Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
OF CRIMINOLOGY
THE SAGE DICTIONARY
OF CRIMINOLOGY
SAGE Publications
London · Thousand Oaks · New Delhi
Ø The editors and contributors 2001
Preface ix
Editors' Introduction xi
Wayne Morrison, Queen Mary and West®eld Rene van Swaaningen, Erasmus University
College, University of London, UK Rotterdam, The Netherlands
John Muncie, The Open University, UK Mark Thornton, Victoria University, Well-
Karim Murji, The Open University, UK ington, New Zealand
Pat O'Malley, La Trobe University, Mel- Steve Tombs, Liverpool John Moores Univer-
bourne, Australia sity, UK
Ken Pease, University of Hudders®eld, UK Tonia Tzannetakis, University of Athens,
Hal Pepinsky, Indiana University, USA Greece
Mike Presdee, University of Sunderland, UK Claire Valier, Lancaster University, UK
Jill Radford, University of Teesside, UK Sandra Walklate, Manchester Metropolitan
Joseph Rankin, Eastern Michigan University, University, UK
USA Reece Walters, Victoria University, Welling-
Roger Sapsford, University of Teesside, UK ton, New Zealand
Esther Saraga, The Open University, UK Louise Westmarland, Scarman Centre, Uni-
Phil Scraton, Edge Hill University College, versity of Leicester, UK
Ormskirk, UK Nicole Westmarland, University of Stirling,
James Sheptycki, University of Durham, UK UK
Joe Sim, Liverpool John Moores University, Dick Whit®eld, Probation Of®ce, Kent, UK
UK Dave Whyte, Liverpool John Moores Univer-
Richard Sparks, Keele University, UK sity, UK
Elizabeth Stanko, Royal Holloway, University David Wilson, University of Central England,
of London, UK Birmingham, UK
Colin Sumner, University of East London, UK Anne Worrall, Keele University, UK
Maggie Sumner, Westminster University, Jock Young, Middlesex University, UK
London, UK
PREFACE
The compilation of the dictionary has been a USA, Australia and New Zealand, never before
truly collective endeavour and could not have has the work of so many criminologists ± often
been developed without the generous help, with widely differing perspectives ± been
support and suggestions of many different brought together in a single endeavour. We are
people. From the outset the editors have been indebted to them all.
supported by an international advisory board A work of this nature has also been a
with representatives from the USA, Australia necessarily lengthy and complex exercise in
and the Netherlands as well as the UK. They collaboration, collation, formatting, timeta-
provided invaluable advice in drawing up an bling and processing. Without the formidable
initial list of key terms which had international administrative and secretarial skills of Sue
and universal signi®cance and furnished the Lacey and Pauline Hetherington of the Social
editors with the names of specialist academics Policy Department at the Open University it
world-wide. As a result the dictionary has been would not have been possible at all. Last but
immeasurably enhanced by contributions from not least we express sincere thanks to Gillian
criminological researchers and authors, of Stern and Miranda Nunhofer and the team at
whom many are the leading scholars in their Sage for their invaluable support, assistance
®eld. With more than 250 entries written by and care for this project.
69 academics and practitioners from Europe,
EDITORS' INTRODUCTION
The Sage Dictionary of Criminology explores the re¯ecting the ®eld of criminology in its diverse
categories of thought, methods and practices and expansive dimensions. Though they
that are central to contemporary criminologi- appear in alphabetical order, the choice of
cal study. Unlike many other dictionaries or entries has been guided by four organizing
encyclopaedias in this area, its starting point is principles. Each entry concerns one of the
not to elucidate particular legal powers or following:
criminal justice procedures but to unravel
issues of theoretical and conceptual complex- · a major theoretical position;
ity. · a key theoretical concept;
The dictionary was constructed on the · a central criminological method; or
principle that criminology is a contested inter- · a core criminal justice philosophy or
disciplinary discourse marked by constant practice.
incursion, interactions, translations and trans-
gressions. Competing theoretical perspectives Each entry is central to the ®eld, standing
meet and sometimes they are able to speak to, either as an intellectual benchmark, or as an
listen to and understand each other, at others emergent thematic in the shifting and expand-
they appear not to share any common dis- ing ®eld of criminological studies. As a result,
course. There is, therefore, no one de®nition of the dictionary provides a comprehensive
criminology to be found in this dictionary but introduction to criminological theory, its
a multitude of noisy argumentative crimin- diverse frames of reference and its expansive
ological perspectives which in themselves modes of analysis.
often depend and draw upon knowledges Throughout, the dictionary aims to be fully
and concerns generated from elsewhere. As a international and deliberately avoids legal
result, the dictionary deliberately includes terms and cases which are speci®c to par-
pieces that depart from traditional agendas, ticular criminal justice jurisdictions. For the
transgress conventional boundaries and sug- same reason it also deliberately avoids legally
gest new points of formation and avenues for de®ned acts of crime ± such as theft, burglary,
cross-discipline development. Many of the murder and so on ± but does include those
entries will be of vital importance in under- `crimes' which are either emergent ± such as
standing criminology in terms of what it is cybercrime and animal abuse ± or those with a
discursively struggling to become. A canonical wider theoretical resonance ± such as corpo-
closure or discursive uni®cation of crimino- rate crime, serial killing, hate crime and so on.
logy is no more possible at the beginning of In selecting these entries we have been
the twenty-®rst century than it was at the particularly concerned to help students to
beginning of the twentieth century. New think through and utilize key concepts,
modes of information exchange and the methods and practices and to complement as
unprecedented mobility of ideas rule out well as supplement the teaching materials
disciplinary parochialism and assertion of already used in university and college-based
authoritative positions. This is what will give criminology and related courses. It is designed
criminology its intellectual strength and as an accessible learning resource for under-
ensure that the ®eld of criminological studies graduate students in the ®elds of criminology,
remains dynamic and relevant for future criminal justice studies, the sociology of crime
generations of students. and deviance, socio-legal studies, social
The rationale of the dictionary can best be policy, criminal law and social work.
explained by way of a detailing of its scope To ensure maximum accessibility each entry
and structure. In compiling this dictionary is headed by a short statement or de®nition
every effort has been made to ensure that it is which sets out the basic parameters of the
broadly representative and inclusive in tone, concept itself. From here any comparability
xii EDITORS' INTRODUCTION
with an orthodox dictionary ends. The follow- dictionary's use as a study guide for intro-
ing section ± distinctive features ± is more ductory courses in the ®eld, as a source of
encyclopaedic in style and allows for some reference for advanced study, as a supplement
detailed comment on the concept's origins, to established textbooks and as a reference
development and general signi®cance. guide to the specialized language of theore-
Throughout, we have encouraged authors to tical and conceptual criminology. Patient
re¯ect critically and freely on criminology's reading will uncover the full range of connec-
historical knowledge base and on potential tions to be made across the entries and their
future developments. We have ensured that a associated concepts.
®nal section ± evaluation ± has been included There is one ®nal point we wish to make.
for all major theoretical positions. This allows This dictionary originated in a series of con-
for some initial considered and critical assess- versations between ourselves and Gillian
ment of how they have been or can be Stern in London and Milton Keynes in 1997
debated, challenged and reworked. Evaluation and 1998. We ®nally committed ourselves to
sections also appear in many of the other the dictionary when we realized that it ®tted
entries, but at the discretion of the individual in with the criminological project we had
authors. As a guide, we have encouraged embarked upon at the Open University. We
entries of up to 1500 words each for major continue to view this dictionary as part of our
theoretical positions and up to 1000 words ongoing dialogue with/in criminology and we
each for theoretical concepts, methods and intend to produce a second edition which will
criminal justice concepts. Each entry is also enable us to re¯ect on the framework we have
cross-referenced to those other associated constructed and expand upon the range of
concepts included in the dictionary to facilitate theoretical perspectives, concepts, methodolo-
a broader and in-depth study. Finally, each gies and emergent issues. We will persist with
entry concludes with a list of up to six key our efforts to be as inclusive and internation-
readings to reinforce the aim of the dictionary alist as possible and to emphasize the
as a learning resource to be built upon by the importance of a theory-led criminology. To
reader. We are also aware that for many this end we would welcome feedback as well
students an initial entry into criminological as any possible future contributions.
study is as much through the names of
particular authors as it is through a particular
key concept. To this end, the dictionary con- Eugene McLaughlin
cludes with both a subject index and a name John Muncie
index to further enhance its accessibility. All Milton Keynes, UK
these features are designed to facilitate the December 2000
A
ity. `The aim is compensation rather than tant series of insights into the role of the
retaliation; reconciliation rather than blame prison and its failures at the beginning of the
allocation. To this end, the criminal justice twenty-®rst century. The perspective con-
system needs to be decentralized and neigh- tinues to pose the key question: is prison the
bourhood courts established as a complement answer to the problem of crime even allowing
or substitute' (de Haan, 1991, pp. 211±12). for an expanded de®nition to include crimes
Abolitionism therefore `implies a negative committed by the powerful?
critique of the fundamental shortcomings of There have been a number of issues raised
the criminal law to realize social justice' while and criticisms made of the abolitionist posi-
simultaneously offering both an alternative tion. Most have come from those who, like
way of thinking about crime and a `radical abolitionists, would see themselves as part of a
approach to penal reform' (van Swaaningen, theoretical and political tradition that was on
1997, p. 117). the critical wing of politics and social science.
It is also important to note that abolitionism Left realists would criticize abolitionists for
is not a homogeneous theoretical and political their idealism and for their `anarcho commu-
movement but varies across cultures. Not only nist position' which is `preoccupied with
has it been principally a European phenom- abolishing or minimizing state intervention
enon (Davies, 1998), but within Europe there rather than attempting to make it more
have been different strands to the movement effective, responsive and accountable' (Mat-
with some pointing to the distinct differences thews, cited in Sim, 1994, p. 265).
between European and British movements. In Abolitionists would reject the charge of
Europe early abolitionists such as Mathiesen, idealism and as noted above would point to
Christie, Bianchi and Hulsman advocated an the in¯uence that they have had on a number
alternative vision for criminal justice politics. of political debates and social policies in terms
Second generation abolitionists, neo-abolition- of making the state more accountable. For
ists, accept many of the abolitionist principles, example, the issue of deaths in custody which
including the rejection of both the concept of became a major political debate in the UK in
crime and `penality as the ultimate metaphor the 1980s and 1990s involved not only
of justice' (van Swaaningen, 1997, pp. 116 and individuals who were part of the abolitionist
202). However, British neo-abolitionists such movement but had a signi®cant hegemonic
as Box-Grainger, Ryan, Ward, Hudson and impact on liberal reform groups by pulling
Sim also advocated engaging in more inter- them onto a more radical and critical terrain in
ventionist work to develop a `criminology terms of demanding political action to deal
from below', which with the devastating impact of these deaths on
the family and friends of the deceased (Sim,
In utilizing a complex set of competing, contra- 1994). Abolitionists would also say that the
dictory and oppositional discourses, and provid- problem with criminology is that it suffers
ing support on the ground for the con®ned and from too little utopian and idealistic thought
their families, has challenged the hegemony rather than too much.
around prison that has united state servants, Feminist writers have also drawn attention
traditional reform groups and many academics to the problem of violent men and what
on the same pragmatic and ideological terrain. In should be done to protect women from the
a number of areas . . . such as deaths in custody, predations of, for example, men who rape.
prison conditions, medical power, visiting, cen- This raises the broader question of dangerous-
sorship and sentencing these groups have ness and the nature of the response that is
conceded key points to the abolitionist argument needed to deal with dangerous individuals.
and have moved onto a more radical terrain What, for example, do we do with those who
where they too have contested the construction of engage in serial killing and who are over-
state-de®ned truth around penal policy. (Sim, whelmingly men? Abolitionists would agree
1994, pp. 275±6) that violence against women is a major issue
across societies which should be taken and
responded to seriously but would maintain
Evaluation that simply con®ning violent men inside can
often only mean detaining them in institutions
In the light of the huge increase in prison where the pervasive culture of masculinity is
populations around the globe and the con- likely to reinforce misogynist views around
tinuing rise in both reported crimes and male power and women (Sim, 1994). Therefore
crimes audited in victimization and self- they would say that the nature of the
report studies, abolitionism offers an impor- institutions and the broader culture which
4 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
objecti®es women and equates heterosexuality De Haan, W. (1991) `Abolitionism and crime control:
with domination and power needs to be a contradiction in terms', in K. Stenson and
addressed. D. Cowell (eds), The Politics of Crime Control.
They would argue further that dangerous- London, Sage.
ness is a social construction in that there are a Mathiesen, T. (1990) Prison on Trial. London, Sage.
range of behaviours that can have immense Sim, J. (1994) `The abolitionist approach: a British
implications for individual and group safety perspective', in A. Duff, S. Marshall, R.E. Dobash
but which are rarely, if ever, labelled danger- and R.P. Dobash (eds), Penal Theory and Practice:
ous. The non-implementation of health and Tradition and Innovation in Criminal Justice.
safety laws would be an example of this point. Manchester, Manchester University Press.
Finally, abolitionists would argue that the Van Swaaningen, R. (1997) Critical Criminology:
distinction between normal and abnormal, Visions From Europe. London, Sage.
which lies at the heart of positivist thought,
and which dominates debates about violence
and dangerousness, is also problematic. They
would point to the killings carried out by, and ACTION RESEARCH
the non-prosecution of, the `normal' men who
murdered hundreds of innocent men, women
and children in Vietnam in 1968 as an example De®nition
of the social construction of dangerousness.
This crime took place 15 months before the Action research is a form of research, often
infamous Manson murders in the USA. This evaluative in nature, which has the intention
latter case has become deeply embedded in of in¯uencing the future direction of practice
popular and political consciousness while the and policy.
former case has largely been forgotten.
At another level, Angela Davies (1998, pp.
102±3) has argued that while the European Distinctive Features
abolitionist tradition has offered many impor-
tant insights into the nature of the prison The origins of action research are generally
`there is no sustained analysis of the part anti- traced to the work of Kurt Lewin (1943), who
racism might play in the theory and practice of envisaged that social research should seek
abolitionism'. This is particularly important to address certain goals. In many forms of
when it is recognized that prison populations enquiry the researcher seeks to distance him-
around the world contain a disproportionate self or herself from the topic being researched,
number of people drawn from ethnic minority and from the parties to social action. The
backgrounds. action researcher, in contrast, enters into a
For the future, abolitionists have increas- dialogue with the parties to social action,
ingly connected with the emerging discourses transmitting results at certain points during
and debates around human rights and social the investigation so that the parties involved
justice which they see as mechanisms for can make changes to the ways in which they
developing negative reforms, thereby promot- are proceeding, and sometimes to the aims
ing a response to social harm that is very they are seeking to achieve. The consequences
different from the destructive prison and of these changes are then studied in turn, and
punishment systems that currently exist. further feedback and change may take place in
an iterative process. Such a process can also
Joe Sim have consequences for the research design and
methods originally adopted by the research-
er(s), which may have to change in order to
Associated Concepts: abolition, critical crimino- accommodate new developments in social
logy, hegemony, left idealism, redress, social action. Action research is therefore a dynamic
constructionism, social justice, the state model of research, which requires time for
re¯ection and review.
Key Readings Action research has been used in commu-
Bianchi, H. and van Swaaningen, R. (eds) (1986) nity-based initiatives, such as community
Abolitionism: Towards a Non-Repressive Approach to development projects and crime prevention
Crime. Amsterdam, Free University Press. programmes, in order to inform the future
Davies, A. (1998) `Racialized punishment and prison progress of social intervention. An example of
abolition', in J. James (ed.), The Angela Y. Davies action research in practice can be found in an
Reader. Oxford, Blackwell. evaluation of a domestic violence project
ACTUARIALISM 5
where `regular feedback was given to the methods of change', Bulletin of the National
project in order that this could inform sub- Research Council, 108, pp. 35±65.
sequent developments'. Here the dif®culties of Mies, M. (1993) `Towards a methodology for
achieving `longer term re¯ections and change' feminist research', in M. Hammersley (ed.),
when beset by shorter term `operational' Social Research: Philosophy, Politics and Practice.
issues were noted (Kelly, 1999). London, Sage.
Evaluation
ACTUARIALISM
Action research has also been employed where
participants and researchers share a commit-
ment to achieving a particular end, such as anti- De®nition
racist action, feminist approaches to working,
and the pursuit of human rights (see, for Actuarialism refers to the suite of risk calcu-
example, Mies, 1993). Action research raises lation techniques that underpin correctional
questions about the extent to which the policies.
researcher can remain aloof and detached
from social action; the researcher may be
regarded more as an actor with a particular Distinctive Features
set of skills and experience. Action research can
also have the aim of empowering participants Actuarialism is most closely associated with
in social action. This may be achieved by the `new penology' writings of Malcolm M.
enabling participants to have more control over Feeley and Jonathan Simon. The term the `new
their lives and communities, or by increasing penology' had been ¯oating around American
the research skills of participants so that they criminal justice circles for several years before
have a greater ability to monitor, evaluate and Feeley and Simon ®nally pulled the various
re¯ect on their activities themselves, or both of components together. They argue that in
the foregoing. One such development has been response to the need for more accountability
the attempt to empower user interests in public and rationality a radical shift took place in
service evaluations. `User' research has a `com- correctional policy in the USA during the
mitment to changing the balance of power 1980s. The old transformative rationales for
between those who provide and those who the correctional system were replaced by the
receive services', the interests of service users actuarial language of probabilistic calculations
being enhanced through the research process and statistical distributions applicable to
(Barnes, 1993). populations. Rather than concentrating on
individuals, the system shifted to targeting
Iain Crow and managing speci®c categories and sub-
populations. Management was to be realized
through the application of increasingly sophis-
Associated Concepts: evaluation research, ticated risk assessment technologies and
praxis, re¯exivity practices. This shift also enabled the system
to construct its own measures of success and
Key Readings failure and to predict its own needs. In many
Barnes, M. (1993) `Introducing new stakeholders: respects Feeley and Simon viewed actuarial-
user and researcher interests in evaluative research ism as both the logical consequence of the
± a discussion of methods used to evaluate the original utilitarian penal reform project and a
Birmingham Community Care Special Action radical departure in that the system had
Project', Policy and Politics, 21 (1), pp. 47±58. moved beyond any interest in reform or
Everitt, A. and Hardiker, P. (1996) Evaluating for rehabilitation. The correctional system under
Good Practice. Basingstoke, Macmillan. actuarialism becomes a hyper-rational proces-
Greenwood, D.J. and Levin, M. (1998) Introduction to sing system that ful®ls the mandate that it has
Action Research: Social Research for Social Change. been given. For them actuarialism logically
London, Sage. connected with neo-liberal socio-economic
Kelly, L. (1999) Domestic Violence Matters: An policies that produced surplus populations
Evaluation of a Development Project. Home Of®ce that had to be contained and controlled. In the
Research Study No. 193, Research, Development UK actuarialism is most closely associated
and Statistics Directorate, London, HMSO. with the work of the probation service, whose
Lewin, K. (1943) `Forces behind food habits and professional task is risk assessment of the
6 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
likelihood of re-offending and the threat posed offences; advocacy of `what we know' and
to the community. `what works' criminal justice policies; propos-
ing modesty and realism in making claims
Eugene McLaughlin about what can be achieved; and being either
employed within the criminal justice system or
Associated Concepts: managerialism, prediction acting as paid advisers to criminal justice
studies, rational choice theory, risk, situational of®cials.
crime prevention For Jock Young, the work of James Q.
Wilson (in the USA) and Ronald V. Clarke (in
the UK) has been vital to the emergence of a
Key Readings fully ¯edged administrative criminology.
DiLulio, J. (1987) Governing Prisons: A Comparative
Administrative criminology's starting point is
Study of Correctional Management. New York, The
that despite the massive investment in welfare
Free Press.
in the 1960s and a sustained period of pros-
Feeley, M. and Simon, J. (1992) `The new penology:
perity, crime rates escalated to unprecedented
notes on the emerging strategy of corrections and
levels in many Western societies. James Q.
its implications', Criminology, 30 (4), pp. 452±74.
Wilson took this startling fact as proof that
Simon, J. (1988) `The ideological effect of actuarial
social democratic theorizing on the causes of
practices', Law and Society Review, 22, pp. 771±800.
and solutions to crime was seriously ¯awed.
Simon, J. and Feeley, M. (1995) `True crime: the new
He argued that it was time to go back to basics
penology and public discourse on crime', in T.
on criminal justice policy. Criminologists
Blomberg and S. Cohen (eds), Punishment and
should concentrate their efforts on producing
Social Control. New York, Aldine de Gruyter.
policies that addressed what the public was
afraid of, that is `predatory' street crimes such
as muggings, assaults, robberies, burglaries
and so on, carried out by strangers. Crime
ADMINISTRATIVE CRIMINOLOGY reduction rather than social engineering
should be the focus of criminal justice policies.
The importance of engaging in focused
De®nition research and evaluated pilot studies was to
produce rigorous knowledge and avoid costly
A term coined by Jock Young in the 1980s to mistakes. Scepticism about the role of the
refer to the reconstitution of establishment criminal justice system in crime control also
criminology in the UK and USA in the after- meant that policy-makers needed to think
math of the demise of positivist inspired about how to integrate practical crime control
correctionalist theory and practice and the into other aspects of public policy.
emergence of radical criminology. Adminis- In the UK, Ronald V. Clarke, a senior
trative criminology concentrates on the nature researcher at the Home Of®ce, reached similar
of the criminal event and the setting in which conclusions to Wilson and began to formulate
it occurs and assumes that offenders are an approach to `commonplace crime' that was
rational actors who attempt to weigh up the not hindered by what he viewed as the
potential costs and bene®ts of their actions. limitations of mainstream criminological the-
The goal of administrative criminology is to orizing, particularly its failure to develop
make crime less attractive to offenders. realistic and practical policy recommenda-
tions. From Clarke's perspective, criminal
justice policy-makers cannot do much about
Distinctive Features the desire of some young men to become
involved in delinquency and criminal activity.
The term `administrative criminology' encom- However, most offenders are involved in a
passes a large number of writers from a variety rational choice structuring process that con-
of academic backgrounds involved in a wide sists of evaluating the perceived risks in the
range of research sites. They are united by: commission of a particular offence, the
acceptance of dominant de®nitions of what rewards that are likely to be realized and the
constitutes the problem of crime; a lack of skills and resources required to execute a
interest in the social causes of crime; acceptance criminal act successfully. As a consequence,
of the need for their research to be applied to criminal justice policy-makers should concen-
aid policy development and decision-making; trate their efforts on reducing the physical
support for rational choice or `opportunity' opportunities for offending and increasing the
approaches to speci®c offenders and speci®c chances of offenders being caught and
ANARCHIST CRIMINOLOGY 7
punished. The focus on how a criminal's ing: A Report to The United States Congress, http://
decision-making in a given situation is in¯u- www.ncjrs.org/works/index.htm.
enced by her/his perception of risk, effort and Wilson, J.Q. (1983) Thinking about Crime. New York,
reward led to the development of a suite of Basic Books.
opportunity reduction techniques to: increase
the effort associated with committing a crime;
multiply the risks of crime; reduce the
rewards of crime; and remove the excuses AETIOLOGY
for crime. The techniques and strategies
chosen must be appropriate to the speci®cs
of the crime committed and their setting. See Causation
Evaluation
ANARCHIST CRIMINOLOGY
Such situational crime prevention policy
initiatives lend themselves to evaluation for
effectiveness and this enabled administrative De®nition
criminologists to develop evidence-based,
problem-solving approaches to crime reduc- Anarchism is one of the most dif®cult political
tion. Administrative criminology's other con- ideologies to conceptualize and de®ne, pri-
cern is to re-organize the state's crime control marily because there is no one anarchist
efforts to make them as ef®cient, effective and ideology and because of the degree of
focused as possible. It has no particular senti- misrepresentation by its political opponents.
mental attachment to the criminal justice It is a meeting place for a bewildering number
system and is willing to advocate managerial- of philosophies, belief systems and practices
ization, actuarialization and privatization. and originated as a reaction to the emergence
By the end of the 1990s administrative of the nation state and capitalism in the
criminologists had become increasingly nineteenth century. Anarchists are united, ®rst
sophisticated in formulating and defending and foremost, by the belief that the state is
their perspective, going so far as to present coercive, punitive, exploitative, corrupting
`opportunity' as a `root cause' of crime. To date and destructive. Alternative forms of mutual
there has been no adequate response from aid and voluntary organization that are non-
either critical criminology or left realism. authoritarian, non-coercive, non-hierarchical,
functionally speci®c and decentralized are
Eugene McLaughlin advocated.
authority still stand as a key reference point Jeff Ferrell (1995, p. 106) sums up the
for any emergent anarchist criminology. possibilities of anarchist criminology: `At its
Kropotkin argues that law is useless and best, anarchism and the process of justice that
harmful, sustaining mass criminality and ¯ows from it constitute a sort of dance that we
generating social pathologies. Laws protecting make up as we go along, an emerging swirl of
private property and the interests of the state ambiguity, uncertainty, and pleasure. Once
are responsible for generating between two- you dive into the dance, there are no guar-
thirds and three-quarters of all crime. The antees ± only the complex rhythms of human
body of criminal law that is geared towards interaction and the steps that you and others
the punishment and prevention of `crime' invent in response. So, if you want certainty or
does not prevent crime and degrades society authority, you might want to sit this one out.
because it fosters the worst human instincts As for the rest of us: start the music.'
and obedience to the status quo and bolsters
state domination. Eugene McLaughlin
Kropotkin insists that the majority of crime
will disappear the day private property ceases Associated Concepts: abolitionism, left idealism,
to exist and human need and cooperation peacemaking criminology, the state
rather than pro®ts and competition become
the organizing principle of social life. Alter-
native forms of social solidarity and inclusive
Key Readings
Ferrell, J. (1995) `Anarchy against the discipline',
notions of social justice, rather than state-run
Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 3 (4),
systems of criminal justice and the ®ctional
pp. 86±106.
`rule of law', can contain anti-social behaviour.
Ferrell, J. (1999) `Anarchist criminology and social
Here, there are obvious links to the core prin-
justice', in B.A. Arrigo (ed.), Social Justice/Criminal
ciples underpinning abolitionism, left idealism
Justice. Belmont, CA, Wadsworth.
and peacemaking criminologies.
Kropotkin, P. (1996) `Law and authority', in J.
Anarchists deny that their vision relies on
Muncie, E. McLaughlin and M. Langan (eds),
disorder, violence and lawlessness. However,
Criminological Perspectives: A Reader. London,
the belief that anarchism originates in every-
Sage.
day struggle rather than abstract theorizing
Tifft, L.L. (1979) `The coming re-de®nitions of crime:
leads to the advocacy of direct or creative
an anarchist perspective', Social Problems, 26, pp.
action and `propaganda by deed'. The resul-
392±402.
tant protest and resistance tactics and set-piece
confrontations which are vital to the renewal
of theory and practice bring anarchist groups
into confrontation with the forces of law and
order and they thus risk potential criminaliza- ANIMAL ABUSE
tion. It is in this moment that the stereotypical
representation of the nihilistic anarchist is
conjured up in the news media. De®nition
animals' welfare can be assessed. Reduced life or speciesist approach to animal abuse. Several
expectancy, impaired growth, impaired rep- philosophers have established the moral signi®-
roduction, body damage, disease, immuno- cance of animals in their own right. Because
suppression, adrenal activity, behaviour animals are sentient living beings, with interests
anomalies and self-narcotization are indicators and desires, and are `subjects-of-a-life', animals
of poor welfare. Welfare thus depends not are taken into the circle of moral consideration
solely on an animal's subjective experiences. (Regan and Singer, 1989). Speciesism thus
Although poor welfare and suffering often stands for a prejudice or biased attitude
occur together, suffering is no prerequisite for favouring the interests of the members of one's
poor welfare. When an act or omission entails own species against those of members of other
negative effects on an animal's welfare ± to be species. As with other systems of discrimination
assessed using these species-speci®c indica- like racism and sexism, speciesism rests on the
tors ± it can be classi®ed as animal abuse. But domination and subordination of others, here
scienti®c uncertainty about many aspects of solely based on the fact that animals are not
animals' mental state or emotional life human (Adams and Donovan, 1995). A non-
requires the use of a precautionary principle: speciesist and more sensitive de®nition of
an act should be regarded as animal abuse if animal abuse focuses on the interests of animals
we are unsure if it has a detrimental effect on and the consequences of animal abuse for their
the welfare of an animal. Following the welfare (Beirne, 1995; Cazaux, 1999). It rests not
descriptions of the `battered child syndrome' on an exhaustive enumeration of possibly
and the `battered woman syndrome', attempts abusive acts or omissions (e.g., burning,
should also be made to identify the clinical poisoning, assault, neglect, etc.) but on the
signs and pathology of physical abuse of effects of practices on animals' physical and
companion animals, as speci®ed in the psychological welfare.
`battered pet syndrome'. Henceforth, this de®nition of animal abuse
invalidates the distinction between animal
cruelty and animal abuse. The effects of abuse
Evaluation on animals' welfare are independent of
offenders' sadistic, malicious or benign pro-
The apparent importance of animal abuse has pensities. Nor should the de®nition of animal
recently been highlighted through its complex abuse include the anthropocentric phraseol-
relationship with child abuse and domestic ogy `unnecessary suffering' ± often inscribed
violence (Lockwood and Ascione, 1998). One in animal welfare laws ± since it lends
line of research has examined the supposed legitimacy to animal suffering deemed neces-
links between animal abuse and other expres- sary for economic, political or scienti®c
sions of family violence, for example, child reasons. For example, from a non-speciesist
abuse and woman abuse. It has been found viewpoint, bestiality is not an offence of
that several forms of violence often co-exist decadence or of sexual indecency but, because
with different categories of victim. The of its similarity to the sexual assault of women
presence of animal abuse might indicate that and children, it should be named interspecies
other family members are also potential sexual assault (Beirne, 1997).
victims; acknowledging this connection can Animal abuse refers not only to individual
help in the prevention of human interpersonal cases of socially unacceptable practices, such
violence. Other research has examined the as the abuse of companion animals, but also to
correlation between animal abuse committed several institutionalized systems founded on
by children and the development of aggressive the exploitation and subordination of animals
or violent behaviour at later stages in life. Here, which are by many viewed as socially
it has been found that children abusing acceptable. These include the abuse of animals
animals are more likely subsequently to exhibit in agriculture, hunting, ®shing, trapping,
aggressive and violent tendencies towards entertainment and sports and in experimental
humans. Animal abuse in childhood is thus research.
seen to signify the need for intervention by a What is classi®ed as animal abuse is thus
variety of social and human service agencies. independent of human intention or ignorance,
The importance of detecting and preventing socially sanctioned or socially rejected norms,
animal abuse has tended to become a justi®able and labels of necessary or unnecessary suffer-
and legitimate ®eld of research, action and ing. It is also independent of whether the
intervention, precisely because of its connection animal victim is categorized as a companion
with expressions of human interpersonal animal, a wild animal, as livestock or as an
violence. However, this is an anthropocentric experimental animal, and covers both single
10 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
and repeated or institutionalized incidents of and Weber, Durkheim was concerned with
animal abuse. grappling with the new problems of modern-
ity and sought to identify the key features
Geertrui Cazaux and Piers Beirne underlying social change. With modernity
human desires and passions seemed freer,
Associated Concepts: family crime, hidden the pace of change was dramatic: how then
crime, violence was `social solidarity' or social cohesion
possible? Durkheim did not pose the question
Key Readings so much in terms of `what are the forces
Adams, C.J. and Donovan, J. (eds) (1995) Animals driving us apart?', but rather asked `what is it
and Women. London, Duke University Press. that keeps us together?' How is society itself
Beirne, P. (1995) `The use and abuse of animals in possible? What are the roles and `functions' of
criminology: a brief history and current review', humans and social institutions? And how are
Social Justice, 22 (1), pp. 5±31. we to learn about it in order that we may
Beirne, P. (1997) `Rethinking bestiality: towards a adapt to change?
concept of interspecies sexual assault', Theoretical Durkheim located the driving force of
Criminology, 1 (3), pp. 317±40. modernity in the twin factors of the division
Cazaux, G. (1999) `Beauty and the Beast: animal of labour and the freeing of desire. Society is to
abuse from a non-speciesist criminological per- be conceived as a `moral milieu' which posi-
spective', Crime, Law & Social Change, 31 (2), pp. tions and constitutes the individual. Indivi-
105±25. duals experience social reality through their
Lockwood, R. and Ascione, F.R. (eds) (1998) Cruelty differential positioning in the social division of
to Animals and Interpersonal Violence. Indiana, labour. Humans are motivated by the pursuit
Purdue University Press. of pleasure and the satisfaction of desire and
Regan, T. and Singer, P. (eds) (1989) Animal Rights they attain happiness when their possibilities
and Human Obligations. London, Prentice±Hall. for satisfying desire are not at odds with the
social realities of the division of labour. But
what happens when the cultural regulation of
desire breaks down and desire is released as a
mobile, in®nite capacity transcending the
ANOMIE limitations on satisfaction inherent in any
division of labour?
De®nition In his doctoral thesis, ®rst published in 1893,
Durkheim argued that the consequences of
A state of ethical normlessness or deregula- anomie, or the failure of moral regulation,
tion, pertaining either to an individual or a were clear in
society. This lack of normative regulation
leaves individuals without adequate ethical the continually recurring con¯icts and disorders
guidance as to their conduct and undercuts of every kind, of which the economic world offers
social integration. so sorry a spectacle. For, since nothing restrains
the forces present from reacting together, or
prescribes limits to them that they are obliged to
Distinctive Features respect, they tend to grow beyond all bounds,
each clashing with the other, each warding off
Anomie is one of the foundational concepts of and weakening the other . . . Men's passions are
modern criminological thought. Its promi- stayed only by a moral presence they respect. If
nence in American theorizing (where it forms all authority of this kind is lacking, it is the law of
the basis of `strain' theory) is largely due to the the strongest that rules, and a state of warfare,
interpretation given to anomie in the work of either latent or acute, is necessarily endemic.
Robert Merton. His 1938 article `Social Struc- (Durkheim, 1984, pp. xxxii±xxxiii)
ture and Anomie' is one of the most in¯uential
articles in the history of sociology. Whilst Durkheim thus explicitly reversed Hobbes's
Merton's theory is now seen as reductionist picture of `the war of all against all' inherent
and somewhat mechanistic in the view it in the state of nature. Whereas for Hobbes this
offers of human agency, fertile ground is still is the purely natural or pre-social state, which
seen in Durkheim's original late nineteenth- humans overcome by creating a powerful
century formulation of anomie. This is largely sovereign to lay down de®nitions of meaning
due to the scope of Durkheim's questioning. (laws) and enforce obedience, Durkheim
Along with fellow Europeans Marx, Nietzsche places this state of social war and crime as a
ANOMIE 11
product of society, a result of the breakdown those `located in the lower reaches of the social
of moral regulation. Modernity is character- structure' crime could, therefore, be a reaching
ized by increasing individualism, by auton- for the American dream, albeit sought through
omy of thought and action, but this autonomy illegitimate channels. Merton's theory was
is dependent upon greater interdependency in further developed with the `differential oppor-
the division of labour and increased complex- tunity' theorizing of Cloward and Ohlin (1960)
ity within the collective consciousness: `liberty and anomie has proved a fertile, if somewhat
itself is the product of regulation'. The task for elusive concept to build upon, recently
`advanced societies' was to achieve a balance informing Agnew's (1992) `positive' strain
between the functions of the division of theory.
labour, law and culture, `the conditions that
dominate social evolution'. With the old
certainties disappearing, the individual ®nds Evaluation
him/herself without secure footing upon
reality; anomie threatens. In times of economic Merton's theory struck a deep chord with
crisis, either dramatic increases in prosperity many. It seemed to offer a way of constraining
or disasters, anomie may become the normal crime by improving the legitimate life chances
state of being: `greed is aroused without of those who otherwise may make the choice
knowing where to ®nd its ultimate foothold. to innovate deviantly. However, the positivist
Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far tendencies of American sociology meant that
beyond all it can attain. Reality seems value- any concept dif®cult to operationalize into
less by comparison with the dreams of fevered survey questions or mathematically inscrib-
imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned, able data remained elusive rather than
but so too is possibility when it in turn accepted, and always open to the charge of
becomes reality: A thirst for novelties, unfa- weak sociology.
miliar pleasures, nameless sensations, all of Anomie is thus a highly suggestive concept,
which lose their savour once known' (Dur- but dif®cult to operationalize. What are we to
kheim, 1984, p. 254). make of this? Perhaps the intellectual history
What was the solution to the state of of anomie re¯ects the impossibility of achiev-
anomie? While Durkheim personally argued ing a `transparent' sociology, capturing the
that the solution to the normative deregulation true `experience' of the subject. Durkheimian
causing anomie could not be the imposition of sociology had a normative element; it was for
normative restructuring through violence and modern society to arrive at a state of scienti®c
the manipulation of cultural symbols ± the self-consciousness. This would aid the crea-
solution that both Fascism and state Stalinism tion of moral individualism in that mankind
were later to offer ± he bequeathed few theor- would attain an objective knowledge of how
etical tools for integrating studies of culture, things stood, of the functional interdepen-
class and perceptions of social `reality'. The dency of all upon all. But this dream of happi-
understanding of anomie which was to be ness as attunement to our shared knowledge
developed within criminology was con- of the state of reality has been undercut by the
strained by its centrality to the middle range relentless division of labour, by `reality' in
theorizing of Robert Merton (1938). `late-modern' `Western' societies being char-
Writing shortly after the social democratic acterized by oscillation, plurality and perspec-
compromise of the `new deal', Merton identi- tivism, rather than stability. The technological
®ed the key cultural message of modernist intensi®cation of cultural reproduction ± via
American culture as the `success' goal, in par- the advent of generalized communication, the
ticular `money-success'. A `strain to anomie' mass media, the Internet ± gives us a sea of
resulted from a disjuncture between cultural information, rendering `our' experience com-
goals and legitimate means of achievement. municable to a trans-local set of `fellow-
Speci®cally, the new technologies of advertis- feelers' while appearing inconsistent and
ing put forward a cultural goal of economic super®cial to our `others'. Few would see the
af¯uence and social ascent, but individuals, function of modern `art' as to offer representa-
differentially positioned in the social structure, tions of the `absolute' or gateways into the
understood that the institutionally available eternal truths of the human condition; rather it
means may or may not enable personal is designed to `shock' or draw the observer
success. Whilst the majority of Americans into the experience of ambiguity and ambiva-
may `conform', others may `innovate', accept- lence. Within criminology, understanding
ing the cultural goal but rejecting the insti- anomie offered the hope that criminological
tutionally available means. Particularly for theorists could demonstrate particular policy
12 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
recommendations, namely that crime could be individual, with particular reference to crime
averted by reconciling the means available to and deviance.
agents through the goals offered by culture. If
agents could be assured that they could
achieve the cultural goals through legitimate Distinctive Features
or `normal' means (education, employment
etc.), then the strain to deviance would lessen. The designation `appreciative criminology'
But in the globalized capitalism of the late- owes much to use of the term `appreciative
modern condition, at least within Western studies' by Matza (1969) to refer to speci®c
societies, multiple goals and fractured and studies of deviant subcultures such as those of
overlapping identities appear the norm. The the hobo, the juvenile gang, the drug-taker.
very concept of deviance loses its grip. Such studies are characterized by observing,
Moreover, the range of candidates available sometimes by participation, the social world of
as cultural goals, not just consumerism but the deviants with a view to producing an
enhancement of power or the creation of appreciative account of the deviant's own
personal identity as a life choice, render the story in his or her own terms. Theoretically,
technological ®x of adjusting `means to ends' a appreciative criminology is in¯uenced by the
mirage. The concept of anomie may take on interactionist perspective which developed in
the role of an existential prop, never quite social psychology and sociology in the 1930s
®tting within any criminological theory, but and which received further impetus in the
always hinting at something of fundamental 1960s and 1970s, for example in connection
importance in the human condition. with new deviancy theory. Interactionism
offers an alternative to positivist ways of
Wayne Morrison thinking about crime and criminality.
Amongst other things, positivism started
from assumptions such as: there are categories
Associated Concepts: differential association, of individuals who are criminal and who have
functionalism, relative deprivation, social characteristics which clearly distinguish them
control theory, strain theory, subculture from non-criminals; the explanations for
criminality lie in individual pathologies; such
Key Readings pathologies are the causes and determinants
Agnew, R. (1992) `Foundation for a general strain of criminality. Instead, interactionism offers a
theory of crime and delinquency', Criminology, framework which emphasizes human choice
30 (1), pp. 47±87. and free will rather than determinism; a view
Cloward, R. and Ohlin, L. (1960) Delinquency and of crime and deviance as something which is
Opportunity. New York, The Free Press. generated in interactions rather than as a
Downes, D. and Rock, P. (1998) `Anomie', in characteristic of individual backgrounds; and
Understanding Deviance: A Guide to the Sociology an assumption that social action and the social
of Crime and Rule Breaking, 3rd edn. Oxford, world are ¯exible, changing and dynamic
Oxford University Press. rather than ®xed, objective and external.
Durkheim, E. (1970) Suicide (trans. S.A. Solovay and Above all, appreciative studies took from
J.H. Mueller, ed. G.E.G. Catlin), New York, The interactionism the notion that there can be
Free Press. variability of meanings in social contexts and
Durkheim, E. (1984) The Division of Labour in Society in society in general, rather than consensus.
(trans. W.D. Halls). Basingstoke, Macmillan. The aim of appreciative studies was, and is, to
Merton, R.K. (1938) `Social structure and anomie', describe, understand and appreciate the social
American Sociological Review, 3, pp. 672±82. meanings and interpretations which cate-
gories of individuals attribute to events,
contexts and others' actions. Such studies are
epitomized in the title of Howard Parker's
(1974) book View from the Boys, a study of male
APPRECIATIVE CRIMINOLOGY juvenile gangs in Liverpool based on the
perspectives of the gang members themselves.
Methodologically, appreciative studies have
De®nition been in¯uenced by the ethnographic tradition
in social research. Ethnography, which liber-
An approach that seeks to understand and ally means description (`graphy') of cultures
appreciate the social world from the point (`ethno'), has its roots in social anthropology
of view of the individual, or category of and the study of pre-industrial societies.
APPRECIATIVE CRIMINOLOGY 13
Subsequently it has been adapted to the interested in asking questions about the
examination of subcultures in complex causes of smoking marijuana; instead he
society. Ethnography has a number of meth- focused on the question of how and why
odological commitments which make it espe- marijuana users come to be de®ned and
cially appropriate to appreciative studies of labelled as deviant. This involved looking at
deviant subcultures using an interactionist interactions between the would-be deviant
framework. First, there is a commitment to and the agencies of social control.
studying the social world from the point of
view of the individuals being studied. Sec-
ondly, it is assumed that there can be a multi- Evaluation
plicity of perspectives rather than just one,
and also that each is equally valid for the The critiques that can be levelled at apprecia-
people who hold them. Thirdly, social per- tive criminology are those which, in terms of
spectives (and the social meanings, de®ni- theory, can be levelled at interactionism and
tions, labels and stereotypes which comprise which, in terms of methodology, can be
them) cannot be separated from social inter- directed at ethnography. For example, expla-
actions. Therefore, particular attention should nations of crime and deviance that are
be paid to the ways in which people interact in grounded in interactions in small-scale con-
speci®c social contexts. Fourthly, there is a texts run the risk of neglecting wider social
belief that such observation should be natur- structural dimensions of power, inequality
alistic, that is individuals should be studied and oppression (although for some a synthesis
behaving as they would normally and natur- based on theorizing at different levels is
ally do so. It is for this reason that ethno- feasible). Methodologically, ethnographic stu-
graphers often rely on participant observation dies endure the criticisms that they lack
although that is not the only form of data generalizability to wider contexts and ±
collection used. being reliant on the deviants themselves for
The Chicago School of Sociology of the data ± are not scienti®c or objective. There is
1920s and 1930s was a source of classic also the possibility that taking an appreciative
appreciative studies. Researchers adapted stance is synonymous with glorifying the
some of the techniques of social anthropolo- criminal. This does not ®nd sympathy with
gists to study the subcultures of crime within those who emphasize the need to face up to
their city (in addition to statistical analysis of the reality of crime and the consequences of it
crime rates to map zones of the city). They for victims.
produced books with titles such as The Jack Such criticisms apart, appreciative studies
Roller (Shaw, 1930), The Hobo (Anderson, have provided a rich vein within criminology
1923), and The Gang (Thrasher, 1927). There and have described and explained criminal
was particular emphasis on the transitional and deviant subcultures which would not
zone of the city with indicators of social otherwise have been made visible by other
disorganization such as high turnover of theoretical and methodological approaches.
population, poor housing and high incidence
Victor Jupp
of crime.
Appreciative studies captured the culture of
crime in this zone and also the mechanisms by Associated Concepts: Chicago School of Sociol-
which this culture was transmitted. In doing ogy, cultural criminology, ethnography, inter-
so, the Chicago sociologists emphasized the actionism, labelling, new deviancy theory,
distinctiveness of the deviant subcultures and participant observation, subculture
their separation from mainstream society. In
the 1960s and 1970s there was a resurgence of Key Readings
ethnographic studies, linked to an interac- Anderson, N. (1923) The Hobo: The Sociology of the
tionist framework, but with a particular slant Homeless Man. Chicago, University of Chicago
towards the process of labelling. For example, Press.
Howard Becker's (1963) study of marijuana Becker, H. (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of
smokers was in¯uential in generating a Deviance. New York, The Free Press.
greater concern with the ways deviant and Matza, D. (1969) Becoming Deviant. Englewood
non-deviant worlds meet and interact rather Cliffs, NJ, Prentice±Hall.
than with their separation. This was part of the Parker, H. (1974) View from the Boys. Newton Abbot,
emergence of labelling theory as a radical David and Charles.
response to the predominance of positivist Shaw, C.R. (1930) The Jack Roller. Chicago, University
conventional criminology. Becker was not of Chicago Press.
14 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Thrasher, F.M. (1927) The Gang. Chicago, University statist to win popular support while disguis-
of Chicago Press. ing the reality of honing state centralism. More
importantly, Poulantzas had neglected the
purposeful and orchestrated construction and
manipulation of popular consent. Herein lay
AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM the essence of Hall's claim for authoritarian
populism: `harness[ing] . . . support [of ] some
popular discontents, neutraliz[ing] opposing
De®nition forces, disaggregat[ing] the opposition and
incorporat[ing] some strategic elements of
Conceptualized as an essential aspect of how popular opinion into its own hegemonic
social democratic states and their institutions project' (Hall, 1985, p. 118).
respond to crises within advanced capitalist Hall's response to, and development of,
political economies, authoritarian populism Poulantzas's thesis emerged from his work
explains how increasingly repressive punitive with colleagues at the Centre for Contempor-
laws and sanctions gain popular legitimacy. ary Cultural Studies, Birmingham, UK during
This mobilization of state power aims to the 1970s. In their exhaustive analysis of the
manage consent, organize regulation and `crisis' in the UK political economy, Hall et al.
secure hegemony through an increasingly (1978, p. 303) identi®ed `deep structural shifts'
authoritarian political agenda derived from which had resulted in `the extension of the law
political disaffection and discontent. It reaf- and the courts at the level of political
®rms reactive and reactionary discourses management of con¯ict and the class struggle'.
established around the `collapse' of democ- As the state had become more directly inter-
racy, the `breakdown' in law and order, the ventionist within the economy, establishing
`militancy' of the unions, the `decline' in moral the foundation for capitalist reconstruction
values and so on. These discourses are through the libertarianism of the `free-market',
exploited through political and media `cam- it became both necessary and `legitimate' for
paigns', thus generating `moral panics' within `public opinion to be actively recruited in an
popular discourse and social reaction. open and explicit fashion in favour of the
``strong state'' . . . [characterized as] the ebb
and ¯ow of authoritarian populism in defence
Distinctive Features of social discipline' (1978, pp. 304±5).
For Hall et al. (pp. 317±20) the `crisis' that
Basing his analysis on the proposition that was `policed' through the gradual develop-
`state-monopolized physical violence perma- ment of legitimate coercion comprised four
nently underlies the techniques of power and distinct elements: a crisis of and for British
mechanisms of consent' within Western capitalism; a crisis of the `relations of social
capitalist democracies, Poulantzas (1978, forces' derived in the economic crisis; a crisis
p.81) claimed that during the 1970s a new of the state in mobilizing popular consent for
form of state had emerged: `authoritarian potentially unpopular socio-economic strate-
statism . . . intensi®ed state control over gies; a crisis in political legitimacy, in social
every sphere of socio-economic life combined authority, in hegemony; the imposition of
with radical decline of the institutions of `social authority' and societal discipline. The
political democracy and with draconian and authors identi®ed the collapse of postwar
multiform curtailment of so-called ``formal'' social-democratic consensus and the consoli-
liberties' (1978, pp. 203±4). Repressive mea- dation of New Right ideology as a funda-
sures depended on the actual exercise of state- mental shift in the balance of social forces ±
sanctioned violence and, signi®cantly, on its from consent to coercion ± inherent within
internationalization through ideological social democracies; a shift they characterized
acceptance or, for those who opposed the as the emergence of an exceptional form of the
rise of authoritarianism, through mechanisms of capitalist state.
fear. Further expanding the thesis, Hall (1979, p.
For Stuart Hall, Poulantzas had made a 19) proposed that the `language of law and
de®ning contribution to the critical analysis of order is sustained by moralisms . . . where the
the `exceptional shifts' towards authoritarian- great syntax of ``good'' versus ``evil'', of civil-
ism within Western social democracies. Yet he ized and uncivilized standards, of the choice
felt that Poulantzas had misread the strategy between anarchy and order constantly divides
of anti-statism prevalent within the radical the world up and classi®es it into its
right ± a strategy representing itself as anti- appointed stations'. By appealing to `inherent'
AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM 15
social values and evoking an overarching shared by Western capitalist states, hegemonic
moral imperative, law and order rhetoric in `conception and project', whose `domi-
appealed to a collective common sense; nance' had become `self-evident' by the mid-
`welding people to that ``need for authority'' 1980s (Hall, 1985, p. 119). Returning to
. . . so signi®cant for the Right in the con- Gramsci, he concluded it was `impossible to
struction of consent to its authoritarian conceptualize or achieve' hegemony without
programme'. Populism, however, was not accepting the economy as the `decisive
simply a `rhetorical device', it operated on nucleus' around which civil society consoli-
`genuine contradictions' and re¯ected a dated (1985, p. 120).
`rational and material core' (1979, p. 20). As academic hostilities cooled it became
Hall (1980, p. 3) considered the `drive' clear that the signi®cance of authoritarian
towards a `more disciplinary, authoritarian populism conceptually lay in its contribution
kind of society' to be `no short-term affair'. It to theorizing the political and ideological
embodied a `regression to a stone-age mor- dimensions of the authoritarian shift and its
ality' promoted by politicians, together with, populist appeal for stronger laws, imposed
in popular discourse, `a blind spasm of con- order and tightening discipline. What
trol: the feeling that the only remedy for a remained unexplored was the foundation of
society which is declared to be ``ungovern- popular authoritarianism within the wider
able'' is the imposition of order, through a society, given ± as Hall and others recognized
disciplinary use of law by the state'. Thus, the ± that people are not mere `dupes'. Historically,
`shift ``from above'' [was] pioneered by, an authoritarian streak can be detected within
harnessed to and, to some extent, legitimated the collective psyche which appears to trans-
by a popular groundswell below'; a populism cend cultural and regional differences. Further,
exempli®ed by `a sequence of ``moral panic''' authoritarian responses to orchestrated moral
(Hall, 1985, p. 116). panics, not derived in economic crises or which
occur during periods of relative economic
expansionism, require consideration.
Evaluation Yet Hall's analysis ± combining Gramsci,
Laclau and Poulantzas ± demonstrated that
The most strident critique of authoritarian advanced capitalism is served, serviced, but
populism came from Jessop et al. (1988). rarely confronted, by state institutions whose
Concentrating on its application to the rise decision-makers share its ends, if not always
and consolidation of Thatcherism in the UK its means, in a coincidence of interests
they argued it over-emphasized the signi®- expressed in a common and dominant
cance of ideology and downplayed structural ideology. In functioning, the state ± exempli-
relations of political economy. It was too con- ®ed by the rule of law, its derivation and
cerned with the `relative autonomy' of administration ± tutors and guides the broad
language and discourse, neglected the political membership of society. State institutions are
economy of the New Right (preferring instead sites for the regeneration and reconstruction of
to focus on its `hegemonic project') and ideas as well as policies. This process, sensi-
`generate[d] an excessive concern with the tive to and informing of popular discourses,
mass media and ideological production at the serves to defend the structural contradictions
expense of political and economic organiza- and inequalities of advanced capitalism
tion . . .' (1988, p. 73). They rejected the idea whether in recession (crisis) or in growth
that Thatcherism had secured hegemony and (reconstruction). In this climate, authoritarian
achieved a new expression of collective populism serves as a poignant reminder that if
`common-sense'; the New Right had neither consensus cannot be forged, it will be forced.
broad consensus nor political legitimacy for its
objectives. Further, Hall was criticized for Phil Scraton and Kathryn Chadwick
idealizing the gains of postwar social democ-
racy and for failing to address the political
economic determinants of global economic Associated Concepts: criminalization, critical
restructuring. criminology, hegemony, moral panic, the state
The ensuing debate was severe. Hall denied
that authoritarian populism had been con- Key Readings
ceived as a comprehensive analysis of Thatcher- Hall, S. (1979) `The Great Moving Right Show',
ism. It was `preposterous' to claim that he had Marxism Today, January, pp. 14±20.
suggested that Thatcherism had secured Hall, S. (1980) Drifting into a Law and Order Society.
hegemony. Rather, it constituted a politics, London, The Cobden Trust.
16 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Hall, S. (1985) `Authoritarian populism: a reply to Jessop, B., Bennett, K., Bromley, S. and Ling, T.
Jessop et al.', New Left Review, 151, pp. 115±24. (1988) Thatcherism. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Poulantzas, N. (1978) State, Power, Socialism. London,
Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the Verso.
State and Law and Order. London, Macmillan.
B
prospects of reforming offenders are usually Cavadino, M. and Dignan, J. (1992) The Penal System:
much better if they stay in the community, An Introduction. London, Sage.
provided the public is properly protected Home Of®ce (1990) Crime, Justice and Protecting the
(Home Of®ce, 1990). Public. London, HMSO, cm 965.
The passage of the 1991 Act did reduce the Pitts, J. (1988) The Politics of Juvenile Crime. London,
prison population signi®cantly; it fell from Sage.
45,835 in October 1992 to 41,561 in January Wilson, D. and Ashton, J. (1998) What Everyone in
1993. This downward trend continued until Britain Should Know About Crime and Punishment.
expansionist policies re-appeared in the wake London, Blackstone's.
of the murder of 2-year-old James Bulger by
two 10-year-olds in 1993, and the `prison
works' speech of the then Home Secretary,
Michael Howard, in the same year (Wilson BIOLOGICAL CRIMINOLOGY
and Ashton, 1998).
The second force at the heart of bifurcation
is the theoretical concept of just deserts. Put De®nition
simply this is a return to elements of classical
criminology which suggests that `the punish- The basic premise of biological criminology is
ment should ®t the crime'. As such, prisons that certain people are born to be criminal
should not be ®lled with minor property through the inheritance of a genetic or physio-
offenders ± who in fact ®ll most prisons in logical predisposition to crime. Environmental
Western democracies ± but with offenders conditions are not ignored but viewed as
who pose a risk to the public, and who would potential triggers of the biological force. As
be dangerous if not incarcerated. Just deserts behaviour is viewed as re¯ecting a prewritten,
is therefore also a recognition that prisons do often inherited, code, criminality lies beyond
not rehabilitate offenders, but often stigmatize individual control. Accordingly biological
them, making it more dif®cult for them to re- criminology is overwhelmingly positivist in
integrate into society. nature.
Bifurcation showed limited success in England Early positivists such as Lombroso, Ferri and
and Wales in that the passage of the 1991 Garafalo identi®ed the criminal in terms of
Criminal Justice Act did reduce the prison physical stigmata. Physical anomalies with
population signi®cantly. However, it is of hereditary origins (such as large cheekbones,
relevance that it was a concept that was unable ¯at nose and thick eyebrows) were thought to
to withstand popular, `common sense' cla- mark out a criminal propensity. The notion of
mour to increase prison numbers, largely as a the criminal as defective reworks Darwin's
reaction to a tragic but atypical murder, and theory of evolution. As humans develop they
when political expediency determined a learn how to adapt to their environment.
different course of action. In short, when it Those who do not are viewed as an atavistic
was in the government of Britain's interests to throwback to an earlier stage of evolution as
appear `tough' on criminals as well as crime, pre-social and more criminally inclined. In his
bifurcation became politically irrelevant. later work Lombroso placed less emphasis on
the atavistic nature of all criminality. By 1897
David Wilson he claimed that the `born criminal' applied to
only a third of all criminals. To this he added
the categories of the epileptic, the insane and
Associated Concepts: classicism, just deserts, the `occasional criminal'. The latter exhibited
neo-conservative criminology no inbred anomalies, but turned to crime as a
result of a variety of environmental condi-
Key Readings tions. His later work also attempted to
Bottomley, A.K. (1980) `The ``Justice Model'' in measure the effect of climate, rainfall, price
America and Britain: development and analysis,' of grain, banking practices, poor education
in A. Bottoms and R. Preston (eds), The Coming and the structure of government, Church and
Penal Crisis: A Criminological and Theological religion on occasional criminality. However,
Exploration. Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press, he never totally abandoned the notion that
pp. 25±52. criminals were abnormal. He never allowed
20 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
for the possibility that criminality could be from twins' in¯uence on each other's beha-
`normal'. viour.
