, J. ‘Globalization theory: a post mortem’ 2005 International Politics 42

2–74.
¢ Rubinstein, After Auschwitz. (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill Co., 1966).
¢ Stiglitz, J. Globalization and its discontents. (London: Penguin Books, 2002) new
edition [ISBN 9780141010380].
¢ Walklate, S. and R. McGarry, Criminology and war: transgressing the borders.

(London: Routledge, 2015) [ISBN 9780415722155].
Criminology page 171
Notes
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Criminology

© University of London 2016. Reprinted with minor revisions 2020

Published by: University of London

2 Crime, globalisation and the/your criminological imagination . . . . . 11

3 Competing traditions? Legacies of classical and positive criminology

4 Sources of criminological data: official criminal statistics and their

5 Psychology and crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

5.5 Trait-based personality theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

6 Sociological perspectives – structural and cultural foundations . . . . . 79

7 Contemporary cultural criminology and existentialism . . . . . . . . . 99

8 Feminist criminology: the challenge of gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

9 Punishment and its institutional framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

10 Conclusion: criminology under globalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Courses on which this module is offered

Notional study time

MODULE PURPOSE AND OVERVIEW

Criminology is a wide term covering a large discipline. As a single 30 credit module

LEARNING OUTCOMES: KNOWLEDGE

1. Understand the inter-disciplinary heritage of criminology and the influence this

2. Describe the different sources of information available to academics, policy-

3. Understand the contested nature of what is (and is not) considered to be ‘crime’;

LEARNING OUTCOMES: SKILLS

6. Distinguish between different conceptual frames of reference and compare and

BENCHMARK FOR LEARNING OUTCOMES

(b) Criminological Theory. Orientating perspectives in studying crime such as

(c) Institutional Framework of Law Enforcement. Philosophy and aims of punishment,

LEARNING AND TEACHING

The Laws Virtual Learning Environment

u a complete version of the module guides;

u online audio presentations;

u past examination papers and reports;

u Computer Marked Assessments – multiple choice questions with feedback

The Online Library

u the professional legal databases LexisLibrary and Westlaw;

u cases and up-to-date statutes;

u key academic law journals;

u links to important websites.

¢ Hopkins Burke, R. An introduction to criminological theory. (Routledge: London,

Summative assessment is through a three hour unseen examination. Students are

1.1 What is your interest in criminology: as a discipline and as a subject?

1.2 Why have criminology? Do we need it? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.3 The syllabus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1.4 Core materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

1.5 Using the materials and preparing for the assessment . . . . . . . . . . 9

Murdered on September 15, 1942.

Criminology – what is it?

Criminology is increasingly offered as a whole degree, in which case criminology

Contrasts in outlooks and mood: ‘Whose side are you on?’

Throughout this guide, a three-fold distinction will be made between:

1. Criminology, as ‘logos’, in other words, as the ‘scientific’ discipline aiming for

As said above, criminology involves humans commenting on other humans; unlike

Consider the historical position:

We now live with many of the advances of post-Enlightenment projects – fantastic

Yet it is surely an advance to know of these things. In 2020, we live in a globalised

Consider who speaks:

As an academic discipline, criminology has been dominated by the writings of

While it will be of benefit to you to have outline knowledge of elements of criminal

1.1 What is your interest in criminology: as a discipline and as a

1.2 Why have criminology? Do we need it?

The existence of so much crime in Western societies shows the underside of

c. What is the length of each article; is there a contrast between newspapers?

e. What way of describing people is apparent?

f. Do any of the ‘crime stories’ involve any notions of economic interdependency,