Several attempts have subsequently been As a result, Mednick, Gabrielli and Hutch-
made to test biological and genetic theories. A ings (1987) proposed that the study of
study of 3,000 prisoners in London in the adoptions would be a better test of a relative
1910s discovered high correlation between the genetic effect, particularly if it could be shown
criminality of spouses, between parents and that the criminality of biological parent and
their children and between brothers. Poverty, child was similar even when the child had
education and broken homes were poor grown up in a completely different environ-
correlates. It was argued that criminality was ment. Using data from over 14,000 cases of
passed down through inherited genes. adoption in Denmark from 1924 to 1947,
Accordingly, in order to reduce crime, it was Mednick et al. concluded that some factor is
increasingly recommended that people with transmitted by convicted parents to increase
such inherited characteristics should not be the likelihood that their children ± even after
allowed to reproduce. This logic was fertile adoption ± will be convicted for criminal
ground for the growth of eugenics, a doctrine offences. As a result, this type of research
concerned with `improving' the genetic selec- continues to attract research funding and
tion of the human race. Evidence from the publicity. In 1994 the Centre for Social, Genetic
Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development and Development Psychiatry was established
established in the 1960s also continues to at the Maudsley Hospital in South London to
suggest that crime does indeed run in families. examine what role genetic structures play in
From a base of 397 families, half of all con- determining patterns of behaviour (including
victions were concentrated in just 23. Convic- crime). In 1995 a major international con-
tions of one family member were strongly ference was held behind closed doors to
related to convictions of each other family discuss the possibility of isolating a criminal
member. Three-quarters of convicted mothers gene ± the basis of which rested on the study
and convicted fathers had a convicted child. of twins and adoptees (Ciba Foundation,
Further, more sophisticated research direc- 1996). In one of the best selling social science
ted at isolating `a genetic factor' has been books of the decade, The Bell Curve (New York,
carried out with twins and adoptees. These Basic Books, 1994), Herrnstein and Murray
have attempted to test two key propositions: claimed that American blacks and Latinos are
disproportionately poor not because of dis-
1 That identical (monozygotic or MZ) twins crimination, but because they are less intelli-
have more similar behaviour patterns than gent. Further, they suggested that IQ is mainly
fraternal (dizygotic or DZ) twins. determined by inherited genes and that
2 That children's behaviour is more similar people with low IQ are more likely to
to that of their biological parents than to commit crime because they lack foresight
that of their adoptive parents. and are unable to distinguish right from
wrong. Such theory indeed remains politically
In a review of research carried out between and popularly attractive because it seems to
1929 and 1961, Mednick and Volavka (1980) provide scienti®c evidence, which clearly
noted that, overall, 60 per cent of MZ twins differentiates `us' from `them'. If certain
shared criminal behaviour patterns compared people are inherently `bad' then society is
to 30 per cent of DZ twins. More recent work absolved of all responsibility. Such reasoning
has found a lower, but still signi®cant, level of is, of course, most characteristic of totalitarian
association. Christiansen's (1977) study of regimes whether in Nazi Germany or the
3,586 twin pairs in Denmark found a 52 per former USSR or in programmes of forced
cent concordance for MZ groups and a 22 per therapy practised in the USA.
cent concordance for the DZ groups. The Further research has examined the effect of
evidence for the genetic transmission of some a wide range of biochemical factors These
behaviour patterns thus appears quite strong. have included: hormone imbalances; testoster-
However, telling criticisms have also been one, vitamin, adrenalin and blood sugar
made of this line of research. For example, a levels; allergies; slow brain-wave activity;
tendency to treat identical twins more alike lead pollution; epilepsy; and the operation of
than fraternal twins may account for the autonomic nervous system. None of the
greater concordance. Thus the connection research has, as yet, been able to establish
between criminality and genetics may be any direct causal relationships. While some
made through environmental conditions, interesting associations have been discovered
derived from the behaviour of parents or ± for example between male testosterone
BIOLOGICAL CRIMINOLOGY 21
levels and verbal aggression, between vitamin personality, it is argued, will predispose a
B de®ciency and hyperactivity, and between person to make criminal decisions, but
stimulation of the central portion of the brain criminality is not a matter of nature versus
(the limbic) and impulsive violence ± it nurture, but of nature and nurture. This
remains disputed that such biological condi- approach is a de®ning characteristic of socio-
tions will automatically generate anti-social biology, developed in the 1970s and heralded
activities, which in turn will be translated into by its advocates as a way forward in unifying
criminality. the social and natural sciences. Generally, it is
argued that some people carry with them the
potential to be violent or anti-social and that
Evaluation environmental conditions can sometimes trig-
ger anti-social responses. Socio-biologists view
Most critical commentaries on this work ± biology, environment and learning as
notwithstanding the question of its ethical mutually interdependent factors. Sociopathy
position ± have argued that each fails to may not be inherited, but a biochemical
recognize the potential effect of a wide range of preparedness for such behaviours is present
environmental factors. The high correlation in in the brain, which, if given a certain type of
the criminality of family members could be environment, will produce anti-social beha-
explained by reference to poor schooling, viour (Jeffery, 1978).
inadequate diet, unemployment, common Nevertheless, the search for biological,
residence or cultural transmission of criminal physiological or genetic correlates of crimin-
values. In other words, criminality may not ality is continually hampered because it is
necessarily be an inherited trait, but be learned practically impossible to control for environ-
or generated by a plethora of environmental mental and social in¯uences and thus to be
factors. The usual comparative controls of able to measure precisely the exact in¯uence
criminal and non-criminal are doubly mislead- of a genetic effect.
ing. Offenders in custody are not representa-
tive of criminals in general, but constitute a John Muncie
highly selected sub-set of those apprehended,
charged and convicted. Control groups of the
non-criminal are almost certain to include
some individuals who have committed crimes Associated Concepts: determinism, dispositional
but whose actions have remained undetected. theories, genetics, individual positivism,
Indeed most current research in this tradition somatotyping
would not claim that biological make-up alone
can be used as a suf®cient explanation of crime.
The question of exactly what is inherited Key Readings
remains unanswered. Rather, some biological Christiansen, K.O. (1977) `A review of studies of
factors may generate criminality, but only criminality among twins', in S. Mednick and K.O.
when they interact with certain other psycho- Christiansen (eds), Biosocial Bases of Criminal
logical or social factors. Whilst correlational Behaviour. New York, Gardner.
analysis may suggest that criminality is Ciba Foundation Symposium 194 (1996) Genetics of
transmitted in certain families, it is now Criminal and Antisocial Behaviour. Chichester,
acknowledged that it does not allow us to Wiley.
distinguish the relative importance of genetic Jeffery, C.R. (1978) `Criminology as an interdisci-
and environmental factors. Characteristics that plinary behavioural science', Criminology, 16 (2),
are linked to offending (e.g. intelligence, pp. 149±69.
impulsivity, aggressiveness) could be geneti- Mednick, S. and Volavka, J. (1980) `Biology and
cally transmitted, but not criminality per se. crime', in N. Morris and M. Tonry (eds), Crime and
It is now more common to ®nd biology Justice, vol. 2. Chicago, University of Chicago
considered as but one element within multiple Press.
factor explanations. For example, Wilson and Mednick, S.A., Gabrielli, W. and Hutchings, B.
Herrnstein (1985) argue that individuals have (1987) `Genetic factors in the etiology of criminal
the free will to choose criminal actions when behaviour', in S. Mednick, T. Mof®t and S. Stack
they believe that the rewards will outweigh (eds), The Causes of Crime: New Biological
any negative consequences. Such a decision Approaches. Cambridge, Cambridge University
(freely made) is, however, in¯uenced by Press.
inherited constitutional factors. Low IQ, Wilson, J.Q. and Herrnstein, R.J. (1985) Crime and
abnormal body type and an impulsive Human Nature. New York, Simon and Schuster.
22 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
areas and support communities where `the There is considerable disagreement over how
public order is deteriorating but not unrec- much of the remarkable improvement in the
laimable, where the streets are used frequently New York crime rate could be attributed to the
but by apprehensive people, where a window `broken windows' strategy. However, what is
is likely to be broken at any time, and must beyond dispute is that Wilson and Kelling re-
quickly be ®xed if all are not to be shattered'. opened a debate on what the core role of the
It is a waste of police resources to concentrate police should be and how policing should be
on crime-ravaged neighbourhoods that are organized.
beyond redemption.
Eugene McLaughlin
Evaluation
Associated Concepts: defensible space, problem
The compelling analysis underpinning oriented policing, zero tolerance
`Broken Windows' fed into policy discussions
about the need for new approaches to urban
policing. What is signi®cant is that it lends Key Readings
itself to both benign and authoritarian policy Bratton, W.J. (1997) `Crime is down in New York:
responses and mission statements. It could blame the police', in N. Dennis (ed.), Zero-
be argued that `problem oriented policing' Tolerance Policing: Policing a Free Society. London,
strategies are premised on a similar type of Institute of Economic Affairs.
understanding of the role of the police in Goldstein, H. (1990) Problem-Oriented Policing. New
stabilizing urban communities and how police York, McGraw±Hill.
legitimacy can be secured through responding Kelling, G.L. and Coles, C.M. (1996) Fixing Broken
to `quality of life issues' and prioritizing crime Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in
prevention. However, its core argument has Our Communities. New York, Touchstone Books.
also been adapted to justify aggressive street Skogan, W. (1990) Disorder and Decline: Crime and the
policing tactics such as those practised in New Spiral of Urban Decline in American Neighborhoods.
York in the 1990s. NYPD's `zero tolerance' New York, The Free Press.
crime ®ghting strategy returned of®cers to Wilson, J.Q. and Kelling, G. (1982) `Broken win-
street patrolling and mandated them to target dows', Atlantic Monthly, 249 (3), pp. 29±38.
the broad spectrum of low level misconduct Young, J. (1997) `Zero tolerance: back to the future',
and widespread anti-social behaviours which in A. Marlow and J. Pitts (eds), Planning Safer
made the city feel unsafe and disorderly. Communities. London, Russell House Publishing.
C
their exclusion. Cultural criminologists main- Katz, J. (1988) Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual
tain that, through the dual processes of the Attractions in Doing Evil. New York, Basic Books.
scienti®c rationality and containment of con- Lyng, S. (1990) `Edgework: a social psychological
temporary everyday life, carnival has shat- analysis of voluntary risk taking', American
tered and its fragments and debris are now to Journal of Sociology, 95, pp. 851±86.
be found not in the pleasure and excitement of Presdee, M. (2000) Cultural Criminology and the
organized carnival but in acts of transgression Carnival of Crime. London, Routledge.
and crime (Presdee, 2000). Without a partly
licensed and organized carnival `form', the
carnivalesque emerges more unrehearsed and
unannounced and often in a more violent and CAUSATION
criminal way. Lyng (1990) has described such
performance as `edgework' ± intense and
often ritualised moments of pleasure and De®nition
excitement which accompany the risk,
danger and skill of transgression and which The key proposition of causal analysis is that
come to play a key part in the construction of certain antecedent individual and social
shared subcultural meaning. factors will invariably and unconditionally
Many pleasurable activities such as rave have a certain effect.
culture, drug taking, body modi®cation, the
use of the internet, joy riding and SM
activities, contain both elements of the carni- Distinctive Features
valesque and of crime whilst the political
demonstration `the Carnival against Capital- To establish that one factor is the cause of
ism' that erupted at the 30 November 1999 another, we have at least to show that the
meeting of the World Trade Organization in supposed cause precedes the supposed effect
Seattle, USA, evidenced a global carnival of in time and, ideally, that the effect occurs
crime and pleasure, partially organized always and only when the cause occurs.
through the Internet, that showed that prac- (Social causation is generally complex, how-
tical politics (such as the demonstrations by ever, and it may take a combination of causes
`Reclaim the Streets' and `Tree Dwellers' in the to produce an effect. We may also ®nd that a
UK) can cause widespread disruption; can be cause does not determine an effect absolutely,
criminal yet immensely pleasurable to the but only probabilistically: the cause may make
participants. the effect more likely but not always and
The carnival as analysed by Bakhtin inevitably produce it.) We should note that
resulted in a return to law and order and led association between the supposed cause and
to reintegration into the existing structures of the effect is a necessary condition for causation
social life. Now, as carnival explodes into but not a suf®cient one. To demonstrate
everyday life there is no longer an inevitable causation beyond argument it is necessary to
return to law and order. The expectation has establish the mechanism by which the cause
grown that crime as carnival will be con- brings about the effect.
tinually performed without shame and with- In social and criminological research we
out social reintegration. seldom speak absolutely of `causes', but rather
of `antecedents' or `in¯uences' or `predispos-
Mike Presdee ing factors'. Rarely is it possible, even in
theory, to argue that an antecedent factor
leads deterministically to its effect; we are
Associated Concepts: anarchist criminology, more likely to want to say that it renders a
cultural criminology, cybercrime, hedonism behaviour more likely or in¯uences the way in
which events and actions are interpreted. The
exception is when treatments or ways of
Key readings handling offenders or crimes are being
Bakhtin, M. (1984) Rabelais and His World. Bloo- evaluated. Here we shall want to show that
mington, Indiana University Press. the treatment or form of handling does have
Docker, J. (1996) Postmodernism and Popular Culture: the desired effect and is the only reasonable
A Cultural History. Cambridge, Cambridge Uni- explanation for the effect's occurrence.
versity Press. The essence of casual analysis, in crimin-
Ferrell, J. and Sanders, C.R. (1995) Cultural Crimino- ological as in all other research, is control of
logy. Boston, MA, Northeastern University Press. alternative explanations. In an experiment this
28 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
control is delivered as part of the design of the and strange. Each lives in `phase space', a map
study: a treatment or manipulation is shown portraying dynamic systems in movement in
to lead to the effect, and the study is so their various phases. Attractors are regions in
designed that all other explanations for the phase space toward which dynamic systems
effect can be ruled out. Where experiments are move. The point attractor re¯ects movement
not possible or ethical ± i.e. in most crimino- toward a point in phase space. A swinging
logical research ± then statistical control is pendulum (the dynamic systems) eventually
used to rule out alternative explanations. comes to rest at a point. This `point' attracts
trajectories to it. The periodic, cyclic or limit
Roger Sapsford attractor is seen as a circle with each point on
the circle depicting at least two dimensions
Associated Concepts: correlational analysis, simultaneously. A swinging pendulum, with
determinism, experiments, multivariate ana- no frictional forces, will move back and forth
lysis, positivism, prediction studies traversing space and changing momentum.
This could be depicted in phase space as a
Key Readings circle with the two axes marked position and
Belson, W.A. (1975) Juvenile Theft: The Causal Factors. momentum. Hence, any point on this circle
London, Harper and Row. represents simultaneously its location and
Glueck, S. and Glueck, E. (1950) Unravelling Juvenile momentum. For both the point and periodic
Delinquency. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University attractor, modernist thought would have no
Press. problem in the determinacy involved.
Sapsford, R. and Jupp, V. (eds) (1996) Data Collection The next two attractors become increasingly
and Analysis. London, Sage. `fuzzy'; one sees both order and disorder
existing. Modernist thought is hard pressed to
explain them. A torus attractor looks very
much like an in¯ated inner tube. If our
pendulum was connected with a worn hinge
CHAOS THEORY it would wobble as it moved in its trajectory.
Hence this introduces the third degree of
De®nition freedom. To depict this we would include
movement in the form of a line winding itself
Chaos theory, sometimes referred to as com- around the outside of the torus. In other
plexity theory, and one of the emerging per- words, the torus depicts two coupled cyclic
spectives in postmodern criminology, is the attractors. Where the two coupled systems
study of orderly disorder. Chaos theory is repeat frequencies in a ratio way we have a
the study of dynamic systems that exhibit both periodic torus; where they don't, we have a
`determinism' and `free will'. Modernist quasiperiodic torus. The shape of the torus
thought has constructed determinism and free itself does indicate there is overall order in the
will as dualities; chaos theory argues both can system (read `determinism' or stability); how-
be at work in complex, dynamic systems. ever, within the torus, or at any moment,
accurate prediction escapes us (thus a degree
of instability, or if you will `free will'). The
Distinctive Features strange attractor combines order and disorder
(orderly disorder), and is the most indetermi-
Chaos theory had already been anticipated by nate of the four attractors. The most celebrated
Nietzsche (cited in Babich, 1996, p. 109): `the strange attractor is the butter¯y attractor,
total character of the world . . . is in all eternity which looks very much like a pair of butter¯y
chaos'. Order appears only as an imposition or wings. Each wing represents an `outcome
as `aesthetic anthropomorphisms', as `semiotic basin', or a region toward which trajectories
®ctions' according to Nietzsche. In the early move. These attractors both exhibit a form
1990s a number of theorists in America (Bruce (i.e., the shape of a butter¯y wing), or order,
Arrigo, Dragan Milovanovic, Hal Pepinsky, stability, or can even be interpreted as having
Robert Schehr, T.R. Young) began applying a degree of determinism, and also disorder
chaos theory to criminology, law and sociol- (i.e., within the wings, indeterminacy pre-
ogy (Milovanovic, 1997). Chaos theory vails). Thus within each wing are trajectories
includes several key conceptualizations: portraying the dynamic system in movement
in its various phases, but no accurate predic-
Attractors Four types of attractors have been tion can exist, hence we have instability,
identi®ed: point, cyclic/periodic/limit, torus, disorder, indeterminacy, or `free will'.
CHAOS THEORY 29
Bifurcation diagram (logistic mapping) This rounding and dismissing `minor' variables in
phase map was developed in early studies of calculating `variance explained' may overlook
gypsy moth populations. It was found that important factors once iterated. One of the
rather than linear development, non-linear classic forms produced by a simple algorithm
movement appears in the form of `period and iteration is the Mandelbrot set.
doubling'. Here, with increasing input of some
major variable, results do not follow neat Sensitivity to initial conditions Chaos theory
predictable outcomes. Rather, initially peri- shows that especially in far-from-equilibrium
odic attractors develop as solutions to the conditions, even with small perturbations, or
question of what size population, but with with even some small change in initial starting
additional proportional input, bifurcations or values in iterations, large, unintended, and
splitting exists, where ®rst two solutions disproportional results occur: `a butter¯y
(periodic attractors) then 4, then 8, 16, 32 and ¯apping its wings in Southeast Asia produces
so on emerge. In other words, proportional a hurricane in Florida'. A school crossing
inputs did not produce proportional results, guard taking interest in a child in the ghetto
and various attractors appear: ®rst, point, then may, upon iteration, produce a person
periodic, then torus, and then strange attrac- transcending his/her adverse environment.
tors. After that, deep chaos is experienced
where prediction escapes us. However, within Non-linearity Modernist thought privileges
these latter regions, called far-from-equili- linear developments. Perhaps best expressed
brium conditions, order spontaneously arises in syllogistic reasoning and deductive logic in
out of disorder. These pockets of order are legal reasoning. Chaos theory indicates that
called `dissipative structures'. complex systems often exhibit `jumps', singu-
larities, and unintended consequences. Even
Far-from-equilibrium conditions Modernist beginning with a deterministic mathematical
thought privileges order, stability, homeosta- formula can produce unexpected, non-linear
sis, equilibrium, structural functionalism. changes.
Chaos theory argues for inherent instabilities.
Thus disorder, instability and far-from-equili- Fractals and fractal geometry Modernist
brium conditions are privileged. Within these thought privileges Euclidean geometry with
regions both order and disorder live side by its whole integer dimensions (0,1,2,3, etc.).
side, not as dualisms. Within these regions Chaos theory indicates that within these
`structures' are extremely sensitive to pertur- integer dimensions an in®nite number of
bations. Even very small inputs can produce others exist. The classic question of how long
disproportionate effects. Thus contrary to the is the coast of England is answered by: it's
privileging of bureaucratic structures as is in®nite; it depends on the measuring device;
assumed in homeostatic systems, `dissipative use a yardstick and one gets one result, use a
structures' appear which are only temporary footstick, one gets another result, use an `inch
structures of stability. stick' and yet another result. With each meas-
urement the distances increase. Fractals are
Dissipative structures These `structures' are useful in getting away from Boolean logic, as
characterized as always in process; they are in yes±no answers privileged in legal logic.
both `structures' and also dissipating ± are in Truth is always somewhere in between.
constant recon®guring modes of being. They Fractal geometry opens up `space' in which
offer only temporary stability points. They exist alternative visions may appear.
in far-from-equilibrium conditions. Unger's
(1987) blueprint for a `superliberal' society
entails the emergence of these dissipative Evaluation
structures (without him naming them as such).
Chaos theory has been applied in criminology
Iteration This is a process by which one (see generally, Milovanovic, 1997) to explain
begins with a simple algorithm, plugs in an rural crime, banditry, property crime, gender
initial value, solves, takes the result, plugs it and racial violence, organized crime, corpo-
back into the algorithm, solves, plugs in the rate crime, white collar crime; in modelling
solution into the initial algorithm and so on. It Richard Quinney's critical theory in crimino-
is feedback. What one ®nds is that even a very logy; in developing a `chaos of violence'; and
slight variance can, with a number of subse- in juvenile delinquency research. In law,
quent iterations, produce large, dispropor- several applications have developed: it has
tional effects. In empirical criminology been integrated with semiotic analysis; it has
30 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
been applied to explain the role of the Disseminating Lacan. Albany, NY: State University
American legal system; it has been shown of New York Press.
relevant in forensic psychology to explain the Henry, S, and Milovanovic, D. (1996) Constitutive
insane defendant; it has been shown how law Criminology. London, Sage.
imposes coordinates on the body and lan- Milovanovic, D. (1996) `Postmodern criminology',
guage by which reality gets constructed in Justice Quarterly, 13 (4), pp. 567±609.
restricted ways; it has been shown that law Milovanovic, D. (ed.) (1997) Chaos, Criminology, and
operates much like an `autopoeitic' system Social Justice: The New Orderly (Dis)Order. West-
(e.g., dissipative structure); and it has been port, CT, Praeger.
applied in decision-making in law. In social Schehr, R. and Milovanovic, D. (1999) `Con¯ict
justice it has been used to explain models of a mediation and the postmodern: chaos, catas-
more just society (Henry and Milovanovic, trophe, and psychoanalytic semiotics', Social
1996); to explain the spontaneous develop- Justice, 26 (1), pp. 208±32.
ment of new forms of organization in single Unger, R. (1987) False Necessity. New York, Cam-
room occupancy areas; used in the develop- bridge University Press.
ment of new models of society that are more
sensitive to being human; applied to a critique
of existing mediation programs (Schehr and
Milovanovic, 1999); and used as the basis of a CHICAGO SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGY
new approach in social movement theory.
The methodological thrust of doing chaos
theory involves: De®nition
1 locating the attractors hidden in complex A school of sociological enquiry renowned for
data sets. establishing links between environmental
2 determining how many attractors exist in factors and crime.
that data set.
3 ®nding the change point(s) at which new
attractors are produced (for purposes of Distinctive Features
social control).
4 identifying the key parameters which drive To understand the Chicago School it helps to
the system into ever more uncertainty (for know something of Chicago itself. In a little
purposes of developing humanistic social over a century ± largely as a result of its sig-
policy). ni®cant geographical location ± Chicago grew
5 determining which setting of those key from an obscure frontier trading-post to
parameters is acceptable to the whole become one of the world's greatest cities
society. with a population that, by 1930, had exceeded
3 million. One of the striking features of this
phenomenal expansion was the extent to
Chaos theory is one of the perspectives which Chicago became home to a panoply of
within postmodern criminology. It continues ethnic groups: not only was the city a point of
to ®nd wide application areas in criminology gravitation for migrating African Americans
and law. Several theorists have integrated keen to escape the poverty and repression of
chaos theory with other perspectives within the rural South, but it was also a destination
postmodern analysis in developing a model point for large numbers of European immi-
that draws from the innovative conceptual grants. Consequently, by 1900 Chicago was an
tools offered. Perhaps the greatest in¯uence amalgam of disparate social worlds and
has been on those who are eager to develop con¯icting identities. Against this socially
novel ways of approaching old problems. turbulent background, a new school of socio-
logical enquiry emerged.
Dragan Milovanovic The starting point for the Chicago School
was Robert Park's `theory of human ecology'.
Derived from the observations of early plant
Associated Concepts: constitutive criminology, ecologists, Park postulated that human com-
postmodernism, post-structuralism munities were closely akin to any natural
environment in that their spatial organization
Key Readings and expansion was not the product of chance,
Babich, B. (1996) `The order of the real: Nietzsche but instead was patterned and could be
and Lacan', in D. Pettigrew and F. Raffaoul (eds), understood in terms analogous to the basic
CHICAGO SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGY 31
natural processes that occur within any biotic The Chicagoans set about assiduously
organism. Thus, Park maintained that the city researching the city's many social problems.
could be thought of as a super-organism; an Taking their lead from Park, they proceeded
amalgamation of a series of subpopulations from the premise that the best way to identify
differentiated either by race, ethnicity, income the causes of social problems such as crime
group or spatial factors. Accordingly, each of was by close observation of the social pro-
these groups acted `naturally' in that they cesses intrinsic to urban existence. To facilitate
were underpinned by a collective or organic this task the School developed innovative new
unity. Furthermore, not only did each of these research methods such as participant observa-
`natural areas' have an integral role to play in tion and the focused interview. Such techniques
the city as a whole, but each community or enabled the Chicagoans to `enter the world of
business area was interrelated in a series of the deviant' and compile ethnographic data on
`symbiotic relationships'. Close observation of hobos and taxi-dancers, racketeers and street-
these relationships enabled Park to conclude gang members. The result was a series of
that just as is in any natural ecology, the stunning qualitative and appreciative studies
sequence of `invasion±dominance±succession' (e.g. Anderson, 1923; Shaw, 1930) that not only
was also in operation within the modern city. provided great insight into many diverse
Park's thoughts on the social ecology of the urban subcultures, but also went a long way
city were developed by his colleague, Ernest to establishing a theorized methodology for
Burgess (Park et al., 1925), whose concentric studying social action.
zone theory contended that modern cities Arguably, it is the ®ndings that emerged
expanded radially from their inner-city core from the School's empirical work that remain
in a series of concentric circles. Burgess identi- its most enduring legacy. Clifford Shaw and
®ed ®ve main zones within Chicago, each two Henry McKay (1942) set about statistically
miles wide. At the centre was the business testing the assumption that crime was greater
district, an area of low population and high in disorganized areas than elsewhere in the
property values. This in turn was encircled by city by plotting juvenile delinquency court
the `zone in transition'; a place characterized statistics onto Burgess's concentric circle
by run-down housing, high-speed immigra- model. Their ®ndings had immense implica-
tion, and high rates of poverty and disease. tions for criminology. Simply stated, they
Surrounding that zone, in turn, were zones of found that delinquency rates were at their
working-class and middle-class housing, and highest in run-down inner-city zones and
ultimately the af¯uent suburbs. Of greatest progressively declined the further one moved
importance to the Chicagoans, however, was out into the more prosperous suburbs. Of
the zone in transition. This was the oldest critical importance, they also identi®ed that
residential section of the city and was this spatial patterning of juvenile crime
comprised primarily of dilapidated, ghetto remained remarkably stable (often over very
housing that was unlikely to be renovated long periods of time) irrespective of the
because of its proximity to the busy commer- neighbourhood's racial or national demo-
cial core. The affordability of accommodation graphic composition. These ®ndings allowed
in these neighbourhoods ensured that the Shaw and McKay to conclude that delin-
zone served as a temporary home for thou- quency was a product of sociological factors
sands of immigrants too poor to afford within the zone of transition rather than
lodgings elsewhere in Chicago. A pattern individual pathology or any inherent ethnic
quickly emerged whereby immigrant families characteristics. This was a momentous break-
only remained in the zone for as long as it took through that did much to dispel earlier
them to become suf®ciently economically criminological theories, that located the root
established to move out and `invade' an area cause of crime within the individual. Having
further from the business district. Conse- established this important position, Shaw and
quently, this was an area of great ¯ux and McKay went on to claim that socially dis-
restlessness ± a place in which communal ties organized neighbourhoods perpetuate a situa-
were lost, traditional shared folkways were tion in which delinquent behaviour patterns
undermined, and impersonal relations pre- are culturally transmitted. In contrast to orderly
vailed. Such neighbourhoods were sometimes neighbourhoods where community integra-
described as `socially disorganized', and it tion is strong and `conventional values' are
was within these un-integrated urban spaces deeply ingrained, in disorganized environ-
that the members of the Chicago School ments ± because of the paucity of supervision
sought to unearth the substantive causes of and the collapse of community provisions ±
crime and deviance. the prevailing value-system is likely to be both
32 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
conducive to, and supportive of delinquent product of social construction, the `delinquency
behaviour. In other words, criminal conven- areas' scrutinized in their research were often
tions and delinquent traditions are `trans- locations in which delinquents resided and
mitted down through successive generations thus not necessarily the same neighbourhoods
of boys, in much the same way that language in which they committed their crimes.
and other social forms are transmitted' (1942, A further criticism concerns the failure of
p. 166). This observation, along with Edwin the Chicagoans to place the everyday world of
Sutherland's (1939) related theory of differen- crime and deviance into the wider economic
tial association, was an important strand in or political context. So concerned were Park
subsequent criminological theories that and his followers with the day-to-day pro-
attempted to account for crime by reference cesses of urban life and the ways in which
to deviant subcultures. these concerns impinged upon and contrib-
uted to crime in the city, that they neglected to
consider fully the underlying forces of
Evaluation capitalist development that also played a
major role in shaping social life and determin-
The work of the Chicago School has had a ing patterns of urban segregation in Chicago.
considerable in¯uence on the development of
criminological theory. In particular, it helped Keith Hayward
crystallize thinking and give structure to the
nascent and very disparate movements within Associated Concepts: appreciative criminology,
the then ¯edgling discipline of sociology. community crime prevention, geographies of
By developing innovative research meth- crime, participant observation, social ecology
odologies, the School laid the foundations for
a new type of `appreciative', re¯exive, quali- Key Readings
tative analysis. More importantly, by identify- Anderson, N. (1923) The Hobo: The Sociology of the
ing the important relationship between Homeless Man. Chicago, University of Chicago
environmental factors and crime, the School Press.
greatly compromised the (then still popular) Faris, R.E.L. (1967) Chicago Sociology, 1920±1932.
belief that criminality was a product of innate Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
biological or pathological factors. Vitally, it Park, R.E., Burgess, E.W. and McKenzie, R.D. (eds)
established the importance of detailed appre- (1925) The City. Chicago, University of Chicago
ciation of the social lifeworlds of individuals Press.
for understanding the meaningfulness of their Shaw, C.R. (1930) The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy's
behaviour. Despite its many achievements Own Story. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
however, the School has not been without its Shaw, C.R. and McKay, H.D. (1942) Juvenile
critics. Delinquency and Urban Areas. Chicago, University
A common criticism, challenging the useful- of Chicago Press.
ness of the ecological model, is that the theory Sutherland, E. (1939) Principles of Criminology, 3rd
of human ecology contained certain fallacious edn, Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott.
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
CHILD ABUSE
which that individual resided. This later
famously became known as the `ecological
fallacy'. Similarly, the key concept of `social See Family crime; Violence
disorganization' 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- CLASSICISM
like' fallacy today is recognized as fundamen-
tally ¯awed.
Major reservations have also been expressed De®nition
about the wisdom of basing empirical research
into juvenile delinquency upon of®cial statis- An approach to the study of crime and
tics. Aside from the obvious criticism that criminality which is underpinned by the
Shaw and McKay consistently failed to notion of rational action and free will. It was
acknowledge that crime rates are always the developed in the late eighteenth and early
CLASSICISM 33
nineteenth centuries by reformers who aimed and paternal benevolence which had preceded
to create a clear and legitimate criminal justice Beccaria and Bentham's ideas, leading to
system based upon equality. At its core is the reforms to the legal system, classicism appears
idea that punishment should be proportionate to offer a reasonably fair and more transparent
to the criminal act and should be viewed as a philosophy of punishment. It provides a
deterrent. Further assumptions include the benchmark by which other theories can be
notion of individual choice within a consen- compared and an important philosophical
sual society based upon a social contract and underpinning for anti-positivistic paradigms
the common interest. that emphasize free will. What it fails to take
into account, however, are the reasons or
causes of societal inequality or conditions
Distinctive Features within which individuals are said to be
propelled to commit certain acts that may
One of the central features of the classical violate legal codes. Classical criminologies
perspective within criminology is the empha- assume that there is an agreed collective set of
sis upon voluntarism and hedonism. Indivi- values or goals, ignoring the possibility of
dualism and self-interest are placed at the con¯icting groups or aims. Although Beccaria
forefront of explanations about why some conceded that there are pre-rational indivi-
people commit crime and how they should be duals (children) and sub-rational people (the
punished. One of the ®rst proponents of this mentally insane), he failed to acknowledge
approach was the Italian philosopher Cesare that social conditions may affect `rational'
Beccaria, with his work on the right to punish judgement. Furthermore, unlike later neo-
and methods to prevent crime, ®rst published classicists, Beccaria did not view crime as a
in 1764. He argued that society should create rational response to certain social conditions
laws that may infringe upon the personal such as poverty, although he did concede that
liberty of a few, but result in the greater the poor may have to be deterred more
happiness of the majority. His approach to the forcefully than other members of society.
prevention of crime was that the pain of Critiques offered by positivist criminolo-
punishment should be greater than the gists also suggest that social and individual
potential pleasure resulting from the act. forces, such as biology, physiology and
Hence, the punishment should be proportion- environment create situations which may
ate to the harm it causes society. lead individuals to commit certain acts. Early
Another early advocate of this utilitarian theorists, mentioned above, proposed that
approach was the philosopher and penal some particular bodily difference, such as
reformer Jeremy Bentham, who argued that skull size, could identify and predict propen-
punishment should be calculated to in¯ict sity to crime (see for example Lombroso and
pain in proportion to the damage to the public Ferrero, 1895). Later, psychologists working
interest. As this philosophy was developed within positivist frameworks argued that there
into criminological and legal de®nitions of could be an individual explanation in terms of
crime, formal equality before the law and the personality characteristics which might pre-
similarity of criminals and non-criminals was dispose some people to commit crime. In
emphasized in penal policy. In contrast to contrast, classicism maintains that although
positivist approaches, which were developed hedonistic, pleasure-seeking principles may
in the late nineteenth century by Lombroso lead some people to make errors of judge-
and Ferrero (1895) and Ferri (1901), for ment, they are essentially similar to those who
example, classicists maintained that the rea- do not commit such acts. Furthermore, in
soning individual had simply made an error terms of gender this perspective fails to take
of judgement in committing a criminal act ± a into account the disparity between rates of
violation of the social contract. To prevent this offending between men and women. One of
recurring the individual must be sure of swift, the questions this type of critique raises is the
sharp and certain punishment, so that, inability to explain these differences in terms
according to Beccaria, crime and punishment of offending as an irrational act or individual
are associated in the human mind. error.
Another dif®culty with the classical school
is that it assumes a rational, legal and `just'
Evaluation system ignoring functionalist arguments
regarding the necessary and bene®cial aspects
As an alternative to the apparently cruel, of crime. It seems unable to account for white
harsh system based on terror, absolute control collar and corporate crime or the `dark' ®gure
34 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
The value of quantitative cohort research lies The intellectual pedigree of this body of
in its ability to provide a great deal of data ideas/perspective is one of a decidedly
regarding respondents' lives and motivations, mixed `parentage'. Apart from the important
over a long period of time. As the work is not connections back to Aristotelian notions of
conducted in a retrospective fashion, problems civic republicanism and Judaeo-Christian
associated with respondent recall of past ideas of communion, the expression of com-
events are also diminished. The advantages munitarian aspirations is also associated with
are similar in qualitative work, except that in socialist and anarchist thinking. Furthermore,
addition rich, detailed data may be collected communitarian philosophy may also be linked
on an ongoing basis, providing a fuller picture to a conservative sociological tradition in
of respondents' lives rather than simply a which a critique of Enlightenment's project
snapshot. may be discerned. As a result of this hetero-
Relatively few cohort studies have been dox pedigree, communitarianism may be said
conducted by social researchers given the to `break' with traditional ideas of right and
resources associated with the design and left. Thus, for example, within much commu-
management of such projects. Another key nitarian thought, both the market and the
problem arises in attempting to retain the (welfare) state are viewed as dangers to the
original sample over time. Some respondents vibrant, organic community.
may be inaccessible as the study progresses or Liberalism's emphasis on individual rights
may wish to withdraw from the research. A and freedoms and abstract notions of `enligh-
great deal of effort is involved in retaining the tened self-interest' is subject to a critique for
cooperation of respondents. A further pro- its neglect of the inherently social nature of
blem arises in that the production of ®ndings humans. In contrast, communitarians point to
is slow, given the long-term nature of cohort the collective character of human existence in
research. which obligation and mutual dependency are
to the fore. Questions about solidarity and
Julia Davidson belonging are central to communitarianism in
all its versions. Social compliance in turn
derives primarily from informal cultural
Associated Concepts: longitudinal study, social controls built into everyday relations. Much
survey, time series design of its appeal then is to real people in speci®c,
morally bounded communities rather than
through abstract notions of liberty and indi-
Key Readings
vidual rights. Herein lies its strong conserva-
Marshall, P. (1998) The Prevalence of Convictions for
tive appeal.
Sexual Offending. Home Of®ce Research Findings
The sociologist and populist `guru' Amitai
Brie®ng, No. 55, London, HMSO.
Etzioni (1994) is the most prominent con-
Sapsford, R. and Jupp, V.R. (eds) (1996) Data
temporary proponent of the conservative
Collection and Analysis. London, Sage.
communitarian project to undertake a `re-
moralization' of society. In Etzioni's words,
`Communitarians call to restore civic virtues,
for people to live up to their responsibilities
and not to merely focus on their entitlements,
COMMUNITARIANISM and to shore up the moral foundations of
society.' At times Etzioni is quite explicit in
harking back to a vision of a more stable,
De®nition orderly and lawful past based on an idealized
image of small-town America. Accepting that
The broad philosophical and sociological there was discrimination against women and
tradition in which there is an emphasis on ethnic minorities in the past, Etzioni never-
the centrality of informal, communal bonds theless expresses concern that the assumed,
and networks for the maintenance of social previous bedrock of moral consensus has not
order. It is critical of individualistic, liberal been replaced by anything of substance other
theories of social behaviour and `society', than `a strong sense of entitlement and a weak
invoking notions of `social beings' and `com- sense of obligation'. The contemporary weak-
munity' rather than `atomized individuals'. It ness of community is identi®ed as both the
has both conservative and radical variants. cause of most of our ills (including crime and
36 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
disorder) but also its potential saviour, when will continue and with it the growth of more
`re-moralized'. coercive and authoritarian methods of govern-
Quite speci®c suggestions are put forward ment and social control. The politics of
by conservative communitarians on law and enforcement will gather greater force.
order which further reinforce the dominant A major contribution to the radical commu-
motifs of obligation and the shoring up of our nitarian debate on crime, disorder and the
moral foundations. Apart from support for decline of communities in the USA is found in
vigilant `self-policing' in the community, this the work of Elliot Currie (1997). Currie con-
communitarian agenda appears to lend sup- tends that the most serious problem facing
port to a draconian and public version of contemporary USA is that its most disadvan-
`shaming' offenders. The bottom line for taged communities are sinking into a perma-
authors like Etzioni, however, in their diag- nent state of terror and disintegration. Radical
nosis of the problem and solution of crime and communitarian commentators like Currie
disorder, always appears to be the existence of argue that behind the growth of crime is a
a tight and homogeneous community. cultural as well as a structural transformation
There is also a radical variant of commu- of poor communities. In this regard, there are
nitarianism in which the principles of sponta- some common themes to both the conserva-
neous solidarity, rules of reciprocity and tive and radical communitarians. The con-
small-scale communities with participatory necting points are around the concern with
democracy are to the fore. Bill Jordan captures cultural deprivation and morality. However,
the working de®nition of `community' there are also important breaks between the
adopted in this body of work as follows: it is two variants of communitarianism, as exem-
`the voluntary exchanges within systems of pli®ed in the radical version's concern with
mutual obligation that include members structural inequalities, promotion of diversity
through reciprocity, sharing and redistribu- and the key and positive role of the state in
tion' (Jordan, 1996, p. 186). In contrast to moral addressing social `wounds'.
authoritarian communitarianism, radical com-
munitarians are keen to emphasize that indi-
vidual moral autonomy needs to be assured Evaluation
and realized through speci®c projects and
commitments. The good society is de®antly Moral authoritarian or conservative commu-
pluralistic and mutual tolerance is a crucial nitarianism has been widely criticized for the
feature of it. following reasons:
According to radical communitarians,
recent years in neo-liberal societies have · a normative emphasis on one moral com-
witnessed a deterioration in social relations munity at the expense of a sociological
due to the denial of access for the poor to recognition of the plurality and diversity
majority goods and thus their experience of of actually existing communities;
majority power as unjust. As a consequence, · a desire to return to a traditional and
both the autonomy of poor people as citizens nostalgic past;
and the quality of life in the community have · a neglect of power structures in human
been jeopardized. Such processes of social societies or at least a naturalization of
exclusion and polarization do not necessarily hierarchical relations;
destroy communities in any simple sense but · a critique of personal rights and a call for
radical communitarian commentators recog- duties but a failure to critique property
nize that new forms of particularistic commu- rights;
nities do emerge in the absence of any notion · a glori®cation of past solidaristic commu-
of a shared, common good. It is argued that nities together with a failure to concep-
marginalization, inequality and exclusion lie tualize the crucial importance of struggles
at the root of much crime and anti-social acti- versus oppression in the creation of
vities. As a consequence, the radical com- collectivist communities;
munitarian agenda on crime prevention gives · ®nally, a naive and exclusivist call for a
ethical priority to decisions over redistribution return to the `traditional' family as the
and reintegration which in turn allows all means to prevent social ills, including
members to participate both in the decisions crime.
themselves and, crucially, in the shared life of
their communities. Unless such developments Within the popular conservative variant of
take place, it is suggested, the decay in consent communitarianism, there is a vision of a
and in allegiance to democracy and civil order unitary, homogeneous community sustained
COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS 37
Thus similar claims and arguments about Abolitionists have long shared these misgiv-
community tend to re-occur in different his- ings but the main impulse of the abolitionist
torical contexts, highlighting the continuing critique of traditional formal criminal justice is
potency of community ideas. based on the criminalizing consequences of
disintegrative shaming and retributive pun-
Gordon Hughes ishment and the failures of contemporary
criminal justice policy owing to its over-
Associated Concepts: Chicago School of Sociol- bearing reliance on imprisonment. Commu-
ogy, communitarianism, community justice, nitarians of different varieties share the
community safety, crime prevention, left abolitionist bias towards informal, reintegra-
realism, self-policing, social exclusion tive and educational solutions. However, they
also openly accept that punishment is the
Key Readings inevitable concomitant of law enforcement
Crawford, A. (1997) The Local Governance of Crime. with censure as a mostly legitimate response
Oxford, The Clarendon Press. to wrong-doing; and with denunciation in the
Garland, D. (1996) `The limits of the sovereign state: name of the victim and the common good as
strategies of crime control in contemporary morally appropriate (Nellis, 2000).
society', British Journal of Criminology, 33 (4), pp. The claims of community justice are also
445±71. evident in populist law and order interpreta-
Hope, T. (1995) `Community crime prevention' in M. tions of the limitations of the formal and
Tonry and D. Farrington (eds), Building a Safer legalistic system of criminal justice. Vigilant-
Society: Strategic Approaches to Crime. Chicago, ism and public shaming are common expres-
University of Chicago Press. sions of this variant of the movement for
Shaw, C. and McKay, H. (1969) Juvenile Delinquency community justice.
and Urban Areas. Chicago, University of Chicago However, the contemporary appeal to com-
Press. munity justice in criminal justice systems and
for policy-makers and practitioners is based on
less extreme criticisms of, and organizational
departures from, formal, adversarial justice
than that associated with either abolitionism or
COMMUNITY JUSTICE populist punitiveness. In effect, the practice of
community justice is for the most part aimed at
De®nition organizational reform of parts of the justice
system which are viewed as failing due to high
The term is deployed generally to describe a costs, poor coordination and lack of participa-
range of con¯ict resolution strategies, usually tion and involvement of lay actors in the
associated with informal, popular or restora- process. There are clear parallels with the
tive forms of justice. emergence of the strategy of multi-agency
community safety and crime reduction. The
actual claims for returning justice to the
Distinctive Features community (however de®ned) appear to have
more to do with rhetoric and legitimation than
The term `community justice' has begun to actual practice. Instead, community justice as
enter the vocabulary of those who work with realized in speci®c criminal justice and social
offenders and victims, although few are sure welfare systems tends to be a not so new or
what it means (Nellis, 2000). That noted, the radical strategy based on multi-agency work
word has a long tradition in criminological with relatively low tariff offenders in which the
thought, having been deployed in analyses active involvement of the victim, offender and
of popular and informal justice. It is also other relevant members of the community is
particularly associated with abolitionist and encouraged. Among the most in¯uential
communitarian perspectives/traditions in examples of such institutional practices in
criminology (see Christie, 1977). The current, contemporary societies are the `reintegrative
growing popularity of the term among prac- shaming' initiatives such as Family Group
titioners and policy-makers is in part linked to Conferences and sentencing circles and the
the recognition that state-administered sys- widely used penalties such as community
tems of justice are expensive, unduly bureau- service orders for `shallow end' offenders. Is it
cratic and slow, individualized in their then mostly a `rebranding' of the status quo?
response to offenders and neglectful of the According to proponents of community justice,
needs of victims and the wider community. it offers to open up further possibilities, in
COMMUNITY POLICING 41
rather than the wider social arrangements that safety refers to the likely absence of harms
generate harms. Multi-agency strategies of (particularly serious harms) from all sources,
community safety are most pronounced in the and not just from human acts classi®able as
UK, where they have become a statutory crimes. In particular this requires a shift of
feature of local crime and disorder reduction focus from that of the harming person to that
policies. As legislated in the UK, it is merely a of the harming circumstance. If used narrowly
style of crime reduction/prevention ± `a we are likely to see the emergence of double
synonym of crime prevention with ¯uffy standards ± whereby some of us are protected
overtones added' (Pease and Wiles, 2000). from attack by others while others of us choke
More generally across the world, commu- on polluted air or are victimized as a result of
nity safety also often appears to be a means by inadequate protective building design.
which many powerful sectional interests Many academic commentators have sought
within civil society are able to `lock', `light' to debunk the idea of community, on various
and `zone' themselves out of harm's way, counts (for being nebulous, nostalgic, intrinsi-
whilst areas blighted by de-industrialization cally oppressive and so forth). According to
and acute levels of victimization are least many academic commentators, `community
likely to have the material resources, political safety' is at best a `feel good' word marked by
connections and the civic associations that an extreme vagueness. It is generally seen to
meaningful community safety presupposes exist more happily at the level of rhetoric
(Hope, 1995). rather than practice where it is limited by
Viewed more broadly, community safety some serious structural constraints (Gilling,
refers to the absence of likely or serious harms, 1997). Critics of community safety have also
whether caused by human agency or other- alerted us to the dangers of appeals to com-
wise (Pease and Wiles, 2000). This pan-hazard munity in the politics of criminal justice and
paradigm offers a challenge to dominant, crime prevention, not least for the tendency to
compartmentalized thinking about harms in produce intolerance towards those viewed as
which each agency seeks to reduce the harms `outsiders'. But the idea of community also has
traditionally central to its compartmental a long association with the solidarity struggles
function. It is concerned with dangers from of the weak and the poor. If it did not exist
whatever source, not just crime but also, for then it would need to be invented.
example, traf®c and transport, housing and Community safety remains a `wicked issue',
working conditions. This approach to harm not just for the challenges it raises for not
reduction and the promotion of public safety easily compartmentalized practices and poli-
is not as yet common, necessarily involving cies about harm reduction, but also for the
what is often termed `joined-up thinking'. It theoretical, moral and political challenges
also necessitates sustained, multi-agency coor- associated with its nascent and contested
dinated attention to access to, and delivery of, agenda in the new governance of crimes and
welfare and health services, educational and harms (Hughes, 2000).
employment opportunities, as well as con-
fronting institutionalized discrimination and Gordon Hughes
vested power interests. But there are potential
advantages of rethinking community safety as
strategies aimed at the minimization of the Associated Concepts: communitarianism, com-
number and seriousness of harms rather than munity crime prevention, community justice,
focusing on crime prevention alone: not least left realism, multi-agency crime prevention,
so that serious harms caused by non-human self-policing, social crime prevention, social
agency may take their rightful place among harm
reasons to be fearful (Pease and Wiles, 2000).
Key Readings
Evaluation Hope, T. (1995) `Community crime prevention', in
M. Tonry and D. Farrington (eds), Building a Safer
The debate on whether community safety and Society. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
crime prevention amount to the same thing or Hughes, G. (2000) `In the shadow of crime and
whether they carry different connotative disorder: the contested politics of community
baggage is still nascent and un®nished. As safety', Crime Prevention and Community Safety,
Pease and Wiles note, community safety is a 2 (4), pp. 47±60.
phrase to be preferred (over crime prevention Crawford, A. (1997) Local Governance of Crime.
and crime and disorder reduction) only if Oxford, The Clarendon Press.
44 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Gilling, D. (1997) Crime Prevention: Theory, Policy and desire of many governments to be seen to be
Practice. London, UCL Press. ®nding less expensive, but equally demand-
Pease, K. and Wiles, P. (2000) `Crime prevention and ing, alternatives to imprisonment. This has
community safety: Tweedledum and Tweedle- been termed the `decarceration' debate and
dee?', in K. Pease, S. Ballintyne and V. McLaren resulted from a loss of con®dence in the 1950s
(eds), Key Issues in Crime Prevention, Crime and 1960s in the `rehabilitative ideal' (based
Reduction and Community Safety. London, IPPR. on the discredited therapeutic possibilities of
institutions). In reality, such expansion has
been an accompaniment, rather than an
alternative, to a rising prison population.
COMMUNITY SENTENCES
Evaluation
De®nition
Community sentences have many advantages
Penalties, imposed on offenders by criminal over imprisonment. They allow offenders to
courts, that do not involve imprisonment. retain family, work and social ties while, at the
These include various forms of reprimand, same time, giving them the opportunity to
®nancial penalties, supervision and unpaid repair the damage they have done to the com-
work and are sometimes referred to as `non- munity and resolve the personal and social
custodial' sentences or `alternatives to prison'. problems which may have led to their
offending in the ®rst place. They enable the
offender to avoid the stigma of imprisonment
Distinctive Features and the risk of becoming embedded in a
criminal culture as a result of constant associ-
Although community sentences vary around ation with other criminals in prison. Commu-
the world, it is possible to classify them in three nity sentences are also far less costly to
ways: self-regulatory, ®nancial and super- administer than imprisonment.
visory (Worrall, 1997). Self-regulatory penal- Despite these advantages, community sen-
ties involve some form of public admonition or tences have an `image' problem. Although
reprimand which is assumed to be suf®ciently many more offenders receive some form of
shaming of itself to deter the offender from community sentence than are imprisoned,
further law-breaking. Financial penalties are of penal debates and policies focus overwhel-
two kinds: ®nes are both retributive and mingly on prisons and neglect other forms of
deterrent in purpose and are generally paid punishment. Attempts to raise the pro®le of
to the central administration of a criminal community sentences encounter a number of
justice system; compensation is paid (through obstacles.
the courts) to the victim of a crime and is First, and of most signi®cance, is the public
intended to provide reparation. Supervisory and media perception that community sen-
sentences are imposed when courts believe tences are but a poor substitute for the `real
that the offender is unable to stop committing punishment' of prison. Viewed as `soft
crimes without support or surveillance and options', community sentences are often rep-
they may contain one or more of three resented in policy documents as weak and
elements: rehabilitation (through education, undemanding `let offs', which do not com-
therapeutic programmes, counselling and mand public con®dence. There is, therefore, a
welfare advice), reparation (through unpaid constant search among advocates of commu-
work for the community) and incapacitation nity sentences to include more and more
(through curfews and electronic monitoring). demanding conditions which distinguish
Some community sentences have long his- `intermediate sentences' (as they are some-
tories, while others have been introduced times called) from traditional welfare-oriented
more recently. For example, in many coun- supervision (Byrne et al., 1992; Petersilia,
tries, the origins of probation (the main form 1998). Second is the obstacle of unfair and
of supervision) can be traced back to the late inconsistent sentencing. Despite increasingly
nineteenth century, whereas community ser- sophisticated guidelines on the use of com-
vice (unpaid work) was introduced in the munity sentences, there remain concerns that
1960s and 1970s and electronic monitoring in certain groups of offenders are over-repre-
the 1980s. sented in prison for reasons that may have
Expansion in the use of supervisory sen- little to do with the seriousness of their
tences since the 1970s has been due to the offences. Community sentences tend to be
COMPARATIVE METHOD 45
Using comparison for hypothesis testing can groups can be compared on a variable at the
be illustrated by forms of statistical analysis same point in time (cross-sectional analysis) or
(although qualitative research also tests the same areas or groups can be compared on
hypotheses, by using a process known as a variable at different points in time (long-
analytic induction). Assume that a researcher itudinal analysis). Sometimes comparison
wishes to test a hypothesis that the level of takes place after publication of results from
crime in geographic areas is associated with several researchers working independently,
levels of unemployment. This can be done by for example, in examining the conclusions of
grouping areas according to their level of projects from different parts of the world to
unemployment (high, medium, low). Each of consider how different societies deal with
the three categories of area will be measured domestic disputes. In other cases researchers
in terms of their average level of crime and from different countries collaborate to pro-
statistical tests can be applied in order to duce inter-societal comparisons (see, for
provide evidence as to whether differences example, Van Dijk et al., 1990: Mawby and
between the areas are so substantial and Kirchoff, 1996).
signi®cant that levels of crime must be
associated with levels of unemployment (or
vice versa). Evaluation
The comparative method is re¯ected in
different research styles. For example, the use Comparison is an essential part of research
of quasi-experimental or evaluative designs to methodology. It involves deliberately seeking
assess policy initiatives involves the compar- or anticipating comparisons between sets of
ison of the two groups or areas, one of which observations. Without comparison with a
receives the policy initiative whilst the other baseline or against a control group it is not
does not. The two groups are compared before possible to reach plausible and credible
and after the introduction of the initiative with conclusions. However, this requires the clear
regard to the feature at which the policy is establishment of a baseline and the ability to
aimed. This two-way comparison (of two control for factors the researcher does not wish
groups on a before±after basis) facilitates to vary.
some evaluation of the effectiveness of the
policy initiative. The comparative method in Victor Jupp
social surveys is illustrated by the way in
which categories of people in a sample (for Associated Concepts: content analysis, ethno-
example, men and women; old and young) are graphy, evaluation research, social survey
compared in terms of their having or not
having an attribute (for example, a scale that
measures `fear of crime'). Qualitative, ethno-
Key Readings
Mawby, R. and Kirchoff, G. (1996) `Coping with
graphic work emphasizes the development of
crime: a comparison of victims' experiences in
generalizations and of `grounded theory' by
England and Germany', in P. Davies, P. Francis
the systematic comparisons of cases in terms
and V. Jupp (eds), Understanding Victimization.
of their similarities and their differences. The
Newcastle, University of Northumbria Press.
cases that are compared include interactions,
May, T. (1997) Social Research: Issues, Methods and
social meanings, contexts, social actions and
Process. Buckingham, Open University Press.
cultural groups. Because this is a continuous,
Van Dijk, J.J.M., Mayhew, P. and Killias, M. (1990)
rather than once and for all activity, it is
Experiences from across the World: Key Findings of
sometimes referred to as the constant com-
the 1989 International Crime Survey. Deventer,
parative method. Other methods to use
Netherlands, Kluwer.
comparison include content analysis (the
comparison of documents), historical research
(the comparison of historical periods) and
analysis of of®cial statistics (comparison of
areas, groups or time period in terms of social CONDITIONING
indicators).
Comparison permeates different stages of
research. For example, in research design it is De®nition
illustrated in the ways in which samples are
selected for study so as to compare subsets on The processes by which an organism's behav-
some variables while holding others constant. iour is related to, or conditioned by, the
At the analysis stage different areas or social environment; often used to mean learning.
CONDITIONING 47
Clockwork Orange, which to some extent in¯u- systematic generation of structured inequal-
enced popular views of the motives of ities in capitalist societies. All stress that to
advocates of theories of conditioning. Indeed, understand crime we must also understand
several academic and professional commenta- the interests served by criminal law and the
tors have dismissed theories of learning by way in which those in authority use their
impugning the characters of their proponents. power.
It is noticeable that since Skinner's death
several texts have attempted to give a more
rounded picture of behaviourism (Nye, 1992; Distinctive Features
O'Donohue and Kitchener, 1999).
There are two critical lines to consider in the According to consensus theory, society is held
evaluation of conditioning. First, the rejection together by a common acceptance of such
of mentalism as an explanatory concept, with basic values as right and wrong. Because of
the associated forsaking of free will as a this common agreement social order is largely
vehicle for accounting for human actions. harmonious and predictable. On the other
Second, the gap in understanding, at a psy- hand, con¯ict theory argues that there is little
chological and physiological level, of the way agreement on basic values. Society is com-
in which conditioning takes place. posed of many competing groups, each of
which promotes different interests. Con¯ict,
Clive Hollin rather than stability, is the fundamental
characteristic of social order. Power and
Associated Concepts: behaviour modi®cation, authority are re¯ections of social, economic
differential association, free will, opportunity and political inequality. Law is a means the
theory, personality theory, rational choice powerful use to enforce their own interests at
theory, social learning theory the expense of others.
Thorsten Sellin (1938) was the ®rst to argue
that con¯ict causes crime. He noted that
Key Readings modern societies were characterized by social
Bjork, D.W. (1993) B.F. Skinner: A Life. New York,
anonymity, poorly de®ned personal relation-
Basic Books.
ships and the existence of a wide variety of
Davey, G. (ed.) (1981) Applications of Conditioning
competing groups, which meant that however
Theory. London, Methuen.
certain groups behaved they would always
Lee, V.L. (1988) Beyond Behaviorism. Hillsdale,
violate the norms of some other group. Crime
Lawrence Erlbaum.
occurs when the law of one group is extended
Nye, R.D. (1992) The Legacy of B.F. Skinner: Concepts
to cover the domain of another (as in cultural
and Perspectives, Controversies and Misunderstand-
migration) and when differentiation occurs
ings. Belmont, Wadsworth.
within one group (as in disputes over law
O'Donohue, W. and Kitchener, R. (eds) (1999)
enforcement). The conduct which the state
Handbook of Behaviorism. San Diego, Academic
denotes as criminal is related directly to the
Press.
decisions of those who wield political power
Watson, J.B. (1913) `Psychology as the behaviorist
and control the legislative and judicial
views it', Psychological Review, 20, pp. 158±77.
manifestations of authority. George Vold
(1958) extended this analysis through the
concepts of `group con¯ict' and `political
organization'. He argued that groups con¯ict
CONFLICT THEORY with each other when the goals of one can be
achieved only at the expense of others. Each of
many interest groups attempts to secure its
De®nition own interests by lobbying the legislature to
enact laws in their favour. Groups that are
Con¯ict theory is usually contrasted with able to do so curb the behaviour of competing
positivism or those theories that assume that a groups. As a result the process of law-making,
basic consensus exists in society. It has taken law-breaking and law enforcement is a direct
three major forms. Culture con¯ict theory re¯ection of fundamental con¯icts between
focuses on clashes between conduct norms. interest groups and the relative power that
Group con¯ict theory relates such clashes they hold. Patterns of criminalization re¯ect
directly to the position of elites and the wield- the different degrees of political power
ing of political power. Class con¯ict theory wielded by different social groups. Crimin-
views power differentials in the context of the ality becomes a normal and natural response
CONFLICT THEORY 49
of groups struggling to maintain their own others are not, and how a capitalist economic
way of life. system itself is capable of generating certain
During the 1960s several criminologists, also patterns of crime.
in¯uenced by labelling, further re®ned crim-
inological con¯ict theory. In the USA Austin
Turk (1969) developed the thesis by account- Evaluation
ing for speci®c processes of criminalization in
societies based on relationships of con¯ict, Con¯ict theory has taken many forms within
domination and subordination between auth- the rubric that con¯ict is natural to society.
orities and subjects. Richard Quinney's early Initial formulations adopted an interactionist
work (1970) set out a number of propositions or pluralist view of con¯icting interest groups;
to establish the social reality of crime. Crime later formulations, in¯uenced by Marxism or
was de®ned as human conduct created by political anarchism, have emphasized the
authorized agents in a politically organized centrality of structured class inequalities and
society. Criminal de®nitions describe beha- ruling class power. The heyday of con¯ict
viours that con¯ict with the interests of those theory was in the political turmoil of 1960s
with the power to shape public policy. The and 1970s America. By the mid-1970s it was
social reality of crime is constructed by the largely superseded by the New Criminology
formulation and application of criminal de®- and critical criminology developed in the UK.
nitions by `certain social segments', their Its key propositions that law always arises
diffusion within the rest of society, the from con¯ict and that criminalization always
development of behaviour patterns related to serves the interests of the ruling class have
criminal de®nitions and the construction of been severely tested. Such a priori general-
criminal conceptions. As such, the de®ning izations have either been outrightly rejected
quality of crime lies not in criminal behaviour by neo-conservative criminology or critiqued
but in the power to criminalize. The greater by critical criminology as one-dimensional
the social con¯ict the more likely that the and deterministic. Con¯ict theory tends to
powerful will criminalize the behaviour of view the relationship between power and
those who challenge their interests. consciousness as relatively simple. It suggests
Chambliss (1975) and Quinney in his later that crime only exists when it is recognized by
work (1974) subsequently developed con¯ict the powerful or when one is in a position of
theory by relating such pluralist notions as disadvantage in an unequal society. It fails to
`social segments' to speci®c class divisions and grasp adequately the ¯uidity and negotiation
speci®c modes of economic production. Class of class relations, whilst more or less ignoring
con¯ict theory, derived from Marxism, those of `race' and gender. But whatever its
included the premises that: limitations its lasting legacy is to have started
the process of politicizing criminology; turn-
ing attention to the fact that the study of crime
· Acts are de®ned as criminal because it is
cannot adequately proceed in isolation from
in the interest of the ruling class to de®ne
them as such. the study of criminal law.
· The ruling class will violate laws with
John Muncie
impunity while members of the subject
classes will be punished.
· Criminal behaviour is a consequence of Associated Concepts: criminalization, critical
the repression and brutalization of capit- criminology, interactionism, labelling, Marxist
alism. criminologies, new criminology, radical crim-
· Criminal law is an instrument of the state inologies, the state
to maintain the existing social order.
· Crime diverts the working class's atten- Key Readings
tion from the exploitation they experience; Chambliss, W. (1975) `Toward a political economy of
it contains their resistance. crime', Theory and Society, 2, pp. 149±70.
· Crime will persist in capitalist societies Quinney, R. (1970) The Social Reality of Crime. Boston,
because of the fundamental tendency of Little, Brown.
such societies to promote inequality and Quinney, R. (1974) Critique of the Legal Order. Boston,
class con¯ict. Little, Brown.
Sellin, T. (1938) Culture Con¯ict and Crime. New
In these ways, con¯ict theory has produced York, Social Science Research Council.
a series of complex analyses of why certain Turk, A. (1969) Criminality and Legal Order. Chicago,
behaviours are criminalized by the state while Rand McNally.
50 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Vold, G. (1958) Theoretical Criminology. New York, shaped by it. They are co-producers and co-
Oxford University Press. productions of their own and others' agency.
Constitutive criminology is about how some
of this socially constructed order, as well as
some of the human subjects constituted within
CONFORMITY it, can be harmed, impaired and destroyed by
both the process, and by what is built during
that process: ultimately by each other as fellow
See Social control theory subjects.
Constitutive theorists argue that the co-
production of harmful relations occurs
through society's structure and culture, as
CONSTITUTIVE CRIMINOLOGY these are energized by active human subjects
± not only as offenders, but also as the social
categories such as victims, criminal justice
De®nition practitioners, academics, commentators,
media reporters and producers of ®lm and
Constitutive criminology is a postmodernist TV crime shows, and most generally, as
theoretical perspective that draws on several investors, producers and consumers in the
critical social theories, most notably symbolic crime business. They look at what it is about
interactionism, phenomenology, social con- the psycho-socio-cultural matrix (the cloth of
structionism, structural Marxism, structura- crime) that provides the discursive medium
tion theory, semiotics, chaos theory and through which human agents construct
af®rmative postmodernism. The core of the `meaningful' harms to others. The approach
constitutive argument is that crime and its taken, therefore, shifts the criminological focus
control cannot be separated from the totality away from narrow dichotomized issues focus-
of the structural and cultural contexts in which ing either on the individual offender or on the
it is produced, nor can it lose sight of human social environment. Instead, constitutive
agents' contribution to those contexts (Henry criminology takes a holistic conception of the
and Milovanovic, 1994, 1996). relationship between the `individual' and
`society' which prioritizes neither one nor the
other, but examines their mutuality and
Distinctive Features interrelationship.
According to constitutive criminologists, a
Constitutive theory rejects the argument of major source of harmful relations emanates
traditional modernist criminology that crime from structures of power. Unequal power
and offenders can be separated from social relations, built on the constructions of differ-
processes of societal production and analysed ence, provide the conditions that de®ne crime
and corrected in isolation from the whole. Nor as harm. Constitutive criminology de®nes
is crime understandable as a determined pro- crime as the harm resulting from humans
duct of cultures and structures. Instead of investing energy in harm-producing relations
setting out to identify factors that `cause' of power. Humans suffering such `crimes' are
offending, constitutive criminology seeks to in relations of inequality. Crimes are nothing
examine the relations that co-produce crime. less than people being disrespected. People
Constitutive criminology is founded on the are disrespected in numerous ways but all
proposition that humans are responsible for have to do with denying or preventing us
actively creating their world with others. They becoming fully social beings. What is human
do this by transforming their surroundings is to make a difference to the world, to act on
through interaction with others, not least via it, to interact with others and together to
discourse. Through language and symbolic transform environment and ourselves. If this
representation humans identify differences, process is prevented we become less than
construct categories, and share a belief in the human; we are harmed. Thus constitutive
reality of that which is constructed that orders criminologists de®ne crime as `the power to
otherwise chaotic states. It is towards these deny others their ability to make a difference'
social constructions of reality that humans act. (Henry and Milovanovic, 1996, p. 116).
In the process of investing energy in their Constitutive criminology also has a different
socially constructed, discursively organized de®nition of criminals and victims from that of
categories of order and reality, human subjects modernist criminological theories. The offen-
not only shape their social world, but are also der is viewed as an `excessive investor' in the
CONSTITUTIVE CRIMINOLOGY 51
power to dominate others. Such `investors' put alternative meanings . . . Replacement dis-
energy into creating and magnifying differ- course, then, is not simply critical and
ences between themselves and others. This oppositional, but provides both a critique
investment of energy disadvantages, disables and an alternative vision' (Henry and Milo-
and destroys others' human potentialities. The vanovic, 1996, pp. 204±5). The new replace-
victim is viewed as a `recovering subject', still ment constructions are designed to displace
with untapped human potential but with a crime as moments in the exercise of power
damaged faith in humanity. Victims are more and as control. They offer an alternative
entrenched, more disabled, and suffer loss. medium by which social constructions of
Victims `suffer the pain of being denied their reality can take place. This is not a unitary
own humanity, the power to make a differ- medium but, as Smart (1990, p. 82) has argued,
ence. The victim of crime is thus rendered a refers instead to `subjugated knowledges,
non-person, a non-human, or less complete which tell different stories and have different
being' (Henry and Milovanovic, 1996, p. 116). speci®cities' and which aim at `the decon-
This reconception of crime, offender and struction of truth' and the power effects of
victim thus locates criminality not in the claims to truth. Instead of replacing one truth
person, nor in the structure or culture but in with another, replacement discourse invokes a
the ongoing creation of social identities `multiplicity of resistances' to the ubiquity of
through discourse and leads to a different power (1990, p. 82). Beyond resistances, the
notion of crime causation. To the constitutive concept of replacement discourse offers a
theorist crime is not so much caused as celebration of unof®cial, informal, discounted
discursively constructed through human pro- and ignored knowledges through its discur-
cesses of which it is one. Consciously striving sive diversity. In terms of diminishing the
to reconstruct the discourse of the excessive harm experienced from all types of crime
investor at both a societal and a systemic level, (street, corporate, state, hate etc.), constitutive
crime feeds off itself, expanding and consum- criminology talks of `liberating' replacement
ing the energies intended to control it. Put discourses that seek transformation of both the
simply, crime is the co-produced outcome, not prevailing political economies and the asso-
only of humans and their environment, but of ciated practices of crime and social control.
human agents and the wider society through Constitutive criminology thus simultaneously
its excessive investment, to the point of argues for ideological as well as materialistic
obsession, in crime, through crime shows, change; one without the other renders change
crime drama, crime documentaries, crime only in part. In short, constitutive criminology
news, crime books, crime ®lms, crime precau- argues for a transpraxis which is deconstruc-
tions, criminal justice agencies, criminal tive, reconstructive and sensitive to the
lawyers and criminologists. All are parasitic dialectics of struggle.
of the crime problem, but as constitutive
criminology suggests, they also contribute to Stuart Henry and Dragan Milovanovic
its ongoing social and cultural production and
ongoing reproduction.
Associated Concepts: chaos theory, crime,
deconstruction, Marxist criminologies, news-
Evaluation making criminology, postmodernism, praxis,
social harm
The implications of constitutive theory are,
®rst that crime must be deconstructed as a
recurrent discursive process, and second, that Key Readings
conscious attempts must be made at recon- Barak, G. (1994) Media Process and the Social
struction with a view to preventing recur- Construction of Crime: Studies in Newsmaking
rence. Given this interrelated nature of social Criminology. New York, Garland.
structures and human agents and their social Henry, S. and Milovanovic, D. (1994) `The constitu-
and cultural productions in the co-production tion of constitutive criminology', in D. Nelken
of crime, constitutive criminology calls for a (ed.), The Futures of Criminology. London, Sage.
justice policy of reconstruction. This is Henry, S. and Milovanovic, D. (1996) Constitutive
achieved through replacement discourse which Criminology: Beyond Postmodernism. London, Sage.
`is directed toward the dual process of decon- Henry, S. and Milovanovic, D. (eds) (1999) Con-
structing prevailing structures of meaning and stitutive Criminology at Work: Applications to Crime
displacing them with new conceptions, dis- and Punishment. New York, State University of
tinctions, words and phrases, which convey New York Press.
52 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
themes appear in documents. Finally, content Whilst accepting the possibility of a multi-
analysis should be concerned with the mani- plicity of meanings and interpretations, the
fest content and surface meaning of a text critical tradition adds further dimensions, for
rather than with deeper layers of meaning. example by examining the ways in which the
Typically, research designs cluster around contents of documents come to be treated as
one or more of the following questions: What `knowledge' and also the role of such knowl-
are the characteristics of the content? What edge in the exercise of power. This could be at
inferences can be made about the causes and a societal level, by analysing the ways in
generation of content? What inferences can be which of®cial reports de®ne certain forms of
made about the effects of content on readers or action as illegitimate and thereby justify the
viewers? For example, in characterizing the exercise of state power against certain sections
®lms watched by adolescents the researcher of society; or it can be at a micro level, by
may categorize them as `high', `medium' or analysing the ways in which police and
`low' in terms of violence by counting the probation records result in the ways in
number of actions in each ®lm which s/he which an individual is dealt with in the
de®nes as `violent'. Or research on the images criminal justice system.
of youth portrayed by popular newspapers
may categorize and count the number of Victor Jupp
articles which portray a `positive', `negative'
or `neutral' image. In such cases, the de®nition Associated Concepts: documentary analysis,
of the relevant categories comes from the ethnography, interactionism, positivism
researcher. Once the categories are delineated,
the analysis of content is often a technical Key Readings
process and may be carried out by appropriate Holsti, O.R. (1969) Content Analysis for the Social
computer software. Sciences and Humanities. Reading, MA, Addison±
Wesley.
Jupp, V.R. and Norris, C. (1993) `Traditions in
Evaluation documentary analysis', in M. Hammersley (ed.),
Social Research: Philosophy, Politics and Practice.
The positivist approach to content analysis London, Sage.
emphasizes the manifest contents of docu- Scott, J. (1990) A Matter of Record. Cambridge, Polity
ments which are subsequently categorized Press.
according to de®nitions provided by the
researcher. The latent meanings of the content
and the possibility of differing interpretations
by `producers' and `receivers' are not treated
as problematic nor as a prime focus of interest. CONTROL THEORY
By way of contrast, an interpretative (or inter-
actionist) approach places social meanings at See Social control theory
the centre of any analysis, that is, meanings
attributed to the contents of documents by
producers and by the variety of audiences. In
doing so, the interpretative tradition is at odds
with the positivist assumptions of a corre-
CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS
spondence between intent, content and effect
on different audiences and also at odds with De®nition
the belief that there is a common universe of
meanings uniting all relevant parties. What A research methodology in the social sciences
the interpretative tradition brings to the which analyses naturally occurring conversa-
research agenda is a focus on the ways in tion systematically, using tape recordings and
which meanings are assigned both by authors transcripts. It aims to `describe people's
and audiences, and the subsequent conse- methods for producing orderly social interac-
quences. It would, for example, be interested tion' (Silverman, 1993, p. 120).
in the ways in which the same documents
placed before a court of law can be interpreted
differently by defendants, prosecutors, jurors Distinctive Features
and judge. The interpretative approach to
documents is very close to the ethnographic Conversational analysis is one particular
tradition in social research. research technique associated with the
CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS 55
broader research perspective of ethnometho- response ± and how the second speaker then
dology, which emerged in the 1960s as a continues the process. This sequencing leads
reaction against the `grand theorizing' and on to the other key aspect of conversational
`abstracted empiricism' of earlier sociologists analysis which concerns the obligations of
such as Talcott Parsons (Heritage, 1984). participants to listen, understand and turn-
Ethnomethodology emphasizes the impor- take. Turn-taking is viewed as the mechanism
tance of studying the ways in which people by which actors display to each other that they
routinely ascribe meaning to daily events in are engaged in social interaction. Violation of
speci®c, local social contexts. Consequently, turn-taking (for example by interrupting,
the ways in which people talk to each other `talking over' someone or failing to respond
become worthy of study in their own right. to an invitation to speak) indicates a failure of
This emphasis on naturally occurring speech social competence. Conversational analysis is
counteracted previous preferences for also interested in `lexical choice' ± the words
researcher-dominated methods such as struc- and descriptive terms which speakers select in
tured interviews, observation or experimental differing contexts ± and in `interactional
manipulation of behaviour. All these asymmetries'. Heritage (1997) identi®es four
approaches, it was argued, produced only potential sources of asymmetry which may
`glossed' or idealized interpretations of how exist between participants in institutional talk
research subjects presented themselves within ± inequalities of status, `know-how' (that is,
a pre-conceived theoretical framework and understanding of the institution), knowledge
denied the researcher access to the genuinely and rights to knowledge. All these factors
`raw' data of mundane social interaction. would shape, and would be detectable in, any
The underlying assumptions of conversa- conversation between, for example, a magis-
tional analysis are that spoken interaction is trate, a solicitor and a defendant in court.
organized in identi®able, stable structural
patterns and that its meaning is dependent
on its context. Therefore, it is not possible to Evaluation
engage in a priori theoretical construction or
interpretation of motives or meaning, in the Although conversational analysis is a useful
absence of detailed examination of actual con- tool for studying ordinary interactions in a
versation. It is also important that no aspect of variety of criminologically relevant situations,
the conversation (for example, pauses or it may be of particular value in the study of
overlapping speech) should be dismissed as `institutional talk'. Here, an understanding of
irrelevant. For this reason, conversations must the basic structures and sequences of con-
be tape recorded and later transcripts must versation can be extended to an understand-
include every detail of the process, rather than ing of how criminal justice institutions, such
being `tidied up' versions of interviews. as courts and prisons, function (Atkinson and
Analysis of transcripts involves close attention Drew, 1979). Of particular interest are the
to sequencing, timed intervals and the charac- ways in which professionals routinely legit-
teristics of speech production such as volume, imate, or account for their actions. However,
emphasis and intonation. These features are conversational analysis is a highly technical
indicated by the use of written symbols which methodology which is not readily accessible to
constitute the agreed conventions of conversa- novice researchers. Of more practical use may
tional analysis (Ten Have, 1999). be the similar, but broader and less technical
The core tool of conversational analysis is approach of discourse analysis.
the concept of the `adjacency pair', a term used
by Harvey Sacks (Heritage, 1984) to describe a Anne Worrall
sequence of two utterances which are adja-
cent, produced by different speakers, ordered
as a ®rst and second part and in such a way Associated Concepts: discourse analysis, ethno-
as the ®rst part requires a particular second graphy
part. Examples of common adjacent pairs are
`question±answer', `greeting±greeting', `offer± Key Readings
acceptance/refusal'. The concept of the `adja- Atkinson, J.M. (1982) `Understanding formality: the
cency pair' is a template not only for categorization and production of ``formal'' inter-
describing conversational action but also for action', British Journal of Sociology, 33, pp. 86±117.
interpreting it. It can be used to demonstrate Atkinson, J.M. and Drew, P. (1979) Order in Court:
how the ®rst speaker uses his or her action as The Organization of Verbal Interaction in Judicial
the basis for interpreting the second speaker's Settings. London, Macmillan.
56 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Heritage, J. (1984) Gar®nkel and Ethnomethodology. contentious, save for the overwhelming con-
Cambridge, Polity Press. clusion that offending is widespread and
Heritage, J. (1997) `Conversation analysis and pervasive. Various strands of qualitative
institutional talk', in D. Silverman (ed.), Qualita- work have also been undertaken around
tive Research: Theory, Methods and Practice. London, corporate crime. One focus has been case
Sage. studies of a particular event, very often with a
Silverman, D. (1993) Interpreting Qualitative Data: view to determining via social science that a
Methods for Analysing Talk, Text and Interaction. particular corporate activity constitutes illeg-
London, Sage. ality in the absence of any successful legal
Ten Have, P. (1999) Doing Conversation Analysis: A action. Much academic work has also been
Practical Guide. London, Sage. devoted to speci®c types or categories of
crime, most notably around ®nancial crimes,
crimes committed directly against consumers,
crimes arising directly out of the employment
CORPORATE CRIME relationship and crimes against the environ-
ment. Finally, there have been several indus-
try-speci®c case studies, notably in the car,
De®nition chemicals, ®nancial services, oil, and pharma-
ceuticals sectors. Taken together, these bodies
Illegal acts or omissions, punishable by the of work demonstrate the scale and pervasive-
state under administrative, civil or criminal ness of corporate crimes across societies, and
law, which are the result of deliberate decision- support the now almost universally accepted
making or culpable negligence within a claim that the economic (not to mention
legitimate formal organization. These acts or physical and social) costs of corporate offend-
omissions are based in legitimate, formal, ing far outweigh those associated with `con-
business organizations, made in accordance ventional' or `street' offending.
with the normative goals, standard operating Much of this work has proceeded either at
procedures, and/or cultural norms of the the margins of, or beyond, criminology. This is
organization, and are intended to bene®t the partially explained by the fact that crimino-
corporation itself. logy remains wedded to state-de®ned crime
and criminal law, each of which are largely
understood in individualistic and inter-perso-
Distinctive Features nal terms; it is little surprise that much work
around corporate crime has hailed from
Attention to corporate crime has a long critical criminologies, which are based upon
tradition traceable back to the work of Bonger a commitment to a critique of dominant
in Western Europe and Ross in the USA in the de®nitions of crime and criminal law, while
early 1900s. With Sutherland's pathbreaking at the same time examining processes of
work in the 1940s, the phenomenon of cor- criminalization (and, by implication, non-
porate crime received greater prominence, but criminalization). Corporate crime research
also came to be con¯ated with the concept of also faces enormous methodological dif®cul-
white collar crime, a con¯ation which remains ties, may be relatively unattractive to the
problematic (Nelken, 1994). A recent, signi®- funders of research and is unlikely to produce
cant stage in conceptual clari®cation was the immediately utilizable policy proposals: all of
distinction between `occupational' and `orga- which may further explain its relative omis-
nizational' crimes (Slapper and Tombs, 1999, sion from dominant criminological agendas.
pp. 15±18).
Much research into corporate crime has
sought to overcome the absence of utilizable Evaluation
of®cial statistics in almost all national jurisdic-
tions by documenting the scale of such Conceptual disputes as to what constitutes
offending. Further, quantitative corporate corporate crime continue, many pursuing
crime research using large data sets, typically classic disputes as to the `proper' domain of
focusing upon the largest corporations such as criminology. One consequence of the relative
the Fortune 500 in the USA (Sutherland, 1983; marginality of corporate crime research to
Clinard and Yeager, 1980), has sought to criminology remains theoretical underdeve-
isolate empirical correlates of offending, such lopment around this concept. Moreover, the
as industry, size, pro®tability and so on. ®eld of corporate crime has constantly
Findings from such empirical efforts remain suffered from problems of legitimacy, not
CORRELATIONAL ANALYSIS 57
least because of its extensions of the term hidden crime, human rights, Marxist crimin-
`crime' to those acts or omissions punishable ologies, organized crime, radical criminologies,
beyond the criminal law and, secondly, its the state, state crime, transnational organized
desire to include as `crimes' acts or omissions crime, white collar crime
that have never been de®ned as such through
any criminal justice process. These shifts Key Readings
beyond both the criminal law and formal Clinard, M. and Yeager, P. (1980) Corporate Crime.
legal processes have frequently opened up New York, The Free Press.
corporate crime researchers to charges of Nelken, D. (1994) `White-collar crime', in D. Nelken
moralizing. Other conceptual disputes can be (ed.), White-Collar Crime. Aldershot, Dartmouth.
understood as necessary responses to chan- Slapper, G. and Tombs, S. (1999) Corporate Crime.
ging social phenomena, such as the seemingly London, Longman.
increasingly complex relationships between Snider, L. (2000) `The sociology of corporate crime:
legitimate and illegitimate organizations. an obituary. (Or, Whose knowledge claims have
There are good reasons why corporate crime legs?)', Theoretical Criminology, 4 (2), pp. 169±206.
research ± leading to both empirical and Sutherland, E. (1983) White-Collar Crime. The Uncut
theoretical development ± should, and may Version. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press.
well, proliferate. These include: the spread of
the corporate form, as privatization has been
championed across nation-states; diversi®ca-
tion in the nature of corporate structures and CORRELATIONAL ANALYSIS
organization; the apparent internationalization
of much corporate activity; associated claims
regarding the growing power of corporations De®nition
vis-aÁ-vis national governments and popula-
tions, and resistance associated with these Correlation is the association of two variables
trends; the dogged persistence of so-called ± the predictability of the values of one from
`quality of life' issues such as environmental the values of another. We speak of positive
protection which emerged to prominence in correlation when high values on one variable
the Western capitalist states from the 1960s predict high values on the other, and negative
onwards; and the increasing exposure of the correlation when high values on one variable
active role of corporations in human rights predict low values on another. Examples
atrocities. Against these trends, and militating would be height and weight (positive correla-
against corporate crime research, should be tion) and ®tness and exhaustion after exercise
noted the power of corporations to secure, via (negative correlation).
their political allies, the decriminalization of
their activities through the introduction of
various forms of self-regulation or through Distinctive Features
simple deregulation, each of which are
signi®cant trends in contemporary capitalist The degree of correlation is generally
nation-states (Snider, 2000). expressed as a correlation coef®cient (Pearson's
Corporate crime research remains crucial to product-moment coef®cient being the most
critical agendas within and around crimino- commonly used), which varies between +1
logy. For a focus upon corporate crime entails (perfect positive correlation) and ±1 (perfect
continual scrutiny of the coverage and omis- negative correlation). A value of zero would
sions of legal categories, the presences and mean no correlation whatsoever, with the
absences within legal discourses, the social value on one variable offering no help at all in
constructions of these categories and dis- predicting the value on another. The correla-
courses, their underpinning of, treatment tion coef®cient expresses the extent to which
within and development through criminal the values on the two variables can be ®tted to
justice systems and the ways in which a joint prediction line, with a high value of the
particular laws are enforced (or not enforced), coef®cient indicating a very good ®t and a low
interpreted, challenged and so on. value a very poor one (see Figure 1). Corre-
lational analysis usually deals with linear
Steve Tombs and Dave Whyte relationships ± ones that can be ®tted by a
straight line ± and other related methods are
needed for predicting non-linear relationships.
Associated Concepts: criminalization, critical Figure 2 illustrates linear and non-linear
criminology, critical research, deviance, relationships.
58 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
x x
x x x x
x x x x x x x x
xx xx x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x
x x
x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x
Evaluation
to the criminal law. In considering crime as land (1940) ®rst stated, this would mean that
de®ned in law therefore, the concern is not many harms, particularly those perpetrated by
with those who commit crime, only with those powerful corporations, remain outside the
acts that harm others. criminal law, even though they may be subject
A related issue is who should determine to civil regulation. For Sutherland, an ade-
whether a consensus of outrage exists on quate de®nition of crime should be based on
whether harm has been committed. Those an expanded de®nition of harm that includes
who have been termed `sociological positiv- `social injury'. Similarly, Quinney (1977)
ists' argued that the measure of such con- wanted to expand the de®nition of crime to
sensus or outrage was the purview of social include not only the legal harms resulting
scientists. Thorsten Sellin (1938), for example, from economic domination in a capitalist
advocated a science of criminal behaviour free society, but also the crimes of government
from the politics of criminal law, legislators and of their agencies of social control. How-
and lawyers. Instead scientists should employ ever, legalists such as Paul Tappan (1947)
their own value-neutral techniques to measure vigorously disagreed with expanding the legal
independently whether harm had been caused de®nition, arguing that without adhering
and to establish whether outrage existed and strictly to law, the concept of crime was
through these means establish scienti®c de®- open-ended and meaningless.
nitions of crime (1938, pp. 20±1). Sellin pro- But for those taking a critical con¯ict
posed to do this based on studying naturally perspective an adequate de®nition of crime
existing `conduct norms' rather than using must be based on a de®nition of harm tied
legally constructed laws. Such study `would neither to law nor consensus but to an inde-
involve the isolation and classi®cation of pendent notion of `human rights'. Without
norms into universal categories, transcending such independent anchoring of the de®nition
political and other boundaries, a necessity of crime those victimized are subject to the
imposed by the logic of science' (Sellin, 1938, tyranny of moral majorities or the bias of
p. 30). The problem here is the assumption powerful interests who determine the law.
that science, and the scienti®c process itself, is Because of this the harms that result from
any more free of in¯uence than law (Schwen- racism, sexism, ageism, or from `insidious
dinger and Schwendinger, 1970). injuries' perpetrated by corporations through
Rule-relativists further argued that the harmful work conditions, or harmful pro-
meaning of what is de®ned in law or in ducts, were for years neither acknowledged in
moral consensus is not ®xed but varies. They society nor in law (Schwendinger and
argued that what is de®ned as crime in law is Schwendinger, 1970).
historically, temporally and culturally relative. Postmodernist criminologists have also
Their insight highlights the role of changing developed the idea that harm must be related
rather than absolute values about crime. Their to a concept of humanity and they argue for a
challenge to the strict legal view of crime has dynamic conception of the different ways that
been developed further by social construc- humanity can be harmed. The postmodernist
tionist arguments that show how what is harm constitutive approach to de®ning crime goes
depends on social context and situational beyond powerful groups and classes to the
meaning, itself shaped by the interaction total context of powerful relations in situa-
between interest groups, such as offender, tional and global contexts. For example, Henry
victim, community organizations, police agen- and Milovanovic (1996, p. 104) state that
cies in the local setting. The emergence of an `crimes are nothing less than moments in the
act as an `offence' depends how these groups expression of power such that those who are
negotiate and honour claims that harm has subjected to these expressions are denied their
been created. own contribution to the encounter and often to
The legal consensus position is also criti- future encounters'. They argue that crime `is
cized because it ignores the politics of law- the power to deny others . . . in which those
making. Radical con¯ict theorists claim that subject to the power of another, suffer the pain
what gets de®ned as crime depends on having of being denied their own humanity, the
the power to de®ne and the power to resist power to make a difference'. Henry and
criminalizing de®nitions. Indeed, if interests Milovanovic (1996, p. 103) distinguish
in¯uence the law creation process, then not all between `harms of reduction' and `harms of
acts causing indignation or outrage will be repression'. Harms of reduction occur when
legislated against. Only those harms that an offended party experiences a loss of some
powerful interests deem worthy will be quality relative to their present standing that
subject to criminalization. As Edwin Suther- results from another's action. Harms of
CRIME CONTROL MODEL 61
criminal justice process is a positive guarantor state is there to provide security, law and
of social freedom. In order to achieve this high order and crime control within its territorial
purpose, the crime control model requires that boundaries.
primary attention is given to the ef®ciency A key meaning of the `crime control model',
with which the criminal process operates to therefore, relates to a wide range of mechan-
screen suspects, determine guilt and secure isms employed by the state, from the intro-
appropriate punishment (Packer, 1964). duction of the police to control disruptive
While `due process' values prioritize civil behaviour, to the developing institutions of
liberties in order to ensure that the innocent criminal justice and corrections, and from
are acquitted (even at the risk of acquitting situational crime prevention to multi-agency
some who are guilty), `crime control' values crime prevention work and other sophisti-
stress the goal of convicting the guilty (even at cated modes of community control, to achieve
the risk of convicting some who are innocent, crime control ends.
or of infringing some civil liberties). In a
`crime control' model, formal rules of proce-
dure are often seen as obstacles standing in the Evaluation
way of securing a defendant's conviction. As
the ultimate aim is to punish offenders and to There are strong criticisms that the adoption of
deter future crime, the criminal justice system a `crime control model' leads to harsh penal-
cannot afford a high acquittal rate; the system ties and unnecessarily intrusive measures
must work ef®ciently and speedily to appre- (Hudson, 1996). It is clearly associated with
hend and convict offenders. Packer (1964) `get tough', `prisons work' and `zero tolerance'
likens the crime control model to an assembly policies. Yet such movements in criminal
line or a conveyor belt which, beginning with justice do not re¯ect unalloyed scienti®c
a presumption of guilt, moves the offender to endeavour; rather, they re¯ect political con-
workers at ®xed stations who perform on each cerns (Stenson and Cowell, 1991).
case to bring it one step closer to being a Some radicals view the crime control meas-
®nished product, or a closed ®le. ures of the criminal justice system as largely
It is argued that the main tool of the pre- ineffective and even criminogenic. Many
modern model of crime control was the concerned with justice for juveniles, for
spectacular, public, bloody punishment of instance, have argued that there should be as
the offender who had offended sovereign little intervention in young offenders' lives as
power. The `Bloody Code' of crime control, as possible on the basis that criminal justice
criminal justice was popularly referred to in interventions might well exacerbate their
eighteenth-century England, was however offending. Others would argue that the most
supplemented by more traditional, commu- effective forms of crime control are those that
nitarian mechanisms of social control (custom relate to deep social and economic structures,
and informal means) which had survived which seemingly contribute to the onset of
from the feudal era. Following criticisms from crime in the ®rst place.
classical reformers there was new interest in In a deeply pessimistic but important
rationality, formalism and legality. The lasting review of crime control, Nils Christie (1993)
philosophical in¯uence of classicist views on has argued that it has become an industry
crime and its prevention are perhaps to be with unlimited potential for growth and
found in utilitarianism and what has been which presents very real danger for the
called social contract theory (Hughes, 1998). value of human life.
According to this perspective the punishment
Loraine Gelsthorpe
of the offender is only justi®able in terms of its
contribution to the prevention of future
infringements on the well-being and happi- Associated Concepts: crime prevention, criminal
ness of others. Social contract theory derives justice, deterrence, due process model, gov-
from the idea that the power and authority of ernmentality, social control, zero tolerance
government to control crime (through punish-
ment amongst other means) stems from an Key readings
unwritten but none the less binding contract Christie, N. (1993) Crime Control As Industry.
entered into by members of society whereby London, Routledge.
they agree to certain measures in order to Garland, D. (1996) `The limits of the sovereign state:
secure freedom against the invasive actions of strategies of crime control in contemporary
others. Following this, Garland (1996) refers to society', British Journal of Criminology, 36 (4), pp.
`sovereign crime control', meaning that the 445±71.
CRIME PREVENTION 63
Hudson, B. (1996) Understanding Justice. Bucking- about the measurement and evaluation of
ham, Open University Press. `success' or `failure'. One of the leading
Hughes, G. (1998) Understanding Crime Prevention. experts on the evaluation of crime prevention
Buckingham, Open University Press. initiatives, Ken Pease, has recommended
Packer, H. (1964) `Two models of the criminal caution towards any attempt to look for uni-
process', University of Pennsylvania Law Review, versality in the techniques of prevention since,
113, pp. 1±68. when we consider the prevention of crime, we
Stenson, K. and Cowell, D. (eds) (1991) The Politics of are in fact looking at a set of events joined only
Crime Control. London, Sage. in their proscription by statute (Pease, 1997,
p. 659).
A popular means of de®ning crime preven-
tion in criminology in the late twentieth
CRIME MAPPING century has been in terms of the distinction
between situational and social strategies of
prevention (to complicate matters further, the
See Geographies of crime social strategies are often termed `community'
crime prevention). Situational crime preven-
tion chie¯y concerns opportunity reduction,
such as the installation of surveillance tech-
CRIME PREVENTION nology in public spaces to reduce the oppor-
tunities for the theft of vehicles or crimes
against victims. Social crime prevention is
De®nition focused chie¯y on changing social environ-
ments and the motivations of offenders. Social
Any action taken or technique employed by crime prevention measures thus often tend to
private individuals or public agencies aimed focus on the development of schemes to deter
at the reduction of damage caused by acts potential or actual offenders from future
de®ned as criminal by the state. Given that offending. Both situational and social crime
crimes are events proscribed only by legal prevention approaches tend to be what is
statute, it is not surprising that there is a great termed `multi-agency' in orientation, rather
plethora of activities and initiatives associated than being driven by one agency alone, such
with the term `crime prevention'. as the police. Common to both elements of
this distinction is the claim to be less
damaging than traditional (retributive) justice
Distinctive Features approaches. Also common to both situational
and social prevention is a narrow focus on
Crime prevention in its broadest sense has a `street crime' and speci®c categories of
long history, stretching back to the ®rst use of offender (young, working-class males) rather
locks and bolts to protect persons and prop- than other social harms and offenders.
erty. However, it was only during the last Another approach to classifying types of
three decades of the twentieth century that it crime prevention is that there are three major
emerged as a key institutional feature of models of crime prevention, borrowed from
criminal justice systems and related sites of theorizing in medical epidemiology (Weiss,
social control across most contemporary 1987). First, there is `primary' crime preven-
societies. It is also during this recent period tion involving the reduction of criminal
that we have seen a massive output of crimino- opportunities without reference to criminals.
logical writing aimed at classifying different In primary crime prevention attention is
types of crime prevention. Crime prevention is turned to the crime event rather than the
a chameleon concept which cannot be neatly or motivated offender. In the second type of
unproblematically de®ned. There continue to crime prevention, termed `secondary', the
be many different meanings to crime preven- focus is on changing people before they do
tion and in turn divergent policies and something criminal. Here then attention is on
practices associated with the notion. the prevention of criminality. Finally, `tertiary'
There is no consensus among criminologists crime prevention focuses on the truncation of
with regard to how best to de®ne the phe- the criminal career, or reduction of the
nomenon of crime prevention. Instead, there seriousness of offending, for example through
are competing models and typologies, often of the treatment of known offenders.
a limited theoretical nature, and seemingly Another attempt to provide a comprehen-
driven by rather narrow technical concerns sive typology of crime prevention strategies is
64 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
found in Tonry and Farrington (1995). These (more pragmatically) risk management asso-
authors distinguish four major strategies of ciated with an `actuarialist' model of justice
crime prevention (law enforcement, develop- may re¯ect the decline of the nation state's
mental, communal and situational). According claims to sovereignty over crime control and
to law enforcement strategy, criminal laws may further accentuate trends towards social
exist and are enacted so that fewer of the exclusion and with `safety' increasingly
proscribed acts take place and general pre- becoming the `club'-like privilege of the
vention in turn is the primary justi®cation for privileged and af¯uent.
maintaining a system of criminal punishment.
This traditional law enforcement approach to Gordon Hughes
both crime prevention and punishment oper-
ates chie¯y through deterrence, incapacitation Associated Concepts: administrative crimino-
and rehabilitation. Developmental preventive logy, community safety, crime control model,
interventions are designed to prevent the fear of crime, governmentality, multi-agency
development of criminal potential in indivi- crime prevention, realist criminologies, situa-
duals, especially targeting the risk and pro- tional crime prevention, social crime preven-
tective factors discovered in studies of human tion, surveillance
development. Community prevention is
designed to change the social conditions that
in¯uence offending in residential commu-
Key Readings
Crawford, A. (1997) The Local Governance of Crime.
nities. And situational prevention involves
Oxford, The Clarendon Press.
interventions designed to prevent the occur-
Hughes, G. (1998) Understanding Crime Prevention:
rence of crimes, especially by reducing
Social Control, Risk and Late Modernity. Bucking-
opportunities and increasing risks.
ham, Open University Press.
O'Malley, P. (1992) `Power, risk and crime preven-
Evaluation tion', Economy and Society, 21 (3), pp. 251±68.
Pease, K. (1997) `Crime prevention', in M. Maguire,
R. Morgan and R. Reiner (eds), The Oxford
Despite the plethora of activities and de®ni-
Handbook of Criminology, 2nd edn. Oxford, The
tional distinctions noted above, there remains
Clarendon Press.
a continuing dominance of a narrow focus in
Tonry, M. and Farrington, D. (1995) Building a Safer
administrative criminology on `what works' as
Society: Strategic Approaches to Crime. Chicago,
crime prevention techniques (most associated
University of Chicago Press.
with situational crime prevention `®xes').
Weiss, R. (1987) `Community and crime prevention',
Viewed critically, this technicist focus is
in E. Johnson (ed.), Handbook on Crime and Delin-
limiting and runs the risk of missing the
quency, New York, Greenwood Press.
broader sociological and political context in
terms of which trends in crime prevention
need to be understood. It may be noted that
the concern with evaluating policies and
intiatives for reducing or managing crimes CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
may mean that crime prevention experts lose
sight of the wider levers of crime, disorder
and harms in contemporary societies. De®nition
According to critical authors, the `growth
industry' around crime prevention, crime The International Military Tribunal at Nurem-
reduction and community safety ± which berg impressed the concept of crimes against
includes the academic criminological commu- humanity into international law. These crimes
nity ± re¯ects important wider social trans- were de®ned as the `murder, extermination,
formations in contemporary societies enslavement or deportation, and other inhu-
(Crawford, 1997; Hughes, 1998; O'Malley, mane acts committed against any civilian
1992). This insight is crucial to the recognition population, before or during the war or per-
that developments in crime prevention are not secutions on political, racial or religious
just well-intentioned, technical solutions or grounds in the execution of or in connection
responses to speci®c new crime events but with any crime within the jurisdiction of the
re¯ect broad trends in social control and the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of
governance of diverse and often fragmented the domestic law of the country in question'.
populations. In particular, the increasing The international criminal tribunals for the
emphasis on (at best) crime reduction and former Yugoslavia and Rwanda added the
CRIMINAL CAREERS 65
crimes of rape and torture to the inventory of Criminal career research confronts a
crimes against humanity. By the time the number of methodological issues. Some of
International Criminal Court is established the most important are:
there will be new crimes against humanity to
append to the register. Crimes against human- · The validity of different types of data
ity are different from genocide because they (of®cial records, self-reports, reports of
do not require the intention to eradicate, or others). Often the trajectories derived from
attempt to eradicate, a national, ethnic, racial different sources are similar, but in some
or religious group by mass murder. They are cases, those constructed from of®cial
distinguishable from war crimes in that they records differ from those based on non-
apply in times of peace as well as war. of®cial sources. Arrest statistics show
aggregate levels of violence rising to a
Eugene McLaughlin peak in late adolescence and early adult-
hood, and then declining. Observations of
Associated Concepts: genocide, hate crime, children, however, suggest that aggressive
torture, war crimes behaviour may be highest at ages 1 or 2,
and declines gradually with age. Because
Key Readings small children are weak, do little damage,
Bassiouni, M.C. (1999) Crimes Against Humanity in and are not considered fully responsible
International Law. The Hague, Kluwer Law. for their actions, small children's aggres-
Gutman, R. and Rieff, D. (eds) (1999) Crimes of War: sion is handled informally, and is often
What the Public Should Know. New York, W.W. neglected in studies of criminal careers.
Norton and Co. · Aggregate data or individual-level data?
Ratner, S.R. and Abrams, J.S. (1997) Accountability for A good deal of theorizing has been based
Human Rights. Oxford, The Clarendon Press. on aggregate-level data. For a number of
Robertson, G. (2000) Crimes Against Humanity. different offences, in different times and
Harmondsworth, Penguin. places, rates of aggregate involvement in
crime rise with age and then decline.
Quite different patterns of individual
starts, stops and frequencies can yield
the same aggregate pattern. To distinguish
CRIMINAL CAREERS among these different patterns, data on
individual careers are required.
De®nition · Cross-sectional or longitudinal analyses?
In a one-shot, cross-sectional study, infor-
Ordered sequences of criminal law violations. mation about crime is collected from
An important difference between occupational individuals of different ages at a single
and criminal careers is that the positions in time. This design cannot distinguish age
occupational careers are usually legitimate, effects from cohort effects. Longitudinal
are often established by formal organizations, research following one or more cohorts
and frequently follow a standard pattern. over time cannot distinguish the effects of
Criminal law violations are less widely age from period. No design can disen-
approved and usually do not involve organi- tangle the linear effects of age, period and
zationally de®ned positions. The concept is cohort. Researchers have typically dealt
distinct from the linguistically similar phrase, with this issue by assuming that one or
`career criminals'. more of these effects is zero.
Research has identi®ed numerous antece- careers in `common' crimes have also been
dents of early onset of criminality in early little studied.
childhood traits and family characteristics.
Subsequent trajectories are in¯uenced by David Greenberg
marriage, employment, changing patterns of
peer association, imprisonment and participa- Associated Concepts: cross-sectional design,
tion in treatment programmes. Studies differ deterrence, deviance, deviancy ampli®cation,
on whether offences tend to become more labelling, longitudinal study, recidivism
serious as careers progress.
Most offenders are not specialists. Super- Key Readings
imposed on a pattern of random switching Blumstein, A., Cohen, J., Roth, J.A. and Visher, C.A.
between crimes is a modest degree of special- (eds) (1986) Criminal Careers and `Career Criminals',
ization. Specialization is somewhat greater for 2 vols. Washington, DC, National Academy Press.
white collar criminals and sex offenders. Farrington, D.P. (1997) `Human development and
criminal behaviour' in Mike Maguire, Rod
Morgan and Robert Reiner (eds), The Oxford
Evaluation Handbook of Criminology, 2nd edn. Oxford, The
Clarendon Press.
The strength of the criminal career perspective Greenberg, D.F. (ed.) (1996) Criminal Careers, 2 vols.
is that it directs attention to changes in Aldershot, and Brook®eld, VT, Dartmouth.
patterns of criminal behaviour over the life Le Blanc, M. and FreÂchette, M. (1989) Male Criminal
course and to the dependence of age, or stage Activity from Childhood through Youth: Multilevel
of career, on factors that in¯uence criminal and Developmental Perspective. New York,
behaviour. Springer-Verlag.
Thus far, research on criminal careers has Thornberry, T. (ed.) (1997) Developmental Theories of
tended to be individualistic: little attention has Crime and Delinquency. New Brunswick, NJ,
been paid to the possible mutual dependence Transaction.
of career trajectories of co-offenders. Statistical Tonry, M., Ohlin, L. and Farrington, D.P. (eds)
analyses have tended to lump offences of (1991) Human Development and Criminal Behavior.
different kinds together, possibly obscuring New York, Springer-Verlag.
differences among offences. Studies of crime
switching have tended not to examine the
temporal shape of trajectories.
Career research has concentrated on the
`common' crimes of interpersonal violence, CRIMINAL JUSTICE
theft, vandalism, illegal drug use, status
offences and public order offences. Little De®nition
research has been done on careers in con-
sumer fraud, stock market fraud, insurance The process through which the state responds
fraud, price-®xing, insider trading, tax eva- to behaviour that it deems unacceptable.
sion, offering and soliciting bribes, embezzle- Criminal justice is delivered through a series
ment, espionage, money laundering, arms of stages: charge; prosecution; trial; sentence;
traf®cking, child molesting, perjury, making appeal; punishment. These processes and the
and distributing pornography, war crimes, agencies which carry them out are referred to
police and prison guard violence, and geno- collectively as the criminal justice system.
cide. Some of these offences can be carried out
only by those who meet advanced educational
standards and who hold of®ce in legitimate Distinctive Features
organizations. For these offenders, onset is
expected to be late, and involvement to occur The framework of criminal justice is laid down
at older ages. Predictors of common crimin- by legislation specifying the penalties avail-
ality (for example, impulsive personality, able in consequence of various crimes; and the
childhood aggressiveness, inadequate paren- powers, rules and procedures for each process
tal supervision in childhood, school dif®cul- and agency. In the UK, legislation has
ties and low socio-economic status) may not generally prescribed maximum penalties,
predict involvement for these offences. Mar- leaving considerable discretion to courts in
riage and employment may not promote deciding the actual penalty in individual
desistance, as they do for routine violence cases. The life sentence for murder has tradi-
and property offences. Late initiators of tionally been the only mandatory sentence.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE 67
Other countries have more prescriptive penal quences of crimes. Due process values
codes, with less discretion available to courts. emphasize fairness and equality in criminal
In recent years, the UK has followed other justice, and respect the rights of offenders, so
jurisdictions, especially the USA, in introdu- that there should be proper safeguards
cing more mandatory sentences. Discretion through representation, rules of evidence,
has been reduced at all points in the system. and the prosecution having to establish guilt
Under the slogan `truth in sentencing', poli- according to rigorous standards of proof. Due
ticians have decreed that offenders should process models also expect punishment to be
serve the sentence pronounced by the court, or proportionate to the seriousness of the offence,
at least a ®xed percentage of it, rather than and not to be degrading or inhumane. The
have the length of sentence actually served 1980s are said to be characterized by dom-
determined by prison governors or probation inance of due process values, while there has
of®cers through decisions about early release been a marked swing towards crime control in
or early termination of community orders. the 1990s.
Life imprisonment is the most severe Criminologists have been interested in the
punishment in most Western countries. The possibility and extent of discrimination in
important exception is the USA, where use of criminal justice. Unemployment, race and
the death penalty has increased during the gender have been shown to in¯uence criminal
1990s; several states which did not have it justice decision-making. High unemployment
have introduced or re-introduced the death rates correlate with high imprisonment rates;
penalty. In most years, Texas carries out the black offenders have been found to be more
highest number of executions. Eastern Eur- likely than their white counterparts to be
opean countries seeking membership of the imprisoned; being female is associated with
European Union have abolished the death receiving probation where male offenders
penalty, as part of moves to bring their might receive a ®ne or other non-interventive
criminal justice systems into line with the sentence. There is some disagreement among
European Convention on Human Rights. criminologists about whether the criminal
In the 1980s, several high-pro®le cases in justice treatment of women is more or less
England and Wales were shown to have severe than that of males, but general agree-
resulted in wrongful convictions. Concern ment that it is different. Conversely, consensus
with these miscarriages of justice led to a about the extent of different treatment due to
Royal Commission on Criminal Justice in race has been harder to establish, but there is
1993. Some changes in procedures resulted, general agreement that if there is any
among the most important of which was the difference, it is in the direction of greater
requirement upon prosecutors to disclose severity for black offenders.
evidence more fully to the defence before
trial. Gradually, however, these concerns have Barbara Hudson
faded and by the mid-1990s widespread
perception that too many guilty people were
being acquitted has led to further changes Associated Concepts: crime control model,
which swing the balance of advantage back discretion, discrimination, disparity, dispro-
towards the prosecution. portionality, due process model, penality,
Theoretical analysis of criminal justice has probation, social justice
focused on the tension between the objective
of crime control, and the values of due pro- Key Readings
cess. Although crime control, or crime reduc- Ashworth, A. (1994) The Criminal Process. Oxford,
tion, is obviously the overall aim of criminal Oxford University Press.
justice, it is limited by rights accorded to Ashworth, A. and Wasik, M. (eds) (1998) Funda-
defendants. Crime control and due process mentals of Sentencing Theory. Oxford, The Clar-
were represented as alternative models of endon Press.
criminal justice by Herbert Packer (Sanders Davies, M., Croall, H. and Tyrer, J. (1995) Criminal
and Young, 1994). If crime control is the Justice: An Introduction to the Criminal Justice
dominant consideration, severe penalties may System in England and Wales. Harlow, Longman.
be imposed: penalties designed to ensure Hood, R. (1992) Race and Sentencing: A Study in the
protection of the public through removal or Crown Court. Oxford, The Clarendon Press.
incapacitation of the offender, so that there is Lacey, N. (1994) Criminal Justice. Oxford, Oxford
no chance of a further offence. Establishing University Press.
guilt `beyond reasonable doubt' may seem less Sanders, A. and Young, R. (1994) Criminal Justice.
important than demonstrating the conse- Oxford, Butterworths.
68 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
to Parenti (1999), a right-wing cultural back- From their roots within radicalism the self-
lash provided the foundation for the ideolo- styled UK `left realists' argued that critical
gical reaf®rmation of the `underclass' as analysis had been ¯awed by economic
marginals by choice rather than circumstance. reductionism. Leading to `left idealism' and a
Marginalization and criminalization failure to `take crime seriously'. This created a
together protect, reinforce and reproduce heated debate in which critical criminologists
established order interests whether political, argued that the associated structural processes
economic or both. Coercive intervention, of marginalization and criminalization could
however, requires not only authority but also not be con®ned to the relations of production
legitimacy: `The power to criminalize is not and distribution. They emphasized the signi®-
derived necessarily in consensus politics but is cance of patriarchy, heterosexuality, `race' and
implicitly a political act. Criminalization age as institutionalized and oppressive con-
[re¯ects] ideologies associated with margin- structs, subordinating and marginalizing
alization and it is within these portrayals that people at the political-ideological as well as
certain actions are named, contained and political-economic level.
regulated . . . a powerful process because it Conceptually, criminalization explains the
mobilizes popular approval and legitimacy in structural conditions in which certain acts are
support of powerful interests within the state' de®ned as crimes, and subsequently policed
(Scraton and Chadwick, 1991, pp. 172±3). and punished. It explores the creation and
Thus popular support has to be won for state political management of identities in the
policies and law reforms that are essentially determining contexts of societal power rela-
authoritarian, including the normalization of tions. And it provides an understanding of the
`special powers'. It is the political manage- criminal justice clampdown, the rise in puni-
ment of negative reputations and violent tive legislation and the authoritarian shift
identities ± developed, consolidated, trans- within social democratic states. This clamp-
mitted and reproduced through ideologies of down is exempli®ed in the UK by the mantra
`other' ± which underwrites a hardening `tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime'
process of criminalization. which underpins a multi-agency or matrix
approach to social discipline: zero tolerance
and `quality of life' policing; increased
Evaluation surveillance, targeting and hardline interven-
tions. With the criminal justice `net' widening
The radical critique at the heart of critical to include `anti-social' behaviour, to regulate
analysis within criminology in 1970s USA, UK children at a very early age, the criminalizing
and Europe was criticized for economic context has been further extended.
reductionism and false universalism. It was
accused of over-simpli®cation regarding its Kathryn Chadwick and Phil Scraton
proposed close association of class, margin-
alization and criminalization. The critique
noted that crime, deviance and social con¯ict Associated Concepts: authoritarian populism,
were complex and could not be reduced to crime, critical criminology, emergency legisla-
material causation (unemployment, poverty, tion, labelling, left realism, net widening,
poor housing and so on). racialization, radical feminism, risk, social
Neo-classical, conservative criminologists harm, social reaction, surveillance, underclass
considered concepts such as criminalization
to be little more than justi®cations for crimes
committed by individuals who had made Key Readings
informed choices and should be held respon- Box, S. (1983) Power, Crime and Mysti®cation. London,
sible for their acts. As conservative analysis Tavistock.
reasserted its position through the consolida- Box, S. and Hale, C. (1982) `Economic crisis and the
tion of `underclass theory', it was matched by rising prisoner population in England and Wales',
the emergence of `ethical socialists' who also Crime and Social Justice, no.17.
emphasized `dismembered families', `lone Currie, E. (1998) Crime and Punishment in America.
mothers', lack of civic responsibility and life- New York, Metropolitan Books.
style choice as the primary causes of poverty Parenti, C. (1999) Lockdown America: Police and
and violent crime. Taken together, these Prisons in the Age of Crisis. London, Verso.
critiques reaf®rmed individual and social Scraton, P. and Chadwick, K. (1991) `Challenging the
pathologies as underlying conditions in new orthodoxies: the theoretical imperatives and
which much crime is rooted. political priorities of critical criminology', in K.
70 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Stenson and D. Cowell (eds), The Politics of Crime threats to the established social and economic
Control. London, Sage. order are identi®ed and regulated. It is the
Spitzer, S. (1975) `Towards a Marxian theory of state, through its legislation, that establishes
deviance', Social Problems, 22, pp. 368±401. of®cial means of crime control. Hence, the
state's role to guarantee continuity, to manage
con¯ict and to reproduce the dominant social
and economic order.
In responding to this `radical' direction in
CRITICAL CRIMINOLOGY criminology, critics targeted its implied eco-
nomic reductionism. They suggested that
within critical analysis the rule of law and its
De®nition relations were reduced to functional subsidi-
aries of the political economy. In European
Critical criminology applies critical analysis to societies, notably Scandinavia, Holland and
the `discipline' of criminology, the study of West Germany, the development of radical
crime and the administration of criminal criminology was more inclined towards
justice. It emphasizes the contextualizing abolitionism; `the product of the same counter-
relationship of structure and agency, locating cultural politics of the 1960s which gave rise to
the `everyday', routine world within structural the cultural radicalism of the ``new'' or
and institutional relations. It locates `crime', ``critical'' criminology' (Cohen, 1996, p. 3).
`deviance' and `social con¯ict' within their Throughout the 1980s profound differences
determining contexts rather than being obsessed emerged within critical criminology, experi-
with causation. It endeavours to broaden the enced most acutely in Britain. Key proponents
scope of analysis to a consideration of harm of `New Criminology' rede®ned themselves as
rather than crime, social justice rather than `left realists'. The primary proposition was
criminal justice, treatment rather than punish- that `crime' needs to be `taken seriously' and
ment and discourses of human rights rather `confronted' by politicians, policy-makers and
than discipline and control. The structural academics. Emphasizing crime, crime preven-
relations of production and distribution, tion and civil disorder, the left realist solution
reproduction and patriarchy, and neo-coloni- to the problem of crime proposes a demo-
alism are identi®ed as the primary determin- cratic, multi-agency approach geared to a
ing contexts within which the inter- more equal distribution of resources and a
relationships and mutual dependencies of reformed system of legal justice. Central to the
structural forms of oppression can be under- work of left realism has been the labelling and
stood. rejection of `idealism' in radical criminology,
exposing the political and theoretical weak-
nesses of `left idealism' as economically
Distinctive Features reductionist and deterministic. Critical crimi-
nology, however, cannot be so lightly dis-
Breaking with traditional, academic crimino- missed.
logy which prioritized liberalism, pluralism According to Scraton and Chadwick (1991) a
and reformism, radical criminology emerged `second phase' in the development of critical
in the early 1970s. In Britain, the National criminology can be identi®ed. Established
Deviancy Conference (NDC) was formed, theoretical principles have not been rejected
uniting academics, practitioners and cam- but re®ned, redeveloped and extended. The
paigners in the pursuit of a radical alternative initial call from new criminology to locate the
to mainstream criminology. From the NDC world of everyday life within broader struc-
developed the `New Criminology' which set tural relations remains a de®ning principle,
the radical agenda via the proposal for a setting the agenda for the consolidation of
`fully social theory' of deviance. This critical analysis within criminological theory.
involved establishing theoretical connections Signi®cant here is the relationship between
between the law, the state, legal and political `structure' and `agency'. Agency refers to the
relations and the functions of crime. Its experiential, everyday world of diverse social
objective was to evolve a Marxist perspective relations and interaction. Structure encom-
prioritizing a political-economic focus on passes the world of institutions and structural
class and class relations. Implicit in this relations ± and their histories ± which set the
analysis was the connection between class, boundaries to social interaction and personal
crime and the state with `crime control' opportunity within society, containing and
providing the coercive means through which regulating social relations.
CRITICAL CRIMINOLOGY 71
Moreover, while critical analysis remains action, when such action is coercive or
committed to an economic analysis focusing involves the use of force and violence, it has
on the relations of production and distribution to be legitimated. This is the dichotomy
± emphasizing class relations and the between coercion and consent. Critical crimi-
dynamics and consequences of advanced nology demonstrates that the process of
capitalism and globalization ± other inter- criminalization protects, reinforces and repro-
related centres of power and their institutional duces the political, economic and social
relations also are prioritized. These include the interests of an established order. The process
structural relations of reproduction and requires institutional legitimacy and also the
dependency, emphasizing global domination winning of popular consent for state policies
of women and the complexities, yet univers- and legal shifts that are essentially authoritar-
ality, of contrasting patriarchies. Also signi®- ian. Negative reputations, stereotyped images
cant are the structural relations of neo- and collective, violent identities ± the stuff of
colonialism, emphasizing the pervasiveness `folk devils' ± are transmitted through
of institutional racism and its imperialist ideologies. The state institutional response
legacy; connecting slavery, colonization, relies heavily on winning `hearts and minds'
immigration and migration. Scraton (1991, p. in pursuing this ideological appeal through
93) identi®es these structural relations as the popular discourse. Political, economic and
`determining contexts' of social action and ideological forces, then, are intricately con-
human potential. These are relations embody- nected in the creation, maintenance and
ing exploitation, oppression and subordina- portrayal of the process of criminalization.
tion. They are relations of power, both
economic and political, underpinned by deep
ideological traditions and their contemporary Evaluation
manifestation.
A further important dimension of critical Critical criminology contests and rejects the
criminology is the relationship between power knowledge base, theoretical traditions and
and knowledge. For Foucault (1980), power is imperatives of administrative criminology. It
not unidimensional but is dispersed through- also challenges the emphases of left realist
out society, not resting with one dominant analyses, arguing that this approach remains
state, sovereign or class. Power and knowl- locked into ± and constrained by ± de®nitions,
edge imply each other. Crucially, the power± policies and practices shaped and adminis-
knowledge axis permeates and sustains of®- tered within the criminal justice priorities of
cial discourses. For critical theorists, of®cial social democratic states. While taking `crime'
discourses are developed and reproduced seriously, it retains a commitment to the
through the primary determining contexts of location of `crime', `deviance' and `con¯ict'
class, `race' and gender. Discrimination result- within the determining contexts of power and
ing from these determining contexts is their institutionalized relations.
experienced daily, interpersonally, at the Critical criminology also incorporates a
level of agency. Yet they also have a structural human rights discourse and agenda. This
signi®cance in that classism, racism, sexism development reaf®rms that `advanced' demo-
and heterosexism are institutionalized and cracies, whatever their claims for upholding
oppressive constructs. They inform legislation, the principles of equality and liberty, embody
policy and practice throughout institutions, and reproduce the structural inequalities of
organizations and professions. It is through global capitalism, patriarchy and neo-coloni-
the process of institutionalization that the alism. These inequalities are woven into the
relations of domination and subordination fabric of the state and civil society; hegemonic
gain their legitimacy and achieve structural rather than ideological. They are supported
signi®cance. and reproduced through what Foucault calls
The processes of marginalization and crim- `regimes of truth'. Critical analysis has
inalization are central in explaining and focused on the structure, procedures and
analysing the relationship between the law, appropriateness of the criminal justice process
crime, punishment and the state. Critical (from the derivation of laws to the adminis-
theorists argue that there is a direct relation- tration of punishments) in identifying their
ship between economic crises and political speci®c and cumulative de®cit in revealing
responses of the state and judiciary, leading to `truth' and delivering `justice'. A human
the marginalization and criminalization of rights discourse, agenda and process, provide
certain groups. While economic changes a processual and procedural alternative to the
bring political responses, through state administration of the law and criminal justice
72 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
(Cohen, 1993, 1996). It is also a priority for experiential realities of individuals and com-
critical criminology in challenging the context munities (agency) within their historical,
and consequences of state-sanctioned regimes structural and reproductive contexts (struc-
of truth. ture).
Kathryn Chadwick and Phil Scraton
Distinctive Features
Associated Concepts: abolitionism, authoritarian
populism, criminalization, critical research, Writing in the late 1950s, and demonstrating a
human rights, left idealism, Marxist crimin- growing scepticism for mainstream social
ologies, new criminology, post-colonial crimi- science and its application within the USA,
nology, radical criminologies, radical Wright Mills (1959, p. 20) criticized the
feminism, the state `bureaucratic techniques which inhibit socio-
logical inquiry by ``methodological'' preten-
sions', its `obscurantist conceptions' and its
Key Readings trivializing of `publicly relevant issues' by an
Cohen, S. (1993) `Human rights and crimes of the
overstated `concern with minor problems'.
state: the culture of denial', Australian and New
Such `inhibitions, obscurities and trivialities'
Zealand Journal of Criminology, 26 (2), pp. 97±115.
had created a crisis for a form of state-
Cohen, S. (1996) `Crime and politics: spot the
supported social research which decontextua-
difference', British Journal of Sociology, 47 (1),
lized people's lives, their experiences and their
pp. 1±21.
opportunities. For Wright Mills, researching
Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Inter-
and teaching at the height of McCarthyism,
views and Other Writings, 1972±1977 (ed. C.
sociology had `lost its reforming push' and its
Gordon). Brighton, Harvester Wheatsheaf.
`tendencies towards fragmentary problems
Scraton, P. (1991) `Recent developments in crimino-
and scattered causation' had been `conserva-
logy: a critical overview', in M. Haralambos (ed.),
tively turned to the use of the corporation,
Developments in Sociology: An Annual Review No. 7.
army and the state'.
Ormskirk, Causeway Press.
Throughout the 1960s in the USA and
Scraton, P. and Chadwick, K. (1991) `Challenging the
Western Europe the radical critique of social
new orthodoxies: the theoretical imperatives and
sciences consolidated. It proposed that com-
political priorities of critical criminology', in K.
missioned research was conceptualized and
Stenson and D. Cowell (eds), The Politics of Crime
designed to further the material interests of
Control. London, Sage.
the powerful, in political and economic
Sim, J., Scraton, P. and Gordon, P. (1987) `Crime, the
institutions, at the expense of the powerless.
state and critical analysis', in P. Scraton (ed.), Law,
Of particular concern was how social research
Order and the Authoritarian State: Readings in
was used to serve and service the military±
Critical Criminology. Milton Keynes, Open Uni-
industrial complex and its international,
versity Press.
expansionist objectives. The radical critique
claimed that crime and other social problems
which were the consequence of structural
inequality, economic deprivation and cultural
CRITICAL RESEARCH discrimination were reconstructed through
mainstream social research as the inevitable
outcomes of individual or community patho-
De®nition logies.
Central to the critique was the assertion that
Critical social research begins with the social science, far from being constituted by
premise that `knowledge', including the for- `value-free', `objective' or `scienti®c' disci-
malized `domain assumptions' and bound- plines independent of each other and distinct
aries of academic disciplines, is neither value- from societal relations, was directly implicated
free nor value-neutral. Rather, knowledge is in the maintenance and reproduction of social
derived and reproduced, historically and order. In its applications and interventions
contemporaneously, in the structural relations social science was a part of, rather than apart
of inequality and oppression that underpin from, the political, economic and social
established social orders. Challenging the developments geared to regulating con¯ict
quantitative foundations of positivism and and managing change. Thus its emphases and
the interpretive foundations of phenomeno- methodologies re¯ected its purpose and
logy, critical research endeavours to locate the utility.
CRITICAL RESEARCH 73
Francis (eds), Doing Criminological Research. to correlate past actions, behaviours or events
London, Sage. with contemporary attributes, attitudes or
Neuman, W. (1994) Social Research Methods: Qualita- other subjective feelings. For example, crime
tive and Quantitative Approaches. Boston, MA, surveys seek to connect respondents' previous
Allyn and Bacon. victimization of crime with current fears about
Scraton, P. (ed.) (1987) Law, Order and the Author- the possibility of further victimization.
itarian State: Readings in Critical Criminology. The term cross-sectional design also relates
Milton Keynes, Open University Press. to the use of of®cial statistics and other social
Stanley, L. (ed.) (1990) Feminist Praxis. London, indicators to describe geographical areas at
Routledge. any given point in time. For example, the
Wright Mills, C. (1959) The Sociological Imagination. Chicago School of urban sociology used
New York, Oxford. delinquency rates (amongst others) to `map'
the city of Chicago in the 1930s. This was the
basis for a concentric circle theory of urban
development and the mapping of the city in
CROSS-SECTIONAL DESIGN terms of such rates resembled a cross-section
of an onion. Such statistical analysis was used
alongside detailed ethnographic accounts of
De®nition the `underside' of life within different con-
centric circles.
A design in which a cross-section of the
population is selected for study and data are
collected from or about each selected case at Evaluation
one particular point in time.
Cross-sectional designs provide a relatively
cheap and quick means of describing popula-
Distinctive Features tions on a number of variables at any point in
time. They also facilitate the search for
The term cross-sectional design often refers to patterns of relationships between variables,
a type of social survey in which subsets of a for example various indicators of social
population are selected to be part of a sample. exclusion (such as unemployment, poor hous-
Where the subsets are represented in direct ing standards, low educational standards) and
proportion to their existence in the population levels of criminal and disorderly actions.
it is common to refer to proportionate cross- As indicated earlier, cross-sectional surveys
sectional designs. Where subsets are not sometimes collect retrospective data ± about
selected in proportion to their presence in past experiences, perhaps ± with a view to
the population ± perhaps to give greater correlating past experiences with present
weight to the views of minority groups ± the actions or attitudes. Such correlations subse-
term disproportionate cross-sectional design is quently form the basis for causal inferences
used. Because data are collected from sample suggesting, say, that previous experience of
members at one single point in time cross- victimization engenders present fears of
sectional surveys are sometimes also known as crime. There are, however, dif®culties with
one-shot designs. this. For example, there are doubts about the
One-shot cross-sectional surveys are appro- reliability of respondents' memories of past
priate to obtaining representative `snap shots' experiences. More crucially, correlations indi-
of the population in terms of basic attributes cating potential relationships between past
(such as class, age, ethnicity) and also in terms experiences and current attitudes and feelings
of subjective variables (such as opinions and do not by themselves provide suf®cient
attitudes). In the United Kingdom police evidence of causality. What is also needed is
forces are required by legislation to carry out direct evidence of time-ordering and of causal
crime audits of their area, including a survey forces. Sometimes this can be provided by
of the general public's views on the ways in longitudinal surveys, in which a sample of
which the community is policed. One-shot individuals is studied over a long period of
cross-sectional surveys are well suited to this time (sometimes a life-time).
purpose. Sometimes cross-sectional surveys A further problem with cross-sectional
are also used to collect retrospective data, for studies is related to one of the strengths,
example observations about what sample namely that they provide snapshots at a
members did in the past or had done to particular point in time. However, this
them. At the analysis stage an attempt is made means that such studies are not useful vehicles
CULTURAL CRIMINOLOGY 75
for examining social change in society or for the postmodern propositions that style is
mapping social trends over time. One way of substance, that meaning resides in representa-
overcoming this is by taking equivalent tion, and that crime and crime control can
samples at different points in time and therefore only be understood as an ongoing
collecting data on the same variables with a spiral of intertextual, image-driven `media
view to examining changes or trends. This is loops' (Manning, 1998). Undergirding the use
known as a trend or a time series design, an of these contemporary perspectives in cultural
example of which is the British Crime Survey criminology are somewhat more traditional
which seeks to examine changes and trends in projects: the expansion of existing interaction-
victimization. ist understandings, and the sharpening of
critical analysis in criminology. Cultural
Victor Jupp criminologists attempt to develop the `sym-
bolic' in `symbolic interaction' by exploring
Associated Concepts: Chicago School of Sociol- the stylized dynamics of illicit subcultures and
ogy, longitudinal study, of®cial criminal the representational universes of the mass
statistics, sampling, social survey, time series media. Similarly, they seek to unravel the
design, victim surveys complex circuitry through which the meaning
of crime and crime control is constructed,
enforced and resisted.
Key Readings These theoretical orientations inform the
Jupp, V.R. (1996) Methods of Criminological Research.
methodologies favoured by cultural crimi-
London, Routledge.
nologists. As employed within cultural
Mayhew, P. (1996) `Researching crime and victimi-
criminology, ethnographic research draws on
zation: the BCS', in P. Davies, P. Francis and V.
sociological, anthropological and cultural
Jupp (eds), Understanding Victimization. New-
studies traditions to investigate nuances of
castle, University of Northumbria, Social Sciences
meaning developed within particular cultural
Press.
milieux, and to explore the situated dynamics
of illicit subcultures. At its extreme, such
research is designed to develop a form of
criminological verstehen whereby the
CULTURAL CRIMINOLOGY researcher approaches an empathic, apprecia-
tive understanding of the meanings and
emotions associated with crime and crime
De®nition control. Alternatively, other cultural criminol-
ogists utilize methods of media and textual
An emergent theoretical orientation that analysis to develop critical, scholarly readings
investigates the convergence and contestation of mediated crime and crime control accounts.
of cultural, criminal and crime control pro- Such scholarship investigates both historical
cesses. Cultural criminology emphasizes the and contemporary texts, ranging from news-
role of image, style, representation and mean- papers, ®lm and television to popular music,
ing both within illicit subcultures, and in the comic books and cyberspace. Recently cultural
mediated construction of crime and crime criminologists have also begun to integrate
control. these two methodological frameworks in
exploring the ongoing con¯uence of illicit
subcultures, media constructions and public
Distinctive Features meanings.
Framed by these theoretical and methodo-
As developed by Ferrell (1999), Ferrell and logical orientations, cultural criminological
Sanders (1995) and other theorists, cultural analysis has developed in a number of areas.
criminology incorporates a number of orienta- First, cultural criminology conceptualizes
tions regarding the cultural construction of crime as a subcultural phenomenon organized
crime and crime control. At its most basic, around symbolic communication, shared aes-
cultural criminology seeks to import the thetics and collective identity. Given this,
insights of cultural studies into criminology, cultural criminologists focus especially on
building especially from the pioneering work the dynamics of subcultural style as de®ning
of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary both the internal characteristics of illicit sub-
Cultural Studies in the 1970s on subcultural cultures and external, mediated constructions
symbolism and mediated social control. of them (Hebdige, 1979). In addition, cultural
Similarly, cultural criminology operates from criminologists highlight the intensities of
76 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
collective experience and emotion within illicit operate as a form of intellectual resistance, as
subcultures, as embodied in moments of a counter-discourse on contemporary crime
edgework and adrenalin, and as given mean- issues that through `newsmaking criminology'
ing within shared vocabularies of motive. (Barak, 1994) and other public practices can
If cultural criminologists in this sense con- generate alternative images of crime and crime
ceptualize crime as culture, they also explore control.
the ways in which culture comes to be recon-
structed as crime. Focusing on `culture wars'
fought around issues of art and obscenity, Evaluation
alternative musical forms like punk and rap,
and the allegedly criminogenic effects of tele- Despite a common focus on representation
vision and ®lm, researchers reveal the looping, and meaning in the investigation of crime and
re¯exive process by which such media- crime control, much of the work in cultural
generated popular culture forms are in turn criminology has remained divided between
criminalized by campaigns of moral enterprise the study of illicit subcultures on the one
themselves fought in the mediated realm of hand, and mass media texts on the other. Yet
sound bites, press conferences and newspaper such a sharp disjunction misses a number of
headlines. In this sense, `cultural criminaliza- key dynamics regarding crime and culture,
tion' occurs ± that is, the mediated re- including the reconstruction of mass media
presentation of popular culture forms as texts by various subcultures and audiences;
criminal or criminogenic, with or without the production of localized, situated media by
attendant legal proceedings. Signi®cantly, this illicit subcultures and crime control agencies
process also embodies contemporary political alike; and the subsequent appropriation of
dynamics, as moral entrepreneurs and cul- these situated images and symbols by the
tural reactionaries utilize mediated channels mass media. As noted previously, some recent
to delegitimate alternative or illicit subcul- work in cultural criminology has in fact begun
tures. to address this problem, by linking subcul-
Cultural criminologists likewise explore the tural dynamics, organizational imperatives
broader mediated construction of crime and and situated media to broader, mass media
crime control. Research in this area focuses not constructions of crime and crime control, and
only on everyday media texts, but on the by highlighting the re¯exive process by which
complex, reciprocal interconnections between each party to public crime controversies
the criminal justice system and the mass remakes and recontextualizes the meanings
media that shape such texts. Much of this of the other. Less promising is the ability of
work builds from, and in some cases recon- cultural criminologists to address issues of
ceptualizes, Cohen's (1972) classic model audience and audience meanings; as is the
regarding the invention of folk devils and case with much media analysis and criticism,
the generation of moral panic around issues of the epistemic activities of audiences remain
crime and deviance. In this sense, this work more imagined than investigated.
examines the cultural dynamics by which Cultural criminologists are also just begin-
certain activities come to be constructed as ning to explore a number of key domains in
crime and threat, while others are left which culture, crime and crime control
`unconstructed'. It further emphasizes the converge. Contemporary policing is coming
ironies inherent in the marketing of crime as to be conceptualized as a set of semiotic
both threat and entertainment. practices entangled with `reality' television
Threaded through all these areas of enquiry programmes, everyday public surveillance,
is a concern with relations of power, control and the symbolism and aesthetics of police
and resistance. Cultural criminologists empha- subcultures themselves. Public controversies
size the new and often insidious forms of regarding homeless populations, street gangs,
coercion and control that emerge within graf®ti crews, and other marginalized groups
mediated `wars' on crime and within the are beginning to be investigated as con¯icts
everyday consumption of crime as drama and over the construction of meaning and identity
entertainment. At the same time, they high- in public domains, and thus over ownership of
light forms of resistance that emerge as `cultural space'. Numerous investigations of
audiences remake and reverse mediated embodied emotions ± of pleasure, fear and
meanings, and as illicit subcultures embody excitement as the affective forces driving both
their insubordination in stylized identities and crime and crime control ± continue to emerge.
collectively meaningful experience. Moreover, Perhaps most importantly, cultural crimino-
cultural criminology itself is designed to logy is beginning to move beyond its British
CYBERCRIME 77
and US roots to explore the contested con- involve the internet and web-based informa-
vergence of cultural and criminal dynamics in tion and communication technologies (ICTs).
a variety of world settings, and to investigate
the migration of illicit meanings across real
and imagined borders. Distinctive Features
Finally, as a nascent theoretical perspective,
cultural criminology perhaps constitutes to Cybercrimes are computer-mediated activities
this point less a completed, de®nitive para- that have been de®ned as illegal or illicit and
digm than an eclectic constellation of critiques are acted out through global electronic net-
linked by sensitivities to image and represen- works. By the 1990s, cyberspace had become
tation in the study of crime and crime control. established as one of the fastest growing sites
Oriented as they are to the multiplicity of of crime and transgression (Thomas and
meanings and indeterminacy of images con- Loader, 2000). The internet not only offers its
tinually developing around crime and crime users access to global markets and the diffuse
control, though, cultural criminologists them- networks and links that support illegal and
selves would likely embrace cultural crimino- legal markets but also provides the means to
logy as an always un®nished project, open to traverse the state boundaries of national legal
emerging con®gurations of culture, crime and systems and controls. The internet offers the
crime control, and to emerging critiques of possibility of invisibility and anonymity to
them. transgressors through the use of encryption,
passwords, digital compression, steganogra-
Jeff Ferrell phy and remote storage and as a result has
become a major site of action for organized
crime, petty crime, state crime and hate crime.
Associated Concepts: appreciative criminology, It has been used in activities involving drugs,
carnival (of crime), constitutive criminology, the moving of illegal money, oil traf®cking
critical criminology, discourse analysis, ethno- and arms traf®cking as well as other sanction-
graphy, interactionism, newsmaking crimino- breaking businesses. State and commercial
logy, postmodernism, social constructionism, secrets have been stolen and sold through the
subculture internet. Potentially harmful political ideas
have also been promulgated and disseminated
Key Readings with the aim of inciting violence against ethnic
Barak, G. (ed.) (1994) Media, Process, and the Social and minority groups. The Internet has also
Construction of Crime: Studies in Newsmaking facilitated the development of a global market
Criminology. New York, Garland. for pornography and illegal sexual activities.
Cohen, S. (1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics. Cybercrime involves illegal activities that
London, MacGibbon and Kee. (New edition are aimed at national and international
Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1980.) economies as well as political and social
Ferrell, J. (1999) `Cultural criminology', Annual relations and structures, thereby jeopardizing
Review of Sociology, no. 25, pp. 395±418. and putting at risk not only political and
Ferrell, J. and Sanders, C.R. (eds) (1995) Cultural economic life but also personal everyday life.
Criminology. Boston, MA, Northeastern University Cybercrime often involves cyberviolence that
Press. puts the personal safety of citizens at risk
Hebdige, D. (1979) Subculture: The Meaning of Style. through, for example, the manipulation of the
London, Methuen. emotions of vulnerable individuals by chat
Manning, P.K. (1998) `Media Loops', in F. Bailey and room activities and noticeboard communica-
D. Hale (eds), Popular Culture, Crime, and Justice. tions. Violent acts can be planned and set up
Belmont, CA, West/Wadsworth. hidden from the gaze of CCTV and other
security measures.
Anti-social acts on the Internet have led to
the World Wide Web becoming an important
site for the carnival of crime where protest and
CYBERCRIME disruption can be organized and practised.
The use of e-mail carnivalesque to disrupt
state and commercial organization has become
De®nition commonplace, whilst the organizing of illegal
popular pleasures, such as bare knuckle
The use of electronic communication for ®ghting or cock, quail and dog ®ghting, has
criminal and transgressive activities that meant that law enforcement agencies must
78 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
now counteract such transgressions through Cyberspace Illegalities. NSW and New Brunswick,
their own development of cyber technology NJ, Federation Press.
(Presdee, 2000). Presdee, M. (2000) Cultural Criminology and the
Carnival of Crime. London, Routledge.
Mike Presdee Thomas, D. and Loader, B.D. (eds) (2000) Cybercrime:
Law Enforcement, Security and Surveillance in the
Information Age. London and New York, Routledge.
Associated Concepts: Carnival (of crime), cor- Wall, D. (1997) `Policing the virtual community: the
porate crime, hidden crime, state crime, internet, cybercrimes and the policing of cyber-
transnational organized crime space', in P. Francis, P. Davies and V. Jupp (eds),
Policing Futures. London, Macmillan.
Key Readings Wall, D. (1999) `Cybercrimes: new wine, no bottles?',
Grabosky, P.N. and Smith, R.G. (1998) Crime in the in P. Davies, P. Francis and V. Jupp (eds), Invisible
Digital Age: Controlling Telecommunications and Crimes. London, Macmillan.
D
turning the terms in binary opposition `on Criminology, although more slow in applying
their heads', so to speak, the implied and the tools of deconstruction, has raised similar
unspoken tension is revealed and their questions in relation to criminological theory,
interdependence is made manifest. Further, criminal law and criminal behaviour. Post-
deconstructionists like Derrida explain this modern critical criminology has been the
mutual interdependence through the concept leading exponent of this deconstructionist
of differance (with an `a'). Differance implies agenda.
three meanings: (1) that the two terms in
binary opposition `differ' from one another to Bruce Arrigo
maintain their meaning; (2) that the two terms
in binary opposition `defer' to one another in Associated Concepts: critical criminology, dis-
the sense of implying the other term; and (3) course analysis, postmodernism, post-struc-
that the two terms in binary opposition `defer' turalism
to one another to maintain their interdepen-
dence. Key Readings
Relatedly, deconstruction advocates the Caputo, J. (ed.) (1997) Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A
`free play of the text'. Once a text (e.g., a Conversation with Jaques Derrida. New York,
legal narrative) is constructed, it is liberated, Fordham University Press.
to some signi®cant degree, from its author. Cornell, D., Rosenfeld, M. and Carlson, D. (eds)
That is to say, the narrative has meaning (1992) Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice.
beyond what was intended by the author ± New York, Routledge.
even if the author could exhaust his/her own Derrida, J. (1973) Speech and Other Phenomena.
intended meaning. For example, our under- Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press.
standing of homosexuality, the death penalty, Derrida, J. (1976) Of Grammatology. Baltimore, MD,
mental illness, homelessness, abortion, drug Johns Hopkins University Press.
addiction, politics, art, the presidency, and so Derrida, J. (1978) Writing and Differance. Chicago,
on, today is considerably different from what University of Chicago Press.
it was 25 years ago. Deconstructionists tell us Derrida, J. (1981) Positions. Chicago, University of
that this is because the meaning of each of Chicago Press.
these texts is historically situated; that is,
different contexts create different meanings,
and these various meanings are never exhaus-
tible. This logic gives rise to the deconstruc-
tionist claim of `foundationless' knowledge DECRIMINALIZATION
(i.e., truths absent from original, structured,
anchored realities). Nihilist deconstructionists De®nition
conclude that if all is relative, why bother to
effect any change. Af®rmative deconstruction- A process that refers to the removal of
ists conclude that there are positional, provi- labelling of social problems or deviant
sional, relational truths (i.e., contingent behaviours as crimes.
universalities) that warrant attention where
the voices of and ways of knowing for those
most silenced (i.e., the metaphysics of pre- Distinctive Features
sence) necessitate wholesale support and
recognition. Decriminalization grew out of the abolitionist
critique of penal responses to criminalized
problems. It is based on a rejection of the penal
Evaluation reconstruction of reality (with its associated
concepts such as crime, guilt and punishment)
Modernity's quest for exactness, precision and and its paralysing effect on attempts to
ultimate truths ®nds considerable critique in address underlying social problems and
the face of deconstructionism. As a method for circumstances. Abolitionists pointed to the
uncovering hidden assumptions and values, top-down, repressive, punitive and in¯exible
deconstruction reveals how all texts (e.g., character of penal control, the appropriation of
legal, criminological) are informed by ideol- con¯icts from their owners, and the funda-
ogy. The Critical Legal Studies Movement has mental shortcomings of criminal law to realize
relied heavily on deconstructionism to social justice, and argued that criminal law
advance this position in relation to legal sanction should be replaced by dispute
doctrines, the Constitution and statutory law. settlement and redress. In policy terms,
82 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
adjacent lower-rise buildings with socially around apartment blocks and street closures.
identical residents and with a similar popula- The key paradox which surrounds the effec-
tion density. For Newman a combination of tiveness of `defensible space' and other
indifferent architects, land speculators, cor- situational crime prevention measures is
porate ®nanciers and city planning depart- generally referred to as the problem of dis-
ments had contrived to build the maximum of placement. The possible displacement effects
housing space at the lowest cost and without are:
consideration of the social consequences. The
high-rise double-loaded corridor apartment
tower has no `defensible space' other than the · temporal ± the movement of crime/
disorder to a different time;
interior of the apartment itself. Everything else
± the lobby, stairs, elevators and corridors ± is · tactical ± the continual committal of crime,
but by more sophisticated means;
a `nether world of fear and crime'. Newman's
solution to create secure environments was · target ± the movement of crime to
different targets;
fourfold:
· spatial ± the movement of criminal activity
to different places.
· Enhance territoriality ± the sub division of
places into zones of in¯uence to discou-
rage outsiders and to encourage residents Early empirical work appeared to support
to defend their areas. the premise of spatial displacement in parti-
· Increase surveillance ± the positioning of cular. Increasing the police presence in one
windows so that residents can survey the area of New York brought about a reduction
exterior and the interior public areas of in street crime, but also seemed to increase the
their environment. level of crime in surrounding precincts.
· Improve image ± the redesign of buildings However Clarke (1991) argued that even
to avoid the stigma of low-cost or public when such displacement occurs it is unlikely
housing. ever to be complete. If the displacement is to
· Enhance safety ± the placing of public crimes of lesser seriousness or to areas where
housing projects within urban areas the burden of victimization is more evenly
perceived to be safe. spread, then it may be considered `benign'
rather than `malign' (Barr and Pease, 1990). As
Whilst Newman's approach has been cri- a result, the issue of displacement remains
tiqued as over-general and neglectful of social unresolved. Nevertheless, the concept of
factors, it has been in¯uential in a number of defensible space has also come to be linked
ways. Certain design features, such as with two other unwelcome developments.
improving external lighting, reducing anon- First, continual surveillance suggests the
ymous open spaces, increasing pedestrian emergence of a fortress society in which fear
access and the resetting of windows to allow of crime and distrust stimulate a forever
for greater surveillance have been implemen- expanding network of barricades. Secondly,
ted in numerous housing projects world-wide. the growth in the capacity and penetration of
For example, in the late 1970s new models of electronic surveillance (such as CCTV) con-
spatial segregation appeared in the USA with jures up images of a totalitarian `Big Brother'
the emergence of `common interest commu- state.
nities'. Af¯uent Americans were opting to lock
themselves away in carefully screened coop- John Muncie
erative housing schemes and defended resi-
dential enclaves.
The most obvious way of reducing oppor- Associated Concepts: Chicago School of Sociol-
tunities for crime lies in the use of physical ogy, panopticism, situational crime preven-
barriers. This target hardening, involving tion, social control, surveillance
locks, bolts, gates, guard dogs, security
screens and so on appears to be highly effec- Key Readings
tive. Improving access and windows security Barr, R. and Pease, K. (1990) `Crime placement,
on public housing estates is known to reduce displacement and de¯ection', in N. Morris and M.
the incidence of burglaries. Controlling access Tonry (eds), Crime and Justice: A Review of Research,
± historically evident in the moats and port- vol. 12. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
cullises of medieval castles ± ®nds its Blakely, E.J. and Snyder, M. (1997) Fortress America.
contemporary form in entry phones, electronic Washington, Brookings Institution.
personal identi®cation measures, fencing Clarke, R.V. (1991) Situational Crime Prevention:
84 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Successful Case Studies. New York, Harrow and de®ned, but retains a series of vague and
Heston. imprecise standards that rest on the need to
Davis, M. (1994) Beyond Blade Runner: Urban Control intervene early to prevent future offending or
and the Ecology of Fear. West®eld, NJ, Open tackle assumed family or psychological pro-
Magazine Pamphlet Series. blems. Determinations of what might consti-
Jacobs, J. (1961) The Death and Life of Great American tute reprehensible behaviour extend a court's
Cities. Harmondsworth, Penguin. jurisdiction to establish conduct rather than
Newman, O. (1972) Defensible Space: People and Design purely legal norms. These are often referred to
in the Violent City. London, Architectural Press. as status offences ± that is, the violation of
formal or informal rules which are applied
only to certain sections of society. The focus is
less on the offence itself and more on who
DELINQUENCY commits it. In the USA such status offences as
being incorrigible, truant or sexually preco-
cious apply only to children.
De®nition Most historians agree that delinquency was
®rst identi®ed as a major social problem in the
A term, loosely used, to refer to any kind of early nineteenth century. Social surveys and
youthful misbehaviour. empirical investigations permitted a problem
to be identi®ed but they presupposed existing
conceptions of how youth should behave, what
Distinctive Features relation should exist between different age
groups and what should be the appropriate
Criminologists frequently use the concepts of role of the family. In the early nineteenth
`crime' and `delinquency' interchangeably, century, with the rapid growth of industrial
especially when their object of study is young capitalism, factory production and high den-
people. However, there are crucial differences. sity urban populations, the condition of the
Whilst a legal de®nition of crime refers to labouring classes became the object of con-
behaviour prohibited by criminal law, delin- siderable middle class concern ± whether this
quency is also applied to all manner of was fear of their revolutionary potential,
behaviours that are deemed to be undesirable. disgust at their morality or alarm at their
It is capable of capturing the legally pro- impoverishment and criminal tendencies. In
scribed, but also waywardness, misbehaviour, England, these fears galvanized around dra-
incorrigibility, the `anti-social' and that matic images of gangs of `naked, ®lthy,
believed to constitute the `pre-criminal'. roaming, lawless and deserted children'.
Much of this ambiguity derives from the Accurate estimations of the extent of `delin-
establishment of separate systems of juvenile quency' were impossible, not least because of
justice designed to punish and treat offenders its ill-de®ned nature. Susan Magarey (1978)
but also to protect the vulnerable and contends that there may have been some
neglected. All Western jurisdictions stipulate justi®cation for these growing fears, particu-
that under a certain age young people cannot larly in the newly recorded prison statistics of
be held fully responsible for their actions. It is the 1830s. The number of under 17s impri-
widely assumed that juveniles are doli incapax soned increased from some 9,500 in 1838 to
(incapable of evil), but how certain age groups some 14,000 in 1848. However she ®nds that
± child, juvenile, young person, adult ± are this rise is explicable less with reference to
perceived and constituted in law is not `increased lawlessness' and more with changes
universally agreed upon. Taking Europe as in the position of children in relation to the
an example, in Scotland the age of criminal criminal law and the subsequent criminaliza-
responsibility is 8, in England and Wales 10, in tion of behaviour for which previously there
France 13, in Germany 14, in Spain 16 and in may have been no of®cial action. In particular,
Belgium 18. Each is a socially and historically the Vagrancy Act 1824 and the Malicious
speci®c concept and as such is liable to review Trespass Act 1827 considerably broadened
and change. For example, in England and legal conceptions of `criminality' to include,
Wales in the late 1990s the presumption that for example, suspicion of being a thief,
had been enshrined in law since the fourteenth gambling on the street and scrumping apples
century that those under 14 were incapable of from orchards and gardens. Previous nuis-
criminal intent was abolished. ances were transformed into criminal offences.
In the USA under the statutes of various Moreover, the remit given to the Metropolitan
states delinquency is in part speci®cally Police in 1829 included apprehension of `all
DEMONIZATION 85
loose, idle and disorderly persons not giving women. The nature and scale of reaction in
good account of themselves'. This alone made such events has been seen as a defensive
many more street children liable to arrest. In reaction by religious groups seeking to
these ways juvenile delinquency was `legis- maintain moral boundaries, particularly at
lated into existence'. times of rapid social change. For Erikson
(1966) deviance manifests itself in the form
John Muncie that is most feared, suggesting that demons
are de®ned by psychic needs.
Associated Concepts: crime, deviance, subcul- In modern times the objects of demonization
ture have been ideological and political deviants
whose `wickedness' is attributed to some
shadowy and ambiguous force that enables
Key Readings them to perform feats beyond ordinary human
Magarey, S. (1978) `The invention of juvenile
capabilities ± sometimes this is connected with
delinquency in early nineteenth century England',
a conspiracy theory. Thus, the subversion
Labour History (Sydney), 34, pp. 11±25.
myth is a narrative that explains why things
May, M. (1973) `Innocence and experience: the
have gone wrong by attributing blame or
evolution of the concept of juvenile delinquency
demonizing certain groups or individuals by
in the mid-nineteenth century', Victorian Studies,
holding them responsible for bad events or
17 (1), pp. 7±29.
occurrences (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994).
Tappan, P. (1949) Juvenile Delinquency. New York,
The cast list of demonized groups is extensive,
McGraw±Hill.
including Jews under the Third Reich, the
West, D. and Farrington, D. (1973) Who Becomes
Soviet show trials, and the McCarthy era in
Delinquent? London, Heinemann.
the USA. These state crimes are instances of the
West, D. and Farrington, D. (1977) The Delinquent
mass production ± or fabrication ± of deviance
Way of Life. London, Heinemann.
that signify the need for society to take
exceptional measures to protect itself, con-
necting the concept of demonization to
scapegoating and moral panics. Homosexuals,
DEMONIZATION abortionists, drug users, migrants and asylum
seekers, as well as counter-cultural move-
ments, have all been objects of scapegoating
De®nition and demonization. Furthermore, countries
have also been demonized, for instance the
The act of condemning or denouncing evil that reputation of some `terrorist' Islamic states has
is attributed to demonic in¯uence or powers. been linked to Islamaphobia and Eurocentr-
ism.
In more mundane terms the identi®cation of
Distinctive Features folk devils such as particular youth cultures
has been the basis for labelling outsiders who
Demonology refers to possession by evil are then treated as legitimate targets of self-
spirits, as well as to the construction of a righteous anger and deserving of punishment.
catalogue of enemies. In both cases the object A folk devil is treated as the embodiment of
of demonization is an `other', an out-group to evil and, as such, is stripped of all positive
which blame for misfortune is attributed, and characteristics and ascribed negative ones.
its purpose is to erect and reaf®rm certain This occurs through a symbolization process
moral and social boundaries. In terms of in which `images are made much sharper than
attribution theory the argument would be that reality' (Cohen, 1972, p. 43). New folk devils
bad events require explanation or causes and are placed into and connected with a gallery of
that demonization is a method of assigning contemporary folk devils that may underlie a
blame or guilt. Denunciation fosters a dichot- moral panic. The identi®cation of groups and
omization of `us' and `them' that serves to their characteristics are listed in stereotypical
shore up the moral barricades of society. manner by the media and reaf®rm their
Historically, witchcraft has been a key source negative characteristics and may set in process
for demonology. Witches were connected to deviancy ampli®cation. Goode and Ben-
wicked acts prompted by the devil. The Yehuda (1994) have emphasized the need for
strongly sexualized and gendered dimension careful attention to the speci®c social context
in this should not be ignored, such as the of demonization ± particularly its timing,
`insatiable' sexual appetite attributed to content and targets.
86 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Cohen's work on the denial of responsibility is causal laws. In a more general sense, as used
the extension of the analysis of denial by here, determinism can be taken in the sense of
individuals to include collective forms of inevitability: once the antecedents to an event
denial, such as denial of human rights viola- are understood, so prediction of future similar
tions by representatives of the state. In principle, events becomes possible.
there is no reason why this approach to
`denial' could not be applied to the analysis of
the motivational accounts offered by perpe- Distinctive Features
trators of other forms of crime ± for example,
the white collar crime of insider trading or the Bertrand Russell's (1961) A History of Western
corporate criminality of transnational corpora- Philosophy traces the concept of determinism
tions involved in the dumping of toxic waste. back to 440 BC and the philosophers Leucip-
Researchers working in these areas will pus and Democritus. As the basis of their
confront the problem of accounts that are philosophical stance, known as atomism, they
driven by economic and other interests rather argued that nothing happens by chance, that
than personal deceits. Criminologists and everything is explicable by natural laws. In a
criminal lawyers working on issues of denial position akin to much modern science, the
in the future will face the continuing challenge atomists said that science should be empirical,
of avoiding reducing the issue to the play of seeking to discover the natural laws by which
discourses rather than the expression of to understand the universe. Not all philoso-
speci®c interests and personal responsibility. phers agreed with this view and, from
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle onwards, the
Ruth Jamieson debate has continued.
In the ®eld of human behaviour, including
Associated Concepts: corporate crime, human criminal behaviour, the match is made
rights, neutralization (techniques of ), state between, on the one hand, determinism, and
crime free will on the other. If determinism holds
that behaviour is predictable (once the laws
Key Readings governing behaviour are eventually under-
Cohen, S. (1995) Denial and Acknowledgement: The stood), so free will takes the contrary stance:
Impact of Information About Human Rights Viola- no matter what the antecedents might be at
tions. Jerusalem, The Hebrew University of the point of acting, individuals could, had
Jerusalem, Centre for Human Rights. they wished, have acted differently than they
Douglas, M. (1992) Risk and Blame. London, did.
Routledge. What might determine human behaviour?
Lifton, R.J. and Markusen, E. (1990) The Genocidal There are many levels of explanation, ranging
Mentality. London, Macmillan. through genetic, psychological, social and
Scott, M. and Lyman, S. (1968) `Accounts', American political theories. Regardless of whether the
Sociological Review, 33 (10), pp. 46±62. antecedents are said to be inside the person or
Sykes, G.M. and Matza, D. (1957) `Techniques of in the environment (or a combination of the
neutralization: a theory of delinquency', American two), human action is a function of its
Sociological Review, 22, pp. 664±70. antecedent conditions. Such antecedent con-
ditions may be unique to the individual, none
the less it is these conditions that determine
behaviour. Explanations of behaviour then
move beyond the concepts of freedom and
DETERMINISM dignity (Skinner, 1971).
In thinking about criminal behaviour, the
issue of determinism is of importance. If
De®nition behaviour is determined, then this directly
challenges the principles of free will, respon-
There is no easy de®nition of the term `deter- sibility and choice, the principles upon which
minism'. Honderich (1993) describes three many systems of justice are based. At both a
meanings of the term, each with its own philosophical and scienti®c level the issues are
subtle shifts and variations. Alongside its use complex (Alper, 1998): it seems unlikely that
with reference to small particles in physics, the debate started by the atomists is likely to
determinism can be used as an opposite to free be resolved in the foreseeable future.
will, or it can be used in a more restricted
sense to mean that human action is subject to Clive Hollin
88 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
individual and raising important questions Associated Concepts: crime, delinquency, gov-
about dominant social norms, the dangers of ernmentality, labelling, moral panic, penality,
criminalization, the impartiality of policing, penology, social censure, social control, social
the neutrality of justice, and the counter- exclusion, stigma
productiveness of punishment.
At the beginning of the new millennium, Key readings
however, social scientists cynically believe that Becker, H. (1963) Outsiders. New York, Free Press.
moral judgements are always made from a Goffman, E. (1968) Stigma. Harmondsworth, Pen-
standpoint of partisan interest as well as guin.
general principle and that they are therefore Lemert, E. (1951) Social Pathology. New York,
profoundly relative to the culture or period McGraw±Hill.
within which they are embedded. Events of the Matza, D. (1969) Becoming Deviant. Englewood
twentieth century, such as the Holocaust, have Cliffs, NJ, Prentice±Hall.
given many an awareness of the horrors that Sumner, C.S. (1994) The Sociology of Deviance: An
can be involved in scapegoating censured Obituary. Buckingham, Open University Press.
social groups. In addition, globalization, mass Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society: Social Exclu-
communications, travel and mobility have sion, Crime and Difference in Late Modernity.
resulted in a greater moral tolerance in a London, Sage.
highly differentiated, multicultural, world ±
who is to say what is now deviant? Conse-
quently, all moral judgements are now seen as
questionable in principle, not just those
pertaining to areas of ambiguity. Indeed, any DEVIANCY AMPLIFICATION
lack of ability to challenge a moral judgement
would be taken as a negative sign regarding its
authority. In a depoliticized age, the power of De®nition
authority to de®ne and control popular
morality and culture has been reduced. The process whereby media, police, public
Deviance could be anything within a multi- and political reaction to non-conformity acts
cultural pluralism and has therefore lost its not to control deviancy but has the obverse
signi®cance as a social issue. Society has reaction of increasing it.
advanced to the point where condescending
sensitivity to insulting the urban poor has been
supplanted by critiques of social censure and Distinctive Features
of political authority itself. The core meaning
and purpose of the concept of social deviance Leslie Wilkins (1964) ®rst used the term
has thus been eroded. When norms lose their `deviation ampli®cation' to explore the
authority, authority loses its norms. relationship between levels of tolerance/
What concerns politicians and social scien- intolerance and the reinforcement of deviant
tists at the beginning of a new century are two identities. He noted how societies that had
issues that co-exist and interrelate in a developed an intolerant response to deviancy
constant tension: (1) to locate, understand tended to de®ne more acts as criminal and
and create areas of social agreement which took more formal action against criminals.
might constitute the basis of social censure This in turn led to the increased alienation of
and control for a more healthy, secure and deviants, more crime by deviant groups and
peaceful society, and (2) to expose, criticize a corresponding af®rmation of intolerance of
and explain social norms and systems of social deviants by conforming groups. The produc-
control which are discriminatory, hypocritical tion of intolerance is subject to a `positive
and oppressive in order to enable a society feedback loop', in which the identi®cation of
where its members are allowed to develop and reaction to deviancy becomes self-
their positive capacities to the full. Authority perpetuating. The further an individual is
is trying to regain its moral power and moral de®ned as having moved away from the
critique is trying to expose authority. The cultural norm the more they are likely
continuing harsh reality of poverty, inequality, actually to behave in a non-conformist
oppression, misinformation and ill-health on a fashion. As a result Wilkins argued that
global scale means that both these utopian deviancy control is best achieved by building
concerns face massive challenges. social systems that can tolerate difference and
minimize the number of persons who are
Colin Sumner de®ned as deviant.
DIFFERENTIAL ASSOCIATION 91
The concept of deviancy ampli®cation has applicability to other less publicized forms of
clear resonances with many of the proposi- rule-breaking are less clear. It may remain the
tions of a labelling approach in which the key case that in other instances (for example,
factor in deviancy creation is believed to be domestic violence) it is a lack of negative social
social reaction, rather than individual beha- reaction (intolerance) which provides a cli-
viour. In Britain, Jock Young (1971b) applied mate for its continuation. The extent to which
the concept in his participant observation a real ampli®cation of deviance is driven by its
study of marijuana users in Notting Hill, public identi®cation also remains questionable
London in the late 1960s. He showed how the (and probably unknowable). A complex of
relatively harmless social activity of marijuana motivations may underlie the development of
smoking was transformed into a serious social deviant careers, of which social reaction might
problem through the combined reaction of the play a relatively small part.
mass media, the police and the public.
Through sensational reporting, users were John Muncie
portrayed by the media as sick, promiscuous
and dangerous outsiders. During 1967 such Associated Concepts: deviance, labelling, moral
stereotypes in¯amed popular indignation. panic, social reaction
Media pressure forced the police to take
more direct action by increasing surveillance Key Readings
and rates of arrest. For the drug users what Cohen, S. (1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics.
was once a peripheral activity became a London, MacGibbon and Kee.
symbol of their difference and a key part of Wilkins, L.T. (1964) Social Deviance. London, Tavi-
their de®ance of perceived social injustices. stock.
Police activity acted to amplify the extent and Young, J. (1971a) `The role of the police as ampli®ers
symbolic importance of drug usage for the of deviancy, negotiators of reality and translators
users themselves. Moreover as drug taking of fantasy', in S. Cohen (ed.), Images of Deviance.
was driven underground it moved from being Harmondsworth, Penguin.
a low key, low pro®t activity to one organized Young, J. (1971b) The Drug Takers: The Social Meaning
by a `criminal underworld' and practised in an of Drug Use. London, Paladin.
even more secretive fashion. In this way social
reaction ampli®es deviance in both mythical
and actual terms. A vicious spiral of escalation
ensues.
The concept has also been used by Stan DIFFERENTIAL ASSOCIATION
Cohen (1972) in his study of the moral panic
associated with the Mods and Rockers in De®nition
Britain in the mid 1960s. Here again it was
argued that relatively minor scuf¯es between Initially developed by Edwin H. Sutherland
groups of youths were exaggerated by media (1883±1950), the concept of differential associ-
reportage and magni®ed by subsequent police ation is an attempt to account for the acqui-
and judicial targeting. Again their deviance sition and maintenance of criminal behaviour
was initially ampli®ed through social reaction in terms of contact, or association, with par-
which in turn produced an actual ampli®ca- ticular environments and social groups.
tion in real levels of deviancy as the Mods and
Rockers took on aspects of their new publicly
de®ned personas. Distinctive Features
Chicago School was the advancement of the with more contact with other people favour-
thesis that crime was brought about not by ably disposed towards crime would them-
individual factors, but was a product of social selves develop de®nitions favourable to crime,
forces. and vice versa. A de®nition towards crime
As the attention of criminologists turned to would indicate learning not only of the skills
social factors, the particular role of social to commit an offence, but would also incor-
organization and disorganization in explain- porate the attitudes and moral values that
ing crime came to prominence. A broad posi- supported criminal activity. It is important to
tion evolved that people, perhaps particularly note that Sutherland is not suggesting that the
young people, living in parts of cities that are association has to be with criminals, rather
characterized by social disadvantage and that the association is with people who might
disorganization were at a greatly increased either encourage crime or fail to censure
risk of participating in delinquency. Further, criminal acts.
once a neighbourhood becomes a focus for a As the theory developed in sophistication,
delinquent culture, then the possibility arises Sutherland set out a number of postulates:
that through cultural transmission of delin-
quent values other young people will be 1 Criminal behaviour is learned.
drawn into that crime. In a sense, these 2 Learning takes place through association
emerging sociological theories shifted patho- with other people.
logy from the individual to the social 3 The main setting for learning is within
structure. close personal groups.
During the 1930s Sutherland spent part of 4 Learning includes techniques to carry out
his academic career at the University of certain crimes and attitudes and motives
Chicago, working alongside the researchers supportive of committing crime.
who developed a sociological theory of crime. 5 Learning experiences ± differential asso-
However, Sutherland's own contribution was ciations ± will vary in frequency and
in part driven by a strain that was evident in importance for each individual.
the data collected by the Chicago researchers. 6 The processes involved in learning crim-
While formulating a cogent theoretical per- inal behaviour are no different from the
spective based on social disorganization, the learning of any other behaviour.
data also spoke of a social cohesion and
organization at the centre of criminal activity.
For example, it was dif®cult to argue that Evaluation
white collar crime was a product of social
disorganization. With the articulation of this position as Differ-
Sutherland took a broad perspective, advo- ential Association Theory, Sutherland offered
cating that crime itself is a socially de®ned perhaps the ®rst integrated social psychologi-
construct, with the power to de®ne crime held cal account of crime. Sutherland continued to
by certain in¯uential sections of society. It was re®ne his ideas throughout his writings, and
therefore not the case that he ascribed to a after his death his colleague Donald Cressey
view of crime as a product of individual continued the work (e.g. Sutherland, 1939,
psychopathology. However, he did not lose 1947; Sutherland and Cressey, 1974). Suther-
sight of the individual: he was concerned to land's views are remarkable in that they
understand how crime was transmitted anticipate much of what is to follow in both
through generations, and how a given indivi- psychology and criminology. The theory is
dual was drawn into crime. The mechanism clearly sociological in its portrayal of powerful
for cultural transmission was seen to be learn- social forces as de®ning the nature of crime.
ing, such that criminal behaviour is learned in However, with its concern for the individual,
the same way that any other behaviour is it is also psychological in orientation. The
learned. Sutherland argued that the answer to proposition that learning takes place through
the next question, how criminal behaviour is associations within social groups and intimate
learned, lies in understanding how social relationships is evident in contemporary social
in¯uences impact on the individual. Speci®- learning theory and in social structure theories
cally, each individual has a differential associa- in criminology. The view that each indivi-
tion with other people more or less disposed to dual's unique learning experiences lead to the
delinquency. acquisition of speci®c skills and cognitions ®ts
As an explanatory concept of the impact of with contemporary learning theory. Indeed,
differential associations, Sutherland invoked offenders' cognitions in the form of rational
the notion of a `de®nition': those individuals choice and decision-making have become a
DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT 93
focus for much debate in the recent literature. and its consequences (Skinner, 1938, 1969).
Finally, Sutherland's view of the normality of Skinner's experimental research showed that
the learning that leads to criminal behaviour is the environmental consequences that follow a
in accord with the many contemporary theor- speci®c behaviour act either to increase or
ists who reject explanations of crime based on decrease the probability of that behaviour
individual psychopathology. happening again in the future. When beha-
Sutherland's theory does leaves many viour produces consequences that the indivi-
questions to be answered. How does learning dual ®nds rewarding and the frequency of
occur? What exactly are the social conditions that behaviour is increased, it is said to be
that lead to learning criminal skills and reinforced. Alternatively, a behaviour that
attitudes? At an individual level, how do produces outcomes that the individual ®nds
skills and attitudes function? Sutherland did aversive and which therefore act to decrease
not have the empirical base from which he the rate of behaviour is said to be punished. (In
could begin to answer such questions but he language of operant conditioning, the term
set an agenda for future generations of `punishment' simply means that a behaviour
researchers. decreases in frequency.)
The principles of reinforcement were
Clive Hollin applied to criminal behaviour, as an extension
of differential association theory. They offered
Associated Concepts: appreciative criminology, a means, consistent with learning theory, to
Chicago School of Sociology, conditioning, account for the way in which offending could
differential reinforcement, interactionism, be both acquired and maintained (Burgess and
rational choice theory, social learning theory Akers, 1966). Jeffery (1965) suggested that
criminal behaviour can be viewed as operant
Key Readings behaviour: that is, within the context of the
Sutherland, E.H. (1939) Principles of Criminology. associations that an individual experiences,
Philadelphia, Lippincott. criminal behaviour is acquired and main-
Sutherland, E.H. (1947) Principles of Criminology, 5th tained by its reinforcing consequences.
edn. Philadelphia, Lippincott. Further, extending the principles of operant
Sutherland, E.H. and Cressey, D.R. (1974) Principles learning, criminal behaviour will occur when
of Criminology, 9th edn. Philadelphia, Lippincott. the environment signals that a criminal act is
likely to produce rewards. To understand why
a person commits a crime, it is necessary to
understand that individual's learning history.
The task of understanding an individual's
DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT learning history means understanding the
rewarding (and punishing) consequences of
De®nition the criminal behaviour for the individual
concerned. It is necessary, therefore, to under-
In learning theory the concept of reinforce- stand not only the person but also their
ment refers to the relationship between a environment which provides the setting for
behaviour and the outcomes it produces. criminal acts.
Attempts to understand criminal behaviour The setting conditions for crime operate at
in terms of its outcomes are called differential two levels: ®rst, conditions of the type known
reinforcement. to be precursors to persistent offending;
second, the immediate situational cues that
signal that a criminal act is likely to produce
Distinctive Features rewarding consequences. With regard to the
former, this might include individual factors
Sutherland's concept of differential association such as poor school attainment, family and
highlights the importance of learning in peer relationships, and social disadvantage
attempts to understand criminal behaviour. such as low family income and poor housing.
In the 1950s such ideas were being developed The importance of immediate setting events
in criminology, whilst within mainstream has been increasingly recognized over the past
psychology there were signi®cant advances few years. For example, houses may be
in the development of theories of learning. In targeted for burglary because they offer an
particular, B.F. Skinner's work on the princi- easy opportunity, such as an unlocked door or
ples of operant conditioning had demon- an open window; or because of design
strated the relationship between behaviour features, such as thick trees or high hedges,
94 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
that hide the criminal from observation and Associated Concepts: conditioning, differential
detection; or that goods such as televisions association, rational choice theory, situational
and video recorders are easily observed, crime prevention, social learning theory
making the property an attractive target. This
situational analysis of the environment in Key Readings
which crimes occur has informed both under- Burgess, R. and Akers, R. (1966) `A differential
standings of criminal behaviour and situa- association-reinforcement theory of criminal
tional crime prevention strategies to reduce behavior', Social Problems, 14, pp. 128±47.
crime. Gresswell, D.M. and Hollin, C.R. (1992) `Towards a
Moving to the consequences of criminal new methodology for making sense of case
behaviour, in acquisitive crimes such as material: An illustrative case involving attempted
burglary and embezzlement, the rewards are multiple murder', Criminal Behaviour and Mental
plainly ®nancial and material gain. Such gains Health, 2, pp. 329±41.
can be positively reinforcing in that they Jeffery, C.R. (1965) `Criminal behavior and learning
produce material outcomes that the offender theory', Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and
®nds rewarding. Alternatively, the gains can Police Science, 56, pp. 294±300.
be negatively reinforcing in that they allow the Skinner, B.F. (1938) The Behavior of Organisms: An
offender to avoid the aversive situation of Experimental Analysis. New York, Appleton±
having no money. The link between unem- Century±Crofts.
ployment and crime would serve as a broad Skinner, B.F. (1969) Contingencies of Reinforcement: A
example of how offending might be related to Theoretical Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Pre-
the need to avoid an unwanted ®nancial and ntice-Hall.
social situation. As well as tangible, material
rewards, criminal behaviour can also produce
social rewards such as peer group status and
esteem.
Jeffery also noted that criminal behaviour DISASSOCIATION
can produce aversive consequences, such as
loss of liberty and disrupted intimate relation- See Neutralization (techniques of ); Subculture
ships, that can have a punishing (in the
learning theory sense of the word) effect on
behaviour. Overall, for each and every
individual it is the historical balance of
reinforcement and punishment that deter- DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
mines the likelihood of criminal behaviour
when the opportunity presents itself. (For a
case study applying behavioural analysis to a De®nition
complex set of criminal behaviours see
Gresswell and Hollin, 1992.) A generic term covering a heterogeneous
range of social science research methods
which are concerned with the activities
Evaluation present in recorded talk and their relationship
to other texts (for example, of®cial statements
As the research on processes of learning of policies and practices). It is concerned with
matured two crucial issues emerged. First, `the way versions of the world, of society,
the complexity of people's lives means that it events and inner psychological worlds are
is impossible to know their full learning produced in discourse' (Potter, 1997, p. 146).
history. Thus, there can never really be a
complete understanding of any behaviour,
criminal or otherwise. A behavioural analysis Distinctive Features
of an individual's criminal behaviour will
always be limited by the boundaries of the Discourse analysis is a perspective on social
available information. Secondly, in adopting life which combines theoretical ideas and
operant conditioning as an explanatory frame- analytical orientations from different disci-
work, differential reinforcement falls prey to plines such as linguistics, psychology and
the criticism that it does not consider what sociology. It shares many of the features of
happens inside the individual. conversational analysis in that it is concerned
with the ways in which people ascribe
Clive Hollin meaning to routine social interactions through
DISCRETION 95
This includes the decision to take no action. nity complaints about misconduct, miscar-
Discretion is of®cially delegated within the riages of justice and an increasing number of
criminal justice system and it is not limited to expensive civil actions, police forces have paid
one decision point. Because it extends to all considerably more attention to structuring
points of decision-making and encompasses the discretionary powers of of®cers. This has
procedures and working methods, ¯ows back resulted in:
and forth through all parts of the criminal
justice system.
· Training programmes to equip of®cers to
use discretion in a more professional
Distinctive Features manner.
· The creation of ethical principles and
Discretion is one of the most contentious guidelines governing the whole organiza-
issues in criminal justice because the profes- tion.
sionals involved at each stage of the criminal · Codes of practice and internal circulars to
justice process enjoy a considerable degree of limit and/or guide stop and search,
mandated ¯exibility in the decisions they can interrogation, use of deadly force and
make about the processing of individual cases. response to domestic violence and racist
It is the day-to-day discretionary actions of violence.
police of®cers, prosecutors, defence lawyers, · Strategies to raise the visibility of of®cers'
judges and prison and probation of®cers that work practices.
lubricate the criminal justice system and · The establishment of internal and external
ensure that `justice' is discharged. Discretion reviews bodies.
provides criminal justice professionals with
the space both to engage in discriminatory These strategies are premised on the prin-
activities and to subvert policies that they do ciple that discretion is an inescapable part of
not agree with. police work. However, there are many who
There is wide agreement that the establish- believe that the problem of police discretion
ment of consistent criminal justice policies and will not be resolved until discretionary powers
the fair and equal treatment of all individuals, such as stop and search are abolished or
irrespective of class, gender or race, requires meaningful complaints systems and modes of
the regulation of discretionary powers. democratic accountability are implemented.
Particular attention has focused on the
discretionary powers of police of®cers because Eugene McLaughlin
they are the `gatekeepers' to the criminal
justice system, and unlike many other organ-
izations, discretionary power is located pri- Associated Concepts: `broken windows', crim-
marily with the lowest-ranking employees. inal justice, discrimination, disparity, dispro-
The police role requires discretionary power portionality, net widening, social control, zero
because of®cers are required to deal with a tolerance
vast range of laws, incidents and forms of
behaviour and make critical decisions. The
source of police discretion lies with the legal Key Readings
powers they are given, the nature of the Galligan, D.J. (1990) Discretionary Powers: A Legal
criminal law they have to enforce, the context Study of Of®cial Discretion. Oxford, The Clarendon
within which policework takes place and Press.
limitations on resources. However, the loca- Hawkins, K. (ed.) (1992) The Uses of Discretion.
tion of a considerable degree of unregulated Oxford, The Clarendon Press.
autonomy at the bottom of the organization Ohlin, L.E. and Remington, F.J. (1993) Discretion in
poses serious problems for supervisors. Police Criminal Justice: The Tension Between Individualiza-
of®cers can use their discretion to discriminate tion and Uniformity. Albany, State University of
for or against sections of the community either New York Press.
through under- or over-enforcement of the Walker, S. (1993) Taming the System: The Control of
law. The injudicious, provocative and abusive Discretion in Criminal Justice 1950±90. Oxford,
application of police powers triggered serious Oxford University Press.
confrontations between the police and minor- Vizant, J.C. and Crothers, L. (1998) Street-Level
ity ethnic communities in the USA and UK Leadership: Discretion and Legitimacy in Front-Line
during the 1990s. Public Service. Washington, DC, Georgetown
As a result of judicial judgements, commu- University Press.
DISCRIMINATION 97
expression of prejudiced opinions and the use secured `without discrimination on any
of negative stereotypes are often found to grounds such as sex, race, colour, language,
accompany discriminatory practice. Such pre- religion, political or other opinion, national or
judices (as racism, sexism and homophobia) social origin, association with a national
are frequently explicit. In some criminal justice minority, property, birth or other status'. The
occupations, women and people from ethnic international conventions on the elimination
and other minorities are seen by the dominant of all forms of discrimination against women
group of white men as inferior, less able to do and against racial discrimination are more
the job (in both front-line and managerial stringent. These require governments to
contexts) and ®nd their employment prospects review national and local policies, and to
affected as a result. For example, in Britain, `amend, rescind or nullify' any laws or
male police of®cers have strongly resisted the regulations which have the effect of creating
idea of women joining the police service in or perpetuating discrimination and also a duty
numbers. When they were employed, some to promote tolerance and equality of opportu-
men felt that women should be kept `in their nity (Banton, 1996).
proper place', and away from `real' police- Legislation based on these international
work (Brown, 1997). The experience of abusive principles can be found in many countries.
and discriminatory practices in the workplace These focus on the concepts of anti-discrimi-
and the so-called `glass ceiling' to career nation (for example, anti-racism/anti-sexism/
advancement has led to many employees anti-homophobia), equal opportunities, or
taking legal action against employers in af®rmative action. In the USA, the Civil
criminal justice agencies. Rights Act 1963 prohibited discrimination
against blacks and other minorities in respect
of voting, employment and the use of public
Evaluation accommodations. The Fair Housing Act 1968
prohibited property companies from discrimi-
Studies of discrimination in action in the nating when seeking buyers for houses.
criminal justice process have suggested that it Similarly, in Britain, Race Relations Acts of
occurs under certain conditions. Where the 1965 and 1968 prohibited direct discrimination
law is permissive, individual discretion wide, on the grounds of `race' and ethnicity, and the
and where there is a lack of guidelines as to 1976 Race Relations Act extended the law to
how a decision should be taken, decision- prohibit indirect discrimination. Similar legis-
making is often based on subjective judge- lation prohibits discrimination against dis-
ments. For example, police of®cers have the abled people and against women. The Race
power to stop and search a person of whom Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 will apply
they have `reasonable suspicion', an ambig- these principles for the ®rst time to public
uous and ill-de®ned concept. In such instances services, including the police.
of wide discretion and autonomy, and where The concept of discrimination is helpful to
cultural norms support particular kinds of understand the processes by which the life
stereotypes and prejudices, the results are chances of less powerful individuals and
frequently discriminatory. It has been shown groups are shaped by the responses to them
that police of®cers use colour as a criterion for by the powerful. It contributes to under-
stop and search and that black people are standing how, for example, women and
much more likely to be stopped than would be people from ethnic minority communities
expected given their numbers in the general make up a disproportionately small number
population. Where decisions, and how they of the ranks of criminal justice professions
are reached are not monitored and where (especially those at the top, such as chiefs of
accountability is weak, discrimination can go police and judges). It helps to explain why the
unchecked. culture of these professions is often hostile ±
The right to equality before the law and in both language and practice ± to particular
protection against discrimination has been groups (such as women, gay people, disabled
central to conceptions of basic human rights people and those from ethnic minority com-
that underpin the formation of the United munities). It also helps to explain why the
Nations and the European Union. Protection protections of the criminal justice process are
against discrimination is recognized in Article so often described as unsatisfactory by
7 of the Universal Declaration of Human members of these excluded groups.
Rights, and in Article 14 of the European The notion of anti-discriminatory practice is
Convention on Human Rights. These call for a perspective that acknowledges the existence
fundamental rights and freedoms to be and impact of `race', gender and homophobic
DISPARITY 99
stereotyping, prejudice and their echo in direct are unjust, and that law and policy should be
and indirect discrimination. From this per- adjusted so as to achieve equal outcomes
spective, positive action is required actively to (substantive justice). Techniques for reducing
eliminate discrimination and promote equality disparity include: judicial self-regulation (with
of opportunity. courts of appeal and the like), statutory
sentencing principles (as in penal codes),
Ben Bowling numerical guideline systems (as in the Minne-
sota system ± with clear classi®cations of
Associated Concepts: criminal justice, criminali- offences and categories of relative gravity), and
zation, discretion, disparity, disproportional- mandatory sentences (prescribed maximum
ity, human rights, social justice and minimum penalties) (Ashworth, 1998).
Calls to eradicate disparity have included
Key Readings calls for equal treatment, but this is not unprob-
Banton, M. (1996) International Action Against Racial lematic. Following critiques of the sentencing
Discrimination. Oxford, The Clarendon Press. of women for example, both in principle and
Bowling, B. and Phillips, C. (2000) Racism, Crime and practice, `equal' has come to~mean `like men'.
Justice. London, Pearson. As punishment has become increasingly more
Brown, J. (1997) `Equal opportunities and the police severe in England and Wales, the USA and
service in England and Wales: past, present and elsewhere, `equal treatment' with men is far
future possibilities', in P. Francis, P. Davies and V. from desirable (let alone `just' some would
Jupp (eds), Policing Futures. London, Macmillan. argue) and so the quest for equal treatment is
Kleg, M. (1993) Hate, Prejudice and Racism. Albany, increasingly questioned.
NY, State University of New York Press. In the USA, Tonry (1996) has revealed that
the success of sentencing guidelines in various
states has led to increased imprisonment of
women as the disparities between sentencing
females and males have been reduced. Indeed,
DISPARITY this process of `levelling-up' in order to reduce
sentencing disparities is not uncommon. The
De®nition `split the difference' policy of California is
rather unusual, however, involving a lowering
The concept of `disparity' is most clearly of sentences for men and a raising of sentences
associated with sentencing and the practice of for women.
giving different sentences for similar offences, In jurisdictions where there are sentencing
but it also has wider relevance in terms of guidelines rather than rigid systems of
offenders and victims being treated differently mandatory sentencing, the move towards
or unequally throughout the criminal justice consistency, equality and proportionality of
system when their circumstances are similar. punishment to crime has meant that mitigat-
ing circumstances, such as child care or family
responsibilities, have ceased to be available.
Distinctive Features Thus the call for `equal treatment' has been
replaced by a call for `appropriateness'. That
Discoveries of disparity in the treatment of is, it is argued that what is required is that
offenders in the criminal justice system strike circumstances appropriate to each person
at the heart of the ideal that justice is abstract should be considered regardless of assump-
and that all are equal before the law. Whilst tions about gender-based and other stereo-
disparity is concerned more with differences in typical perceptions of `needs' (Hudson, 1996).
process than differences in outcome, it is often
used interchangeably with `discrimination'
and most pointedly concerns `equal treatment'. Evaluation
Indeed, most people appear to believe that
fairness necessarily involves treating `like The concept of disparity is often confused with
cases alike'. But equal treatment involves at and used interchangeably with `discrimina-
one extreme the impartial application of tion'. Whereas disparity concerns the consis-
existing rules and procedures, regardless of tency with which criteria are applied to cases,
the outcome (procedural justice), and at the discrimination, properly understood, refers to
other, the idea that any policies or procedures the use of illegitimate criteria. For instance,
that have the effect of punishing a higher race is a prime example of a criterion that has
proportion of one social group than another been recognized as illegitimate. However, the
100 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
concepts are closely intertwined. A good deal characteristic is to argue that because of
of research has been carried out to measure certain biological, psychological or sociologi-
both disparity and discrimination, though cal conditions some people are born with or
much of this has been statistical in nature come to acquire a disposition to behave in a
with obvious limitations. First, there is an criminal manner. A `dispositional bias' is at its
assumption that disparity or discrimination strongest in positivism but is also present in
can be proved or dismissed through sophisti- those interactionist and labelling theories
cated statistical analysis. Secondly, it ignores which maintain that the labelling of people
the more dynamic aspects of decision-making as deviant cements a deviant identity and
± the signi®cance of appearance and demea- predisposes them to commit further criminal
nour, prejudices revealed in attitude rather acts. An alternative to dispositional theory can
than in speci®c decision, and the interaction be found in rational choice theory.
between defendants and of®cials. Thirdly,
such research has often focused on a single John Muncie
process or moment in decision-making, and on
a single factor (for example, race or gender), Associated Concepts: criminal careers, deviancy
when a number of factors may be relevant in ampli®cation, individual positivism, labelling,
combination. Equally, treating `like cases alike' positivism, sociological positivism
in terms of outcomes (sentencing outcomes for
instance) can mask processual differences. But
the real problem is that `disparity' is an empty
category that can be ®lled only by reference to
some standard, and in principle the standard DISPROPORTIONALITY
could be set by any criteria.
Loraine Gelsthorpe De®nition
for black and Asian defendants, in comparison such as a lack of suitably quali®ed applicants,
with their white counterparts. or an unwillingness to apply for reasons of
2 Disproportionality in the use of police preference for other occupations.
powers. The use of a power ± such as that to
stop and search under s.1 of the Police and
Criminal Evidence Act in the UK ± can be Evaluation
described as disproportionate if it is used
excessively on speci®c social groups. For Disproportionality is a slippery concept, not
example, police statistics show that black least because it has subtly different meanings
people in London are about ®ve times as depending on the context in which it is used.
likely to be stopped and searched in compar- The example of the `race and crime debate' ±
ison with white people. The term has also where the term is frequently used ± can serve
been used in human rights jurisprudence to as an illustration of the various competing
describe an imbalance in the intrusiveness of a de®nitions.
police power ± such as planting a listening There is more or less universal agreement
device ± in comparison with the seriousness of that black people are more likely than white
the crime being investigated. people to be stopped, searched, arrested and
3 Disproportionality in imprisonment. There imprisoned. The question on which the `race
are a disproportionately large number of black and crime' debate has turned is whether this
people in the prison population in Britain, in disproportionality ± found in the `outcomes'
comparison with their numbers in the general of the criminal justice process ± is the result of
population: while there are 176 white people discrimination (at one or more points in the
in prison per 100,000, there are 1,245 black process), disproportionate involvement of
people in prison per 100,000 (cf Tonry, 1994). black people in offending, or a combination
The obvious question that arises from these of both. Further questions are also raised of
statistics is why the British criminal justice how the disproportionately high rates of
system imprisons so much greater a propor- unemployment, poverty, exclusion from
tion of the black population than the white school and the concentration of black people
population. Among the possible explanations into urban areas impacts on their experiences
are a disproportionate risk of being arrested, of crime and criminal justice. These uses of the
convicted or sentenced to custody, or dis- term are subtly distinct from the penological
proportionately long prison sentences. Dis- notion of proportionality, referring to the
proportionate rates of imprisonment could extent to which punishment and crime are
also re¯ect rates of offending among the black commensurate. The de®nitions coincide when
population. it can be shown that the punishment of black
4 Disproportionality in victimization and people is not only disproportionate in com-
offending. Evidence from victimization surveys parison to their numbers in the population,
indicating that people from ethnic minorities but also unduly harsh given the nature of their
suffer a level of victimization that exceeds that offending.
of white people can be described as `dispro- Identifying disproportionate outcomes of
portionate victimization'. The term can also be the criminal justice process is a necessary, but
used to describe unexpectedly high actual or not suf®cient step towards establishing dis-
supposed `crime rates' among, for example, crimination. In civil rights jurisprudence,
black people. In this usage, `disproportionality disparities in the treatment of women,
in offending' is a rival explanation to `dis- people from ethnic and other minorities can
crimination in criminal justice' for dispropor- be taken as prima facie evidence of discrimina-
tionate imprisonment rates (Russell, 1998: 46). tion which can be tested by assessing the
5 Disproportionality in employment in the extent to which differences can be explained
criminal justice professions. Statistical evidence by legitimate factors. Where disparities are
shows that many fewer women and people shown to be unjusti®ed, the discriminatory
from ethnic minority groups are employed in practices that create and sustain them may be
criminal justice agencies, especially in more ruled unlawful and complainants entitled to
senior ranks, than would be expected on the redress.
basis of their numbers in the population. This
appears ± on the face of it ± to be the result of Ben Bowling
discrimination on the part of employers, and
there is certainly evidence that such discrimi-
nation does occur. However, this imbalance Associated Concepts: discrimination, disparity,
may also be explained by legitimate factors ± just deserts, penology, victimology
102 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
DIVERSION
Evaluation
De®nition Diversionary initiatives (especially alterna-
tives to formal court processing) have prolif-
The process of keeping offenders and other erated in most Western juvenile justice
problem populations away from the institu- systems. They are frequently state-sponsored
tional arrangements of criminal justice or and administered or controlled either by
welfare. of®cials (such as the police) or community-
based agencies. Because of its de®nitional
ambiguity, diversion has developed in differ-
Distinctive Features ent directions at different times and came to
have a variety of meanings in terms of policies
Diversion has its roots in what Stanley Cohen and programmes. In particular, the distinction
(1985) termed the `destructuring moves' of the between `diversion from' and `diversion to'
1960s. Its orientation toward an alternative has been a major concern in juvenile justice
procedural rationale grew out of a radical literature. In this latter version of diversion as
critique of the penal welfare strategy and was a referral to alternative programmes, the
closely associated with measures of decarcera- paradox is that more, rather than fewer,
tion (away from prison), delegalization (away juveniles ended up being subject to new
from the state) and deprofessionalization forms of community-based intervention.
(away from the expert). Diversion subse- Diversion can also mean keeping the
quently emerged as a dominant trend in younger and less delinquent population
juvenile justice reform. Short of rejecting penal away from a career of crime through early
sanctions completely, proponents of diversion identi®cation and treatment. The expansion
in juvenile justice advocated the development of delinquency prevention initiatives can
of initiatives to keep juveniles out of court, thus generate an in¯ationary spiral in the
custody and residential care. Their general processing of delinquency cases, leading to
aim was to remove or minimize the juveniles' greater regulation in the lives of young
penetration into the justice system. For critics people and their families (Klein, 1979).
of treatment-type interventions, increased Furthermore, critics argued that diversion
professional services were seen as either fail- has sometimes been con¯ated with a crime
ing to reform the delinquent or were morally control ideology. In the United States,
DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS 103
intensive programmes such as `boot camps', they transmit, the effects of such meanings on
which were originally promoted as an social groups and the social control function of
alternative measure to divert offenders who documents.
would otherwise be sentenced to long-term
incarceration, are increasingly being used as
a sentencing option in their own right for Distinctive Features
less serious offenders.
Wider developments of managerialism in A wide range of documents has been used in
criminal justice in the 1990s have meant that social research including life histories, diaries,
criminal justice of®cials supported diversion newspapers and magazines, stories, essays,
out of the practical need for a rationalization of®cial documents and records, web pages
of resources and the establishment of an and research reports. Such documents may be
ef®cient crime management apparatus. Diver- made up exclusively of the written word or
sion of cases in preliminary phases is now part they may include statistics, as in a report of
of the state's strategy of `de®ning deviance crime trends.
down' to adapt to high crime rates and The life history is similar to a biography or
increased caseloads in most Western criminal autobiography and is a means by which an
justice systems (Garland, 1996). individual provides a written record of his or
her own life in his or her own terms. It can
Maggy Lee include a descriptive summary of life events
and experiences and also an account of the
social world from the subject's point of view.
Associated Concepts: bifurcation, community The use of newspapers has been central in
sentences, crime prevention, decarceration, what is usually referred to as media analysis.
decriminalization, just deserts, labelling, man- Media analysis has several interests, one of
agerialism, net widening, radical non-inter- which is an examination of the way in which
vention, social control stereotypes of categories of people or types of
action are created, reinforced and ampli®ed
Key Readings with wide-ranging consequences for those
Cohen, S. (1985) Visions of Social Control: Crime, people and actions. For example, newspapers
Punishment, and Classi®cation. Cambridge, Polity have been used to examine the portrayal of
Press. folk devils and also the creation and career of
Garland, D. (1996) `The limits of the sovereign state the label and stereotype of the `mugger' in the
± strategies of crime control in contemporary British press.
society', British Journal of Criminology, 36 (4), pp. Researchers can make use of essays or other
445±71. writings which are already in existence or can
Klein, M. (1979) `Deinstitutionalization and diver- solicit such writings as part of their research
sion of juvenile offenders: a litany of impedi- design. For example, Cohen and Taylor's
ments', in N. Morris and N. Tonry (eds), Crime (1972) examination of the subjective experi-
and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, vol. 1. ences of imprisonment and strategies of
Chicago, University of Chicago Press. psychological survival among long-term pris-
Morris, A., Giller, H., Szwed E. and Geach, H. (1980) oners was in part founded on an analysis of
Justice for Children. London, Macmillan. essays and poems and topics suggested by
Pratt, J. (1986) `Diversion from the juvenile court', Cohen and Taylor themselves. Of®cial docu-
British Journal of Criminology, 24 (2), pp. 81±92. ments, for example reports of public inquiries,
provide valuable data for the analysis of
of®cial de®nitions of what is de®ned as
problematic (for example, public disorder),
what is viewed as the explanation of the
DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS problem and what is deemed as the preferred
solution. Apart from documents at a societal
or macro level, there are other of®cial
De®nition documents at an institutional or micro level
which can be just as important to the disposal
The detailed examination of documents with a and destination of individuals, for example,
view to making assertions about some aspect offenders. These are organizational records,
of the social world, for example, the social or such as probation reports, which de®ne what
historical context in which the documents is, or is not, problematic about individuals,
were produced, the social meanings which which put forward explanations for behaviour
104 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
charges are and, where relevant, why they are profession, particularly those involved in
going to court; there are clear standards of defence work, and with the aims of such
proof (with the plaintiff or prosecution organizations as Liberty. The concept has been
bearing the onus of proof ); there are extensive brought to bear in a number of areas within
rules which determine what is allowable or the criminal justice system where there has
not as legal evidence (with `hearsay evidence', been concern about a lack of fairness and
crudely translated as `gossip', being admissi- openness in decision-making processes. For
ble only under certain conditions), and with example, there have been criticisms of the lack
each party being given the opportunity to of `due process' safeguards associated with
tender evidence before the court (and jury) to the system of parole ever since its inception.
cross examine the other party so as to clarify By this is meant that there have been criticisms
matters or raise objections. In addition, within about the secretive nature of the decision-
a `due process model' judicial proceedings are making processes, a lack of accountability, and
normally conducted in open court so as to a lack of attention to offenders' rights in the
avoid situations like the Inquisition, where whole process. The concept has been similarly
`justice' is arrived at behind closed doors with employed to describe procedural irregularities
few public checks and balances upon judicial in decision-making processing affecting cau-
power. Herbert Packer, who offered an tions and prosecutions, with evidence to
incisive account of both a `due process' suggest that some people might be given
model and a `crime control' model in 1964, cautions where there is insuf®cient evidence
suggests that whilst the crime control model to convict or where there is no admission of
resembles an assembly line, the due process guilt (see Wasik et al., 1999, chapter 2).
model looks very much like an obstacle course
± with successive stages being designed to
present formidable impediments to carrying
the accused any further along the process. Evaluation
Whilst `justice must be seen to be done'
though, in the case of minors there may be The concept of `due process' has been usefully
some limitations on this procedure, with employed in critiques of criminal justice prac-
special `juvenile' or `youth courts' being held tice in recent years, particularly in England
behind closed doors so as to protect them from with regard to the lack of procedural safe-
public gaze. Also, there may be exceptions to guards in police interviews, the use of
the rule of `open court' when it is thought cautions, legal representation, parole deci-
appropriate, especially in sensitive or dif®cult sions, prisoners' rights and the use of the
situations, to hear testimony `in camera' Crown Court (with adult style criminal
(behind closed doors, with bans on publishing proceedings) for juveniles.
the proceedings). Broadly speaking, however, Whilst the concept of due process may be
the institutional processes associated with useful as a representation of `the ideal', setting
`due process' are designed to protect a out how the system ought to be, there are those
citizen's rights. who would argue that `the reality', that is how
The concept of `due process' has its origins the system is, may be so far removed that the
in the Classical School of criminology, which `ideal' becomes increasingly dif®cult to
itself was reacting against punishment under achieve with the result that the criminal justice
the ancien reÂgime of eighteenth-century Europe process ®nds it harder and harder to function
which was both arbitrary and harshly retribu- ef®ciently. In this case, complexity and high
tive, dominated by capital and corporal standards may militate against justice.
penalties. As a protagonist of the Classical It has also been argued that procedural
School, jurist and philosopher Cesare Beccaria justice (due process) is a far cry from sub-
(1738±94) published Dei Delitta e delle Pene stantive justice and that really it is substantive
(1764) (On Crimes and Punishments), which justice (that is, justice which relates to speci®c
provided a thorough and searching critique of human rights aims or to penological aims such
the criminal justice systems of Europe. as abolitionism, restorative justice, rehabilita-
Beccaria, along with others in the Classical tion and deterrence) which should be of
School called for reform, for clarity in the law central importance. Formal legalism ± mere
and `due process' in criminal procedure, adherence to rules and adoption of legal
combined with certainty and regularity of safeguards ± does not in itself make a system
punishment. just.
In England, the due process approach is
often associated with the attitudes of the legal Loraine Gelsthorpe
106 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Associated Concepts: classicism, crime control Packer, H. (1964) `Two models of the criminal
model, disproportionality, just deserts process', University of Pennsylvania Law Review,
113, pp. 1±68.
Key Readings Wasik, M., Gibbons, T. and Redmayne, M. (1999)
Hudson, B. (1996) Understanding Justice. Bucking- Criminal Justice. Text and Materials, London,
ham, Open University Press. Longman.
E
ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMINOLOGIES
ETHNIC CLEANSING
See Chicago School of Sociology; Geographies
of crime; Social ecology See Genocide
110 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Time 1 Time 2
Manipulation
Experimental
group End
Start
Control
Start End
group
variable controlled by the design of the study. groups may not signify more than the
Where literally every other possible source of operation of chance. That is, if the manipula-
variation has been controlled, any observed tion had no effect whatsoever, we would still
change in the dependent variable must be expect group scores not to come out exactly
due to the manipulation of the independent identical but to vary a little. The question is,
variable. how large is `small' or `very slightly'? In other
words, how big does a difference have to be
before we pay attention to it? As a decision
Distinctive Features rule we use statistical techniques based on the
mathematics of probability which can specify,
Figure 1 illustrates a typical two-group experi- given certain assumptions, how likely a given
ment. The upper line represents a group who size of difference is to be obtained by chance
receive the treatment or intervention, and we alone. Arbitrarily we tend to reject the `null
shall assume that their experience between hypothesis' of only chance variation when the
time 1 and time 2 is carefully controlled. Their odds on obtaining our result by chance alone
state at time 1 and time 2 is carefully are as long as one in twenty (p <0.05) or one in
measured, and any change is recorded. A a hundred (p <0.01). If the observed result is
change at time 2 might not be due to the suf®ciently unlikely on one of these criteria it
manipulation, however, it might have hap- is described as statistically signi®cant and
pened in any case simply from maturation accepted as probably re¯ecting a real under-
(growing older). We therefore have a second lying difference. (Statistical mathematics is
group who are as similar as possible to the complex but the application of statistical tests
®rst at time 1 and whose experience between is relatively easy, given computer packages to
time 1 and time 2 is as near as possible the do the calculations for us.)
same, except that they do not receive the One use of experimental designs is in the
treatment. If Group 1 differs from Group 2 at evaluation of treatments, policies and institu-
time 2, having been similar at time 1, then the tional changes. To evaluate the effectiveness of
difference must logically be due to the a new way of running a prison, for example,
treatment, which is the only difference in the one might institute the new regime in one
two group's experiences. setting and refrain from instituting it in
One further check that is generally made is another. If the two settings are very similar,
on the operation of chance itself. Because and the inmate groups are also very similar to
effects are normally probabilistic rather than each other, then differences in inmate beha-
absolute, a small difference between the two viour between the two might be taken as
114 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
probably the result of the innovation (but with law enforcement agency so engaged is of®-
considerable reservations, discussed below). cially headquartered.
Experimental research is seldom used for
the study of crime and the causes of crime,
because it is generally impossible and always Distinctive Features
unethical to institute a manipulation of some
people's lives and refrain from doing so with There are a number of legal principles that
others, at random, in order to make observable give meaning to the idea of `extraterritorial
changes in their behaviour or attitudes. The law enforcement'. The most important is the
gross factors known to be linked to crime and `territorial principle', which is a concept that
disorder ± gender, class, material deprivation re¯ects an important aspect of sovereignty.
and unemployment, membership of particular Under this principle the state has the authority
groups or subcultures, perhaps personality to act as the sovereign power within its
variables ± are not susceptible to manipulation territory. According to Shaw (1997, p. 458),
by the experimenter. this `is the indispensable foundation for the
application of the series of legal rights a state
possesses'. In the criminological domain it is
Evaluation well accepted that a state should be able to
prosecute offences committed, or allegedly
The logic of experimentation is impeccable, committed, on its soil, since territoriality is a
but its preconditions can seldom be met. For logical manifestation of the international state-
the experiment to prove causation conclu- system which vests power in the authorities
sively, every extraneous factor must be con- representing the individual state's sovereign
trolled and every variable precisely measured. power. The logical corollary of this is that
It is very dif®cult to control every extraneous other states do not have the right to exercise
factor outside the laboratory (or at all, with law enforcement powers within the territory
human subjects). Real-life experimental eva- of another sovereign state. To do so is to
luations tend to founder on the dif®culty of undertake `extraterritorial law enforcement'.
measuring the intervention (the treatment): Unless states affected by extraterritorial law
when something is `shown to work' it is enforcement consent to such it may be
generally very dif®cult indeed to specify considered a violation of state sovereignty.
precisely what that `something' is. It is the state's authorities who are respon-
sible for the conduct of law and the main-
Roger Sapsford tenance of good order within its territory.
Thus all crimes committed (or alleged to have
Associated Concepts: causation, evaluation been committed) within the territorial jurisdic-
research tion of a state may come before the municipal
courts and the accused, if convicted, may be
Key Readings sentenced. This is so even if the accused is a
Fowles, A.J. (1978) Prison Welfare: An Account of an foreign national (with the possible exception
Experiment at Liverpool. Home Of®ce Research of persons who have diplomatic immunity
Study No. 35. London, HMSO. who are normally protected from such
Haney, C., Banks, C. and Zimbardo, P.G. (1973) actions).
`Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison', The territorial concept has been modi®ed in
International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, certain ways in order that certain anomalies
pp. 69±97. can be answered. Thus territoriality has been
Jupp, V. (1989) Methods of Criminological Research. extended so as to include crimes where only
London, Unwin Hyman. part of the offence has occurred on a given
state's territory. A classic illustrative example
would be where a person ®res a weapon
across an international frontier resulting in
EXTRATERRITORIAL LAW someone's death. In such situations both the
ENFORCEMENT state where the gun was ®red and the state
where the death takes place may exercise
jurisdiction, but the actual exercise of such
De®nition powers often depends on where the offender
is apprehended. A similar logic might also be
Law enforcement activity which extends out- applied in cases involving criminal conspiracy
with the boundaries of the state in which the where criminal activities are alleged to have
EXTRATERRITORIAL LAW ENFORCEMENT 115
occurred in each of two or more countries. principle, `if the state considers it appropriate'.
This instance is, however, complicated by the Further, the Comprehensive Crime Control
fact that `criminal conspiracy' is not recog- Act (1982) extends the jurisdiction of the USA
nized in every jurisdiction. to include `[a]ny place outside the jurisdiction
Advances in communications and travel of any nation with respect to an offence by or
have transformed the context in which these against a national of the United States' (Shaw,
principles are applied. For example, in Europe 1997, p. 468). It seems likely that, as the global
the Protocol concerning Frontier Controls and ®ght against terrorism and transnational
Policing, Co-operation in Criminal Justice and organized crime develops, so will applications
Mutual Assistance relating to the Channel of the passive personality principle.
Fixed Link (1991) was established to facilitate The `protective principle' or the `state
joint French-British policing of the Channel security principle' allows states to exercise
Tunnel. Under this Protocol police, customs jurisdiction over `aliens' (i.e. non-nationals)
and immigration of®cers may carry out their who have committed, or have allegedly
duties in speci®ed `control zones' in one committed, an act abroad that is prejudicial to
another's territory, and on board through the security of the state concerned. This
trains and at international railway stations. In principle is justi®ed on the basis that it allows
effect, the Protocol creates a `reciprocal for the protection of the `vital interests' of the
constitution of sovereign territory in the state concerned. However, this is a compli-
domain of the other' (Sheptycki, 1998, p. 62). cated matter since the alleged perpetrator may
Under these arrangements each state can claim not be committing an offence under the law of
jurisdiction and can apply its own law when it the country of residence and an extradition
cannot be ascertained with certainty where request may be refused on the grounds that the
precisely an offence has been committed. alleged offence is `political'. The classic case in
However, it is also the case that the state that UK law is Joyce v Director of Public Prosecutions,
®rst receives the person suspected of having which pertained to the infamous pro-Nazi
committed such an offence has priority in Second World War propagandist Lord Haw
exercising jurisdiction. Thus, although juris- Haw, who was convicted of treason.
diction is primarily territorial it is not exclu- In the wake of the Achille Lauro incident, the
sively so. States may enter into arrangements Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Anti-Ter-
whereby jurisdiction is exercised outside the rorism Act (1986) provided for jurisdiction
national territory and whereby jurisdiction by over homicide and physical violence outside
other states is exercised within the territory. the USA where an American national is the
The `nationality principle' also may affect victim. This legislation combines aspects of
states' view of criminal jurisdiction. For both the passive personality principle and the
example, Germany claims jurisdiction over state security principle. Article 6 provides that
crimes committed by German nationals, not- jurisdiction may be claimed over an offence
withstanding that the offence may have been when a US national has been seized, threa-
committed abroad. The nationality principle tened, injured or killed; or if the offence has
may be useful in proceeding in instances been committed in an attempt to compel the
where it is alleged that persons have under- US government to do or abstain from doing
taken foreign travel for the purposes of any act.
engaging in criminal activity, for example On the `high seas' criminal law enforcement
illicit sexual activity with under-age persons. is exclusive to the ¯ag-state of the vessel
In the German case, charges may be brought in concerned. The ¯ag-state may give permission
the `tourist's' home country and is, in fact, the to another state's vessels to exercise criminal
only way to proceed since Germany will not law jurisdiction, or the captain of a vessel may
extradite its own nationals. According to Shaw invite of®cers aboard, but in the absence of
(1997), English courts usually limit such such permission, no vessel may be boarded on
actions to serious cases; treason, murder and the high seas by another country's personnel.
bigamy have provided the case law. Notable exceptions are in cases of piracy and
The `passive personality principle' asserts when a vessel has engaged in `hot pursuit'
that states may exercise jurisdiction in order to from a place within territorial waters.
try individuals for alleged offences committed
abroad which affect the nationals of the state
so claiming. The International Convention Evaluation
Against the Taking of Hostages (1979) allows
states to claim jurisdiction in hostage incidents Extraterritorial law enforcement is frequently
on the basis of the passive personality contested, even when one of the above
116 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
individual's judgement about the amount and in the UK have developed situational and
nature of crime in society and her/his own community-based safety strategies that are
neighbourhood. Self-perceived vulnerability is intended to protect citizens from the criminal
also crucial to levels of individual fear. It also or anti-social behaviour of others and enable
relates to a multitude of anxieties about the them to pursue their lives without the fear of
pace and nature of social and cultural change. victimization. These strategies speci®cally take
For example, a sense of neighbourhood account of the safety needs of vulnerable
decline and shifts in racial and ethnic demo- members of the community. Police forces have
graphics seem to be particular sources of fear also developed aggressive, high pro®le opera-
and anxiety. Conventional wisdom holds that tional strategies to shift the burden of fear
the members of the public most afraid of crime from potential victims to offenders.
are the ones who have been victimized. These policy developments and practical
However, research in a variety of jurisdictions initiatives aside, there remains an urgent need
suggests that the relationship between the risk to reach a more sophisticated theorization of
of victimization and fear of crime is not such concepts as `fear', `risk', `danger',
straightforward. Although it is true that `security' and `safety'.
among certain sections of the public fear of
crime would seem to be out of all proportion Eugene McLaughlin
to the actual risk of becoming a victim, this
general statement about risk needs to be
quali®ed. In-depth research among women in Associated Concepts: left realism, moral panic,
speci®c localities, for example, suggests that personal safety, risk, situational crime preven-
their fears and concerns are not exaggerated. tion, victimology
On the contrary, women have a well-founded
and precise understanding of their vulner- Key Readings
ability with regard to sexual violence. Best, J. (1999) Random Violence: How we Talk About
Fear of crime can escalate because of: direct New Crimes and New Victims. Berkeley, University
experience; secondary knowledge from of California Press.
family, friends and acquaintances; the cam- Davis, M. (1998) Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the
paigning work of pressure groups represent- Imagination of Disaster. New York, Metropolitan
ing victims; police of®cers and politicians who Books.
want to play the law and order card; the Ferraro, K.F. (1995) Fear of Crime: Interpreting
activities of private security ®rms looking for Victimization Risk. Albany, State University of
business; and insurance companies protecting New York Press.
their interests. Sections of the news media Hollway, W. and Jefferson, T. (2000) `The role of
have a key role to play in circulating fear of anxiety in fear of crime in everyday life', in T.
crime through: over-reporting of violent and Hope and R. Sparks (eds), Crime, Risk and
sexual crimes; personalization and sensatio- Insecurity: Law and Order in Everyday Life.
nalization techniques; intense coverage of, and London, Routledge.
commentary on, crimes that grip the public Lewis, D.A. and Salem, G.W. (1985) Fear of Crime:
imagination; and hard line and alarmist Incivility and the Production of a Social Problem.
campaigns against particular types of crim- New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction.
inals. Schlesinger, P. and Tumber, H. (1994) Reporting
Crime: The Media Politics of Criminal Justice.
Oxford, The Clarendon Press.
Evaluation
Associated Concepts: critical criminology, hege- to patriarchal institutions, for example in law,
monic masculinity, liberal feminism, feminist criminal justice and policing. As well as
research, masculinities, postmodern feminism, redressing absences in such research, these
radical feminism, sexuality, victimology studies, consistent with feminism, advocated
political and policy interventions designed to
Key Readings secure bene®cial changes to the circumstances
Daly, K. and Chesney-Lind, M. (1988) `Feminism of those found to be experiencing oppression
and criminology', Justice Quarterly, 5 (4), pp. 497± or discrimination. From the outset, feminist
538. research aimed to both understand the nature
Daly, K. (1997) `Different ways of conceptualizing of patriarchal oppression and to bring about
sex/gender in criminological theories and their change (Kelly et al., 2000).
implications for criminology', Theoretical Crimino- Although the `about women, by women, for
logy, 1 (1), pp. 25±51. women' formulation became something of an
Daly, K. (1998) `Gender, crime, and criminology', in orthodoxy in the early 1980s, it has proved
M. Tonry (ed.), The Handbook of Crime and inadequate as a de®nition. Duelli Klein (1983)
Punishment. New York, Oxford University Press. dismissed the notion that focusing on women
Maher, L. (1997) Sexed Work: Gender, Race and as subjects is suf®cient to de®ne research as
Resistance in a Brooklyn Drug Market. Oxford, The feminist, arguing that without a feminist
Clarendon Press. framework, research about women can perpe-
Smart, C. (1995) Law, Crime and Sexuality. London, tuate dominant androcentric assumptions. The
Sage. formulation was also limiting in its exclusion
Steffensmeier, D. and Allan, E. (1996) `Gender and of research into the operation of male power,
crime: toward a gendered theory of female patriarchal institutions, men and masculinity,
offending', Annual Review of Sociology, 22, pp. although these issues featured signi®cantly in
459±87. feminist research agendas. The early formula-
tion also suggested that to be feminist,
research had to be conducted by women,
although it is clear from Duelli Klein that the
signi®cant factor is a commitment to femin-
FEMINIST RESEARCH ism. As a result, the assertion that feminist
research was `for women', came closest to
identifying what makes research feminist.
De®nition De®ned by Duelli Klein (1983, p. 90) as `. . .
research that tries to take women's needs,
The term `feminist research' escapes any interests and experiences into account and
simple or ready de®nition. The questions: aims at being instrumental in improving
`what makes research feminist?' and `is it women's lives . . .' the `for women' tenet
possible to speak of feminist methodology/ies established feminist research as `women-
or method?' have been the subject of continu- centred'.
ing debate since at least the early 1980s. Through its commitments to feminism and a
women-centred research practice, feminist
research presents a major challenge to the
Distinctive Features empiricist orthodoxy that social science
research should strive for objectivity and be
Early debate centred on the assertion that value-free. In relation to criminology, it is
feminist research was `research about women, revealed that what previously passed as
by women, for women'. Feminists recognized objective was imbued with masculinist mis-
that women had been marginalized, stereo- representations of women. Recognizing that
typed and sexualized in pre/non-feminist scholarship inevitably re¯ects the conditions
research. This `absence' was ®rst addressed of its production, including the gender
by making women visible as autonomous standpoint of its producers, feminism rejects
subjects. However, the far-reaching nature of the possibility of objective knowledge. Rather,
feminist critique generated complex methodo- the subjectivity of the researcher is acknowl-
logical and epistemological questions to the edged as signi®cant in the research process.
extent that the feminist research project came Re¯exivity at the personal level is a core
to entail more than a simplistic adding of methodological principle in feminist research.
women to existing research agendas. As Holland and Ramazanoglu (1994, p. 130)
In criminology this is evident in a body of note, a key innovation of feminist research is
empirical studies examining women's relation `the attempt to grasp the parts that experience,
122 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
emotion and subjectivity play in the research It is not the research methods that make
process, rather than seeing these as weak- research distinctively feminist. Rather, what
nesses to be controlled'. distinguishes feminist research is its feminist
The critique of objectivity extended to commitment to producing research `for
research practice. Feminism demonstrated women', the identi®cation of women's experi-
how the aim of objectivity resulted in the ences as a new empirical resource and the
objecti®cation of research participants. In positioning of the researcher within the
contrast, feminist researchers respect partici- research processes. The distinctiveness of
pants as holders of valuable knowledge and feminist research lies at these related levels
experience. Being granted permission to of methodology and epistemology:
gather and use this knowledge is considered
a privilege. In accordance with feminist ethics · Feminist research is explicitly positioned
is the commitment to developing research within the feminist project of understand-
practices that ensure that women are not ing the nature of women's oppression
exploited or hurt by the research process. In with a view to ending it.
contrast to the positivist commitment to · The research agenda re¯ects women's
`objectivity', the `women-centred' character of concerns.
feminist research highlights the importance of · Its underlying theory is feminist and its
subjectivity and meaning. MacKinnon (1987), practice centres on women's experiences
for example, makes connections between within a framework that acknowledges
feminist research, consciousness raising and continuity and difference between women
the practice of sharing individual and perso- positioned differently in relation to other
nal experiences. Without structural and cul- major power structures, signi®cantly race,
tural location, subjectivity in itself is not a sexuality, culture and class.
suf®cient basis for theory-building, but when · Its outcomes are presented accessibly and
contextualized, it represents a signi®cant made available to those for whom they
starting point. will be useful.
Placing women's experience at the centre of · It recognizes the signi®cance of gender
research carries the danger of exclusions in and gender power relations in all dimen-
relation to marginalized groups, for example, sions of social life.
black and minority ethnic women, lesbians · It accepts the importance of subjectivity
and those belonging to minority faith groups. and personal experience of the researcher.
The question of `which women?' must also be · It minimizes or eliminates exploitative
interrogated. This point has been emphasized relations between researchers and partici-
in black feminist critiques and in research that pants.
is sensitive to issues of inclusion and exclu-
sion. These principles are embedded in practice
Considerable emphasis was initially placed at all stages of feminist research from
on qualitative methods in order to be sensitive theorizing the initial problem, its underpin-
to subjective experience and the meanings ning epistemologies, the data-gathering pro-
accorded to it. This approach also enabled cess, to the writing and publication of
power imbalances between the researcher and outcomes, including a strategic consideration
research subjects to be more readily negotiated. of how to frame the issues and whether and
In fact, by the late 1980s, feminist research was where to publish.
often represented as synonymous with quali-
tative methodology. However, for feminists
involved in activism, awareness of the strategic Evaluation
role of statistics in establishing a case for
political intervention meant that quantitative Feminist research is not primarily about
research also became something of a necessary methods. It is a theoretical, empirical, inter-
evil. But feminist attempts to develop more pretative, critical and engaged process,
`participant friendly', sensitive and accounta- informed by the goal of ultimately eliminating
ble survey practices led to some creative the oppression of women. Acknowledging
innovations. Contrary to some academic that feminist work is positioned within a
representations, feminist research practice has struggle for change does not mean that it is
demonstrated that all methods ± surveys, biased, simply subjective and anecdotal. On
discourse analysis, as well as autobiographical the contrary, the development of strategies for
accounts and face-to-face interviewing ± have change requires an accurate naming and
been drawn on by feminists. analysis of the existing situation or problem.
FOCUS GROUPS 123
Feminist research aims to produce outcomes and assures that the discussion remains on
that can be veri®ed. Its openness regarding the topic of interest. The data are not just the
methodological and theoretical assumptions outcome of an exchange between the facil-
facilitates accountability and criticism. How itator and the group but also the outcome of
feminist research is evaluated depends pri- interactions between group members.
marily on the standpoint of the reviewer.
Those hostile to feminism criticize its overtly
political standpoint, its emphasis on subjectiv- Distinctive Features
ity and rejection of objectivity and its lack of a
common method. Those more persuaded by The term `focus group' is derived from Merton
feminism evaluate it against its own aims and and Kendall's (1946) work on the persuasive-
achievements, including its usefulness in ness of wartime propaganda in the USA.
generating change. Focus groups subsequently became a favoured
tool within market research, for example, to
Jill Radford examine product imagery. In the l980s and
l990s they became widely used by social
Associated Concepts: critical criminology, criti- scientists and also by political parties to gather
cal research, liberal feminism, radical femin- ideas regarding policy formation and presen-
ism, re¯exivity tation.
Social scientists use focus groups in three
ways. First, they are used in an exploratory
Key Readings role, as a preliminary to more extensive
Duelli Klein, R. (1983) `How to do what we want to
research. For example, data collected from
do: thoughts about feminist methodology', in G.
the groups can be used to identify issues
Bowles and R. Duelli Klein (1983) Theories of
which are crucial to the participants them-
Women's Studies. London, Routledge and Kegan
selves, rather than what social scientists think
Paul.
are important; they may help to devise sub-
Holland, J. and Ramazanoglu, G. (1994) `Power and
sequent research design; and they can assist in
interpretation in researching young women's
the formulation of questions to be used in
sexuality', in M. Maynard and J. Purvis (eds),
structured interviews. Secondly, focus groups
Researching Women's Lives from a Feminist Perspec-
can be employed as a method in their own
tive. London, Taylor and Francis.
right and as a central part of a research study,
Kelly, L., Burton, S. and Regan, L. (1994) `Research-
for example, to ®nd out about how represen-
ing women's lives or studying women's oppres-
tatives of a community experience crime
sion? Re¯ections on what counts as feminist
victimization and what views they have
research', in M. Maynard and J. Purvis (eds),
about strategies for prevention. Thirdly,
Researching Women's Lives from a Feminist Perspec-
focus groups can be used to triangulate or
tive. London, Taylor and Francis.
support ®ndings from other forms of research.
Kelly, L., Radford, J. and Scanlon, J. (2000)
Focus groups can generate in-depth attitudes,
`Feminism, feminisms: ®ghting back for women's
opinions, examples and case studies which are
liberation', in K. Atkinson, S. Orton and G. Plain
often not obtainable from large-scale but
(eds), Feminisms on Edge: Politics, Discourses and
shallow social surveys.
National Identities. Cardiff, Cardiff Academic
Typically, focus groups comprise between
Press.
four and 12 participants, who will have been
MacKinnon, C. (1987) Feminism Unmodi®ed: Dis-
selected because they ®t some criteria that are
courses on Life and Law. Cambridge, MA, Harvard
relevant to the research topic. Usually an
University Press.
attempt is made to ensure that the composi-
tion of the group is representative of the
population to which the researchers wish the
conclusions to apply. Discussion of topics is
FOCUS GROUPS initiated by a facilitator who starts with
introductions and general issues and then
moves progressively to more focused ques-
De®nition tions. The role of facilitator is not solely to
initiate an exchange with group members (as
A form of interview which involves a number in-depth interviews) but to encourage interac-
of individuals who discuss a particular topic tions between group members which generate
under the direction of a facilitator who data not usually obtained in one-to-one inter-
promotes interaction between individuals views. The advantages of this interactive effect
124 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
public and police react to the folk devils in health of society and as a means of forming a
terms of the images and symbols presented to prognosis for its future.
them by the media. Individuals respond
accordingly, thereby con®rming their status
as deviant and as a threat to what is viewed as Evaluation
normal.
The concept `folk devil' is inextricably `Folk devil' is a robust and enduring theore-
linked to another, namely `moral panic'. The tical concept which has made important
thesis is that societies go through periods of contributions to criminology by opening up
social change which instil feelings of uncer- fruitful lines of theorizing and empirical
tainty, fear and threat in their members and enquiry. It has facilitated the fusion of
that during such periods folk devils emerge as valuable aspects of interactionism and label-
the symbol, and even the cause of what is ling theory with those offered by critical
wrong. There is a middle range explanation criminology and analysis at a social structural
for the emergence of folk devils in the media level. In doing so it has encouraged enquiry of
in terms of the need for `news value' and micro and macro aspects of social life and
`good copy'. However, Cohen's thesis also interconnections between these. What is more,
suggests a much more fundamental explana- more recent applications of discourse analysis
tion in the rapid social change which Britain within criminology have embraced the con-
was undergoing in the 1960s (decline of the cept of `folk devil' in terms of addressing what
traditional working-class community, types of people are portrayed as problematic
increased permissiveness) and the dissipation within discourses at different levels of society,
of ensuing public anxiety by identifying folk why, and with what effect.
devils as scapegoats and as symbols of what Empirical enquiries, especially those based
was wrong. on ethnographic methods, have used `folk
Hall et al. (1978) drew on Cohen's work in devil' as a sensitizing device for guiding
the analysis of the young-black-mugger-as- research. These include documentary analysis
folk-devil. Their work was similar to Cohen's of media reports, police reports and public
in the way in which it identi®ed an increase in statements by politicians and judiciary; exam-
street mugging as a socially constructed ination of the social construction of of®cial
phenomenon and traced its creation as a statistics and of their role in creating crime
moral panic in the media during the 1970s. waves and moral panics; observation of inter-
However, Hall and his colleagues linked the actions between `deviants' and law enforce-
moral panic and the portrayal of young black ment of®cers in terms of the application,
muggers as folk devils to a crisis in hegemony receipt and ampli®cation of deviant labels. The
during an economic recession in a capitalist concept has also had some policy applications,
system. It was argued that public concern for example in terms of introducing topics on
about mugging served to distract attention the negative aspects of stereotyping into the
away from the underlying causes and inher- education and training of criminal justice
ent problems of increasing economic decline. personnel and related professions.
It thrust social anxieties on to black youths Despite these contributions there is a danger
who were perceived as threats to ordinary that the discourse of `folk devil' as an exag-
(often old) citizens and to social order on the gerated and distorted image which is socially
streets of inner city areas. Also, the threat constructed and then used as a scapegoat for
from young black muggers was used to justify some other problems masks the fact that crime
increased and heavier policing and a general is a reality for those victims who have experi-
drift towards a law and order society. In enced it and for those who live in fear of it.
offering this analysis Hall et al. extended Such a viewpoint is associated with those who
Cohen's thesis by adding a Marxist and come from a position of criminological realism
critical slant to what was a predominantly and who emphasize the need to face up to the
interactionist and labelling approach to crime reality of crime.
and deviance.
Victor Jupp
The concept `folk devil' is capable of wide
applicability but has been applied most
forcefully in analysis of youth and of youth Associated Concepts: criminalization, demon-
cultures (although often in couplets such as ization, deviance, discourse analysis, ethno-
`black youth', `working-class youth', `inner graphy, interactionism, labelling, moral panic,
city youth'). A key reason for this is that youth new deviancy theory, racialization, scapegoat-
are treated as a barometer of the current social ing, social reaction, stereotyping
126 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
crime and deviance because in many respects women to take care of the sexual needs of a
it would provide the ultimate test of their large number of men: `it is the most con-
theorizing. However, the social theorist most venient sexual outlet for armies and for
closely associated with the initial application legions of strangers, perverts, and the physi-
of functionalist theorizing to crime and cally repulsive in our midst. It performs a role
deviance was Emile Durkheim. His socio- which apparently no other institution fully
logical positivism sought to identify and performs' (1971, p. 351). Davis intimates that
explain `social facts': ways of thinking, feeling prostitution reinforces the norms and values
and acting that a society imposes upon its and equilibrium of the family by providing a
members to produce order. Even though he safety valve for married men's pent up sexual
did not produce a systematic treatise on the frustrations and deviant needs. Hence, pros-
subject, crime and deviance were of interest to titution allows the family to be a model of
Durkheim because his central political project temperance and moderation and certi®es the
was working out how social cohesion and respectability of married women. Prostitution
solidarity can be secured in the face of rapid is functional for the women involved, accord-
social and economic change. ing to Davis, because it enables them to earn
Durkheim's contribution to functionalist more money than they would in other
criminology is two-fold. First, he argued that occupations. This led to the conclusion that
crime and deviance are normal (social facts) there will always be a system of social
because acts that offend collective norms and dominance that provides the motive for
expectations exist in all societies and their commercial sex.
universal presence points to their systemic Durkheim's second contribution was his
functionality. For Durkheim, crime and theorizing on anomie. Durkheim never
deviance, so long as they are not excessive, spelled out how much crime and deviance
are functional because (i) the ritual of punish- are healthy and normal. For him, too little
ment is an expressive experience that serves to crime and deviance are indicative of an
bind together members of a social group and overly regulated society and excessive intol-
establish a sense of community and (ii) they erance, whereas too much crime and
are useful in inaugurating necessary changes deviance lower the levels of trust and inter-
and preparing people for change. Even if dependence that are necessary for the
society discovered the means for eradicating survival of society. It is this point that
real crimes, it would have to elevate human connects across to Durkheim's notion of the
weaknesses and petty vices to the status of anomic society. This is a society in which the
crime. Albert Cohen (1966) built on Dur- rules of behaviour and norms have broken
kheim's position by clarifying the various down during periods of rapid social change
ways that crime and deviance make positive and economic transition (recession, depres-
contributions to society: sion or economic boom). If a gap occurs
between what the population expects and
· deviance cuts through `red tape'; what the economic and productive forces of
· deviance acts as a safety valve for societal society can deliver, a situation of strain
pressures and discontents and reduces develops that can manifest itself in norm-
strains; lessness or anomie. A state of anomie
· deviance clari®es the rules; undermines a society's capacity to exercise
· deviance unites the group against the social control. Robert Merton (1957) subse-
deviant(s) and provides commonality and quently reworked the concept of anomie in
solidarity; an attempt to illustrate how the USA's social
· deviance de®nes and heightens confor- structure exerted pressure on individuals to
mity and normality; engage in non-conformist behaviour and
· deviance acts as a warning signal to could generate dysfunctionality. Durkheim
defects in society. viewed anomie as problematic and asso-
ciated it with institutional normlessness and
A classic example of functionalist theorizing abnormality, but for Merton anomie resulted
on the positive contribution of crime and from the incongruity between culturally
deviance to the social order remains Kingsley valued goals associated with the `American
Davis's controversial analysis of the role Dream' and the number of legitimate oppor-
played by prostitution in contemporary tunities available to pursue and achieve these
society. He argues that prostitution exists goals. The resulting strain and frustration
despite near universal condemnation and pro- produce ®ve `modes of adaptation' ± con-
hibition because it enables a small number of formity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism and
FUNCTIONALISM 129
rebellion. Not surprisingly, the most common criminology retain a ®rm presence in much
deviant response ± innovation ± was to be of North American criminology.
found among the lower classes. Many of the
major sociological theories of delinquency Eugene McLaughlin
are indebted to Merton's reworking of
Durkheim's theorizing (as evidenced in sub-
Associated Concepts: anomie, determinism,
cultural theories and variants of control
positivism, social control theory, sociological
theory, for example).
positivism, strain theory, subculture
ality. This was also the period when socio- Distinctive Features
logical explanations of crime were dominant.
However, during the 1980s crime was revis- In 1933, the Polish scholar Raphael Lemkin
ited by the sociobiologists and by those proposed that an international treaty be
researchers who continued to carry out twin agreed to de®ne aggression towards national,
and adoption studies. Those presenting ethnic and religious groups as an international
papers at controversial conferences on genet- crime. In 1944, Lemkin, who was by then an
ics and crime held in the UK and USA during advisor to the United States War Department,
1995 rejected the search for the `gene for coined the term genocide because he believed
crime'. However, they also stressed that the that the terms `mass murder' and `war crimes'
research capabilities were now available to were inadequate to the task of describing and
enable scientists to untangle the genetic and explaining what had happened in Nazi
environmental sources of crime and disorder Germany. Existing criminal categories could
and identify the temperamental traits and not account for the motive for the crime, that
behavioural predispositions that may trigger is, acting on the principle that the victim is not
some individuals to engage in speci®c forms human. Lemkin de®ned genocide as a coordi-
of criminality and disorder. More recently, nated plan to destroy the essential foundations
there has been renewed speculation that the of the life of national groups, with the aim of
human genome project will allow scientists to annihilating the groups themselves. Accord-
pronounce on the complex ways criminality ing to Lemkin, genocide had two phases: ®rst,
and disorder are genetically encoded. the destruction of the national pattern of the
oppressed group; and secondly, the imposi-
Eugene McLaughlin tion of the national pattern of the oppressor.
What is signi®cant to note from the original
formulation is that physical extermination is
Associated Concepts: biological criminology, only the most extreme form of genocide.
individual positivism, positivism, racialization In the aftermath of the Nuremberg war
crimes trials, the UN General Assembly
Key Readings adopted a resolution verifying that genocide
Bock, G.R. and Goode, J. (eds) (1996) Genetics of was the most serious crime against humanity
Criminal and Anti-Social Behaviour. Chichester, and that it was prohibited under international
John Wiley and Sons. law irrespective of whether it occurred in
Burley, J. (1998) The Genetic Revolution and Human peace or war. The 1948 UN Convention on the
Rights. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Jones, S. (1996) In the Blood. London, Harper Collins. Genocide de®ned genocide as `acts committed
Lombroso, C. (ed.) (1911) Criminal Man According to with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
the Classi®cation of Cesare Lombroso. New York, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'.
Putnam. Genocidal acts include: killing members of the
Seldon, S. (1999) Inheriting Shame: The Story of group; causing serious bodily or mental harm
Eugenics and Racism in America. New York, to members of the group; deliberately in¯ict-
Teachers College Press. ing on the group conditions of life calculated
Wilson, J.Q. and Herrnstein, R. (1985) Crime and to bring about its destruction in whole or in
Human Nature. New York, Simon and Schuster. part; imposing measures intended to prevent
births within the group; and forcibly transfer-
ring children of the group to another group.
The 1948 Convention also outlawed conspi-
racy to commit genocide, attempts to commit
genocide and complicity in genocide. Cru-
GENOCIDE cially, the convention covers both individual
and state responsibility for acts of genocide
and imposed a general duty on all signatory
De®nition states not only to punish but to prevent and
suppress such acts. The convention ruled that
Acts organized and committed, in time of those charged with genocide could be tried by
peace or war, with the intent to exterminate, in court in the territory within which the act was
whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or committed or by a specially convened inter-
religious group. It is distinguishable from all national court. To facilitate extradition pro-
other crimes, including ethnic cleansing, ceedings between states, genocide was also
because it is state organized. decreed to be a non-political crime.
132 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
during the nineteenth century, most notably in · Studies of how and why the fear of crime
Belgium by Adolphe Quetelet (1796±1874) and is spatialized. This involves analysing the
in France by A.M. Guerry. Maps were drawn public's perception of where the crime
to plot regional patterns of crime, compare problem is located and working through
rural and urban differences and survey the their mental mappings of safe and
relationship between crime and other socio- dangerous places.
economic conditions. In an allied develop- · Studies of the ¯ow and movement of par-
ment, in England observational studies were ticular crimes such as drugs and prosti-
undertaken within the newly industrialized tution between different localities and
cities by Mayhew and Booth to identify and countries.
examine `criminal areas' such as the `rookeries'
of London. Many of these early surveys were
undertaken to further the case for social and Evaluation
moral reform. An ecological approach to the
study of urban crime was more fully devel- Geographical research on crime and crimin-
oped by the Chicago School of social research ality has continued to play a central role in the
during the 1920s. The guiding principle of the development of crime prevention program-
Chicago School was that cities were living mes, ranging from situational crime preven-
organisms, composed of interconnected parts tion strategies such as target hardening and
and the task of researchers was to understand crime prevention through environmental
how each part related to the overall structure design (CPED). The underlying premise of
of the city and the other parts. The zonal these crime prevention efforts is that proper
theory of city growth developed by Robert design and utilization of the built environment
Park and Ernest Burgess enabled them to map in conjunction with new surveillance technol-
the contours of crime more precisely and to ogies can lead to a reduction in the fear and
offer an explanation as to why crime was incidence of crime and an improvement in the
concentrated in the zone of transition. Clifford quality of urban life. De facto spatial policing is
Shaw and Henry McKay used this conceptual also taking place through the privatization of
framework to construct their path-breaking public space and the development of gated
study of the relationship between juvenile or `crime-proof' communities. Sophisticated
delinquency, gang membership and urban crime mapping techniques such as Geographic
social disorganization. Versions of the eco- Information Systems (GIS) are also a logical, if
logical model and methodologies developed controversial, outcome of spatial research into
by the Chicago school dominated studies of crime `hotspots' (places where according to a
urban crime undertaken between the 1920s variety of statistics the opportunities for
and 1960s in cities across the United States and certain forms of crime are highest). GIS
Europe. consists of specialist database management
As a result of theoretical and methodologi- systems, spatial analysis packages and sophis-
cal developments in the 1980s and 1990s, ticated computer mapping systems which
environmental criminologies have given way facilitate `geocoded' proximity analysis, spa-
to research on how crime is spatialized. A new tial clustering analysis and spatial correlation
generation of criminologists from a variety of procedures. It is these features that have made
disciplinary backgrounds became interested in GIS an invaluable tool not only for mapping
theorizing the complex human public interac- crime `hotspots' but for analysing crime trends
tions and relationships associated with living and managing criminal investigations.
in `the city'. Contemporary spatial approaches
Eugene McLaughlin
to the study of crime can be grouped into four
broad research areas:
Associated Concepts: Chicago School of Sociol-
· Studies concerned with identifying the ogy, defensible space, fear of crime, situational
spatial distribution of crime, criminogenic crime prevention, social ecology, surveillance,
localities, vulnerable areas, defended victimology
spaces and sites of contestation and
resistance. Key Readings
· Studies of how and why the risk of crime Cohen, J. (1941) `The geography of crime', Annals of
victimization is distributed over space and the American Academy of Political and Social
the differential risks within and between Sciences, 217, pp. 29±37.
different localities and various sections of Fyfe, N. (2001) Geography of Crime and Policing.
the population. Oxford, Blackwell.
134 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Grescoe, T. (1996) `The geography of crime', 1998). Governmentality thus focuses on ques-
Geographical Magazine, 9, pp. 26±7. tions of how government is planned as a
Hirsch®eld, A., Brown, P. and Todd, P. (1995) `GIS practical exercise. Typical research has exam-
and the analysis of spatially referenced crime ined such issues as: how are the nature of
data: experiences in Merseyside UK', International offenders and the mainsprings of crime re-
Journal of Geographical Information Systems, 9 (2), imagined when we move from welfare states
pp. 191±210. to neo-liberal government? How is this change
Longley, P.A., Goodchild, M., Maguire, D. and linked to changes in the types of sanction that
Rhind, D.W. (1999) Geographical Information Sys- are deployed to deal with crime? What new
tems. London, John Wiley and Sons. `problems' of crime emerge ± for example:
McLaughlin, E. and Muncie, J. (1999) `Walled cities: how to make potential victims more active in
surveillance, regulation and segregation', in securing themselves and their property
S. Pile, C. Brook and G. Mooney (eds), Unruly against crime? And how to make police
Cities. London, Routledge. more `responsive' to public demands for
security?
Governmentality also assumes the dispersal
of governance in contemporary societies. `The
GOVERNMENTALITY state' becomes merely one site ± or, rather, a
complex of sites ± in which government is
located. Governmentality work has examined
De®nition how government of crime is practised, not
simply by police and the criminal justice
The term applies to the characteristically `system', but also by the insurance industry,
`modern' form of government that governs communities, potential victims, shopping
each individual and the `population' through centre managers and so on. Such work, it can
apparatuses of security (police, courts, health be seen, avoids explanation, especially where
and welfare departments, etc.). The term also this reduces government to a re¯ex of some
refers to an approach that focuses on the other force, such as class interests or post-
intellectual, linguistic and technical ways in modernity. Rather, government is seen to be
which phenomena are constituted by govern- `assembled' from available intellectual and
ment as governable problems. It is primarily material resources ± and so is regarded as
in the latter sense that governmentality has a humanly contingent rather than theoretically
place in criminology. determined. Governmental accounts are also
characterized by a refusal to subject govern-
ment to critique, rather seeing such evaluation
Distinctive Features as internal to government itself. These charac-
teristics re¯ect a methodological suspension or
Studying social relations from the point of denial of truth judgements ± for understand-
view of governmentality means focusing on ing how government `makes up' its truths is a
governance as a mentality or rationality of key object of analysis. Governmentality denies
rule, stressing that phenomena have to be an accessible `real truth' from which critique
intellectually and linguistically represented as and explanation are mounted.
a certain kind of problem in order for them to
be governed. For example, Simon (1997) has
argued that American society increasingly is Evaluation
`governed through crime', as more and more
matters are represented as problems of Governmentality is an in¯uential but still
`criminality' and its effects, to be governed inchoate approach, and there are debates
through criminal justice, crime prevention and among its adherents about its nature and
so on. In turn, governmentality characteristi- purpose (O'Malley et al., 1997). Consequently,
cally examines how such `problematizations' making comment upon its strengths and
are linked to practicable techniques for shortcomings is subject to dispute. However,
achieving their government. For example, on the positive side, it has provided original
crime is said increasingly to be governed and incisive analyses of the government of
through risk. This marginalizes therapeutic or crime, especially related to risk techniques and
punitive techniques for governing offenders, neo-liberal politics. Perhaps this is because it
and valorizes such techniques as crime pre- breaks away from highly abstract theoriza-
vention, offender incapacitation and victim tions, and focuses on detailed con®gurations
compensation and `empowerment' (O'Malley, of rule. Perhaps too it is because the refusal to
GOVERNMENTALITY 135
engage in critique has generated a kind of superior regime of truth. This process of
non-committed analytic that has opened up displaying the truth claims of government,
many new insights. However, these possible and their contingent nature, is the operation of
sources of strength are also its most criticized `diagnosis' that displaces critique within
features. governmentality. Diagnosis focuses on the
One of the most contentious features is its question of `how not to be governed thus?',
focus on the `ideal knowledges' or mentalities rather than on that of `how can we best be
of governance, rather than on `what actually governed?'. Whether this is nihilistic, or
happens'. For many critics of this aspect of promotes contestation of government, is the
governmentality, it is `essential to explore the key evaluative issue; but it involves a political
real practices and processes in which these rather than methodological choice.
programs and rationalities and technologies
are selectively and sometimes unexpectedly Pat O'Malley
used, with all their compromised formations
and unintended effects' (Garland, 1997). For
some governmentality writers, however, this Associated Concepts: discourse analysis, post-
descends into familiar, realist, sociological structuralism, risk, social constructionism
terrain, unlikely to provide resources to think
beyond what already exists, and ± perhaps Key Readings
ironically ± unlikely to destabilize rule. For Dean, M. (1999) Governmentality. Power and Rule in
others, however, this exercise may be essen- Modern Society. London, Sage.
tial, as part of the process of understanding Garland, D. (1997) ```Governmentality'' and the
government's key characteristic of failure. problem of crime', Theoretical Criminology, 1, pp.
Another contested feature is governmenta- 173±214.
lity's rejection of `critique'. Some criticize O'Malley, P. (ed.) (1998) Crime and the Risk Society.
governmentality because it does not allow Aldershot, Dartmouth.
commentators to identify how malfunctioning O'Malley, P., Weir, L. and Shearing, C. (1997)
institutions can be reformed, how authorities' `Governmentality, criticism, politics', Economy and
explanations of crime are wrong, how and Society, 26, pp. 501±17.
why programmes fail and so on (e.g. Garland, Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom. Cambridge,
1997). One response would argue that this Cambridge University Press.
criticism fails to escape the problematic of Simon, J. (1997) `Governing through crime', in G.
government ± for like government, it sets for Fisher and L. Friedman (eds), The Crime Conun-
itself the task of making us into something drum: Essays on Criminal Justice. Boulder, CO,
else, to govern us better, on the basis of a Westview Press.
H
desires and the attractions of the senses. hedonistic desires. Other, cultural, theories of
Hedonism is also associated with risk-taking hedonistic pathology associated the boring,
and excitement in criminality. mundane and routine conditions of lower-class
life with the emergence of criminogenic `focal
concerns' such as the search for `excitement' or
Distinctive Features `thrills' (Miller, 1958). As such models had
trouble accounting for the gendered nature of
Hedonism is fundamental to the formation of working-class crime, subsidiary accounts sug-
classical criminology, especially in the work of gested that the close familial governance of
Bentham (1823) and Beccaria. De®ned as the young women's (sexualized) hedonism gave
desire to maximize pleasure and minimize women fewer opportunities to offend, and
pain, it was assumed to be the underlying resulted in domesticated desires that immu-
mainspring of human behaviour. The rational nized them against offending in later life
choice criminal was imagined as weighing up (Cohen, 1954).
the balance of pleasures and pains likely to While most of these models linked crime to
result from the commission of a crime. Where hedonism via social pathologies, the nexus
this `felicity calculus' indicated a positive is also found in psychological approaches.
balance of pleasures, criminal offending Thus Eysenck (1964) identi®ed criminality
would result. As such, the assumption of especially with extroversion (outgoing impul-
hedonism underlies most punitive penology siveness) and neuroticism (behavioural
geared to deterrence. Bentham, himself, instability). Extroverts, because of lower
developed tables for the in¯iction of punish- response thresholds in the brain's reticular
ment based on the principle that the net formation, are said to require stronger stimuli
calculus of pain had only marginally to to achieve excitation, and to respond weakly
outbalance the sum of pains. This principle, to rewards (pleasures) and punishments
in turn, played a key intellectual role in the (pains). Therefore, they seek strong stimuli
assault on the `excessive' punishments of the and learn conformity more slowly, and thus ±
eighteenth century. it is argued ± are more likely to commit crime.
By the 1930s, much academic criminology The familiar criminological formula of weak
had dispensed with such thinking, arguing moral control coupled with strong desire for
that few people lead such calculating lives, excitement is thereby retained: but the felicity
that most crimes are spontaneous acts of irra- calculus ± the hedonistic attempt to achieve
tionality, and that many criminals are con- surplus pleasure over pain ± has been
stitutionally incapable of performing the translated into a neuro-psychological function
calculation of pleasures and pains. Despite of the brain.
this, the model of hedonistic behaviour per- More recently, this association between
sisted, albeit transformed. As crime increas- crime and excitement has been revived but
ingly came to be regarded as a pathology, taken in new directions (e.g. Bell and Bell,
hedonism too was pathologized ± re-created 1993). For example, rejecting rational choice
as the inability to govern the desire for models, Katz (1988) has argued that crimino-
pleasure and excitement. This pathology was logy has underestimated crime's emotional
theorized as a cause of crime in a multitude of attractions. These extend hedonism beyond
ways by positivist sociology and psychology. mere `pleasures' to include other sources of
Sociologically, hedonism was understood in excitement (righteous slaughter, sneaky thrills,
Victorian terms as a universal, animalistic doing stick-ups) that allow the subject to
quality that socialization had to overlay with emotionally transcend the mundane nature of
discipline. The middle classes were under- modern existence. Ironically, Katz's work, like
stood as `normal' precisely because of such most traditional sociological criminology,
self-government: `deferred grati®cation' assumes a pathology (this time in the nature
became the norm against which hedonism of modernity) that gives rise to a pressure to
was pathologized. Predictably, weak socializa- offend `hedonistically'.
tion emerged early as a cause of crime, and Such anti-rationalist developments coincide
`broken' and `inadequate' working-class with the return of the rational choice felicity
families were identi®ed as failing to implant principle ± embedded in the models of
the necessary norms and techniques of self- situational crime prevention and risk manage-
discipline. More broadly, the breakdown of ment that have become characteristic of ®n de
social control in the chaotic environment of sieÁcle administrative criminology. For the
inner city `transitional zones' was seen as moment, at least, the latter has been the
giving young people excessive licence for their more in¯uential.
138 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Associated Concepts: critical criminology, fem- ing the Marxist idea of the centrality of classes
inist criminologies, hegemony, Marxist crim- and class struggle, his key insight was that
inologies, masculinities successful class rule entails the creation,
through alliances, concessions, compromises
Key Readings and new ethico-political ideas and projects, of
Connell, R.W. (1987) Gender and Power. Cambridge, a collective will which was not narrowly class-
Polity Press. based but had popular, national appeal. In
Connell, R.W. (1995) Masculinities. Cambridge, short, a class wishing to become hegemonic
Polity Press. had to `nationalize' itself, had to become a
Jefferson, T. (1994) `Theorizing masculine subjec- `popular religion'.
tivity', in T. Newburn and E.A. Stanko (eds), When such a `national-popular' consensus
Just Boys Doing Business? London, Routledge, is achieved, the dominant classes can be said
pp. 10±31. to be ruling hegemonically: through authority
Messerschmidt, J.W. (1993) Masculinities and Crime. or leadership rather than coercion or force.
Lanham, MD, Rowman and Little®eld. However, such an achievement is always
Walklate, S. (1995) Gender and Crime. London, fragile and temporary since it is contingent
Prentice±Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf. upon an ever-changing set of economic,
Wetherell, M. and Edley, N. (1999) `Negotiating political and ideological conditions, including,
hegemonic masculinity: imaginary positions and crucially, the constant challenges from the
psycho-discursive practices', Feminism and Psy- subordinate classes, whose goal, according to
chology, 9 (3), pp. 335±56. Gramsci, should be to win over the people to
an alternative hegemonic project. Conse-
quently, the achievement of hegemony in a
particular historical moment, or conjuncture,
could be followed by more coercive, less
HEGEMONY hegemonic moments: new legislation, tougher
policing and, in extremis, the use of the army,
to deal with dissent, unrest, con¯ict and, at
De®nition worst, civil war.
Within criminology, Stuart Hall and collea-
gues used this Gramscian notion of hegemony
An unequal relationship between the ruling to underpin their attempt, in Policing the Crisis
class (or alliance of classes) and the subordi- (1978), to understand the state's response to
nate classes within a given social order which mugging in the 1970s. One of the early
is based on authority or leadership achieved examples of Marxist criminology in Britain,
through the production of consent rather than Policing the Crisis argued that the hegemony
through the use of coercion or force. enjoyed by the ruling alliance in Britain in the
1950s entered into crisis in the 1960s as the
conditions underpinning the postwar social
Distinctive Features democratic settlement proved impossible to
sustain. Challenges to the existing consensus
One of the earliest uses of the term hegemony arose on multiple fronts, around issues to do
appears in the writings of Lenin in the phrase with youth, drugs, sexual mores, race, women,
`hegemony of the proletariat'. Then it had the students, industrial relations, crime and
narrow meaning of political leadership within Northern Ireland. By the 1970s, the conditions
a class alliance, speci®cally the need for for successful hegemonic rule had collapsed,
proletarian leadership in any alliance with signalled by an election-winning law and
the peasantry. In the writings of the Italian order crusade, new laws, the tougher policing
Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1971), the term of all kinds of protest and unrest, the entry of
achieves a far broader reach. Speci®cally, he the army into Northern Ireland, and intern-
expanded its meaning to include moral and ment. Set within this context, the crackdown
intellectual leadership across society as a on mugging in 1972±3 by the police and the
whole. He developed the idea as a way of judiciary, to the accompaniment of media
conceptualizing how, in the aftermath of the headlines and sermonizing editorials, was
Russian Revolution and the First World War, symptomatic of the collapse of hegemony. As
the industrial capitalist democracies of Wes- one among several moral panics, the `mugger'
tern Europe and the USA managed to avoid became a convenient folk devil, or scapegoat,
the proletarian uprisings predicted for them for the new, more troubled and con¯ictual
by classical Marxism. Without ever abandon- times.
HIDDEN CRIME 141
crime statistics with results derived from health and safety practices. A second feature is
surveys of victims (whereby individuals are that there are no statistics, that is of®cial
asked if they have recently been a victim of statistics fail to record or classify the crime.
crime, and if so, whether they reported it to This may be because victims are unaware a
the police) and from self-report studies crime has been committed, they may treat the
(whereby individuals are asked whether they crime as normal and not something to be
have recently committed crimes and whether reported, they may be frightened or intimi-
they were subsequently charged with the dated or they may be unwilling to report the
offence). The extent of hidden crime can vary crime to the police because it is something in
according to the category of the crime but it is which they have colluded. Even where an
known to exist to some degree in relation to all action or event is reported to the police the
such categories. Even in relation to so-called complexity of some of the crimes, especially
conventional crimes ± for example street those relating to ®nancial transaction, together
crimes, car crimes and house burglary ± with the ingenuity and specialist knowledge
some proportion remain hidden. of those carrying them out, often means that
Outside of so-called conventional crimes the police are unable to satisfy themselves that
there are other types which, because of their a crime has been perpetrated and can there-
nature, are not represented in of®cial statistics fore be recorded as such.
or are massively under-represented. The range A third feature of hidden crime is no theory,
includes, ®rst, crimes committed by employ- that is, criminologists and others have
ees against organizations for which they work, neglected to explain the crime, its existence
such as using an organization's facilities and its causes. Criminology has been heavily
illegally and stealing work-based materials in¯uenced by studies of sections of the
for personal use. Secondly, there are crimes population which are most visible in of®cial
perpetrated by organizations against their crime statistics and by explanations which can
employees, including breaches of health and be cast in terms of individual pathology. In the
safety regulations resulting in workplace main, hidden crimes do not ®t into these
injuries, illnesses, accidents and sometimes categories. Also, the sheer diversity of hidden
deaths. A third example is fraudulent beha- or invisible crimes and of the sites at which
viour, including the use of another's money they are committed ± at the workplace, on the
for personal or organizational gain without Internet, in the ®nancial marketplace ±
their knowledge or consent, and the use of probably militates against the development
`sleaze' money to change the course of events, of any comprehensive theory of such crimes.
such as in political life or in the ®eld of sport Fourthly, hidden crime is characterized by
and leisure. Fourthly, the range encompasses no research. There are a number of reasons for
hitherto neglected green crimes, including the this, for example there are the mutually
pollution of the environment by industrial reinforcing effects of the paucity of knowl-
organizations and the smuggling of endan- edge, statistics and theory in relation to
gered species and products produced from invisible crimes. Further, there are practical
them. A ®fth category can be given the generic aspects of conducting social inquiry which
title `cybercrime'. This includes computer restrict the feasibility and possibility of
crimes such as hacking, the illegal appropria- researching invisible crimes. One of these
tion of image and likeness and the use of the relates to access. There are often parties who
Internet in order to sell drugs, to publish have vested interests in relation to with-
obscene materials or to advertise services in holding information about their activities ±
relation to paedophilia. parties who by one means or another are able
Seven features of hidden or invisible crimes to exercise power to deny researchers access to
can be identi®ed (Jupp et al., 1999). First, no data with which to formulate and support
knowledge, that is, there is little individual or conclusions. In the absence of such data either
public knowledge that the crime has been the research is not carried out or it is carried
committed. The ingenuity of the fraudster, the out by means that are not typically found in
complexity of the act and the lack of knowl- standard texts on research methods. Where
edge and vigilance can all conspire to render a the latter occurs, investigators are open to the,
crime invisible. Even where individuals are often unjusti®able, criticism of being non-
aware that an act or event has taken place it scienti®c and biased.
can be taken for granted as normal rather than Fifthly, there is the characteristic of no con-
as criminal. For example, workers in hazar- trol, that is, there are no formal or systematic
dous industries may see themselves as doing a mechanisms for control of such crimes. This
dif®cult job rather than as victims of illicit can be the result of blurring of boundaries
HISTORICAL METHODS 143
between what is legitimate and illegitimate, depends on whether the template ®ts (do the
because of the complexity of many crimes, for elements apply?), the degree to which it ®ts (to
example, fraud, and also because of the what extent does it apply?) and the power of
diffusion of offenders. Further, where crime interactive effects (to what extent do the
is international, especially in the context of elements reinforce one another?).
increasing globalization and fewer barriers
between nation-states, the possibility of detec- Victor Jupp
tion, let alone prevention and control is made
more dif®cult. Sixthly, hidden crimes are
characterized by no politics, that is, such Associated Concepts: corporate crime, crime,
crimes as breaches of health and safety legis- cybercrime, family crime, of®cial criminal
lation do not typically appear as a signi®cant statistics, self reports, social harm, state
part of the political agenda. Much more crime, victim surveys, white collar crime
emphasis is placed on conventional and
street level crimes and on law and order Key Readings
campaigns to combat them. Finally, there is no Box, S. (1992) Power, Crime and Mysti®cation. London,
panic, that is, hidden crimes are not consti- Routledge.
tuted as moral panics and their perpetrators Davies, P., Francis, P. and Jupp, V.R. (eds) (1999)
are not portrayed as folk devils. There is a Invisible Crimes: Their Victims and Their Regulation.
close connection between the formulation of London, Macmillan.
the political agenda and the construction and Jupp, V.R., Davies, P. and Francis, P. (1999) `The
ampli®cation of moral panics and folk devils features of invisible crimes', in P. Davies, P.
in the media. There has been increased aware- Francis and V.R. Jupp (eds), Invisible Crimes: Their
ness of ®nancial irregularities, `sleaze' and Victims and Their Regulation. London, Macmillan.
breaches of food safety regulations but these
are invariably portrayed as scandals which are
exposed rather than examples of sustained
deviant or criminal activity. They are often
treated as `one-offs' and the fault of particular HISTORICAL METHODS
individuals at particular times rather than as
deep-seated structural problems.
De®nition
presumption of innocence and humane pun- become a dominant narrative and an import-
ishment if convicted. ant issue for criminologists, especially through
the growth of victimology surrounding the
abuse of women and children.
Distinctive Features
and Jonathan Simon (1992). Their argument is penality, penology, rehabilitation, retribution,
that a `New Penology' has risen at the expense social defence theory
of an `Old Penology'. For them, the `Old
Penology' was preoccupied with such matters Key Readings
as guilt, responsibility and obligation, as well Currie, E. (1996) Is America Winning the War on Crime
as diagnosis, intervention and treatment of the and Should Britain Follow its Example? London,
individual offender. Whereas, they claim the NACRO.
`New Penology' is radically different and Feeley, M. and Simon, J. (1992) `The New Penology.
actuarial in orientation as it is concerned with Notes on the emerging strategy of corrections and
techniques for identifying, classifying and its implications', Criminology, 30 (4), pp. 449±70.
managing groups sorted by levels of danger- Greenwood, P. (1983) `Controlling the crime rate
ousness. The aim is not to intervene in through imprisonment', in J.Q. Wilson (ed.),
offenders' lives for the purposes of ascertain- Crime and Public Policy. San Francisco, Institute
ing responsibility or rehabilitating them. It is for Contemporary Studies.
instead a strategy of managing dangerousness, Mauer, M. (1997) Intended and Unintended Conse-
and incapacitation is part of this broader, quences: State Racial Disparities in Imprisonment.
apolitical displacement of individualized dis- Washington, DC, The Sentencing Project.
cipline and rehabilitation. Murray, C. (1997) Does Prison Work? London,
Critics of incapacitation, like Elliot Currie Institute for Economic Affairs.
(1996), argue that whilst this strategy might Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society. London, Sage.
have had some effect on the crime rate, this
effect is distressingly small in relation to the
huge costs involved. At best it can be argued
that the effect of this massive experiment with
imprisonment on the crime rate has been INCARCERATION
modest. For instance, whilst the overall crime
rate declined by 3 per cent between 1993 and
1996 in the United States, it still remains at a De®nition
very high level ± with a homicide rate seven
times that of England and Wales (Young, The process of con®ning and segregating
1999). However, what is more alarming is the deviant populations into specialist institutions
clear racial dimension to this strategy of for the purposes of punishment, treatment or
containment, to the extent that one in nine care.
African-American males aged 20±29 is in
prison, whilst a staggering one in three is
either in prison, on probation or parole Distinctive Features
(Mauer, 1997).
These ®gures raise fundamental ethical and The eighteenth century marks a decisive
moral questions on the nature of US society moment in the history of social control in
and the dangers posed by the wholesale Northern Europe, as imprisonment became
importation of the incapacitation doctrine. the dominant means of dealing with undesir-
For it is clear that the `experiment' has been able conduct and the preferred form of
funded by the diversion of public expenditure punishment. Up until this point the two
from welfare to the prison, whilst the level of main purposes of imprisonment were, ®rst,
violence, particularly among the young and to hold in custody those awaiting trial or
disadvantaged, continues to decimate life in execution of sentence and, secondly, coercing
many North American cities. Incapacitation as ®ne defaulters and debtors into making good
a penal policy amounts to little more than the their misfortune. Whilst custody could be
`warehousing' of prisoners, since there is used for punishment, it was primarily used for
scarcely any recognition of the human char- detention, and makeshift structures, like
acter of the offender nor are the reasons for fortresses, castles, cellars and town gates,
offending addressed in any fundamental way were deployed for this purpose. Instead the
as this is viewed as a pointless exercise. main forms of punishment were primarily
corporal and included execution, mutilation,
Eamonn Carrabine branding, whipping and other forms of public
shaming (such as stocks and pillories).
However, as feudal systems of existence
Associated Concepts: actuarialism, capital pun- began to break down with the advent of mer-
ishment, crime control model, deterrence, cantile capitalism and there were signi®cant
148 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
conventional and revisionist histories are Such correlations of body build and beha-
unable to answer. vioural tendencies reached their most sophis-
ticated in the work of Sheldon (1949). His
Eamonn Carrabine analysis suggested that the shape of the body
correlated with individual temperament and
Associated Concepts: carceral society, decarcera- mental well-being. Analysing and comparing
tion, historical methods, normalization, pan- 200 boys in a reformatory in Boston with 4,000
opticism, social control, transcarceration students, he concluded that most delinquents
had a body shape of well-developed muscles
Key Readings and an athletic appearance. Their personalities
Cohen, S. (1985) Visions of Social Control. Cambridge, were strong, active, aggressive and sometimes
Polity Press. violent.
Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of The earliest attempts to isolate a genetic
the Prison. Harmondsworth, Penguin. cause of criminality involved analyses of the
Garland, D. (1990) Punishment and Modern Society: A family trees of known criminals. Dugdale
Study in Social Theory. Oxford, Clarendon Press. (1910), for example, traced more than 1,000
Ignatieff, M. (1978) A Just Measure of Pain: The descendants of the Jukes ± a New York family
Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution. London, infamous for criminality and prostitution ±
Macmillan. and found 280 paupers, 60 thieves, 7 mur-
Rusche, G. and Kirchheimer, O. (1968) Punishment derers, 140 criminals and 50 prostitutes. He
and Social Structure. New York, Russell and concluded that `undesirable' hereditary
Russell (originally published 1939). characteristics were passed down through
families. Criminal families tended to produce
criminal children. Criminals were born not
made. Evidence from the Cambridge study in
Delinquent Development in the 1970s con-
INDIVIDUAL POSITIVISM tinues to suggest that crime does indeed run in
families. This study noted that of 397 families
De®nition half of all convictions were concentrated in
just 23. Convictions of one family member
A theoretical approach that views crime as were strongly related to convictions of each
being generated primarily by forces located other family member. Three-quarters of con-
within the individual. It usually takes one of victed mothers and convicted fathers had a
two forms. Criminal predisposition is to be convicted child.
found either in biologically given constitu- More rigorous research directed at isolating
tional factors or in the psychological make-up a genetic factor has been carried out with
of particular individuals. twins and adoptees. These have concluded
that children's behaviour is more similar
to that of their biological parents than to that
Distinctive Features of their adoptive parents. Mednick concluded
that some factor is transmitted by convicted
A key de®ning characteristic of individual parents which increases the likelihood that
positivism is that the fundamental predisposi- their children, even after adoption, would be
tion to crime lies in the individual. Crime is convicted for criminal offences (Mednick et al.,
determined by innate genetic or physiological 1987). Further research has examined a wide
incapacities or by inadequate child-rearing range of bio-chemical factors (such as hor-
practices in dysfunctional families. mones, testosterone, adrenalin and blood
In the early twentieth century several sugar levels) in attempts to isolate an
attempts were made to isolate key physiologi- individual causal factor in the generation of
cal characteristics of known criminals. Goring deviant, anti-social, criminal or violent beha-
(1913) studied more than 3,000 male prisoners viour. However most current research in this
in and around London and compared them tradition would not claim that biological
with various control groups of non-prisoners. make-up alone can be used as a suf®cient
Using correlational analysis he found that the explanation of crime. Rather, some biological
criminal tended to be shorter in height and factors may generate criminality, but only
weigh less. He explained such difference with when they interact with certain other psycho-
reference to notions of `inbreeding within a logical or social factors. Nevertheless this type
criminal class' which generated a lineage of of research continues to attract signi®cant
mental de®ciencies within certain families. research funding and publicity.
150 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
white liberal attitudes towards `race' in the conviction. The cumulative effect was their
USA, arguing that although institutional disproportionate representation in the prison
racism `relies on the active and pervasive population. Community groups were also
operation of anti-black attitudes' because it critical of the manner in which the criminal
originates `in the operation of the established justice system discriminated against black
and respected forces in the society' it receives victims of crime and the serious under-
less attention and public condemnation. representation of black people in criminal
Institutional racism is maintained and perpe- justice agencies. However, of®cial explana-
tuated not just by the procedures and practices tions such as those articulated by Lord
of white institutions but through indifference, Scarman in his report into the inner city riots
inertia and ignorance on the part of white in the UK in 1981, rejected allegations of
masses and of®cials. This led them to two institutional racism, focusing on the criminal
primary conclusions. First, it is institutional tendencies of young black men and the overtly
racism that is at the root of the alienation of racist actions of a minority of front line police
black people and causes of multitude of of®cers.
oppressive conditions for serious disturbances In the UK, the controversial and unresolved
in black neighbourhoods. When these neigh- issue of institutional racism resurfaced during
bourhoods do explode it is the residents who the of®cial inquiry into the unsolved racist
ae characteristically blamed for the criminality murder of Stephen Lawrence in South London
and in due course experts are appointed to in 1993. To the consternation of the Metropo-
prepare `authoritative' reports which typically litan Police, the inquiry team concluded that
refuse to address deep-seated institutional the police investigation `was marred by a
racism. Second, race relations policies based combination of professional incompetence,
on inclusion, assimilation and the adoption of institutional racism and a failure of leadership
white middle-class values tend only to by senior of®cers'. The ®nal report also
incorporate black people into their own provided the UK government with an of®cial
institutionalized oppression. de®nition of institutional racism: `the collec-
tive failure of an organization to provide an
appropriate and professional service to people
Evaluation because of their colour, culture or ethnic
origin. It can be seen or detected in processes,
Because of its origins and its radical critique attitudes and behaviour which amount to
considerable efforts were made to discredit discrimination through unwitting prejudice,
the value of the term by insistence amongst ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereo-
many social scientists that it was too typing which disadvantage minority ethnic
sweeping and ill-de®ned and made it dif®cult people' (1999, paragraph, 6.34). The report
for race relations bodies to `prove' intention emphasized that there must be unequivocal
and causation. However, its potency for recognition and acceptance of the problem of
activists lay in its insistence that racism be institutional racism and commitment to fun-
addressed at an institutional or systemic level damental organizational change. The govern-
rather than concentrating efforts on identify- ment established an ambitious programme of
ing individual racists. Carmichael and Hamil- reform to ensure that the policies, procedures
ton had also provided an intriguing and practices of the criminal justice agencies
explanation for how racism could persist in are consciously and actively anti-racist and
organizational settings despite the existence promote racial fairness and equality. Whether
of of®cial legislation geared to the removal of the momentum for change will be sustained
discriminary practices and equality of oppor- and the reform programme realized is open to
tunity. question. As yet, there is little evidence that
In the sphere of criminal justice in a variety the criminal justice agencies have any under-
of jurisdictions, a heated debate has taken standing of how their policies and procedures
place concerning the extent of racial discrimi- and practices turn out to be `racialized'.
nation, particularly the disproportionate However, what is truly remarkable is that as
application of discretionary police powers to a result of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry
black communities and the over-representa- report, a version of a concept ®rst coined by
tion of young black men in the prison `Black Panthers' now stands as the accepted
population. Black community groups insisted centre of the race relations strategy of the UK
that institutional racism was at work, with criminal justice system.
young black men receiving less favourable
treatment at every point between arrest and Eugene McLaughlin
INTEGRATIVE CRIMINOLOGY 153
Associated Concepts: criminal justice, discretion, bodies of knowledge that focus on the con-
discrimination, disproportionality, racializa- nections between the aetiology of crime, the
tion behaviour of criminals, and the policies and
practices of crime control.
Key Readings C. Ray Jeffery made one of the earliest
Carmichael, S. and Hamilton, C.V. (1967) Black explicit cases for integration in his textbook
Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. London, Criminology: An Interdisciplinary Approach
Jonathan Cape. (1990, Prentice-Hall). In this work he argued
Scarman, Lord (1981) The Brixton Disorders, 10±12 that criminology had to integrate various
April 1981. London, HMSO. bodies of knowledge from biology, psychol-
Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (1999) Report of an Inquiry ogy, sociology, law and other ®elds. Subse-
by Sir William MacPherson of Cluny. London, quently, he has argued that what is required is
HMSO. an integration of both a theory of crime and a
theory of criminal behaviour. In order to
accomplish this, Jeffery has maintained that
criminology has to develop an interdisciplin-
INTEGRATIVE CRIMINOLOGY ary theory of behaviour and then apply it to
the explanations of crime and criminal behav-
iour. Presently, the study of crime and crime
De®nition control or of crime and justice reveals an
assortment of integrative strategies (Barak,
An interdisciplinary approach to understand- 1998a).
ing crime and crime control which incorpo- Integrating criminologies are expressed in a
rates at least two disciplinary (or non- myriad of ways that may include the merging
disciplinary) bodies of knowledge. This incor- of the goals and objectives within or across the
poration of criminologies and other bodies of traditional and non-integrative approaches of
knowledge should ideally aspire to encompass classical, positivist and critical criminologies.
any and all data, theories and methods that Basically, however, there are three kinds of
shed light on the production of crime, integrative approaches that may be adopted:
criminals and social control, including the (1) disciplinary perspectives that connect
®eld of criminology itself. various explanations of crime and crime con-
trol from within one ®eld of study, operating
up and down, such as sociology, psychology,
Distinctive Features or anthropology; (2) multidisciplinary per-
spectives that partition the subject matter of
Unlike single perspectives or disciplinary crime and crime control into levels of analysis
approaches within criminology that assume that are explained by different disciplines,
that crime and crime control are the products operating side by side, such as sociology,
of primarily biological, psychological, eco- psychology and anthropology; and (3) inter-
nomic, political, social, or cultural factors, the disciplinary perspectives that integrate crime
emerging integrative paradigm argues that and crime control, operating as holistic-
criminological knowledge should incorporate interactive analyses, that incorporate the full
analyses that assimilate the realities from each range or varieties of knowledge from such
of these areas of inquiry. Integrative crimino- diverse ®elds as the social sciences, natural
logy also assumes that the study of the causes sciences, and the humanities.
or aetiology of crime and the study of the Essentially, there are two kinds of integra-
control or regulation of criminals are not tive criminology taking place today: `moder-
separate but related phenomena. Together, nist' and `postmodernist' (Barak, 1998b). Both
these areas of criminology constitute the types of synthesis call for conceptual integra-
integrative parts of the whole of crime and tion. However, modern forms emphasize the
social control. Thus, in order to understand centrality of theory in scienti®c endeavours
criminals, crime control and prevention, or and the construction of `causal models'.
criminology, criminologists should not only Postmodern forms emphasize the ever chan-
study each of these in relationship to the other, ging voices of plurality that provide meaning
but also as these are connected with other for the local sites of crime, justice, law and
bodies of interdisciplinary knowledge such as community and the construction of reciprocal,
cultural, media and gender/sex studies. interactive or dialectical models of `causality'.
Finally, integrative criminology endeavours In comparison, the modern approaches are
to provide analyses that link the various more concerned with integrating theories
154 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
while the postmodern approaches are more courses of social action where criminals and
concerned with integrating knowledges. crime-®ghters alike represent excessive inves-
Rather than pursuing the cause-effect predic- tors in the accumulation and expression of
tions of theoretical integration within one or power and control. Similarly, Gregg Barak's
between a few disciplines like the modernists, Representing O.J.: Murder, Criminal Justice, and
postmodernists are developing explanatory Mass Culture (1996, Harrow and Heston)
models of crime and crime control that argues that in order to understand the
integrate the entire group of interdisciplinary reactions of different groups of Americans to
knowledges. the O.J. Simpson trial, for example, an
An important distinction between the integration of the legal and cultural factors,
various models of integration hinges on the such as the social and psychological group
scope or range of deviance and criminality experiences that have helped to shape various
addressed by a speci®c approach. Usually, the peoples' attitudes and perceptions of crime
causal logic of integrative theorization tends to and justice, must be adopted.
be a composite of causal relationships taken
from other theories that combine elements
from social ecology theory, social learning Evaluation
theory, social control theory and subcultural
theory. For example, Elliott, Huizinga and Although the ®eld of criminology has always
Ageton's (1985) integrated macro±micro formally identi®ed itself as an interdisciplin-
theory of delinquency and drug use contends ary exercise, most of its theoreticians and
that social disorganization, strain and inade- practitioners have worked primarily from
quate socialization cause a weakening of narrow disciplinary frameworks. Hence, inte-
conventional bonding and a strengthening of grative or interdisciplinary criminology repre-
delinquent bonding, which results in delin- sents a challenge to the more traditional
quent behaviour. disciplinary approaches applied by the major-
Other modernist formulations such as the ity of criminologists. As an emerging para-
social process-micro models tend to empha- digm within criminology, integration is
size the integration of kinds-of-people expla- relatively new; so the verdict is still out and
nations of human behaviour. For example, pending. A number of criminologists today
Wilson and Herrnstein (1985) have proposed are sceptical of the ability of integrative
an eclectic, social learning-behavioural choice criminology to deliver on its promises and
formulation that relies on both positivist possibilities. Some criminologists, such as
determinism and rational free will. This Travis Hirschi, have already concluded that
model of theoretical integration combines integrative criminology does not work and
factors involving human agency, individual will not succeed. On the other hand, some
action and social process, while it omits criminologists, like John Braithwaite, believe
considerations of social organization and that integration is the only way to proceed.
culture. A third type of modernist integration
Gregg Barak
includes the social structural-macro models,
such as Quinney's (1977) structural theory
which argues that all criminal activities are Associated Concepts: constitutive criminology,
class-speci®c. In this formulation, the contra- interactionism, social constructionism, social
dictions of capitalist development result in learning theory
two interconnected sets of crime: the crimes of
`domination and repression' committed by the Key Readings
capitalists and agents of crime control; and, Barak, G. (ed.) (1998a) Integrative Criminology.
the crimes of `accommodation and resistance' Aldershot, Ashgate.
committed by workers and ordinary people. Barak, G. (1998b) Integrating Criminologies. Boston,
Finally, there are the postmodernist efforts MA, Allyn and Bacon.
at integration. These argue that crimes are Elliott, D.S., Huizinga, D. and Ageton, S. (1985)
recursive productions, that is, routinized Explaining Delinquency and Drug Use. Beverly
activities which cannot be separated from Hills, CA, Sage.
historically and culturally speci®c discourses Henry, S. and Milovanovic, D. (1996) Constitutive
and structures that have attained a relative Criminology. London, Sage.
stability over time and place. For example, Quinney, R. (1977) Class, State, and Crime. New York,
Henry and Milovanovic's (1996) constitutive David McKay.
criminology argues, such discourses of differ- Wilson, J.Q. and Herrnstein, R.J. (1985) Crime and
ence and structured inequality become Human Nature. New York, Simon and Schuster.
INTERACTIONISM 155
enquiry. These included foci on: crime as the The contribution of the interactionist strand
outcome of social interaction; crime as the within criminology has been to challenge
result of negotiated processes involving rule positivist approaches, with their emphasis on
violators and control agents as de®ners; causality, by raising de®nitional issues (who
changing de®nitions of crime in law enact- gets labelled as deviant?) and by encouraging
ment; police discretion in the enforcement of a focus on control agents as generators of
the law; crime as a meaningful act; and the crime (who does the labelling?). It has also
consequences of being labelled deviant, for produced a rich vein of ethnographic studies
example in terms of further deviancy ampli- of deviant subcultures, criminal justice agen-
®cation. cies and processes of social control.
Victor Jupp
Evaluation
criminals to get their `just deserts'. For this juvenile control', International Journal of the
reason Clarke (1985) maintained that the Sociology of Law, 13 (4), pp. 405±21.
staking out of `justice' as a strategy for reform von Hirsch, A. (1976) Doing Justice: The Choice of
is always liable to allow proponents of law and Punishments. New York, Hill and Wang.
order to recruit the arguments of `natural Hudson, B. (1987) Justice Through Punishment.
justice' for their own ends, although the former London, Macmillan.
is more concerned with retribution and the Hudson, B. (1996) Understanding Justice. Bucking-
latter with judicial equality and consistency. ham, Open University Press.
Within the political climate of the 1980s notions Morris, A., Giller, H., Geach, H. and Szwed, E.
of `just deserts' and `anti-welfarism' were (1980) Justice for Children. London, Macmillan.
indeed politically mobilized by the right. The
language of `justice and rights' was appro-
priated by one of `self responsibility and
obligation'. Accordingly, Hudson (1987, 1996)
has argued that the `just deserts' or `back to JUSTICE
justice' movements that emerged in many
Western jurisdictions in the 1980s were
evidence of a `modern retributivism' rather See Actuarialism; Crime control model; Crim-
than necessarily heralding the emergence of inal justice; Due process model; Informal
new liberal regimes and sentencing policies. justice; Just deserts; Natural justice; Popular
justice; Restorative justice; Social justice
John Muncie
determines whether or not any behaviour historical and political context as deviant,
comes to be de®ned as deviant. A number of whilst others do not. The key question ±
studies were published in the 1960s and 1970s whose law and whose order is being pro-
which revealed the processes of becoming a tected? ± was notably overlooked. As a result,
marijuana smoker, a prostitute, a homosexual, some critical criminologists in the 1970s
a prisoner and so on. In each it was the stigma argued that the insights of labelling needed
attached to the label that was considered to be wedded to a Marxist model of society
pivotal in informing future behaviour pat- and the state. Only then could the subjective
terns. De®ned as `outsiders', it is such groups encounters of social reaction and social control
that come to epitomize what is considered to be viewed as objective social processes set
be criminal. A self-ful®lling prophecy ensues. in particular social formations. As a result
Criminality is continually sought only in those labelling has been critiqued as merely offering
identi®ed as criminal. And the power of the an approach and not meeting the requirements
label of `criminal' ensures that `criminal for a fully worked up criminological theory.
careers' are exacerbated. A different critique offered by positivist
To counter this process labelling theorists criminologists focuses on the lack of serious
argue that only a diminution or absence of attention that labelling gives to primary
of®cial reaction is able signi®cantly to reduce deviance. By concentrating on such `victim-
offending. When no stigma, ostracism or less' crimes as drug taking, homosexuality and
exclusion is applied to a deviant act then so on, it has failed to recognize suf®ciently the
delinquent `careers' will not be established. In fundamental deviance attached to other
contrast to reactive `get tough' approaches, `serious crimes' such as murder, robbery and
decriminalization and a radical non-interven- institutional violence. In addition, it has been
tionism are called for. suggested that the origins of a `deviant
By focusing on the processes whereby identity' lie not in the processes of social
behaviour comes to be criminalized and by reaction, but in local community and neigh-
adopting a relatively non-judgemental or bourhood settings. The multiple sources and
appreciative stance to primary deviance, differential impacts of a range of negative
labelling opened up whole new areas of labels are likely to be far more complex than
interest in criminology, in which the concepts that offered by the labelling perspective of the
of stigma, social reaction and control were to 1960s.
become pivotal. Through labelling, the tradi-
tional behavioural questions ± why do they do
it? ± were subordinated to a more critical line John Muncie
of enquiry ± who de®nes another as deviant?,
for what purposes? and with what implica-
tions for future deviant activity?
Associated Concepts: criminal careers, deviancy
ampli®cation, interactionism, radical crimin-
Evaluation ologies, radical non-intervention, social con-
structionism, social reaction
Labelling continues to offer an important chal-
lenge to traditional criminological approaches.
By focusing on de®nitional issues it is able to
reveal how the concepts of `crime' and Key Readings
`deviance' are not universally agreed upon, Becker, H. (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of
but are socially constructed, contingent and Deviance. New York, The Free Press.
contestable. By drawing attention to the role of Erikson, K.T. (1966) Wayward Puritans: A Study in the
social reaction (and law and order enforce- Sociology of Deviance. New York, Wiley.
ment in particular) it warns of the ways in Kitsuse, J. (1962) `Societal reaction to deviant
which criminal justice may cause that which behaviour', Social Problems, no. 9, pp. 247±56.
it is designed to curtail. However, a number Lemert, E. (1951) Social Pathology. New York,
of radical authors have subsequently argued McGraw±Hill.
that the logic of labelling is limited when Plummer, K. (1979) `Misunderstanding labelling
employed without any analysis of the social perspectives', in D. Downes and P. Rock (eds),
and political structures and inequalities in Deviant Interpretations. Oxford, Oxford University
which such labels are constructed and upheld. Press.
Labelling fails to explain why it is only some Tannenbaum, F. (1938) Crime and the Community.
behaviours that come to be de®ned in a New York, Colombia University Press.
LEFT IDEALISM 161
This did not mean that its institutions at work and in custody. As Sumner (1990, p. 3)
defended processes of domination in every notes, tying theory and research to a social
instance but that wider structures of power democratic agenda means that `there is a
played a central role in the construction of grave danger of running into the cul-de-sac of
criminal justice policies and the deployment a social democratic, parochial reformism
of state personnel. Finally, like abolitionists, which is not so far away from neo-positivist,
they contended that the state's response to administrative criminology'.
crime should be deconstructed and replaced Realists maintain that idealists still concep-
with an alternative set of democratically tualize the state as a homogeneous entity
embedded policies and practices. This posi- which operates at all times and in all places for
tion contrasted with realists, who `with their the bene®t of those in power. Idealists would
focus on the beginning of the ``penal chain'' make two responses to this point. First, it
(crime prevention and the police) . . . nearly remains necessary to scrutinize the state
forgot where this chain ends: in punishment' sociologically, its lack of democratic account-
(van Swaaningen, 1997, p. 200). ability and the institutional and personal
accumulation of power that has underpinned
its development since the beginning of the
Evaluation nineteenth century. Indeed, the trend towards
post-structuralist and postmodernist thought
Left idealism remains a central strand in in the social sciences has led to the state being
critical criminological praxis. While the charge airbrushed out of academic analysis. The state
of utopianism is still leveled at them, idealists should therefore be brought back in as a focus
would say that the events of the 1990s have for research and theorizing. This can be done
only underlined the strength of their thesis. without degenerating into a reductionist and
The consolidation of the New Right, particu- instrumental view of state power.
larly in the UK and USA in the ®rst half of the Second, idealists would contend that the
decade, coupled with an intensi®cation in the interventionist work of the 1970s and 1980s,
authoritarian capabilities of the state, illus- built on exploiting the contingencies and
trates and reinforces their view that while contradictions in the state, continued into the
crime should be taken seriously the state's 1990s. In a range of areas including deaths in
primary focus is on the maintenance and custody, health and safety at work, violence
reproduction of a social order that remains against women and state behaviour in North-
deeply divided along the fault lines of social ern Ireland, idealist academics have continued
class, gender, `race', age and sexuality. to work with community groups and others to
At the same time the moral panics around change laws and state practices. Additionally,
juvenile crime, single parents, asylum seekers in the UK they have provided support to, and
and drug users during the decade illustrate worked with, groups involved in major
how discourses surrounding conventional political issues such as the Hillsborough dis-
de®nitions of crime and deviance can still be aster and the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. They
mobilized ideologically to reproduce struc- would also maintain that they have had an
tures of domination and subordination. The in¯uence not only on public and political
election of New Labour in the UK in 1997, debate but, in working with particular
many of whose ideas on law and order can be pressure groups, have been instrumental in
traced back to left realism, has reinforced the helping to achieve changes in the law, for
idealist argument still further. While idealists example, around inquest procedures affecting
would not support the sociologically reduc- deaths in custody.
tionist position which contends that Labour In terms of future developments, idealists
has abjectly followed the policies of previous would argue for greater utopianism in social
Conservative administrations, they would and criminological theory and that their
contend that many of the government's alternative de®nition of crime and punish-
policies on law and order are built on a ment remains central to their overall vision of
further consolidation of state power. This con- a society devoid of the hierarchies of power
solidation includes: a range of new powers for that limit human capacities and capabilities.
state servants; an ideological construction of They would also agree with Stan Cohen that
particular groups as criminalistic and deviant; the choice for academics is not necessarily
a failure to confront the issue of the demo- between scepticism and realism `but to show
cratic accountability of state institutions; and a in concrete situations where intellectual sub-
reluctance to deal with crimes committed by version might or might not lead'. For Cohen,
the powerful, for example, in terms of deaths this `raises questions of strategy, tactics and
LEFT REALISM 163
alliances'. It follows from this that criminology appraisal of crime and its causes. It is radical
has to try to satisfy: in that crime is seen as an endemic product of
the class and patriarchal nature of advanced
A triple loyalty: ®rst an overriding obligation to industrial society. It is not a cosmetic crimino-
honest intellectual inquiry itself (however scep- logy of an establishment sort which views
tical, provisional, irrelevant and unrealistic); crime as a blemish which, with suitable
second, a political commitment to social justice; treatment, can be removed from the body of
and third (and potentially con¯icting with both), society, which is, in itself, otherwise healthy
the pressing and immediate demands for short- and in little need of reconstruction. Rather it
term humanitarian help. We have to appease suggests that it is within the core institutions
these three voracious gods. (Cohen, 1998, pp. of society (its relationships of class and of
118±22; emphasis in the original) gender) and its central values (such as
Roy Coleman and Joe Sim competitive individualism and aggressive
masculinity) that crime arises. Crime is not a
product of abnormality but of the normal
Associated Concepts: abolitionism, critical crimi-
workings of the social order. Secondly, it is
nology, critical research, hegemony, left
realistic in that it attempts to be faithful to the
realism, the state
reality of crime. This involves several tasks:
Key Readings realistically appraising the problem of crime,
Cohen, S. (1998) `Intellectual scepticism and political deconstructing crime into its fundamental
commitment: the case of radical criminology', in components (the square of crime), critically
P. Walton and J. Young (eds), The New Crimino- examining the nature of causality, being
logy Revisited. Basingstoke, Macmillan. realistic about the possibilities of intervention
Pearce, S. and Tombs, S. (1992) `Realism and and, above all, fully understanding the
corporate crime', in R. Matthews and J. Young changing social terrain in which we now live.
(eds), Issues in Realist Criminology. London, Sage. The particular political space in which left
Ryan, M. and Ward, T. (1986) `Law and order: left realism emerged was in the mid-1980s. The
realism against the rest', The Abolitionist, 22 (2), juxtaposition was with the emergence of con-
pp. 29±33. servative (`neo-liberal') governments in many
Sim, J. Scraton, P. and Gordon, P. (1987) `Introduc- Western countries which pursued an overtly
tion: crime, the state and critical analysis', in punishment-oriented approach to crime con-
P. Scraton (ed.), Law, Order and the Authoritarian trol. At that time a liberal/social democratic
State. Milton Keynes, The Open University Press. opposition was on the defensive. The neo-
Sumner, C. (1990) `Introduction: contemporary liberals actively pointed to the rise in the
socialist criminology', in C. Sumner (ed.), Censure, crime rate and entered vigorously into law
Politics and Criminal Justice. Buckingham, The and order campaigns on behalf of `the silent
Open University Press. majority', holding offenders responsible for
Taylor, I., Walton, P. and Young, J. (eds) (1975) their actions and advocating punishment as
Critical Criminology. London, Routledge. the solution. The New Left position, which
Van Swaaningen, R. (1997) Critical Criminology: had its origins in the libertarianism of the
Visions From Europe. London, Sage. 1960s, tended to resemble a mirror image of
the right. That is, it denied or downplayed
the level of crime, portrayed the offender as
victim of the system, and stressed a multi-
culturalism of diversity and struggle where
LEFT REALISM radicalism entailed the defence of the com-
munity against the incursions of the state,
De®nition particularly the police and the criminal
justice system. What was necessary was a
A school of criminology which emerged
criminology which could navigate between
initially in Britain in the early 1980s as a
these two currents: which took crime ser-
response both to the punitive and exclusion-
iously but which was radical in its analysis
ary policies of conservatism and to the
and policy.
utopianism of New Left radical criminologies.
It was, therefore, no accident that two key
realist texts were published in the mid-
Distinctive Features eighties: What is to be Done About Law and
Order? (by John Lea and Jock Young) in 1984
Left realist criminology, as its name implies, is in Britain, and Confronting Crime (by Elliott
radical in its criminology and realistic in its Currie) in 1985 in the United States, whilst the
164 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
®rst realist crime survey was carried out in with crime rates. For all of these processes
1985 by the Canadian Brian Maclean. involve human evaluation and re¯ection upon
The evocation to `take crime seriously' material circumstances. And because of this
involved realists in large-scale local victimiza- double nature, the opposite reduction is
tion studies directly and `democratically' equally invalid: for material inequality is the
asking people about their problems of crime basis of crime, fear of crime cannot be
and their assessment of police effectiveness. dissociated from the risk of crime, and levels
These surveys, frequently funded by radical of punishment cannot be discussed without
local councils, pointed both to the greater resort to the crime rates.
burden of crime on the poor, ethnic minorities Realism is an integrated theory synthesizing
and women and the extent of police abuses theoretical traditions (particularly subcultural
and inef®ciency. Later surveys were widened theory and labelling theory) and fuzing them
out to include white collar crime and domestic together within a socialist feminist framework
violence (Mooney, 2000). In Britain such work that stresses class and gender inequality (see
has had considerable impact on the re- Mooney, 2000).
orientation of Labour Party policies towards Intervention to control crime is a central
a heightened concern with crime control concern, involving multi-agencies and at
issues. Although such quantitative work has different points in the natural history of a
become identi®ed with realism, the need for speci®c crime. Social crime prevention is
qualitative research to make sense of the stressed although situational crime prevention
®ndings and provide clues to causality is and deterrence from the criminal justice
constantly stressed. system play minor backing roles. The ultimate
A fundamental task of left realism is to task is to make fundamental changes in the
deconstruct the concept of crime. First it is social order whilst at the same time interven-
noted that crime is inevitably the product of ing on a day-to-day basis to protect the public
action and reaction and that the failure of and push reform onwards. Like all radical
previous criminologies is that they have politics the central problem is to remain
problematized one component and ignored committed to change without being merely
the other. Thus positivism focuses on crime utopian and to be immediately effective
and tends to take the de®nition of crime for without being simply technocratic and prag-
granted whereas constructionism (that is, matic.
labelling theory, abolitionism and much of
critical criminology) problematizes the way in
which crime is de®ned and constructed yet Evaluation
tends to ignore crime itself. The left realist
critique argues that to explain crime necessi- Left realism has moved in the last decade from
tates a double aetiology of action and reaction a polemical position that stressed the need for
and a corresponding denial of any essence of radicals to take crime seriously to the founda-
crime. Rather crime is viewed as a concept tion of an integrated theory that attempts to
constantly changing over time and varying synthesize the major strands of criminological
from the perspective of different groups. It thought. What is now necessary is the devel-
occurs in the interrelationship between offender opment of a sociology that relates to the
and victim within the varying de®nitional ¯ux transition to late modernity and a politics that
of formal and informal systems of control is in dialogue with contemporary feminist and
(Young, 1992). (Hence the square of crime social democratic theory. A start has been
between these four points.) made in this direction, but much exacting and
Realism stresses the need to seek the causes exciting work remains to be done.
of crime but is critical of any positivistic
Jock Young
notion of a mechanistic nature. A key causal
concept is relative deprivation, which encom-
passes both the subjective and material nature Associated Concepts: fear of crime, left idealism,
of discontent. Such an emphasis on both the neo-conservative criminology, relative depri-
subjective and objective dimensions of human vation, social crime prevention, victim surveys
action is mirrored throughout realist analysis.
Thus just as it is stressed that the causes of Key Readings
crime cannot be reduced to material depriva- Currie, E. (1995) Confronting Crime. New York,
tion alone, fear of crime cannot be understood Pantheon.
as merely a re¯ection of risk rates and the rate Currie, E. (1998) Crime and Punishment in America.
of imprisonment cannot be simply correlated New York, Metropolitan Books.
LIBERAL FEMINISM 165
Lea, J. and Young, J. (1984) What is to be Done About inspired the statement of feminist principles
Law and Order? Harmondsworth, Penguin. that emerged from the Seneca Falls Conven-
Lowman, J. and Maclean, B. (eds) (1992) Realist tion in 1848. This event, which marked the
Criminology. Toronto, University of Toronto Press. founding of organized feminism in the USA,
Mooney, J. (2000) Gender, Violence and the Social laid claims to sexual equality and equal rights
Order. London, Macmillan. for women alongside men.
Young, J. (1992) `Ten points of realism', in J. Young Thus both the early feminist writers and the
and R. Matthews (eds), Rethinking Criminology: campaigners whom they inspired, relied on an
The Realist Debate. London, Sage. individualist notion of equality and on
Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society. London, Sage. comparing women with men. Campaigns
focused on formal recognition of females as
free and equal individuals who could enjoy
full legal and civil rights to vote, to enter into
LIBERAL FEMINISM contracts, gain an education and membership
of professions. Much effort in the USA and
Britain went into the lengthy struggles to gain
De®nition the vote, sometimes, as in certain US states,
before all of the male population had been
Liberal feminism was the ®rst of the theoretical enfranchised. Nevertheless, insistence on
feminist perspectives, developed in the 1920s rights-based claims to enfranchisement were
from the work of Mary Wollstonecraft and J.S. successful in the early twentieth century in
Mill, and it greatly in¯uenced the `®rst wave' Australia, New Zealand and later in Britain
of modern Western feminism. Its emphasis is and the USA.
very much on the equality of men and women, In the later twentieth century, a second wave
especially with regard to their moral and of feminism ¯ourished, which had notably
intellectual characteristics, thus liberal femin- different aims. Nevertheless, there are clear
ists have argued for social and political links between this phase and the earlier one,
changes in the educational and legal frame- chie¯y through the modern version of liberal
work which they see as constraining women. feminism. The central notion remains that of
In the sphere of criminal justice studies, liberal removing barriers and constraints to achieving
feminism has had a powerful impact on equality. Equal rights and equal opportunities
analyses of equity and discrimination. are key issues: sex discrimination must go,
there must be more women in politics and
positions of power, and in senior posts in
Distinctive Features industry and commerce, and sex stereotyping
in the media, education and public attitudes
Liberal feminism has claims to be the oldest should be combated (Dale and Foster, 1986).
and the original feminist theory, with its roots In the USA the National Organization of
in eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinking Women, in Britain the Equal Opportunities
and in the American Revolution (Banks, 1981). Commission are institutional examples of
While the French Revolution did little to liberal approaches to women's rights.
advance the emancipation of women, the In criminology, liberal feminists demon-
intellectual ferment of ideas which it provoked strated many instances of inequitable treat-
inspired debate in England and America ment of girls and women: the extra penalties
which did challenge the status quo, in which incurred by `wayward' girls in the USA, or the
women had effectively no political rights. In more limited options available in prisons for
1792, Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindi- women. However, some research has indicated
cation of the Rights of Woman in which she that women may be less severely sanctioned
challenged notions of female inferiority and than men and equalizing punishment (for
insisted that there should be equal educational example, through strict sentencing guidelines),
opportunities for women with men and may lead to the harsher, male norm being
employment for single women. In 1869, J.S. imposed (Chesney-Lind and Faith, 2000).
Mill's On the Subjection of Women took up
similar arguments in support of the contem-
porary campaigns for female enfranchisement: Evaluation
`the legal subordination of one sex to the other
± is wrong in itself . . . and that it ought to be Liberal feminists have sought to play down
replaced by a principle of perfect equality'. biological differences between the sexes and to
The American Declaration of Independence argue that women can achieve equality with
166 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
of crime' into adulthood and why. Five key designs, longitudinal research is not depen-
factors relating to the boys when they were 8± dent on the collection of retrospective data in
10 years old were identi®ed as being statisti- seeking to relate past experiences to present
cally related to subsequent delinquency. These day attitudes and actions. It can collect a wide
were low family income, large family size, range of data about a wide range of variables
parents with a criminal record, low intelli- at different stages in an individual's life.
gence and poor parental child-rearing prac- Secondly, the collection of data at the stages in
tices (West, 1982). Six predictors of offending an individual's life to which they relate
in later years, up to the age of 32, were also reduces the invalidity associated with the
identi®ed. These were poverty, poor parent- collection of retrospective data (for example,
ing, family deviance, school problems, hyper- inaccuracies of memory). Thirdly, longitudinal
activity/impulsiveness/attention de®cit and studies can focus on individual development
anti-social behaviour (Farrington, 1989). and can provide direct evidence of time-
The strategy of analysis used to explain ordering of variable which gives credence to
delinquency and subsequent criminal careers causal inferences that link contemporary
owes much to the logic of the comparative attitudes and action to previous backgrounds,
method. At the point at which two subgroups experiences and events.
were identi®ed within the sample ± those On the negative side, however, longitudinal
`delinquent' and those `non-delinquent' ± surveys are very costly and they produce their
these groups were compared on a range of results very slowly, especially those relating to
variables to examine which were the best the later stages of development. Also, there is
predictors of differences between them (in always a risk that members will change as a
effect asking the question `which factors do result of being part of the study, perhaps by
the delinquents share in common which are responding in ways that they believe are
not shared to the same extent by the non- expected of them. What is more, the sample
delinquents?). This form of analysis is not only runs the risk of being seriously depleted by
comparative but also multivariate in so far as a drop-out over the years, something known as
number of variables are introduced in order to `sample attrition'. A further problem is that
explain the variables `delinquency' and `sub- variables about which data are collected at
sequent criminal careers'. These are not only early stages may not anticipate theoretical
explanatory variables but also predictors of developments at a later stage, with the result
delinquency and crime. Such predictors pro- that crucial data relevant to such develop-
vide the basis for suggesting policy initiatives, ments may not have been collected. This is
such as introducing training in child-rearing sometimes referred to as the problem of
methods for parents. `fading relevancy'. A much more fundamental
Although the distinction is not precise, critique is of the causal and positivist
panel studies differ from cohort studies in so assumptions of such surveys. Critical crimin-
far as they are based on representative ologists, for example, would argue that in
samples of the population to be studied placing emphasis on the causal agents in the
rather than cohorts based on birth or a par- early lives of individuals they distract atten-
ticular entry point (for example, admission to tion away from contemporary inequalities and
a prison). oppressions and also that they do not address
Longitudinal studies can also vary accord- `crimes of the powerful'.
ing to the period of time over which data are
collected from the cohorts or panels. There Victor Jupp
may also be variations in the frequency of the
intervals between data collection points
(sometimes known as `sweeps'). Birth cohort Associated Concepts: causation, cohort studies,
studies often extend over a lifetime and comparative method, cross-sectional design,
because they are usually interested in matura- positivism, prediction studies, sampling
tion and development (for example, of a
criminal career) they collect data over longer Key Readings
time intervals than is typical for panel studies. Farrington, D. (1989) `The origins of crime: the
Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development', in
Research Bulletin, Home Of®ce Research and
Evaluation Planning Unit, no. 27, pp. 29±33.
Magnusson, D. and Bergman, L.R. (eds) (1990) Data
The strengths of longitudinal designs are as Quality in Longitudinal Research. Cambridge, Cam-
follows. First, unlike one-shot cross-sectional bridge University Press.
168 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Magnusson, D., Bergman, L.R., Rudinger, G. and Robins, L. and Rutter, L. (1990) Straight and Devious
Torestad, B. (1990) Problems and Methods in Pathways from Childhood to Adulthood. Cambridge,
Longitudinal Research. Cambridge, Cambridge Cambridge University Press.
University Press. West, D.J. (1982) Delinquency: Its Roots, Careers and
Prospects. London, Heinemann.
M
criminology while for others managerializa- extended essay based on the Proceedings of
tion is a relatively autonomous process and the Sixth Rhine Assembly debates on The Law
needs to be analysed on its own terms. A on Thefts of Wood which was published in the
viable post managerialist vision of criminal German paper the Rheinische Zeitung in
justice has yet to be articulated by critics. October of 1842. In this article, Marx discussed
how the peasants living in the Rhine Valley
Eugene McLaughlin had taken away their traditional right to
gather fallen wood (a primary source of fuel
for cooking and heating) as the framework of
Associated Concepts: actuarialism, administra- the old feudal form of law was redrafted in
tive criminology, neo-conservative crimino- line with the needs of the emergent order
logy, risk of industrial capitalism. This is an example of
criminalization, which contemporary crimin-
Key Readings ologists would clearly recognize, and it had
Clarke, J. and Newman, J. (1997) The Managerial negative consequences for those at the bottom
State. London, Sage. end of the `class structure'.
James, A. and Raine, K. (1998) The New Politics of `Property is Theft' is an aphorism frequently
Criminal Justice. London, Longman. associated with Marx. In truth that maxim was
McLaughlin, E. and Muncie, J. (2000) `The criminal Proudhon's (La proprieÂteÂ, c'est le vol) ± Marx
justice system: New Labour's New Partnerships', was seldom so pithy. Still, that sort of revo-
in J. Clarke, S. Gewirtz and E. McLaughlin (eds), lutionary rhetoric, and the sympathies which
New Managerialism, New Welfare. London, Sage. it represented, was vigorously articulated
McLaughlin, E. and Murji, K. (2001) `Lost connec- during the recrudesence of student rebellion
tions and new directions', in K. Stenson and R. of the late 1960s. May 1968 seemed to sym-
Sullivan (eds), Neo-Liberalism and Crime Control. bolize the possibility of revolutionary change
Cambridge, Willan Press. in af¯uent Western societies and in that
O'Malley, P. (1997) `Policing, politics and postmo- moment many academics who had been
dernity', Social and Legal Studies, 6 (3), pp. 363±81. inspired by, or were instrumental in develop-
ing, the sociology of deviance, were galva-
nized into a radical mode of enquiry that drew
heavily on the Marxian tradition. There are
many examples of work carried out in this
MARXIST CRIMINOLOGIES vein. They all exhibit a concern to illuminate
the `class dimensions' of power insofar as they
relate to instances of crime and crime control.
De®nition Within this perspective, the `capitalist order'
itself is held to be criminogenic, and the crime
A variety of criminological perspectives that panics that emerge from time to time are
draw on the Marxian tradition in sociological analysed as being an attempt at the orchestra-
theory in order to explicate the dimensions of tion of a public consensus (in Marxian terms,
crime and its control that revolve around class, `hegemony') by the police, the media, the
power and state. judiciary and other elements of the `state±
corporate apparatus': this not only de¯ects
public concern away from the central contra-
Distinctive Features dictions of capitalism (which emanate from
the `wage±capital relation'), but also serves to
Some social theorists have argued that Marxist provide a justi®cation for ratchetting up the
criminology is not possible, strictly speaking, power of the system of social control which,
because Marxism, as a form of theoretical perversely, contributes to the intensi®cation of
system, speci®es its own objects of analysis the conditions that produced the crime
(such as `the mode of production', `class phenomena in the ®rst place. This reasoning
relations', `alienation', `ideology', `hegemony') was employed to considerable effect in
and thus subsumes the analysis of crime Policing the Crisis (Hall et al., 1978), which
under much more general concerns (Bank- remains one of the seminal contributions of
owski et al., 1977). The bulk of Marx's vast British criminology. Focusing on a `mugging
corpus of work did not concern itself with panic' in London during the early 1970s, the
crime. However, it is still possible to discover denouement of their argument was that,
something of his perspective on crime and its because crime is one of the few symbolic
control. In his early journalism Marx wrote an sources of unity in an increasingly divided
MARXIST CRIMINOLOGIES 171
and embittered class society and, moreover, criminologist in `correctionalism', that is: the
because the traditional elements of consensus coercive use of the criminal sanction to
(especially deference to authority, the trap- `correct' behaviour on a personal basis when
pings of class power and the threat of external the roots of crime lie in the social structural
enemies) were exhausted, bringing the `hege- inequalities of wealth and power. Their later
mony of the state' under threat, the `war work (Taylor et al., 1975) was not a signi®cant
against crime' becomes the primary source of departure from this line, but in it Jock Young
re-legitimation. The state's main concern, so did lay the basis for the argument that
the argument goes, is to de®ne the elements of working-class control over policing should
the crisis of capitalism away. The crisis is be greatly extended, an idea that presaged the
depicted in such a way that images of deviants school of left realism.
(criminals, industrial dissidents, ethnic mino- In What is to Be Done About Law and Order?
rities, drug-takers, youth, welfare scroungers, (Lea and Young, 1984/1993) `left realists' were
political deviants etc.) are foregrounded. Thus to argue that the fatal ¯aw of the Marxist
confusion is created and the working class approaches to criminology had been their
come to mis-recognize their enemy. The crisis failure to offer any realistic solutions to crime,
is de¯ected on to youth, crime and race and other than emphasizing `changing the social
away from capitalist class relations. order'. But Marxist-based criminologies do
not succumb to realist criticisms so easily.
Steven Box (1983, p. 3) pointed out that
Evaluation `of®cial crime' was real enough and that `a
radical criminology which appears to deny
One of the earliest attempts to situate the this will be seen as naive and rightly rejected',
study of crime within a Marxian problematic but `before galloping off down the ``law and
can be found in the work of Willem Bonger, order'' campaign trail, it might be prudent to
but these works have had little lasting in¯u- consider whether murder, rape, robbery,
ence and were dismissed by latter progeny as assault and other crimes focused on by state
`not so much the application of a fully ¯edged of®cials, politicians, the media and the
Marxist theory as they are a recitation of a criminal justice system do constitute the
``Marxist catechism'' in an area which Marx major part of our real crime problem'. He
had left largely untouched' (Taylor et al., 1973, suggested that `maybe they are only one crime
p. 222). The `new criminologists' of the 1970s problem and not the crime problem'. The clue
attempted to synthesize a `fully social theory to `understanding most serious crimes', Box
of deviance' and they did so very much argued, `can be located in power, not
through Marx's preferred style of intellectual weakness, in privilege, not disadvantage, in
labour. The New Criminology is largely a work wealth, not poverty'. Further, in another early
of critique; the ®rst eight chapters of the book contribution to the radical perspective, Wil-
are given over to a sustained criticism of liam Chambliss's work On the Take: From Petty
liberal criminology, positivism, ecological and Crooks to Presidents (1978, Bloomington, IN,
anomie theories, labelling theory, interaction- Indiana University Press) charted the social
ism and phenomenology, classical Marxism composition of racketeering in Seattle show-
(including the writings of Marx, Engels and ing that the `hidden hands' in American
Bonger), and, lastly, con¯ict theory. This tour organized crime were leading lights of the
d'horizon of early and mid-twentieth century political and economic elite. Extensive ®eld
criminological thinking remains a useful work allowed Chambliss to piece together the
summary, even if the theoretical predilections links between the front-line operators and the
of its authors are not widely shared. In the shadowy entrepreneurs who ultimately con-
®nal chapter a `synthesis' is presented which trolled the crime networks: key personnel in
tries to salvage the useful elements of the the police force, the legal profession, business,
theories that preceded `the new criminology'. local government and the prosecutor's of®ce.
Brie¯y, this synthesis argues that it is Writing in the late 1970s, Chambliss was able
axiomatic that capitalism is criminogenic and to assert that these connections extended to
that a society based on `socialist diversity' is the highest of®ce in the land. Presidents
the only social formation that, in principle, Nixon and Johnson were said to have
holds out any possibility of being crime-free. substantial dealings with men `whose busi-
For the criminologist then, the goal should be ness pro®ts derived at least in part from
the demise of capitalism and the transforma- illegal business'. Evidence of the pervasive
tion of society to one of socialist diversity. connections between the `underworld' and the
Anything else, by de®nition, implicates the `upper world' of the capitalist order seemed
172 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
ample enough to indicate that criminality was provide fertile ground for critical scholarship
indeed an endemic feature of American in this ®eld.
capitalism.
Criminologists who follow the lead of James Sheptycki
Durkheim might maintain that Marxist ana-
lyses represent an unnecessary narrowing of Associated Concepts: con¯ict theory, corporate
concern to the criminogenic properties of crime, criminalization, critical criminology,
capitalist society; `crime is a normal social labelling, left realism, new criminology, new
fact', it is a feature of any social order. Those deviancy theory, radical criminologies
who wish to draw on insights from the
Marxist tradition might argue in turn that, in Key Readings
the contemporary period when free-market Bankowski, Z., Mungham, G. and Young, P. (1977)
liberalism has become hegemonic (to use a `Radical criminology or radical criminologist?',
Marxist term) globally, this narrowing is not Contemporary Crisis, 1 (1), pp. 37±51.
so much the product of theoretical blinkers Box, S. (1983) Power, Crime and Mysti®cation. London,
(that is, the result of idealist assumptions), Tavistock.
but rather is the realistic basis on which Greenberg, D. (1980) Crime and Capitalism. Palo Alto,
criminology must inevitably build. In this CA, May®eld Publishing Company.
regard it would do to cite W.G. Carson's The Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and
Other Price of Britain's Oil (New Brunswick, Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the
Rutgers University Press, 1982). Carson's State and Law and Order. London, Macmillan.
book took as its starting point the unaccep- Lea, J. and Young, J. (1984/1993) What is to be Done
table level of fatal and non-fatal accidents that About Law and Order? Harmondsworth, Penguin.
occurred during the United Kingdom's Manning, P.K. (2000) `Policing new social spaces', in
scramble to develop its off-shore oil and gas J.W.E. Sheptycki (ed.), Issues in Transnational
reserves. He was moved to remark that it was Policing. London, Routledge.
conditions in the capitalist world economy Taylor, I., Walton, P. and Young, J. (1973) The New
that `explain why successive governments Criminology. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
would opt to get their hands on the new- Taylor, I., Walton, P. and Young, J. (eds) (1975)
found wealth of the Continental Shelf as Critical Criminology. London, Routledge and
rapidly as possible and at almost any cost'. It Kegan Paul.
is only by seeing the development of Britain's
petroleum extraction industry in the context
of global capitalism that `the troubles endured
by those who have been killed or injured in
the North Sea can be viewed in terms of the MASCULINITIES
``historical change and institutional contra-
diction'' which earns them anything more De®nition
than a coincidental place in ``the course of
world history'''. Variable sets of ideas, values, representations
The crimes of the powerful remain a and practices associated with `being male'
signi®cant blind spot for conventional crimi- which structure relations among men as well
nology. Yet, if there is any sense in the notion as between men and women, and produce
that `property is theft', there is much effects on individuals, organizations and
criminological work to be done. A signi®cant cultures.
new frontier is being opened up through the
institution of intellectual property. Patent law
has been extended in such a way as to allow Distinctive Features
the ownership of DNA and other biological
materials. It has become possible for multina- The traditional idea of masculinity (in the
tional corporations to `own' DNA sequences. singular) as a set of psychological attributes
`Biopiracy' is a term that has been given to the was developed to understand differences
practices of some companies who have between the sexes. In its classical psycho-
asserted the right of ownership over genetic analytic variant, naturally bi-sexual infants are
materials taken from living organisms (Man- precipitated into sexed identities through
ning, 2000). If the roots of Marxist crimin- the dif®culties of coping with the entry of
ologies can be said to lie in the article on The the father into the mother±child dyad.
Law on Thefts of Wood, it would seem that the Rather than continue an unequal struggle to
crimes of capitalist accumulation continue to take the place of the father, boy children,
MASCULINITIES 173
fearful of the potentially castrating father, forms of oppression and particular historical
forsake desire for the mother and settle for trajectory. Building on this idea, Connell (1987,
becoming like the father (and hence the 1995), the most in¯uential contemporary
culturally masculine he embodies) through writer on masculinities, suggested the exist-
identifying with him (which, for Freud, was a ence of three distinct but inter-related struc-
dif®cult and never-completed process). The tures: labour (to do with work and the
social psychological variant married research division of labour); power (to do with
into differences between the sexes (which authority, control, coercion and violence);
always found remarkably few) with role and cathexis (to do with sexuality, emotional
theory (how social positions, like father, get relationships and desire). None of these was
reproduced), to produce the idea of male and accorded primacy and all were to be under-
female sex-roles (or masculinity and feminin- stood as the outcome of practice (albeit always
ity), the successful learning of which ensures taking place within structured, or constrained,
the cultural reproduction of sexual difference. situations). Collectively, the product of these
Second wave feminists concerned with manifold structured practices at any given
understanding the oppression of women time was the historical pattern of gender
introduced the importance of power, the idea relations: the `gender order'.
that the key difference between men and Within criminology, Messerschmidt (1993)
women was the greater power men system- has developed these ideas and applied them
atically enjoyed. When the spotlight was to thinking about crime. He utilizes Connell's
turned speci®cally onto violence, and the notions of a tripartite structure of gender
maleness of the perpetrators was noticed and relations and hegemonic and subordinated
named, the notion of masculinity began to masculinities, as well as the importance of
enter criminology's ®eld of vision. Men's practice. In addition, he addresses the struc-
violence against women was seen as part of tures of race and class by conceptualizing all
the system of male power and a key to its structures as implicated simultaneously in any
reproduction ± hence explaining why domes- given practice, and practice as situationally
tic violence and rape were often not taken constrained by the need to `account' for our
seriously. The early interest in male psychol- actions to normative conceptions (of appropri-
ogy, whether based in biology, early relation- ate gender/race/class conduct). In different
ships or the social learning of sex-roles, had situations class, gender or race `accounting'
shifted to an interest in the social structures of may be more or less salient. Within this
male domination (or patriarchy). This pro- schema, crime becomes a resource for certain
vided the basis for a less individually based men in certain situations for accomplishing
understanding of masculinity, but the concep- masculinity. Its salience for particular men as
tion of masculinity informing the work (where such a resource will depend on other
there was one) was still a singular one. resources at their disposal, which, in turn,
The emergence of feminist-inspired, gender- will be a product of their position in class,
aware historical and ethnographic work on gender and race relations and the sorts of
men revealed not only the diverse forms situations they ®nd themselves in.
masculinity has taken over time and cross-
culturally, but also the co-existence of differ-
ent forms of masculinity within particular Evaluation
cultures; thus was born the idea of masculi-
nities. And, just as power affects the relations Freud thought the concept of masculinity was
between men and women and masculinity/ one of the most `confused' in science. Unfor-
femininity, so it was seen to affect relations tunately, pluralizing the term has not elimi-
among masculinities. Masculinities were nated all confusions. In particular, there is a
argued to be `structured in dominance', with constant tendency to elide men and mascu-
the most powerful (or valued), culturally linities, to reduce the latter to lists of attri-
speaking, in any given social order, being butions, what men do (`take risks', compete,
`hegemonic'. etc.) or should do (be strong, stoical, etc.), as
In attempting to understand the complex, opposed to what women do/should do, rather
contradictory and uneven nature of male than use the term consistently in relational
domination and thus move beyond the terms: as places within gender relations that
reductiveness of the idea of `the structure of only exist in contrast to femininities. No
patriarchy', certain feminist writers had begun femininities, no masculinities. No doubt this
to posit several structures underpinning attributional tendency stems in part from our
gender relations, each with their own speci®c desire to concretize, to turn abstract relations
174 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
economy was also developed by those more media representations and leading to
sympathetic to his perspective, perhaps most demands for greater social control and creat-
signi®cantly by David Arnold and John ing a spiral of reaction.
Bohstedt. The former traces similar patterns
of rioting to that of eighteenth-century England
in early twentieth-century India. The latter Distinctive Features
described how eighteenth-century rioting
might be construed as `community politics'. Since it appeared in the title of Cohen's (1972)
According to Bohstedt, horizontal and vertical book, the term moral panic has been ubiquitous
relationship networks within communities in criminology and the sociology of deviance.
were brought into play at different moments Its many uses to characterize social reaction are
of crowd action, and with different results too numerous to catalogue but include media
depending on a community's structure. In coverage of youth, sex, drugs, juvenile crime,
1985, following the Broadwater Farm riots in single parents, child abuse and diseases of
London, Bohstedt published a letter in The humankind and animals (such as HIV/AIDS,
Times suggesting how these disturbances also as well as BSE or `mad cow' disease).
needed to be considered in such terms. No Cohen's work on the moral panic around
historian can now approach crowd action Mods and Rockers in Britain examines media
without some acknowledgement of the moral coverage in the 1960s and the pronouncements
economy concept, yet, as Mark Harrison has of various authorities or experts who de®ned
warned, there is danger in the way in which the `youth problem' as a symptom of the state
crowd and riot have often been con¯ated in of society and social decline. Cohen uses the
social history, and in seeking to impose a moral analogy of a disaster to identify various stages
economy legitimation to every riot. Disorders, of social reaction. The inventory involves
he insists, on occasions looked backward to taking stock of what happened, a time at
traditional rights for legitimacy; on others they which media descriptions and de®nitions are
looked forward to a vision of how society might crucial since they are the main source for most
be in the future, but they could also be spurred people's information. Cohen categorized the
by demands to meet changing expectations. media inventory of Mods and Rockers in three
parts: ®rst, the media exaggerated the num-
Clive Emsley bers involved, the extent of the violence and
the amount of damage caused. Distortion of
Associated Concepts: historical research, Marx- the events was multiplied by the use of
ist criminologies, primitive rebellion, social sensational headlines and the adoption of a
justice dramatic reporting style, especially in the use
of words such as `orgy of destruction', `mob'
and `siege'. Secondly, media coverage con-
Key Readings
tained many predictions that there would be
Arnold, D. (1979) `Looting, grain riots and govern-
more con¯ict and violence. Thirdly, Cohen
ment policy in South India, 1918', Past and Present,
argued that media coverage served to re-code
84, pp. 111±45.
or to symbolize deviance through associating
Bohstedt, J. (1983) Riots and Community Politics in
the word `Mod' with particular expressions of
England and Wales, 1790±1810. Cambridge, MA,
style such as clothes and hairstyles. Symboli-
Harvard University Press.
zation leads on to sensitization so that other
Harrison, M. (1988) Crowds and History: Mass
events that may otherwise have been seen as
Phenomena in English Towns, 1790±1835. Cam-
isolated or un-connected ones are linked into a
bridge, Cambridge University Press.
pattern and understood as symptomatic of the
Thompson, E.P. (1991) Customs in Common. London,
same underlying malaise. Both processes pro-
Merlin Press.
duce an increase in social control responses
and Cohen saw this control culture as con-
taining three common elements:
Various moral entrepreneurs who call for tions of an elite and outcomes. In seeking to
action to be taken against the outbreak of move beyond this, Goode and Ben-Yehuda
lawlessness usually also proclaim that current (1994) distinguish between three theories or
controls are inadequate. As Cohen shows, approaches. The grassroots model is where a
entrepreneurs exaggerate the problem in order panic originates from the general public and
to make local events seem ones of pressing expresses a genuinely felt, even if mistaken,
national concern, and an index of the decline concern about a threat. The elite-engineered
of morality and standards. The stepping-up of approach is where an elite deliberately and
controls leads to further marginalization and consciously generates concerns and fears.
stigmatization of deviants which, in turn, The interest-group theory is where rule-
leads to more calls for action, more police creators and moral entrepreneurs launch
action and so on into a deviancy ampli®cation crusades for controls. Goode and Ben-
spiral. Cohen's analysis located the nature and Yehuda have distilled ®ve key characteristics
extent of reaction to Mods and Rockers to the of a moral panic:
social context of Britain in the 1960s. In
particular, ambivalence about social change · disproportionality of reaction;
in the postwar period, the new af¯uence and · concern about the threat;
freedom of youth cultures and their apparent · hostility to the objects of the panic;
rejection of traditional forms of incorporation · widespread agreement or consensus that
such as work and families are used to the threat is real;
contextualize the panic. · volatility, that is, moral panics are unpre-
The social context of moral panics was dictable in terms of scale and intensity.
developed by Hall et al.'s (1978) analysis of
social reaction to `mugging' or street crime.
Working within a Marxist framework, they Evaluation
argued that mugging achieved the promi-
nence it did because its themes of `race', crime A moral panic entails simpli®cation, stigmati-
and youth meshed with or crystallized politi- zation and heightened public feeling about an
cal and economic shifts in the 1970s. Econom- individual, group, or event. Calling this a
ically, this was a period of crisis in Britain. moral panic draws attention to exaggerated
Politically, Britain's standing in the world and distorted media coverage and the ways in
continued to decline and, domestically, trade which it may be seen as symbolizing diffuse
unions, left wingers and the welfare state were social anxieties in particular conjunctures. A
blamed for much of the state of `sick Britain'. wide battery of arguments has been raised
New racial discourses were emerging that against the conceptualization and utilization
identi®ed blacks as part of the problem of of moral panics as a way of capturing social
British society. Concerns about sexual permis- reaction. Criticizing Hall et al. (1978) in
siveness and a lack of controls on young particular, left realism maintains that crime
people continued from earlier times. In this and the fear of crime should be taken seriously
climate racialized crime statistics were used to and not dismissed as `just' an expression of
draw attention to the problem of dispropor- media over-reaction or panic. Waddington
tionate amounts of street crime committed by (1986) took issue with the empirical basis of
young blacks and drove discourses for more Policing the Crisis. He argued that, contrary to
law and order to stem the rising tide of crime the view presented in that book, mugging was
and to protect innocent victims. Hall et al. rising and questions the view that media
argued that this moral panic underscored the coverage was disproportionate. Waddington
development of authoritarian populism in and others have asked what a `proportionate'
Britain in the 1970s. reaction would be. The scale of media reaction
Moral panics have been seen as inevitable can rarely be measured or judged in terms
and periodic occurrences for societies under- of either proportionality or seriousness, as
going a reaf®rmation or re-de®nition of moral the highly uneven coverage of wars around
boundaries. Functionalism has been a recur- the world indicates. This casts doubt on one
ring feature of moral panic theory, even in its of the central tenets of moral panics.
radical applications. In a crude version the Problems have also been identi®ed with the
reaction is seen as akin to a form of mass use of the concept of moral panic to capture
delusion where the public is `duped' into reaction to diverse themes or issues. There is a
panicking. This tends to over-state the extent problem in reducing all episodes of over-
of social consensus and to assume a straight- reaction to the catch-all notion of `panicki-
forward correspondence between the inten- ness'. A more detailed understanding of
MULTI-AGENCY CRIME PREVENTION 177
debate about the changing modalities of state cooperation. Furthermore, the conceptual
power in relationship to civil society and `the boundaries of multi-agency social crime pre-
public'. Indeed, notions of `local' and `central' vention are particularly vague, encompassing
state are becoming increasingly problematic a diversity of schemes under the label. Despite
with the rise of what is often termed `gov- or perhaps because of this `catch-all' quality to
ernance at a distance'. This development is such initiatives, the appeal of multi-agency
well illustrated by the example of state power crime prevention partnerships across contem-
being exercised through indirect rather than porary states, faced by both growing rates of
direct agency, as in the fad for local, preventive crime and disorder and declining trust in
`partnerships against crime'. In this new era, traditional crime control responses, is unlikely
responsibility for setting up and running to wane in the foreseeable future.
multi-agency crime prevention initiatives at
the local level is increasingly put out to Gordon Hughes
`tender', inviting bids from rival competitors.
Alongside the emotionally expressive poli- Associated Concepts: community crime preven-
tics of popular punitiveness, the discourse of tion, community safety, crime prevention,
managerialism has come to play an increas- evaluation research, managerialism, realist
ingly important part in the restructuring of criminologies, situational crime prevention,
criminal justice in most mature capitalist social crime prevention
democracies. The managerialist discourse
suggests that the organization and coordina-
Key Readings
tion of public services are best realized by
Crawford, A. (1997) The Local Governance of Crime.
means of the processes of marketization and
Oxford, The Clarendon Press.
the replacement of professionals and bureau-
Graham, J. and Bennett, T. (1995) Crime Prevention
crats by managers. It assumes that better
Strategies in Europe and North America. New York,
management will prove an effective and econ-
Criminal Justice Press.
omical solution for a wide range of economic
Hughes, G. (1997) `Strategies of crime preven-
and social problems. Indeed it has come to
tion and community safety in contemporary
affect the organization and operational work
Britain', Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention, 5,
of the police and other agencies of criminal
pp. 221±44.
justice and prevention in novel and unprece-
O'Malley, P. and Sutton, A. (1997) Crime Prevention
dented ways. In most multi-agency crime
in Australia: Issues in Policy and Research. Sydney,
prevention initiatives a managerialist ethos is
Federation Press.
increasingly to the fore as evidenced in the
Pearson, G., Blagg, H., Smith, D., Sampson, A. and
obsession with `mission statements', `perfor-
Stubbs, P. (1992) `Crime, community and con¯ict:
mance indicators', measurable `objectives',
the multi-agency approach', in D. Downes (ed.),
`customer surveys', `audits' and `evaluation'
Unravelling Criminal Justice. London, Macmillan.
and so on, all of which re¯ect the govern-
mental pressure to be able to count `what
works' in crime and disorder reduction.
MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS
Evaluation
Total sample
None 2450 55.0 75.0
One 600 17.5 15.8 2 = 195.62 p < 0.001
Two 480 17.5 12.6 = 0.31
More than two 270 10.0 3.9
Males
None 1000 40.0 60.0
One 500 30.0 22.0 2 = 159.94 p < 0.001
Two 480 17.5 12.6 = 0.40
More than two 270 10.0 3.9
Females
None 1450 83.3 76.3
One 100 5.0 5.6 2 = 63.30 p < 0.001
Two 200 15.0 10.5 = 0.25
More than two 150 10.0 5.6
· Multiple regression, which combines the to each other as well as to the dependent, and/
effects of different variables into a single or to control for alternative explanations to the
predictor of a dependent variable, making one proposed.
allowance for their overlap. Statistics
generally produced are the multiple
correlation and its statistical signi®cance, Evaluation
the signi®cance of each component varia-
ble's contribution and estimates of their Caution should be taken in interpreting
independent effects (beta coef®cients). multivariate analyses, however.
Multiple regression needs an interval or
ratio-level variable as dependent variable · Most of such analyses work by taking
(one where it makes sense to talk about account ®rst of the variable which
some values as being twice or half others explains the greatest amount of variation,
± like money or age or number of pre- then of the variable that explains the
vious convictions). Dichotomies (variables greatest amount of what is left, and so on.
with only two values ± such as gender) or The effect of the ®rst variable is therefore
interval/ratio variables may be used as sometimes exaggerated because all of the
independent variables. overlap with other variables is attributed
· Discriminant function analysis, which to it.
works in a similar way to multiple regres- · It is always possible that apparent causal
sion but will allow categorical variables relationships are in fact spurious and due
(e.g. type of crime) as dependent vari- to the effect of some other variable which
ables. has not been measured. Statistical control
· Analysis of variance works on categorical is never as effective in eliminating alter-
independent variables and on an interval/ native explanations as control by the
ratio dependent one. It provides an design of the study.
estimate of each variable's independent · While correlation is necessary for causa-
contribution to the explanation of variance tion, it is not suf®cient. There is always a
and a similar estimate for each interaction tendency in these analyses to move from
effect (each combination of variables prediction to causal explanation, and this
working together). is seldom appropriate without additional
· Logistic regression permits the sophisti- evidence and argument which cannot be
cated prediction of categorical variables, supplied by the analysis itself.
combining the strengths of discriminant
Roger Sapsford
function analysis, analysis of variance and
tabular analysis, but it is sometimes
dif®cult to interpret. Associated Concepts: causation, correlational
analysis, experiments, prediction studies
All of these methods, adapted to different
kinds of data, are used for the same purposes: Key Readings
to assess the overall effect of several variables Hood, R. (1992) Race and Sentencing. Oxford, The
on a dependent variable, to assess the inde- Clarendon Press.
pendent effect of variables that may be related Sapsford, R.J. (1999) Survey Research. London, Sage.
N
and justice led to the rise of `relativism' in the corrosive in¯uence of the liberalist modern
social science and `legal positivism' or `legal culture. In terms of criminal justice policy,
realism' among legal theorists. These perspec- neo-conservative criminology is oriented on
tives emphasize the social embeddedness of the one hand to the preservation of traditional
moral rules and the role of legislators and values and norms and on the other to the
judges in de®ning justice for any society. In promotion of a technocratic rationality that
legal theory there is perhaps not so much decouples the control of crime from its social
distance between natural justice and legal and economic aetiology.
positivism positions as between relativists and
universalists in social science. The best-known
contemporary theorist of natural justice, Finnis Distinctive Features
(1980), places importance on context and
interpretation, while Hart (1994), a leading The term neo-conservative criminology sig-
legal realist, says that valid legal systems ni®es the existence of a close causal relation-
necessarily contain some minimum content of ship between speci®c theoretical positions on
natural law. crime and crime control and the neo-con-
Natural justice is undergoing a revival in servative political convictions of their authors.
the form of increased adherence to human The main exponent of neo-conservative crimi-
rights theory and politics. Desire to help those nology is the American James Q. Wilson, a
living under oppressive regimes has led to political scientist who has nevertheless greatly
championing of the claims of human rights in¯uenced criminal justice policy through his
against inviolability of sovereignty; feminists widely read writings (for example, he co-
and those seeking to remove discrimination authored along with George Kelling (1982) the
against ethnic and religious minorities have in¯uential theory of Broken Windows), and
also drawn on the idea of human rights. Even his numerous advisory roles during the
communitarian theorists and critics of `cul- Reagan and Bush administrations.
tural imperialism' acknowledge the necessity Neo-conservative criminology does not
of universal commitment to fundamental amount to a criminological theory. It should
human rights. rather be understood as a speci®c application
of a broader social engineering perspective
Barbara Hudson that utilizes theoretical, and particularly
applied, knowledge in the service of the func-
Associated Concepts: communitarianism, tional exigencies of the state and the economy.
human rights, social justice Whilst according to neo-conservative political
thought, the economic, technical and manage-
rial achievements of modernity should be
Key Readings safeguarded and further extended, the same
Dworkin, R. (1977) Taking Rights Seriously. London,
does not apply to its ethical and cultural
Duckworth.
components. Indeed, modernist culture with
Finnis, J. (1980) Natural Law and Natural Rights.
its emphasis on `subjective value orientations'
Oxford, Oxford University Press.
and `expressive self-realization' is held out as
Hart, H.L.A. (1994) The Concept of Law, 2nd edn.
undermining the motivational requirements of
Oxford, Oxford University Press.
an `ef®cient economy and a rational state
Reiman, J. (1990) Justice and Modern Moral Philosophy.
administration', namely the individual's will-
New Haven, CT, Yale University Press.
ingness to achieve and to obey (Habermas,
Sandel, M. (1998) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice,
1989). In place of such subversive modernist
2nd edn. Cambridge, Cambridge University
culture, neo-conservatives ask for a revival of
Press.
tradition and call for `courage for the past' in
the state, schools and family.
The functional logic which lies behind their
justi®cation of traditionalism in terms of its
NEO-CONSERVATIVE CRIMINOLOGY bene®cial effects for the system can also be
discerned in certain other central features of
neo-conservative thinking. Neo-conservatives
De®nition urge the state to withdraw to activities it can
effectively control ± so as to lessen legitima-
Neo-conservative criminology treats criminal- tion problems. They, moreover, recommend a
ity as one of a group of social pathological greater detachment of administration from
phenomena, the prevalence of which is due to public will-formation so as to minimize the
NEO-CONSERVATIVE CRIMINOLOGY 183
uated in terms of their effectiveness with necessarily provide the legitimation for them
respect to certain goals: namely goals that are being imposed on society's members. There
derivable from factual `needs' and are thus have to also be other, morally philosophically
essentially beyond choice. valid, reasons for attempting the refurbishing
The tendency, furthermore, of neo-conser- of fading values.
vative criminology to clearly demarcate causal
analysis from policy analysis and policy- Tonia Tzannetakis
making leads to a lowering of expectations
with regard to crime prevention and control, Associated Concepts: actuarialism, administra-
to the pursuit of marginal gains primarily tive criminology, `broken windows', manage-
through a ®ght against symptoms and to the rialism, rational choice theory, realist
abandonment of attempts to tackle the root criminologies, situational crime prevention,
causes of crime. The extent to which the latter underclass
is necessary or unavoidable remains an open
question. Attempts to remove the root causes
of criminality are portrayed by neo-conserva- Key Readings
Habermas, J. (1989) The New Conservatism. Cam-
tive criminology as utopian in view of a
bridge, Polity Press.
variety of more or less `objective' biological,
Wilson, J.Q. (1985) Thinking about Crime. New York,
social, economic, political and technical con-
Vintage.
straints. However, many of such constraints
Wilson, J.Q. and Herrnstein, R.J. (1985) Crime and
may themselves be manufactured and thus are
Human Nature: The De®nitive Study of the Causes of
in principle solvable. Causal analysis can
Crime. New York, Simon and Schuster.
direct our attention to new possible ®elds of
Wilson, J.Q. (1991) On Character: Essays by James Q.
intervention and change, which policy-related
Wilson. Washington, DC, A.E.I. Press.
research, inextricably linked ± as it is ± to the
Wilson, J.Q. and Kelling, G. (1982) `Broken win-
requirements of the policy-maker, is bound to
dows', Atlantic Monthly, March, pp. 29±38.
exclude from its agenda.
Young, J. (1994) `Incessant chatter: recent paradigms
Finally, the selective attention of neo-
in criminology', in The Oxford Handbook of
conservative criminology to the moral culture
Criminology. Oxford, The Clarendon Press, pp.
of contemporary society as a major cause of
69±124.
existing levels of crime, as well as an appro-
priate ®eld of intervention, is open to serious
criticism. The importance attached to culture
as a causal factor ± largely on the basis of
speculation rather than ®rm evidence ± is NET WIDENING
dictated by the same functional logic which
runs through neo-conservative writings. Mod-
ernist culture is examined by the neo- De®nition
conservatives solely from the point of view
of its functional role as an element of the The processes whereby attempts to prevent
`pattern maintenance' of the system. But crime and develop community-based correc-
attempts to restore traditional values and tions act to expand the criminal justice system
norms are themselves utopian. Traditional and draw more subjects into its remit.
(familial) values (to take only one example),
cannot be restored without `turning back the
clock of modernization' (for example, by Distinctive Features
undoing the social, political and economic
processes, which have historically led to a In the 1970s diversion became a widely
change of the female role and family relation- acclaimed strategy for reducing the numbers
ships). As has succinctly been pointed out: of offenders, particularly young offenders,
`precisely the fact that today tradition must be from appearing in court and thereby avoiding
invoked shows that it has lost its power' the stigma and labelling of judicial processes.
(Horkheimer, 1974, cited in Habermas, 1989, Sentencing alternatives such as probation and
p. 44). community supervision were also intended to
An important question is, moreover, raised reduce the use and cost of custody. However,
concerning the extent of the legitimation of the it was repeatedly found that while `alterna-
particular normative preferences of neo-con- tives' have burgeoned, so have prison popu-
servative criminology. The functional under- lations. Moreover, the very existence of
standing and use of values does not apparently benign and welfare-based options
NET WIDENING 185
has increased the numbers subject to some · Petty or `potential' delinquents are subject
form of of®cial, rather than informal, inter- to more intrusive and disguised control in
vention. In California, for example, increasing the name of diversion or prevention.
the proportion of offenders placed on proba- · As the soft end of the system appears
tion was encouraged by providing state funds more and more benign, so the hard core
(a subsidy) to the counties for not committing appears more hopeless and becomes a
cases to state institutions. However Lerman's target for such policies as selective
(1975) assessment of the subsidy programme incapacitation.
found that many probationers were subse- · Whole populations are subjected to
quently sent into custody for probation further and subtler involvement in the
violations. Moreover, those not recommended business of social control. They are made
for probation were receiving longer sentences. the object of preventive social control
He suggests that the creation of new `diver- before any deviant act can take place.
sionary' measures achieved no long-term
decarceration and ultimately expanded the For Cohen (1985, p. 37) and Austin and
numbers subject to various forms of of®cial Krisberg (1981) the real effect of diversion and
surveillance and detention. This resulted not decarceration is to increase the reach and
just from courtroom decisions but from an intensity of state control:
increased willingness on the part of social
workers to use their discretionary power to · The criminal justice system expands and
intervene on the offender's behalf. A Canadian draws more people into its reach (net
widening).
study, which examined the effects of commu-
nity corrections programmes introduced in · The level of intervention, involving indi-
Saskatchewan from 1962 to 1979, concluded vidualized treatment and indeterminate
sentencing, intensi®es (net strengthening).
that not only had these failed to reduce the
size of the prison population, they actually · Institutions are rarely replaced or radi-
resulted in a three-fold increase in the cally altered but supplemented by new
proportion of persons under formal state forms of intervention (different nets).
control. Similarly, the National Evaluation of
the Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders Evaluation
project in the USA reported that the pro-
grammes were so clearly biased to heighten These readings of criminal justice reform have
the intake of less serious offenders, that many been challenged in various ways as one-
more were caught up in the referral network dimensional, unduly pessimistic and nihilistic.
than if the project had not been established. Indeed Cohen's (1985) later re¯ection on this
Stanley Cohen (1979) described such pro- `nothing works' mentality concedes that the
cesses as `thinning the mesh' and `widening intentions of `doing good' are not automati-
the net'. Allied to his wider `dispersal of cally misguided. Speci®c policies at particular
discipline' thesis, Cohen contended that as times may have a positive and progressive
control mechanisms are dispersed from cus- effect ± that there remains some possibility `for
tody into the community they penetrate realizing preferred values'. He eventually
deeper into the social fabric. A blurring of argues for a slightly different reading of net
boundaries between the deviant and non- widening which would allow `sensitivity to
deviant and between the public and the success (however ambivalent)'. McMahon
private occurs. A `punitive archipelago' is (1990, p. 144) also points out that the concept
expanded as new resources, technology and only directs attention towards expansionary
professional interests are applied to an increas- trends and draws attention away from `any
ing number of `clients' and `consumers'. moderation of penal control which may have
Entrepreneurs are drawn into the control taken place and from the superseding of some
enterprise in search of pro®ts. Communities previous forms of penal control by preferable
are mobilized to act as voluntary control ones'. Nevertheless, the concept continues to
agents in their own right. But, throughout, the serve as a reminder of the unintended
prison remains at the core of the system. The consequences of some criminal justice reform,
rhetoric of diversion and community camou- particularly when that reform is couched in
¯ages what is really going on. Rather, alterna- terms of `zero tolerance', the need for early
tives to prison and crime prevention policies (pre-criminal) intervention or as acting in the
have failed to reduce the reach of criminal `best interests' of others.
justice and tend to draw more people into the
mesh of formal control: John Muncie
186 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Associated Concepts: appreciative criminology, · the actual act (the rationality of individual
rational choice theory, subculture acts and the social dynamics surrounding
them);
Key Readings · the immediate origins of social reaction (the
Agnew, R. (1994) `The techniques of neutralization contingencies and conditions crucial to the
and violence', Criminology, 32, pp. 555±79. decision to act against the deviant);
Cohen, S. (1993) `Human rights and crimes of the · the wider origins of deviant reaction (the
state', Australian and New Zealand Journal of political and ideological concerns of the
Criminology, 26 (2), pp. 97±115. state);
Coleman, J.W. (1994) The Criminal Elite: The Sociology · the outcome of social reaction on the deviant's
of White Collar Crime. New York, St Martins Press. further action (the conscious decisions
Katz, J. (1987) Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual made by an individual to respond to
Attractions in Doing Evil. New York, Basic Books. sanctions);
Matza, D. (1964) Delinquency and Drift. New York, · the nature of the deviant process as a whole
Wiley. (the necessity to integrate all elements of
Sykes, G.M. and Matza, D. (1957) `Techniques of the deviant process while being alive to
neutralization: a theory of delinquency', American the conditions of social determination and
Sociological Review, 22, pp. 664±70. self-determination).
emerged in the 1960s. Becker (1967) brought of practical help to those on the receiving end
such questioning directly into criminology of repressive control systems or to those
and the sociology of deviance by asking social members of the working class who suffer
scientists: `Whose side are you on?' Social most from the effects of everyday criminal
science in general, and individual positivism actions. Nevertheless the new criminology's
in particular, were charged with lending the programme of focusing on agency and
state a spurious legitimacy and functioning as structure, and on the micro as well as the
little more than a justi®cation for oppressive macro social world, arguably created a vital
power. What the new criminology managed space from which a whole range of critical,
to achieve was a radical reconstitution of feminist and left realist positions could
criminology as part of a more comprehensive subsequently emerge.
sociology of the state and political economy, in
which questions of political and social control John Muncie
took precedence over behavioural and correc-
tional issues. By the mid-1970s such re¯ections Associated Concepts: critical criminology, left
on the construction of crime became pivotal in idealism, left realism, Marxist criminologies,
the formulation of a critical criminology. When new deviancy theory, radical criminologies
the task of criminology was de®ned as one of
creating a society `in which the facts of human Key Readings
diversity are not subject to the power to Becker, H. (1967) `Whose side are we on?', Social
criminalize' (Taylor et al., 1973, p. 282), it was Problems, 14 (3), pp. 239±47.
clear that criminology was being transformed Taylor, I., Walton, P. and Young, J. (1973) The New
from a science of social control and into a Criminology. London, Routledge.
struggle for social justice. Taylor, I., Walton, P. and Young, J. (eds) (1975)
Such critical analysis was indeed in¯uential Critical Criminology. London, Routledge.
in awakening interest in analysis of the role of Walton, P. and Young, J. (eds) (1998) The New
the law in capitalism, in particular spawning a Criminology Revisited. Basingstoke, Macmillan.
series of revisionist histories of the relation-
ships between what counted as `crime', class
position and systems of punishment. Such
complexities could not be addressed, for
example, by an uncritical adoption of the NEW DEVIANCY THEORY
economic and material determinism of Marx-
ism. A major stumbling block in the synthesis De®nition
of Marxism, interactionism and labelling was
that the concerns of criminology and its A theoretical position which emphasizes
continuing observance of the concept of micro-sociological explanations of the ways
`crime' do not represent a theoretical ®eld of in which deviance is generated in interactions
study within Marxism. Rather crime is an between individuals and law enforcement
ideological category generated by state agen- agents, with particular reference to the process
cies and intellectuals. For many Marxist of labelling and deriving from symbolic
scholars the new criminological agenda was interactionism.
limited because there could be no such thing
as a Marxist criminology. Retaining the
concept of crime as the key referent inevitably Distinctive Features
laid open the possibility of collusion with
state-sponsored de®nitions of undesirable New deviancy theory emerged in the 1960s
behaviours. It was noticeable too that the and early 1970s as part of a radical response to
new criminology retained a gender-speci®c the positivist domination of criminology. New
mode of analysis and failed to encompass the deviancy attempted to recover the `meaning'
then emergent ®eld of gender studies or to in human behaviour denied in positivism. It
include any reference to women and crime in had a number of in¯uences and strands
its analysis. From a left realist perspective, including interactionism (derived from
subsequently developed by one of the original George Herbert Mead's writings on symbolic
authors of the new criminology, it has been interactionism), labelling theory and the
further claimed that the pursuit of structural ethnographic tradition of social research.
change and a tolerance of diversity are idealist The main features of new deviancy theory
and utopian. A lack of political pragmatism are as follows. There is emphasis on social
and failure to be policy prescriptive offer little action as free, creative and spontaneous rather
NEW DEVIANCY THEORY 189
Distinctive Features
Evaluation
Gregg Barak (1988) ®rst used the term `news-
making criminology' to explore the relation- The ultimate value of newsmaking crimino-
ships between the study and production of logy still remains to be seen. In terms of
crime news and the interaction by criminolo- criminologists having a strong in¯uence over
gists and others involved in the processes of the social construction of crime and justice,
mass communication. Like students of crime this appears to vary by nation-state and the
and media generally, students of newsmaking role of public intellectuals in particular
criminology are concerned with the degrees of societies. At the same time, newsmaking
distortion and bias in the news, or with the criminology has already raised the conscious-
distance between the social reality of crime ness of criminologists about the processes of
and the newsmaking reality of crime. Like newsmaking and about their interactive roles
other analysts of the news media, newsmaking with the mass-mediated images of crime and
criminologists are similarly interested in justice, whether these be in the areas of
seeing that the news media `tell it like it is', researching, teaching, or newsmaking per se.
and better yet, `like it could be' or `like it
should be', based on an informed scienti®c Gregg Barak
view of crime and justice (Barak, 1994).
The concept of newsmaking criminology
refers to criminologists' conscious efforts Associated Concepts: constitutive criminology,
and activities in interpreting, in¯uencing, or cultural criminology, social constructionism
NORMALIZATION 191
taking drugs has become the norm and that ing outside? Is the policing, say, of London
non-drug-taking can be seen as deviant. Yet normal enough for that of Belfast to be
Shiner and Newburn draw on UK and USA compared to it?
data to argue convincingly that whilst drug
taking was common amongst young people it Nic Groombridge
was not the norm and that substantial
numbers continue to `say no to drugs' and
disapprove of their use. Associated Concepts: deviance, neutralization
However, it could be argued that Shiner and (techniques of ), pathology
Newburn accept too readily the distinction
between legal and illegal drugs and fail to take
suf®cient account of cultural aspects. Using Key Readings
®gures for both prescribed and over-the- Feest, J. (1999) `Imprisonment and prisoners' work:
counter medicines it is possible to argue that normalization or less eligibility', Punishment and
there is a cultural expectation of using a `pill Society, 1 (1), pp. 99±107.
for every ill' amongst the whole population. In Foucault, M. (1975) Surveiller et punir. Paris,
this scenario tea, coffee, alcohol, Prozac, Gallimard.
Ecstasy and aspirin are all used to get people Mulcahy, A. (1999) `Visions of normality: peace and
through their life. Moreover, popular culture reconstruction of policing in Northern Ireland',
and the media are saturated with references to Social and Legal Studies, 8 (2), pp. 277±95.
drug use and culture. For instance, a bicycle Parker, H., Measham, F. and Aldridge, J. (1995)
advertisement punningly asks, `what's he Drugs Futures: Changing Patterns of Drug Use
on?'. amongst English Youth. London, Institute for the
The debate about normalization of drugs Study of Drug Dependency.
often turns on de®nitional issues about what is Robinson, M.B. and Zaitzow, B.H. (1999) `Criminol-
or should count as normal. Similarly, the ogists: are we what we study? A national self-
argument for the normalization of prison report study of crime experts', The Criminologist,
regimes (Feest, 1999) or of policing (Mulcahy, 24 (2), pp. 1, 4, 17±19.
1999) assumes the normality of the comparator Shiner, M. and Newburn, T. (1999) `Taking tea with
being used. Thus, in a carceral society ± Noel: the place and meaning of drug use in
returning to Foucault ± can we simply com- everyday life', in N. South (ed.), Drugs: Cultures,
pare regimes inside prison with those obtain- Controls and Everyday Life. London, Sage.
O
tolerated by those in authority) and routinize analytic effect, in many other areas of human
the harmful acts and also dehumanize their life of interest to students of crime ± for
victims. The process of authorization is one in example, in respect of the collective collusion
which the situation is rede®ned in such a way of middle-range employees of large corpora-
that normal moral principles do not apply and tions involved in systematically fraudulent
the individual is `absolved of the responsi- activity or in crimes against the environment.
bility for making moral choices'. The process The exploration of the utility of the concept in
of routinization structures the (harmful) these areas will be an important future task
action so that there is no opportunity for both for criminal lawyers involved in speci®c
raising moral questions or making moral litigation and for social scientists involved in
decisions. Finally, the process of dehuman- the analysis of `criminal behaviour' in these
ization ensures that the `perpetrator's atti- areas, as much as in respect speci®cally of
tudes towards the victim become structured crimes committed in circumstances of war.
in such a way that it is neither necessary
nor possible for him to view his relationship Ruth Jamieson
with the victim in moral terms' (Kelman, 1995,
pp. 29±32). Associated Concepts: genocide, social control
theory, state crime, torture
Evaluation Key Readings
Ahrendt, H. (1964) Eichmann in Jerusalem. Har-
Social scienti®c work on `crimes of obedience' mondsworth, Penguin.
is important for the way it highlights the Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust.
different social contexts and social processes Cambridge, Polity Press.
that are associated with the production of Kelman, H.C. (1995) `The social context of torture:
what otherwise might simply be dismissed policy process and authority structure', in R.
(and therefore not explained) as immoral, evil Crelinson and A. Schmid (eds), The Politics of Pain.
or pathological acts. In his writing on the Oxford, Westview Press.
Holocaust, for example, Zygmunt Bauman has Kelman, H.C. and Hamilton, V.L. (1989) Crimes of
emphasized the inescapable importance of Obedience. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press.
understanding the processes through which Milgram, S. (1974) Obedience to Authority. New York,
immoral regimes are institutionalized and Harper and Row.
given a `normal' authority (Bauman, 1989). Scheff, T. (1993) Bloody Revenge: Emotions, National-
Thomas Scheff's work on emotions, national- ism and War. Boulder, CO, Westview Press.
ism and war is a good example of a social
scientist trying to make sense of the ways in
which ethnic division, rage, humiliation and
the cultural devaluation of the fate of
individual human beings may combine to OFFICIAL CRIMINAL STATISTICS
produce the conditions of genocide and other
war crime (Scheff, 1993). The laboratory-based De®nition
experimental work conducted by Milgram did
not in itself identify ± and did not try to Statistical data compiled by the police and the
identify ± any of these processes or the factors courts and routinely published by govern-
that in¯uenced the behaviour of the 35 per ments as indices of the extent of crime.
cent of his subjects who refused to obey.
Milgram's `agentic state' model of obedience
failed also to explain the temporal dimension Distinctive Features
of obedience. People are often caught up in
sequences of demands for obedience, in which Most countries annually collect data which are
the degree of harm escalates from one moment a count of the volume of particular categories
to the next. Once they have committed their of crime as recorded by the police. In the USA
®rst crimes of obedience, they may become data are submitted voluntarily by local police
entrapped into continuing to obey. departments to the FBI and published as
Overwhelmingly, the concept of a crime of Uniform Crime Reports. In the UK similar
obedience has been applied to activities statistics are produced by the Home Of®ce
conducted in circumstances of war. There is, (Criminal Statistics England and Wales and the
of course, no in-principle reason why the biannual Statistical Bulletins). Each includes
concept might not be applied, to useful data on offences (from which trends in crime
OFFICIAL CRIMINAL STATISTICS 195
over time are charted) and on offenders who of: How much crime? How many criminals?
have eventually been found guilty or cau- How many victims? The `true facts' of crime
tioned (from which details of the sex and age are probably unknowable. They depend not
of offenders are derived). only on what we de®ne as crime, but also on
The ®rst national crime statistics were the validity of statistical measures, no matter
produced in France in the early nineteenth how they are produced. Most academic
century (Quetelet in 1842). In England and analysts, the media, politicians and the
Wales crimes recorded by the police have been public rely on of®cial statistics as `hard
published since 1876 and in the USA since facts', but they are both partial and subjec-
1930. Both of these latter countries have tively constructed.
witnessed a dramatic rise in the crime rate
since the mid 1950s, with the only sustained · In the USA the Uniform Crime Report
fall occurring in the mid to late 1990s. A distinguishes between index crimes and
similar long-term upward trend has been a non-index crimes. It constructs crime
feature of most Western democracies, with the trends from tabulating eight index crimes
notable exception of Switzerland (Maguire, ± those the FBI believes to be the most
1997, p. 159). serious. The list does not include fraud,
Breaking down this overall rate into offence embezzlement, offences against family or
groups reveals that the `crime problem' is children, drug abuse, vagrancy and so on.
predominantly one of crimes against property In England and Wales the of®cial statistics
(theft, burglary, criminal damage) and above do not include offences recorded by the
all theft of, or from, vehicles. Crimes of British Transport Police, Ministry of
violence appear small in comparison. Turning Defence Police and UK Atomic Energy
to the data on offenders, it is ®rst notable that Authority Police, who collectively record
their numbers are dramatically lower than the about 80,000 offences per year (Maguire
total number of offences recorded. Whilst 1997, p. 149). Tax evasion (recorded by the
some of this disparity may be attributable to Inland Revenue) and VAT evasion
those committing more than one offence, it is (recorded by Customs and Excise) will
clear that in the vast majority of cases nothing only appear in of®cial criminal records if
is of®cially known about those responsible they are subsequently brought to court.
(Maguire, 1997, p. 173; Coleman and Moyni- · Crime statistics are based on those crimes
han, 1996, p. 43). The data on `known reported to and subsequently recorded by
offenders', however, produce a picture of the the police. But some offences may not be
`typical offender' as male and young. For reported because of ignorance that a crime
example in England and Wales the of®cial has been committed (for example, tax
criminal statistics have consistently found that evasion, computer fraud); there appears to
over 80 per cent of offenders are male and be no victim (for example, certain drugs
almost half are under the age of 21. offences, prostitution, sexual offences
Criminologists have long debated the between consenting adults, illegal abor-
reliability of these statistical measures. Self tion); the victim is powerless (for example,
evidently they only measure those offences child abuse); ambivalence towards or
reported to and recorded by the police. As a distrust of the police (for example, certain
result these basic data are now regularly youth cultures); the offence may be
added to by nationwide victim surveys. In considered trivial (for example, thefts
1972 the US Bureau of the Census began from work, vandalism, minor shoplifting,
collecting information about rates of victimi- brawls); the victim may be concerned that
zation by asking random samples of the the offence will not be taken seriously (for
population to recall crimes committed against example, some cases of rape); or the
them in the past year. In 1982 Britain followed victim has no faith that the police will
this lead with its own British Crime Survey act to protect his or her interests (for
(BCS). Both in the USA and in Britain it was example, racial intimidation and harass-
consistently revealed that only about 50 per ment). Measurements of crime rest initi-
cent of crime is in fact reported to the police. ally and critically on the extent to which
the public perceives and interprets beha-
viour as `criminal' (Walker, 1983, p. 292).
Evaluation · Not all offences reported are recorded as
such by the police. The amount of
The of®cial criminal statistics do not provide resources available to the police and
any straightforward answers to the questions courts is limited and thus subjective
196 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
and/or administrative decisions are made recording large numbers of minor prop-
concerning which crimes to act against. It erty offences which were traditionally
is only recorded crime which enters the `cuffed' (not recorded) chief constables
of®cial statistics. Walker (1983, p. 286) were able to persuade their police autho-
notes that, although the police in England rities to increase funding. The crime rate is
and Wales have a statutory obligation to then more a re¯ection of police lobbying
record crimes, considerable discretion and politics, than of criminal behaviour.
remains about whether it is considered · Changes in the number of arrests, trials
suf®ciently serious to warrant their atten- and sentences may not represent actual
tion. Violent disputes between neighbours changes in the amount of crime, but rather
or members of a family may, for example, changes in the capacity of the criminal
be classi®ed as `domestic ± advice given' justice system to process individual cases.
and the alleged `offence' not recorded. Increases or decreases in the number of
Similarly, how a recorded offence is police, judges, courtrooms and prison
classi®ed by the police ± as `theft from a places will inevitably affect these statistics.
person' or `robbery'; as `burglary, no loss' More police, more judges and more
or `vandalism'; as `wounding' or `common prisons appear to have a nearly in®nite
assault' for example ± will affect the rate capacity to increase the amount of of®-
at which certain crimes appear to be cially recorded crime. This is partly
committed. Problems inherent in record- because there is a forever-present unlim-
ing, and variations due to local police ited well of unrecorded criminal behaviour
`targeting', will also affect our under- which can be tapped when and if the
standing of the extent of particular crimes. political will and the resources for law
· Changes in law enforcement and in what enforcement are suf®ciently activated. It is
the law counts as crime also preclude also because there exists a huge potential
much meaningful discussion over the to perceive and rede®ne actions as `crimes'
extent of historical increases and decreases as the technological ability to implement
in crime. Legislative changes may mean forms of mass surveillance increases.
that existing categories are rede®ned, thus
rendering historical comparison meaning- Collectively, such processes of data collec-
less. Some increases in crime can be tion inevitably mean that notions of crime
arti®cially constructed solely by economic waves and of perpetual increases in offending
and administrative circumstance: in¯ation have to be interpreted with extreme caution.
provides a perfect example of such a bias. Nevertheless, the pictures they create of crime,
The law is not index linked and so acts of criminals and offending remain some of the
criminal damage, of®cially de®ned in key means through which academic, political,
England and Wales as damage exceeding media and public knowledge is gained. The
£20 in value, shot up from 17,000 in 1969 statistics cannot be dismissed as simply mean-
to 124,000 in 1977. In¯ation shifted many ingless. They can provide valuable insights
thousands of previously trivial incidents into police and court de®nitions of crime and
of damage into the more serious crime the operation of social, legal and organiza-
bracket. tional constraints and priorities. They cannot,
· Changes in police practices, priorities and however, be expected to aid our understand-
politics will also have a dramatic effect on ing of the `independent entity of crime' for, by
such headline statistics as `crimes its nature, no such fact exists.
recorded by the police'. What is remark-
able for example about long-term histor- John Muncie
ical trends in crime rates in England and
Wales is their consistently low level Associated Concepts: crime, hidden crime, self-
during the nineteenth and early twentieth reports, victim surveys
centuries followed by a consistent dou-
bling in every decade (except the 1950s) Key Readings
until the 1990s. By examining police Coleman, C. and Moynihan, J. (1996) Understanding
inspectorate and committee reports at the Crime Data. Buckingham, Open University Press.
time, Taylor (1998) argues that the Maguire, M. (1997) `Crime statistics, patterns and
increases in crime between 1914 and 1960 trends: changing perceptions and their implica-
can be largely accounted for by senior tions', in M. Maguire, R. Morgan and R. Reiner
police of®cers `playing the crime card' in (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 2nd
order to improve their establishment. By edn. Oxford, The Clarendon Press.
OPPORTUNITY THEORY 197
Taylor, H. (1998) `The politics of the rising crime being described in the literature. With respect
statistics of England and Wales 1914±1960', Crime, to the target, Bottoms and Wiles (1997) note
History and Societies, 2 (1), pp. 5±28. the importance of `target attractiveness'.
Walker, M.A. (1983) `Some problems in interpreting Target attractiveness has several dimensions:
statistics relating to crime', Journal of the Royal ®nancial value is obvious, but other factors
Statistical Society, Series A, No.146, part 3, pp. such as being simple to sell and easily
282±93. transported can be important in making a
target attractive. It is also the case, of course,
that the same target will not be equally
attractive to all potential offenders.
OPPORTUNITY THEORY The critical elements of the situation might,
as Bottoms and Wiles (1997) suggest, be seen
in terms of `accessibility'. Accessibility refers
De®nition to the physical qualities of the situation such
as visibility, ease of access, and lack of obser-
An approach to explaining criminal behaviour vation at the scene of the crime. The latter
that sees crime as a function of the charac- factor, lack of observation, may be linked with
teristics of situations that offer the opportu- the third dimension of opportunity, absence of
nity, to those inclined to take it, to bene®t from a responsible guardian. A reasonable guardian
an illegal act. may, for example, be a neighbour, an of®cial
such as a car park attendant, or a police of®cer.
In considering accessibility and guardian-
Distinctive Features ship, it is dif®cult to disentangle the environ-
ment and the individual. For example, an
Historically, theories of crime took either a individual might need specialist knowledge to
`dispositional' stance, with a focus on the recognize the environmental cues that signal
individual offender, or a `sociological' an attractive target. Thus, burglars may be
approach, with emphasis on the social condi- aware of cues, such as type of lock or window
tions associated with crime. A rather different catch, that signal easy entry to a property.
approach began to emerge following the work Similarly, a guardian may be present but it is
of Cohen and Felson (1979) and the advent of the guardian's perceived effectiveness that is
`routine activities theory'. The core of this the critical dimension with respect to the
theoretical approach is that crime will occur potential offender's decision-making and
when three elements combine: a speci®c eventual actions.
situation (i.e., a time and location), a target, As the concept of opportunity is stretched to
and the absence of effective guardians. The include a wider range of factors, so the
combination of these three elements provides associated models of crime become more
the opportunity for successful offending. complex. Clarke (1995) presents a model of
The beginnings of views about crime based the opportunity structure for crime that
on routine activities and opportunity are to be incorporates such diverse elements as socio-
found in research broadly concerned with the economic structure, perception, physical
environmental correlates of crime. These environment, and information processing.
studies are concerned with the speci®c Such deepenings also begin to overlap with
environmental conditions that might account the view, reminiscent of classicism, of crim-
for patterns of crime. For example, rising inals as motivated by self-interest. Owing
numbers of burglaries can be explained by the more to economics than human science, the
greater proportion of empty houses as more basis of human action is seen in terms of
people go out to work leaving homes `expected utility'. A quotation from Van Den
unguarded and offering the opportunity for Haag (1982) illustrates this approach in its
undetected crime. Similarly, it can be seen that most stark form: `I do not see any relevant
more street parking leads to higher rates of car difference between dentistry and prostitution
theft; street violence is more likely in dimly lit or car theft, except that the latter do not
areas of towns and cities; and the probability require a license . . . The frequency of rape, or
of vandalism to property is increased when of mugging, is essentially determined by the
there is no one with direct responsibility for expected comparative net advantage, just as is
the safety of buildings and utilities. the rate of dentistry and burglary' (p. 1,026).
The concept of opportunity began to come Like an accountant reckoning a balance
under increasing scrutiny, with various sheet, the offender considers the net gains and
dimensions of the three critical elements losses then, as it were, moves into the market
198 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
to make a pro®t. The offender is seen as a Van Den Haag, E. (1982) `Could successful
rational decision-maker, as a `reasoning crim- rehabilitation reduce the crime rate?', Journal of
inal', with personal bene®t a prime motivation Criminal Law and Criminology, 73, pp. 1,022±1,035.
for crime. This theme of the criminal as a
rational decision-maker was developed to
signi®cant effect by Cornish and Clarke
(1986). Cornish and Clarke are clear that ORGANIZED CRIME
while social factors, such as family and peer
group, may be part of an individual's growing
up to be involved in crime, the `event De®nition
decision', the making of a rational choice, at
the point of committing the offence, is critical. This concept emerged ®rst in the United States
in the 1920s but is now used internationally,
for example, by the United Nations and G8
Evaluation countries, as shorthand to describe a range of
serious crimes that are deemed especially
The development of concepts such as oppor- dif®cult to control. It may be de®ned as the
tunity, routine activities and rational decision- ongoing activities of those collectively
making has had a profound practical impact engaged in production, supply and ®nancing
in the form of situational crime prevention for illegal markets in goods and services.
(Clarke, 1992). This approach to crime pre-
vention takes the broad approach that by
changing elements of the situation, such as Distinctive Features
target availability and levels of surveillance,
it is possible to impact signi®cantly on the There are two main analogies employed in the
opportunities for crime and the offender's description and analysis of organized crime:
decision-making. There are criticisms of this the market and government. In the ®rst, a
approach at theoretical and practical levels, distinction is commonly drawn between
particularly with regard to the rationality of `ordinary' criminals, even if in gangs, whose
some offending and the issue of displacement. crimes are `predatory', that is, concerned with
However, there is little doubt that the overall the illegal redistribution of already existing
approach has taken criminological theory into wealth, and criminal organizations commit-
new areas of research and practice. ting `enterprise' crime: the production and
Clive Hollin distribution of new, though illegal, goods and
services (Naylor, 1997). This is not a hard and
fast distinction: the more opportunistic the
Associated Concepts: classicism, defensible criminal organization the more likely it is to be
space, free will, geographies of crime, rational involved in both types of crime.
choice theory, routine activity theory, situa- This basic idea of `enterprise' crime is
tional crime prevention, surveillance central to most contemporary accounts of the
concept, both of®cial and academic, but
Key Readings crucially different approaches emerge once
Bottoms, A.E. and Wiles, P. (1997) `Environmental analysis proceeds. In the of®cial discourse
criminology', in M. Maguire, R. Morgan and R. criminal enterprises penetrate otherwise lawful
Reiner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, business, thus undermining and corrupting it,
2nd edn. Oxford, The Clarendon Press. for example, offering counterfeit supplies or
Clarke, R.V. (ed.) (1992) Situational Crime Prevention: protection including threats. Such activities do
Successful Case Studies. New York, Harrow and happen but they represent only a partial
Heston. account. A fuller examination of the interac-
Clarke, R.V. (1995) `Situational crime prevention', in tion between organizations and markets
M. Tonry and D.P. Farrington (eds), Building a shows that under certain conditions the
Safer Society: Strategic Approaches to Crime Preven- relationship between legal and illegal organi-
tion. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. zations is symbiotic. For example, the study of
Cohen, L.E. and Felson, M. (1979) `Social change and corporate crime examines the extensive illegal
crime rate trends: a routine activities approach', behaviour of organizations that are formally
American Sociological Review, 44, pp. 588±608. legal. Similarly, Smith (1980) develops a model
Cornish, D.B. and Clarke, R.V. (eds) (1986) The of enterprises being situated on a spectrum
Reasoning Criminal: Rational Choice Perspectives on between legality and illegality and explains
Offending. New York, Springer-Verlag. how the interaction of entrepreneurs and
ORGANIZED CRIME 199
customers leads to `strati®ed marketplaces', former regimes of the Soviet bloc has seen a re-
for example, entrepreneurs may prefer to orientation not just of security intelligence
borrow money from a bank but, if unable to agencies and military forces but also of
do so, may go to a loan shark. academic departments of international rela-
Overall, the enterprise model is at the heart tions to the analysis of `new' security threats.
of the common metaphor of the criminal Coinciding as it has with the era of globaliza-
`®rm'; for some, however, what is particularly tion, the result has been an outpouring of
signi®cant about criminal organizations of®cial concern at national and international
including, for example, the Ma®a, is not their level that organized crime is not just a `serious
marketplace activities so much as their problem' but that it actually constitutes a threat
`governmental' behaviour. At one level, this to national security. Further, the threat is
may re¯ect attempts by criminal organizations normally presented as if it were primarily an
to corrupt government in general, for external one in much the same way as `ordinary'
example, contractual bid-rigging, and law crime is normally represented as crimes of `the
enforcement in particular, paying-off police, other'. Therefore discussion is of `Russian-',
prosecutors and judges for favourable deci- `Asian-', `Nigerian-organized crime' and so on
sions. However, more fundamentally, criminal and unreliable estimates of the values of cross-
organizations have been characterized as border crime are often given. Actually, more
threatening the state's monopoly of functions careful analysis indicates that crime remains
such as coercion, protection and extraction predominantly local in origin and carried out
(Naylor, 1997, pp. 15±16). These functions are by national citizens.
all central to the legitimacy claims of modern Thus, great care must be taken with the use
states and to the extent that other organiza- of the concept: organized crime is an issue on
tions deploy violence, offer protection and which governments feel strongly the need to
bene®ts and extract `taxation', then they may reassure insecure populations that `something
be seen as challenging that central claim. Post- can be done' and there is consequently much
Soviet Russia is seen as an example of this. rhetoric of `wars' on crime and drugs. In
Indeed, taking a longer historical view, the reality, organized criminality is so deeply
struggles between rivals to establish mono- embedded within the operation of domestic
polies can be seen as the central feature of and global markets that the most that can be
`state-making' (Tilly, 1985). achieved is to ameliorate somewhat its most
damaging effects.
Evaluation Peter Gill
Considerable controversy has surrounded the
use of this concept, much of it centring on the Associated Concepts: corporate crime, critical
nature and extent of the organization of crime. criminology, extraterritorial law enforcement,
Work carried out for the US President's Crime Marxist criminologies, state crime, transna-
Commission in the 1960s presented the Italian- tional organized crime, white collar crime
American Ma®a as the core manifestation of
organized crime; speci®cally that it resembled a
corporate hierarchy with the associated features Key Readings
of ranks and division of labour. Critics argued Abadinsky, H. (1997) Organized Crime, 5th edn.
that this image resulted from the over-reliance Chicago, Nelson-Hall.
of researchers on ®les and other evidence from Hobbs, D. (1998) `Going down the glocal', The
a law enforcement community that was Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 37 (4), pp. 1±19.
anyway predisposed to describe their targets (See also other articles in this special edition.)
in the same hierarchical terms as they were Naylor, R.T. (1997) `Ma®as, myths and markets',
themselves organized. Alternative models, Transnational Organized Crime, 3 (3), pp. 15±30.
based more on the idea of networks, for Smith, D. (1980) `Paragons, pariahs and pirates',
example, based on families or more broadly, Crime and Delinquency, 26 (July), pp. 45±57.
friends and business connections (e.g. Hobbs, Special Issue on Transnational Crime (1998) Interna-
1998) are a more accurate depiction. tional Journal of Risk, Security and Crime Prevention,
Further impetus has been given to this 3 (2).
controversy by the identi®cation of transna- Tilly, C. (1985) `War making and state making as
tional organized crime as a major problem organized crime', in P. Evans (ed.), Bringing the
during the 1990s. The reasons for this are clear: State Back In. Cambridge, Cambridge University
the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Press.
P
makes connections between seemingly uncon- closely associated with interactionism and
nected events. Alternatively, what makes him appreciative forms of criminology. The parti-
frustrating is his failure to cite sources, and his cipant observer becomes immersed `in the
endless willingness to push his materials ®eld' by emphasizing:
beyond the point at which they can be sus-
tained. Panopticism bene®ts and suffers from · the study of groups in their natural sur-
these strengths and weaknesses in almost roundings, with the minimum of distur-
equal measure. It should be remembered, for bance;
example, that Bentham's design was never · empathy and understanding;
accepted, and the Panopticon never built. On · the direct observation of interactions and
the other hand, as a basis for analysing our in particular the meanings they have for
contemporary preoccupation with security participants; and
surveillance, panopticism offers many inter- · descriptions in terms of the everyday
esting insights. understandings of actors in a situation.
David Wilson Gold (1969) distinguished four forms of
such research: `observer-as-participant',
Associated Concepts: carceral society, electronic `participant-as-observer', `the complete obser-
monitoring, penality, penology, surveillance ver' and `the complete participant'. In full
participant observation, the researcher identi-
®es an area worthy of study and enters the
Key Readings ®eld without much preconception about what
Bozovic, M. (ed.), (1995) The Panopticon Writings of
is to be found. Typically the observer also
Jeremy Bentham. New York, Verso Press.
conceals their identity as a researcher from
Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of
those being studied.
the Prison. London, Allen Lane.
In the 1960s and 1970s the development of
explicitly anti-positivist approaches to the
study of crime and deviance, for example in
labelling and new deviancy theory, provided
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION the political and theoretical inspiration for
what was arguably the heyday of participant
observation research. Polsky's (1971) research
De®nition into poolroom hustlers in New York and
Parker's (1974) study of a group of male `street
The collection of information through active kids' in Liverpool came closest to Gold's
participation in the social world that is under notion of `complete participant' in that their
study. position as researcher and as participant was
often indistinguishable. Both carried out their
research covertly, and in order to gain trust
Distinctive Features engaged in deviant activities themselves ± a
position that some ethnographers have
Pioneered by the Chicago School of Sociology described as having `gone native'. However,
in the 1920s, the key aim of participant each provided invaluable insights into the
observation is to view the social world, as far complexity of subcultural codes and beha-
as possible, from the actor's own point of viour that previous researchers had been
view. Typically this involves becoming a part unable to, or failed to, acknowledge. As a
of the group under study, learning its culture result each was also able to offer a damning
and observing its behaviour. The key aim is to critique of `orthodox' research masquerading
gain access to the meanings actors themselves as `science'.
make of their own personal and social situ- On the other hand, participant observation
ations. It facilitates data collection on situa- has also been used to improve understandings
tions as they occur rather than in arti®cial of the internal workings of the criminal justice
situations (as in experimental research) or system, as in Holdaway's (1983) study of the
through constructs of reality provided by the British police. This study was carried out
researcher (as in survey research). The covertly and was able to reveal the extent to
promise is held that such observations can which police work was framed by the every-
help to make sense of behaviour that may day meanings and de®nitions that of®cers
appear to be irrational and paradoxical to themselves had constructed to make sense of
those `on the outside'. As a result, it is most their role and the people that they policed.
202 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Fully developed, covert participant observa- greater part of his discussion is given over to
tion research is necessarily time-consuming, bio-medical analogy. Moreover the term
dif®cult, long-term, potentially risky and can morbidity is sometimes used ± again empha-
in some circumstances raise serious ethical sizing the organicism of his argument.
questions. It is probably no surprise, in a Famously, Durkheim used suicide to illustrate
criminology that had by the 1990s become the utility of sociological method even in the
dominated by technicist, evaluative and most seemingly individual act. Similarly, he
administrative concerns, that such research claims `if there is any fact whose pathological
has become increasingly rare. But it remains character appears incontestable, that fact is
one of the few means through which a crime. All criminologists are agreed on this
humanization of the subjects of criminological point. Although they explain this pathology
research can be achieved. differently.' He then proceeds to make his oft-
quoted claim about crime being normal (even
John Muncie amongst a `society of saints'). However, he
allows some crime to be pathological. He
Associated Concepts: appreciative criminology, acknowledges that a person may commit
Chicago School of Sociology, ethnography, crime for individual pathological reasons and
interactionism, new deviancy theory sociologically that a rate of crime may be
pathologically higher than predicted for social
Key Readings types and levels of society. This too he calls
Adler, P.A. (1993) Wheeling and Dealing: An morbidity or abnormal. However, contrary to
Ethnography of an Upper Level Drug Dealing and the general positivism of his arguments, he
Smuggling Community. New York, Columbia recognizes ± and foreshadows the labelling
University Press. perspective ± `that, among these divergences,
Burgess, R.G. (1984) In the Field. London, Unwin there are some with a criminal character. What
Hyman. confers this character upon them is not the
Gold, R. (1969) `Roles in sociological ®eld observa- intrinsic quality of a given act but that
tion', in G. McCall and J. Simmons (eds), Issues in de®nition which the collective conscience
Participant Observation. London, Addison Wesley. lends them' (1895, 1964, p. 70).
Holdaway, S. (1983) Inside the British Police. Oxford, It is a mark of the extent to which socio-
Blackwell. logical criminology has advanced that Dur-
Parker, H. (1974) View from the Boys. Newton Abbot, kheim's claim that all criminologists agree on
David and Charles. the pathological character of crime strikes the
Polsky, N. (1971) Hustlers, Beats and Others. modern reader as odd. Durkheim was able to
Harmondsworth, Penguin. overturn the narrow bio-medical de®nition of
pathology and give it a sociological face.
However, despite Durkheim's in¯uence
`pathology' has not usually been the nomen-
PATHOLOGY clature favoured by those who followed in his
footsteps. It can be argued that it appears in
various disguises in the sociology of deviance,
De®nition such as differential association, social disorga-
nization and strain. It might also be argued that
Within bio-medical discourse ± the study of some positivistic readings of both Marxism
disease; by extension and common usage ± the and feminism see class society and patriarchy
abnormal (that which is not normal), an as pathological or responsible for the `patho-
unhealthy deviation from the norm, degen- logies' of the working class or of men.
erate. For those who follow individualistic
explanations of crime, pathology will be
located in the individual at the level of the Evaluation
genes, hormones or psyche. For sociologists,
the pathology might be located in the family, It can be argued that pathology no longer has
peer-group, area or social formation. any place in sociology. However, as psycho-
pathology, it has been elevated in criminal
justice discourse and popular cultural repre-
Distinctive Features sentation ± note the character of Hannibal
Lecter in Silence of the Lambs ± to prime
Durkheim (1895, 1964) devotes a chapter to the importance once again as an explanation of
`Normal and the Pathological'. However, the crime. Sumner (1994) claims that the ®eld
PEACEMAKING CRIMINOLOGY 203
of study that Durkheim opened up was killed and less guarded with others. The science and
off in 1975. Sumner proposes replacing art of weaving people, including those called
deviance with censure as the ®eld of study. `offenders' and `victims' in conventional `war-
In this, the term pathology, including psycho- making' criminology, into social networks
pathology, can be seen as the censure of the secure from violence. Peacemaking crimino-
different by those with the power to de®ne it. logy is the opposite of the prevailing `war-
This can be seen in Durkheim's terms as making' paradigm in criminology, which is
functional, in labelling terms as misguided or the science and art of identifying, isolating and
counterproductive or in Foucauldian terms as subduing offenders or would-be offenders.
productive. The disciplines of medicine and
the psy-sciences employ the nexus of power/
knowledge to produce ± and offer to control ± Distinctive Features
pathology, as they have done with madness,
crime and sexual dissidence. Like all spiritual and religious and political or
Administrative criminology has sought to cultural traditions, all social science, including
side-step the issue of pathology within the criminology, can be divided into two compet-
individual or society but replaces it with the ing paradigms on how to belong in social
fear or risk of other's pathology, which is to be order. The war-making paradigm presup-
managed. In this way the gated community poses that we are born ignorant and need to
might be seen as a cordon sanitaire and security learn to obey instruction from our properly
guards as white blood corpuscles and T-cells constituted earthly superiors, from whose
mobilizing to neutralize pathogens. `Steriliz- might right is made. In this paradigm the
ing' urban spaces in the nineteenth century key dependent variables are negative ± such
was the job of the `new police'. Now it falls to as crime, violence, criminality, punishment,
the martian ray of CCTV. Staying with the deterrence and risk. In the peacemaking
medical metaphor, society seems uncertain paradigm, social relations become stronger
whether to swallow up (a cannibalistic and richer insofar as they are built on mutual
response) or vomit out (a bulimic response) respect. Dependent variables in a peace-
the pathologized `other' (Young, 1999). making paradigm are positive, such as
compassion, love, empathy, respect, dignity,
Nic Groombridge mutuality and trust.
Within the peacemaking paradigm, punish-
Associated Concepts: demonization, deviance, ment itself is presumed to be a social problem
individual positivism, normalization, sexual- rather than a social solution. It is common to
ity, social censure, sociological positivism see those identi®ed as doing peacemaking
criminology belonging to corollary groups.
Some, for example, draw upon Gandhian
Key Readings principles of non-violence. Some, including
Durkheim, E. (1895, 1964) The Rules of Sociological
those who note that `penal servitude' is the
Method. London, The Free Press of Glencoe.
one kind of `slavery' explicitly allowed by the
Lemert, E. (1967, 1972) `Forms and pathology of
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States
drinking in three Polynesian societies', in Human
Constitution, call themselves `penal abolition-
deviance, social problems and social control. Engle-
ists'. Some advocate `restorative' or `transfor-
wood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice±Hall, pp. 218±33.
mative', rather than `retributive justice'. Some
Sumner, C. (1994) The Sociology of Deviance: An
call for `compassion' in Buddhist terms, others
Obituary. Buckingham, Open University Press.
for `love' and `mercy' in Judaeo-Christian-
Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society: Social Exclu-
Muslim terms. Traditional ways of responding
sion, Difference and Crime in Late Modernity.
to personal and structural violence, from
London, Sage.
indigenous peoples around the world, are
especially prominent in peacemaking litera-
ture and in criminal justice practice, as in the
New Zealand parliament's adoption of the
PEACEMAKING CRIMINOLOGY Maori practice known worldwide today as
family group conferencing, in Canadian
sentencing circles, or in growing Anglo legal
De®nition recognition of, and admiration for, the Navajo
peacemaking court in the United States.
The study of the processes and ways of Criminologists who are drawn to peace-
relating that leave people safer, more trusting making commonly report that their spirits are
204 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
lifted by studying what people value in others not understand just how bad oppression is,
and how to elicit what we like from each the urgency of supporting those who even
other, in contrast to the despair and discour- take up arms to resist and subdue their
agement that they had come to feel studying oppressors, nor the progress that has been
what we want people not to do and how to get made through militant class struggle. Other
people to stop doing things. It feels better to than prisoners, it is by and large true that
learn how to get what we do want and value peacemaking criminologists and their critics
with others than to learn how to crush human are privileged. This issue recurs in all
miscreants. theological and political debate over whether
Whether secular or deist, peacemaking to be hard-hearted or to let our hearts bleed.
criminology is explicitly concerned with the Some texts have taken to calling `peace-
spiritual attitude we bring to bear in our social making criminology' a `school'. In recent
relations, while war-making criminology tends history, `peacemaking' became an operative
to embrace Enlightenment dualism between word in criminological circles when the title
spiritual value and social fact-making. Much of an edited book ± Criminology as Peacemaking
peacemaking criminology is critical of value ± caught on after its publication in 1991.
neutrality in retributive criminology. Indeed, Criminologists who say they are doing `peace-
one theory of the causes of violence and making' encompass a wide range of crimin-
punitiveness, notably as stated by renegade ological individualists, which surely includes
German psychoanalyst Alice Miller, is that all those who would be loath to accept the
violence and punishment presuppose personal de®nition of `peacemaking' set forth here. In
dissociation of one's feelings from one's action. peacemaking criminology, as in everyday life,
When you pull the switch to punish a it pays not to take for granted that one knows
transgressor, your feeling for the transgressor's any criminologist by the label `peacemaking'
suffering is cut off by messages from authority alone.
®gures as to what you ought to do to the
offender for some higher good. In peace- Hal Pepinsky
making criminology, there is no higher good
than empathy, or, as some like US war resister Associated Concepts: abolition, anarchist crimi-
A.J. Muste and criminologist Richard Quinney nology, human rights, labelling, restorative
have put it, `peace is the way'. In radical justice, social reaction
feminist terms, in peacemaking criminology
power over others is violence itself, and the
building of safe community lies in power
Key Readings
Anderson, K. and Quinney, R. (eds) (2000) Erich
sharing and in participatory democracy.
Fromm and Critical Criminology: Beyond the Punitive
Society. Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press.
Evaluation Consedine, J. (1999) Restorative Justice: Healing the
Effects of Crime. Lyttleton, NZ, Ploughshares Press.
Fuller, J.R. (1998) Criminal Justice: A Peacemaking
The three main criticisms of peacemaking
Perspective. Boston, MA, Allyn and Bacon.
criminology are that it is not a theory, that it is
Miller, A. (1990) For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty
impractical and that it is privileged.
in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence. New
Peacemaking criminology is not a theory.
York, Noonday Press.
Like retribution, peacemaking is more an
Morris, R.M. (1993) Penal Abolition: The Practical
attitude or de®nition of the situation. On
Choice. Toronto, Canadian Scholars' Press.
the other hand, peacemaking criminology
Pepinsky, H.E. and Quinney, R. (eds) (1991)
includes theories of how peace is made.
Criminology as Peacemaking. Bloomington, IN,
Practicality is a paradigmatic matter. Peace-
Indiana University Press.
making criminology is not prophecy. Peace-
making theory only purports to predict
whether people will be safer or more at risk
as a result of this or that intervention, not
whether people will actually do what makes PENALITY
them safer. There is in peacemaking crimino-
logy a rich body of empirically tested
propositions as to what brings people together De®nition
or separates them.
The realist criticism is that peacemaking A term introduced from the French peÂnaliteÂ
criminology is concocted by people who do and owing its current salience primarily to the
PENALITY 205
Carlen in Women's Imprisonment (Routledge Wacquant, L. (2000) `The fourth peculiar institution:
and Kegan Paul, 1983) identi®es the modes of the prison as surrogate ghetto', Theoretical
discipline speci®c to the carceral control of Criminology, 4 (3), pp. 377±90.
women. Jonathan Simon in Poor Discipline
(Chicago, 1993) follows the rise, decline and
re-engineering of parole and the supervision
of offenders. Adrian Howe (1993) proposes a PENOLOGY
thoroughgoing feminist re-evaluation of pen-
ality in terms of the multiple modes of
discipline governing the lives of girls and De®nition
women. Garland (1990) offers an ambitious
synthesis which accommodates not only the A term which (although arguably in less
longstanding preoccupations with the powers common usage now than formerly) covers the
of the state and the Foucauldian concern with application of clinical, managerial or social
the `micro-physics' of penal practice but also a scienti®c methods or expertise to the dis-
wider interest in the place of the penal in ciplined study and evaluation of penal insti-
modern culture, especially in its expressive tutions, especially prisons.
and emotive aspects.
Distinctive Features
Evaluation
In its older and narrower sense `penology'
In view of the complexity and scale of contem- designates the attempt to reform or rationalize
porary penal systems, their endless change- penal conditions and regimes so as to maxi-
ability (yet the obdurate and intractable nature mize their corrective effectiveness. In recent
of many of their central problems) and the times (roughly since the middle of the
intense political controversy and sensitivity twentieth century), its sense broadens to
that surround them, the social analysis of include any form of systematic enquiry into
penality has become a necessary and highly the characteristics of penal systems ± includ-
active ®eld of criminological enquiry. The ing, at its radical edge, arguments for their
emergence of new modes and techniques, for abolition.
example around the assessment and calcula- It is conventional, and probably appropri-
tion of risk, in conjunction with some ate, to date the inception of modern penolo-
ostensibly very old themes in populist political gical thinking from the reform projects
rhetoric, together with the grossly unequal undertaken by John Howard, Jeremy Bentham
weight of penal action that falls on speci®c and others from the later eighteenth century
sections of the population ± especially along onwards. Mention of these two very different
the fault-line of race (Wacquant, 2000) ± thinkers, the former an impassioned advocate
makes for a penal landscape that demands a of Christian charity and the latter a utilitarian
continuous effort of understanding and critical rationalist, betrays a duality that has since
evaluation. recurred many times in the historical devel-
Richard Sparks opment of penology between motivations
grounded in humanitarian magnanimity or
the desire for the religious reformation of the
Associated Concepts: carceral society, govern- offender and those directed more instrumen-
mentality, penology, risk, social control tally at the re®nement of techniques of
behavioural control. To the extent that these
Key Readings ambiguities attended the birth of penology it
Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish. London, is unsurprising that the subsequent activities
Allen Lane. of penologists have often produced ambig-
Garland, D. (1990) Punishment and Modern Society. uous, hybrid and sometimes perverse or
Oxford, Oxford University Press. contradictory results, as historians of the
Garland, D. and Young, P. (eds) (1983) The Power to subject have often demonstrated (see, for
Punish. Aldershot, Gower. example, Ignatieff, 1978; McGowen, 1995).
Howe, A. (1993) Punish and Critique: Towards a Suf®ce here only to note that the particular
Feminist Analysis of Penality. London, Routledge. histories of prison architecture and disciplin-
Rusche, G. and Kirchheimer, O. (1968) Punishment ary regimes, as well as the minutiae of
and Social Structure. New York, Russell and medico-psychiatric services, religious observ-
Russell. ance, diet and other aspects of the material
PENOLOGY 207
infrastructure and social relations of penal of the rehabilitative ideal', or in its more
institutions are largely unintelligible without extreme formulation the `nothing works'
reference to the intellectual inputs of the position). For many observers this coincides
various penologies that have successively with a shift, again most pronounced in the
informed them. In that penology has been United States, towards primarily incapacita-
throughout most of its history a reform- tive rationales for punishing or, more critically
minded subject with practical goals, it has understood, a move towards a `warehousing'
been characterized by the repeated inventive- approach to imprisonment. These develop-
ness (and as often the repeated failures) of ments are summed-up by Garland (1990) as
projects for the improvement, if not indeed the constituting a `crisis of penal modernism'. The
utopian perfectibility, of prisons and other irony for penology is that whereas the latter
penal arrangements. developments tend to increase the scale of
For much of the twentieth century two imprisonment this is met by a reduced
major foci of penological effort are apparent. intensity of scholarly interest in what goes
The ®rst is the monitoring of variations in on in prisons, or more generally in the lives
sentencing and of the manipulation of penal and fates of offenders beyond a merely
regimes (both in prisons and in non-custodial supervisory concern with risk management
settings) for evidence of their impact on and case-processing (for an account of the
offending and re-offending, whether on outworkings of this view see Simon, 2000).
grounds of rehabilitation, deterrence or inca-
pacitation. In the hands of its more sophisti-
cated practitioners (for example Norval Evaluation
Morris, Michael Tonry or Franklin Zimring
and Gordon Hawkins for the United States; Penology has not, however, come to a full
Nigel Walker or Anthony Bottoms for the stop. For its more practically oriented practi-
United Kingdom), this concern necessarily tioners there is now a sense that `nothing
shades into legal theory and the philosophy of works' always was an over-reaction and a
punishment. If penology has a disciplinary resurgent interest (albeit in more modest but
identity which is distinguishable from these more technically sophisticated vein) in `what
normative and theoretical matters it lies in its works?'. For others there is also the sobering
rigorous application of empirical procedures. awareness that however much penologists
For a representative survey of work in these have historically claimed to stand on the
traditions see von Hirsch and Ashworth progressive side of every engagement, the
(1998). subject cannot evade complicity in or respon-
The second major focus of enquiry is the sibility for the disciplinary apparatuses
systematic study of penal institutions them- erected in its name and especially their
selves ± their social organization, routines and regressive consequences for stigmatized and
characteristic relationships; the experience of dispossessed people.
con®nement and of custodial or supervisory
Richard Sparks
work; the recurrent problems of imprisonment
(riots, violence, suicide and self-harm); and,
more especially in the last three decades, Associated Concepts: deterrence, incapacitation,
questions of discriminatory or disparate treat- incarceration, penality, rehabilitation
ment on grounds of race, gender and age.
Such work arguably enjoyed a heyday in the Key Readings
middle decades of the twentieth century when Garland, D. (1990) Punishment and Modern Society.
the prison aroused the fascination ®rst of Oxford, Oxford University Press.
functionalist (Clemmer's `prison community', von Hirsch, A. and Ashworth, A. (eds) (1998)
Sykes's `society of captives') and later of Principled Sentencing: Readings on Theory and
symbolic interactionist (Goffman's `total insti- Policy, 2nd edn. Oxford, Hart Publishing.
tutions') sociologies (see Sparks et al., 1996, Ignatieff, M. (1978) A Just Measure of Pain.
chapter 2 for a short survey). Harmondsworth, Penguin.
The subsequent relative decline both of McGowen, R. (1995) `The well-ordered prison:
therapeutic penology and of prison sociology, England, 1780±1865', in N. Morris and D. Roth-
especially in the United States, would seem to man (eds), The Oxford History of the Prison. Oxford,
¯ow in large part from a diminished con- Oxford University Press.
®dence, increasingly evident from the 1970s Simon, J. (2000) `The ``society of captives'' in the era
onwards, in the capacities of penal interven- of hyper-incarceration', Theoretical Criminology,
tions to reduce reoffending (the so-called `loss 4 (3), pp. 285±308.
208 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Sparks, J.R., Bottoms, A.E. and Hay, W.T. (1996) crime routinely impacts upon the everyday
Prisons and the Problem of Order. Oxford, Oxford life of individuals. It challenges the image of
University Press. the individual paralysed by the fear of crime
and encourages an understanding of the ways
in which people manage what they know may
or may not happen to them. In particular it has
contributed to an appreciation of understand-
PERSONAL SAFETY
ing women as experts in their own safety and
to the dif®culties of separating the public from
De®nition the private: the fear of the unknown from the
fear of the known.
The daily, often taken for granted, routines, As a concept it has become absorbed by the
that human beings engage in as a way of crime prevention literature in which setting it
feeling safer at home, on the street and in the has lost some of its feminist resonance.
workplace. Nevertheless, as an idea, it does encourage
practitioners to work with an active rather
than a passive image of the human being.
Distinctive Features
Sandra Walklate
The concept is primarily associated with the
radical feminist response to the fear of crime
debate. Radical feminists argue that that Associated Concepts: community safety, crime
debate constructs a passive image of (female) prevention, fear of crime, left realism, radical
victims of crime and renders their fears feminism, victimology
irrational by pursuing an understanding of
criminal victimization which focuses on the
threat posed by random violence from a Key Readings
stranger. The radical feminist response to the Goodey, J. (1997) `Boys don't cry; masculinities, fear
fear of crime, however, focuses attention on of crime, and fearlessness', British Journal of
the threat of danger from people (men) that Criminology, 37 (3), pp. 401±18.
are known and consequently is concerned to Stanko, E. (1990) Everyday Violence: How Women and
understand how women (and men) manage Men Experience Sexual and Physical Danger.
danger in their routine everyday lives. Hence London, Pandora.
a concern with the active construction of Stanko, E. (1997) `Safety talk: conceptualizing
strategies for the management of personal women's risk assessment as a ``technology of the
safety. It is a concept that emphasizes the soul''', Theoretical Criminology, 1 (4), pp. 479±99.
active participation by individuals in their Walklate, S. (1998) `Excavating the fear of crime:
everyday lives rather than presuming that fear, anxiety or trust?', Theoretical Criminology,
human beings are passive recipients of events 2 (4), pp. 403±18.
that just happen to them. Work informed by
this concept has demonstrated that men and
women work with different languages of
personal safety. For example, women's strate-
gies are much more likely to be informed by PERSONALITY THEORY
the threat of sexual danger, whilst men's
strategies are much more likely to be informed
by the threat of physical danger, though the
subsequent experience of vulnerability can be De®nition
felt in very similar ways. In addition, age and
sexuality also appear to contribute to indivi- Personality theory is a central feature of
dual personal safety strategies. mainstream psychology. The term personality
is generally taken to refer to a relatively stable
set of distinguishing psychological charac-
Evaluation teristics. It is the combination of such features
that de®nes a particular type of personality.
This concept constituted an important inter- Personality theory is therefore concerned with
jection into the fear of crime debate and has understanding the constituents of personality,
contributed to a more careful and considered its development and, ultimately, its measure-
approach to understanding the way in which ment.
PERSONALITY THEORY 209
children learn to control antisocial behaviour criminal behaviour ± High E±High N and
through the development of a `conscience': High P±High E±High N ± were, indeed,
this conscience, Eysenck maintains, is a set of found only in the delinquent sample. The Low
conditioned emotional responses to environ- E±Low N group, which the theory would
mental events associated with the anti-social predict to be highly socialized, was found only
behaviour. For example, the child who mis- in the non-delinquent group. However, not all
behaves receives a parental reprimand, the studies using cluster analysis have produced
fear this brings is associated with the anti- such clear ®ndings.
social act, and over time this conditioning The weight of empirical evidence lends
determines the child's level of socialization. some support to Eysenck's thesis that there is
The speed and ef®ciency of social conditioning a relationship between personality (as he
will mainly depend upon the individual's de®nes it) and crime. A number of reserva-
personality in terms of E and N. As the High tions, as Eysenck acknowledges, need to be
E±High N combination leads to poor con- made. The theory does not explain all crime
ditionability then such individuals will be and, with its concentration on the high and
least likely to learn social control and there- low extremes of the personality types, is
fore, it is predicted, will be over-represented clearly not applicable to all offenders. Further,
in offender populations. Conversely, Low E± one of the theoretical bases of the theory, the
Low N would lead to effective socialization, so link between classical conditioning and socia-
that these individuals would be predicted to lization, remains to be established satisfac-
be under-represented in offender groups. The torily. Still further, the theory demands
remaining two combinations, High E±Low N acceptance of a trait theory of personality
and Low E±High N, fall at some intermediate which is only one of a number of ways of
level and so would be expected in both conceptualizing personality, and one that has
offender and non-offender groups. The third come under ®erce attack from proponents of
personality dimension, P, is also argued to be other theoretical approaches to understanding
strongly related to offending, particularly with human behaviour.
crimes that involve hostility towards other
people.
Clive Hollin
Evaluation
Eysenck's theory of crime (or more properly Associated Concepts: biological criminology, con-
anti-social behaviour) has generated a great deal ditioning, extroversion/introversion, social
of empirical research. The broad position is control theory
that there is unanimous support for the
contention that offenders will score highly on
P; the majority of studies show that offender
samples score highly on N; and the evidence is Key Readings
mixed for E. In seeking to account for the Eysenck, H.J. (1959) Manual of the Maudsley
discrepant ®ndings for E, Eysenck suggested Personality Inventory. London, University of
that E might be split into two components, London Press.
Sociability and Impulsiveness, with only the Eysenck, H.J. (1977) Crime and Personality, 3rd edn.
latter related to offending. A study by Eysenck London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
and McGurk (1980) con®rmed that an offender Eysenck, H.J. and Eysenck, S.B.G. (1968) `A factorial
sample scored higher than a non-offender study of psychoticism as a dimension of
sample on Impulsiveness, with no difference personality', Multivariate Behavioural Research
between the two samples on a measure of (Special Issue), pp. 15±31.
Sociability. Eysenck, H.J. and Gudjonsson, G.H. (1989) The
Evidence in support of the theory is Causes and Cures of Criminality. London, Plenum
presented in a study by McGurk and Press.
McDougall (1981), which conducted a cluster Eysenck, S.B.G. and McGurk, B.J. (1980) `Impulsive-
analysis of the P, E and N scores of 100 ness and venturesomeness in a detention centre
delinquents and 100 non-delinquent college population', Psychological Reports, 47, pp. 1299±
pupils. The analysis showed four personality 1306.
clusters in each group: both groups contained McGurk, B.J. and McDougall, C. (1981) `A new
Low E±High N and High E±Low N clusters, approach to Eysenck's theory of criminality',
but the clusters predicted to be related to Personality and Individual Differences, 2, pp. 338±40.
POLITICAL CRIME 211
which maintained that, with few exceptions, · Ignoring the presence and relevance of
behaviour was a matter of free will and competing value systems, cultural diver-
individual choice. People broke laws because sity or structural con¯ict.
they anticipated that the bene®ts would
outweigh any loss. They acted largely out of
Nevertheless, positivism maintains a strong
hedonism, choosing behaviour that was
presence in contemporary criminological stu-
pleasurable and avoiding that which would
dies. Since the 1970s work has continued in
give pain. For much of the eighteenth and
examining the role genetic structures play in
nineteenth centuries this meant that no
determining patterns of individual behaviour
defences of criminal acts could be entertained.
(including crime). Evidence from the Cam-
The arrival of Lombroso's theory remained a
bridge Study in Delinquent Development
signi®cant challenge to the judicial orthodoxy.
suggests that crime runs in particular families.
For if criminality was determined by factors
Poor parenting, low intelligence, hyperactivity
other than rational choice, then surely it made
and anti-social behaviour have been cited as
little sense to punish offenders. Rather their
key predictors of future criminality. Similarly,
condition should be treated.
research of long-term trends in crime has
By the early 1920s the development of a
concluded that property crime increases at
criminological science ± positivism ± was to
times of economic depression whilst personal
become in¯uential, not only in physiology, but
crime increases at times of economic boom.
also in medicine, psychiatry, psychology and
Positivism also retains popular and political
sociology. Offending came to be thought of as
appeal (in both its individual and sociological
being determined by biological and/or cul-
variants) because of a general reluctance of
tural antecedents. It was no longer viewed as
governments to accept that crime lies beyond
simply self-determining. By searching for the
their control. However, it also remains the
speci®c causes (or aetiology) of criminal
subject of controversy. Some would argue that
behaviour, positive criminology assumes that
the use of the scienti®c method remains
criminality has a peculiar set characteristics.
superior to conjecture or polemic, but such
Accordingly, most research of this type has
methodology carries no automatic guarantee
tried to isolate key differences between
of uncovering the `truth'. Inaccurate assump-
criminals and non-criminals. Some theorists
tions, misinterpretations, misapplication of
have focused on biological and psychological
®ndings and inadequate measures for testing
factors, thus locating the sources of crime
can all conspire to produce not only mislead-
primarily within the individual and bringing
ing but dangerous conclusions. Assumptions
to the fore questions of individual pathology
are likely to be made about exactly which
and abnormality. This approach is central to
factors, from a myriad of the potentially
individual positivism. In contrast, sociological
relevant, are worthy of study. In this, the
positivism argues that the key causative
selection of particular variables will depend
factors lie in the social contexts external to
on a priori assumptions the scientist holds
the individual. Here crime is more a matter of
about the nature of human behaviour. Positi-
social pathology.
vist modes of study tend to discover various
correlations between crime and extraneous
Evaluation conditions but can rarely if ever claim to
have speci®ed direct causes. Above all, the
Many of the basic principles of positivism concept of crime is accepted uncritically.
came to be questioned during the 1960s. In
particular positivism was criticized for: John Muncie
Lombroso, C. (1913) Crime: Its Causes and Remedies. · analysing criminology's historical compli-
Boston, MA, Little, Brown. city in techniques of colonial governance;
Quetelet, A. (1842) A Treatise on Man. Edinburgh, · exposing its practices of interiorization
Chambers. and exteriorization;
· revealing the racialized subjects and
categories constructed within and through
criminological discourses;
POST-COLONIAL CRIMINOLOGY · centring what has been denied, ignored
and marginalized;
· working within or in relation to non-
De®nition European/non-Western criminological
`writings from elsewhere';
At its most simple, the term `post-colonial' · identifying and inscribing what has been
refers to the historical period after colonialism silenced by `the canon' and `founding
and is linked to anti-colonization and de- gestures' of Western criminology;
colonization. A much broader conceptualiza- · reinterpreting the `classics' of Western
tion of the term would include the analysis of criminology through application of post-
the on-going relationship between the colonial colonialism's key concepts and methodol-
and post-colonial and the signalling of new ogies;
ways of thinking which have emanated from · acknowledging that the point of departure
heterogeneous sources. In this sense the post- for understanding Western criminal jus-
colonial is both a condition and a space. tice practices might be `elsewhere';
Although at the time of writing there is no · producing alternative conceptualizations
fully ¯edged post-colonial criminology, there of `self-evident' issues;
is a convincing case for such an emergent ®eld · deploying strategic essentialism to gener-
of study. ate new oppositions;
· formulating discourses of resistance to
neo-colonial criminological practices.
Distinctive Features
Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the also accused of dressing up in philosophical
State, and Law and Order. London, Macmillan. (male?) language what feminism has been
Shohat, E. (1992) `Notes on the ``post-colonial''', saying for years, for example the questioning
Social Text, 31/32, pp. 99±113. of `malestream' knowledge and claims to
Spivak, G. (1993) Outside in the Teaching Machine. objectivity originated from other strands of
London, Routledge. feminism in the early 1980s. These criticisms,
Sumner, C. (1986) Crime, Justice and Underdevelop- along with the rejection of the existence of
ment. Aldershot, Gower. patriarchy have led some feminists to classify
postmodern feminism as part of the growing
backlash against feminism.
Evaluation
POSTMODERN FEMINISM
Few feminist criminologists accept postmo-
dern feminism as being useful in its entirety,
De®nition although it is also worth noting that intellec-
tual autobiographies are increasingly offered
A strand of feminism informed by post- in acknowledgement that a researcher's work
modernism, post-colonialism and post- to some degree re¯ects who and what they
structuralism which rejects the notion of the are. The notion that `woman' is culturally
essentialist `woman', arguing the term is created through power and language draws
culturally constructed in relation and opposi- parallels with feminist objections to how
tion to `man' and can be deconstructed and women are portrayed in court in sexual
reconstructed due to its ¯uidity. assault cases. However, the in¯uence that
postmodern feminism had in recognizing this
is debatable.
While postmodern feminism has been
Distinctive Features useful in terms of theory, it has limited use
in view of the key aims of second-wave
In¯uenced by poststructuralist theorists such feminism, and although epistemological
as Derrida and Foucault, postmodern femin- debates have been widely accepted it remains
ists reject not only the notion of `woman' but the case that few feminists are able to accept a
also patriarchy and women's subordination. feminism without sisterhood; a feminism
Also referred to as `post-feminism', this term without `women'. Until criminology is ready
is misleading, however, as it is often used by to depart from `modernity' and embrace `the
the media to de®ne a period of time when postmodern', there is little future for a
feminism is no longer deemed relevant. postmodern feminism within criminology, or
Postmodern feminism rejects binary oppo- vice versa.
sites, for example male/female, objectivity/
Nicole Westmarland
subjectivity, arguing concepts are culturally
constructed in relation to one another and are
therefore unstable. The production of knowl- Associated Concepts: deconstruction, post-
edge is questioned, and claims to objectivity colonialism, postmodernism, post-structural-
and the notion of a universal `truth' are ism, radical feminism
rejected. Postmodern feminists have criticized
standpoint theorists, claiming neither women Key Readings
nor men can ever have total knowledge as all Barrett, M. (2000) `Postfeminism', in G. Browning, A.
knowledge is partial and situated, and Halcli and F. Webster (eds), Understanding
although all standpoints are con¯icting, none Contemporary Society: Theories of the Present.
is privileged (Haraway, 1991). London, Sage.
Criticisms of postmodern feminism come Brooks, A. (1997) Postfeminisms ± Feminism, Cultural
most strongly from radical feminists who Theory and Cultural Forms. London, Routledge.
argue that destroying the concept `woman' Haraway, D.S. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women:
will result in less collective activism. There is The Reinvention of Nature. London, Free Associa-
also concern that postmodern feminism is too tion Books.
`academic' and will further widen the gap Riley, D. (1988) Am I That Name? Feminism and the
between feminist activists and academics Category of `Women' in History. New York,
resulting in a form of elitist feminism. It is Macmillan.
216 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Smart, C. (1990) `Feminist approaches to crimino- irony. Rather than rigid structures such as
logy, or postmodern woman meets atavistic man', bureaucracies, postmodern analysis privi-
in A. Morris and L. Gelsthorpe (eds), Feminist leges `dissipative structures', which are
Perspectives in Criminology. Milton Keynes, Open very sensitive and responsive to their
University Press. environment.
Young, A. (1996) Imagining Crime. London, Sage. · Social roles. Modernist thinkers often rely
on a Parsonian notion of the person
whereby s/he is seen as a role player on
various stages, reading speci®c scripts.
POSTMODERNISM Through socialization one is cast into
various roles. For postmodernists, roles
are unstable constructions; a person is
De®nition always a role-maker.
· Subjectivity/agency. Modernists celebrate
Postmodern theory in criminology arose in the the notion of the individual (the centred
early 1990s out of the disenchantment with subject) best typi®ed in Cogito, ergo sum.
modernist and Enlightenment thought. It This is the conscious, determining, re¯ec-
privileges non-linear developments, orderly tive, rational and unitary person, epiti-
disorder, extreme sensitivity to initial condi- mized in the notion of the juridic subject,
tions, disproportionate effects, fractal geome- the `reasonable man in law'. Postmoder-
try, chance factors, contingency, irony, local nists offer the idea of the decentred
knowledge, the decentred subject and the subject, a person who is less in control,
effects of language in the constitution of the more located in various languages and
subject. It situates its critique and suggestions what they allow.
for reconstruction, or transpraxis, in political · Discourse. Modernist thought assumes
economy. language is neutral; it is but an instrument
for use in verbalizing a person's desire.
Postmodernists argue that discourses are
Distinctive Features rather linguistic coordinate systems, and
language is always already populated
Postmodern thought can be traced to French with voices. It is never a neutral medium.
theorists in the 1970s and 1980s. Several · Knowledge. Modernist thought privileges
theorists formed the kernel of the ®rst wave: global knowledge and foundational truths
Baudrillard, Cixous, Deleuze, Derrida, Fou- that can be arrived at through the
cault, Guattari, Irigaray, Kristeva, Lyotard, scienti®c method. Postmodernists see
Moi. Many were in¯uenced by Nietzsche and knowledge as always partial, fractured,
more recently Jacques Lacan, a revisionist fragmented and contingent. They focus on
Freudian who integrated the works of Benve- Pathos (suffering, struggle, overcoming)
niste, Jakobson, Kojeve, de Saussure, Strauss over Logos (logic and rationality).
and topology theory. He was to give Freud's · Space/time. Modernist thought situates
early work a linguistic spin (the `unconscious itself in Newtonian physics of space and
structured like a language'). Second wave time and in Euclidean geometry. Privi-
theorists have emerged in the late 1980s and leged is linearity, stasis, determinism and
1990s who have applied this body of theory to stability. Postmodernists privilege quan-
law, criminology, cultural and media studies, tum mechanics, non-Euclidean geometry,
the clinical and literary criticism. topology theory, fractal geometry,
Postmodern thought differs from modernist `striated space,' irreversibility of time
thought along several dimensions (Milovano- among others.
vic, 1997). · Causality. Modernist thought privileges
determinism, linear causality and the
· Society and social structure. Modernist inherent potential for discovering all
thought, such as typi®ed by the works of laws of nature. Postmodernists, however,
Durkheim, Parsons and Luhmann, privi- say `God plays dice'. Quantum and chaos
leges order, stability, linear developments, theories indicate the centrality of chance
equilibrium and homeostatic analysis. and indeterminacy as well as dispropor-
Postmodern analysis privileges order and tionate effects.
disorder (orderly disorder), far-from-equi- · Social change. Modernists assume linear
librium conditions, non-linear change, development in historical change, whether
chance, indeterminacy, contingency and Hegelian (Absolute Spirit), Marxian (dia-
POSTMODERNISM 217
clarity, opting for a mode of address and Foucault's analysis of the prison also provides
argumentation marked by density, impene- us with an answer to the question of why the
trability, ambiguity and incoherence. Post- new model prison failed to reform offenders.
structuralism not only re-centres the subject Discussions that focus on the `success' or
but constructs a subject that is fragmentary `failure' of the prison are inappropriate. The
and contradictory. Consequently, it also prison cannot fail because `it is not intended to
stresses the importance of differences over eliminate offences, but rather to distinguish
unity. As a result of post-structuralism's anti- them, to distribute them, to use them'.
essentialism, considerably more attention was
paid to theorizing subjectivity, agency and
power. Post-structuralism has had a major Evaluation
in¯uence on feminist and postmodernist
theorizing. A post-structuralist Foucauldian perspective
Derrida developed deconstruction as a on the constitution of power/knowledge has
method of destabilizing and decentring provided criminologists with a vital set of
modern philosophy's claims to truth. Decon- conceptual tools for analysing of®cial texts in a
struction involves looking at a system, wide range of criminal justice settings and for
examines how it was built, identi®es the undertaking histories of the present. The work
keystones and the de®ning angles which of feminists writers such as Vikki Bell (on
support the structure. By moving the compo- incest), Carol Smart (on law) and Alison
nent pieces around, one can free oneself from Young (on postmodern criminology) signi®es
the authority and logics of the system. In its the intellectual power of post-structuralist
analysis of texts, deconstruction identi®es the ideas.
key processes of signi®cation, looking for the Eugene McLaughlin
incoherences, instabilities and ambivalences
within texts, locating the traces of oppositional
elements and reversing the normal patterns of Associated Concepts: deconstruction, discourse
interpretation. Deconstruction is radically analysis, essentialism, panopticism, post-
disruptive because it ®rst of all reverses and modern feminism, postmodernism, social
then seeks to replace `natural' oppositions control
such as nature/culture, male/female and
object/subject. For Derrida these oppositions Key Readings
are restrictive substitutes for thinking. Bell, V. (1993) Interrogating Incest: Feminism, Foucault
Post-structuralism impacted on criminology and the Law. London, Routledge.
via Michel Foucault's anti-realist and anti- Berman, A. (1996) From the New Criticism to
essentialist Discipline and Punish. In this book Deconstruction: The Reception of Structuralism and
he presents not a history but an `archaeology' Post Structuralism. Urbana, IL, University of
or `genealogy' of the transformation of the Illinois Press.
notion of punishment and the birth of the Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish. Harmonds-
prison. Foucault's intention is to lay to rest worth, Penguin.
those congratulatory histories of the modern Smart, C. (1995) Law, Crime and Sexuality. London,
prison which tell a story of progress, reform Sage.
and enlightenment. For Foucault, what is Young, A. (1995) Imagining Crime. London, Sage.
signi®cant in the transformation of a mode of
punishment that depended on the in¯iction of
bodily pain and public theatrical spectacle to
one organized around incarceration, regula- PRAXIS
tion, surveillance and reformation of the mind
is not whether it is better or more humane but
how it represents the re-organization of De®nition
disciplinary knowledge/power. For Foucault,
the techniques and rationales embedded in Praxis refers to the link between theory and
Bentham's proposed `Panopticon' ± surveil- practice, and the struggle that exists in all
lance, classi®cation, examination ± were the intellectual movements to transform existing
embodiment of this shift to a new modality of (oppressive or marginalizing) societal condi-
control. The prison was but one representative tions into meaningful re¯ection, action and
institution of the carceral society where change. Praxis is a complicated and intricate
disciplinary power/knowledge is exercised phenomenon because it entails a re-constitu-
within a multitude of institutional practices. tion of culture, institutions, relationships and
220 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
social interaction, such that a more humane, and production. Feminist praxis entails endor-
emancipatory climate of pro-social civic life sing such interventions as consciousness-
prevails. Moments of praxis, then, redirect our raising, connectivity, the primacy of relation-
entire way of being from the alienating ships, and the personal is political.
constraints of identity politics to the unifying Postmodernists have further re®ned the
dynamics of a pluralistic society. Self-determi- Marxist notion of praxis by utilizing the
nation, intentionality, sociality and creativity concept of `transpraxis.' Transpraxis retains
are cornerstones of praxis and the new social the Marxist conviction that theory and practice
order it endorses. need to be linked to produce change; however,
it also addresses the role of language in such
transformations. Transpraxis involves the
Distinctive Features dialectics of linguistic struggle in which the
new, reconstituted order does not re-create
The notion of praxis has its roots in the work conditions of alienation and oppression.
of Karl Marx. Marxism is a dialectical and Transpraxis is a deliberate and af®rmative
historical theory of human progress, that attempt not to reverse hierarchies but, instead,
responds to the economic and social problems to af®rm those who victimize, marginalize and
associated with (advanced state-regulated) criminalize while renouncing their victimiz-
capitalism. For Marx (1868) praxis was that ing, marginalizing and criminalizing practices.
moment in which `the free development of Transpraxis is an effort to validate the act of
each [was] the free development of all'. resistance. The key to transpraxis is speech,
According to Marxist thought, praxis is a words, grammar and how we talk about (and
political and economic effort designed to then act upon) emancipation.
change the conditions that give rise to
psychological alienation and social oppres-
sion. Indeed, during the period in which Karl Evaluation
Marx lived and wrote, people were alienated
from their labour, from their fellow workers,
and from themselves. Under such conditions, Praxis (or transpraxis) symbolizes efforts to
change was necessary and inevitable. The alter and improve the conditions in which
source of this change was a blend of scholarly people live, work and engage others. Critical
enquiry and political action; namely, praxis. and radical criminology have been more
Others have contemporized Marx's notions closely linked with the Marxist notion of
on praxis and applied his insights in different praxis. Socialist feminist criminologists have
social science contexts. For example, the similarly relied upon the Marxist concept,
dialogical and liberation pedagogy of Paulo infusing it with a sensitivity to gender politics.
Freire (1985, p. 50) calls for conscientization. The Postmodern criminologists (particularly con-
purpose of conscientization is for the stitutive criminologists) have appropriated the
oppressed to `exercise the right to participate idea of transpraxis in their explanation of
consciously in the socio-historical transforma- crime, criminals and criminal behaviour.
tion of their society'. Freire was particularly
interested in how the oppressed (such as the Bruce Arrigo
poor, the illiterate, the disenfranchised) could
function as cultural revolutionaries. The key to
Associated Concepts: constitutive criminology,
transformation is re¯ection and dialogue in
critical criminology, feminist criminologies,
which the subjugated speak `true words' about
Marxist criminologies, political crime, post-
themselves, about the conditions in which they
modernism
live, and about the necessary and inevitable
process by which change (an alternative,
emancipatory reality) can materialize. Key Readings
Feminists, especially Marxist and socialist Eisenstein, Z. (ed.) (1979) Capitalist Patriarchy and the
feminists, have appropriated Marx's notion of Case for Socialist Feminism. New York, Monthly
praxis. Both claim that the conditions in which Review Press.
women ®nd themselves are related to the state Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York,
of malestream praxis and the culture of Herder and Herder.
patriarchy and capitalism. Women's liberation Freire, P. (1985) The Politics of Education. South
is rooted in transforming the sexual division of Hadley, MA, Bergin and Garvey.
labour, reconstituting society's notions of mas- Henry, S. and Milovanovic, D. (1996) Constitutive
culinity, femininity, competition, hierarchy Criminology: Beyond Postmodernism. London, Sage.
PREDICTION STUDIES 221
Marx, K. (1868) Capital, 3 vols. New York, Interna- false positive outcome arises when the presence
tional Press. of the predictors indicates the outcome will
Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1845±6) The German occur but it does not arise; while a false
Ideology. New York, International Publishers. negative refers to the situation when, in the
absence of predictors, the criterion of risk
actually does occur. `False' outcomes are
generally called `misses'.
PREDICTION STUDIES The ®rst attempts at prediction of reoffend-
ing were made by criminologists in the 1920s
(e.g., Burgess, 1928). These mainly relied on
De®nition measurement of a range of potential static risk
factors for reoffending, typically information
The aim of prediction studies is to ®nd the gleaned from demographic and criminological
variables (risk factors) that most accurately records, followed by statistical calculations to
predict the likelihood of offending (or more determine the factors that best predicted the
usually) reoffending. It is held that knowledge outcome (that is, recidivism). This tradition
of accurate predictors of offending is impor- has continued into more recent times with the
tant theoretically and practically valuable, as, development of several actuarial prediction
for example, in informing parole decisions. instruments based on static factors for use
with general offender populations.
Examples of actuarial scales used to predict
Distinctive Features offending include the California Base Expec-
tancy Scale, the Salient Factor Scale, and the
Prediction studies are characterized by two Offender Group Reconviction Scale. The
elements: ®rst, the de®nition of the criterion of Salient Factor Scale, developed and re®ned
concern; secondly, identi®cation of the pre- in studies conducted within the US Parole
dictors (or risk factors) for the speci®ed Commission, is an actuarial scale that contains
criterion. For example, prediction studies only static risk factors. It is a six-item checklist
may be concerned with the speci®c criterion that produces a score from 0 to 10 points: the
of violent offending by males. The aim of the higher the score, the lower the likelihood of
research would therefore be to ®nd the speci®c reconviction, with bands of scores used to
predictors of male violent offending. There are categorize risk. Hoffman (1994) has reported a
two types of predictors: static predictors are long-term follow-up of the Salient Factor Score
risk factors that cannot change, such as on three samples of prisoners released from
criminal history, family background and prison and concludes that the scale has
employment record; dynamic predictors are retained its predictive accuracy over the 17-
risk factors that can change, such as level of year period in which the various samples of
drinking, employment or relationships. offenders were released.
There are also two main styles of conduct- While prediction scales based on static
ing prediction studies. Actuarial prediction factors can be accurate, by de®nition they
seeks to analyse statistically data gathered cannot give any indication of a change in risk.
across a range of potential predictors to However, the new generation of `risk±need'
identify which predictors perform best in scales are designed to include dynamic as well
predicting the given criterion. Clinical predic- as static risk factors. For example, the Level of
tion relies on individuals, teams, or case Supervision Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) is com-
conferences to make predictions as to the pleted through ®le review and interview, and
likelihood of future offending. The generally assesses a range of risk factors, including
accepted position, dating from Meehl's (1954) `static' factors such as previous convictions,
seminal text, is that statistical prediction is and `dynamic' factors such as drink problems
superior to clinical prediction. and employment. The pattern of scores
Attempts at predicting risk can have various identi®es speci®c areas of offender need
outcomes, each of which has very different (informing service providers), while the total
implications for those involved. Strong pre- score can be translated into a risk band for
dictors for a given criterion will produce high future offending (Andrews and Bonta, 1995).
levels of true positive and true negative out- The empirical evidence supporting the LSI-R
comes. In other words, the predictors will as a measure of risk and needs is strong:
correctly predict either the occurrence or Gendreau et al. (1996) conclude their review of
absence of the criterion. These `true' outcomes, predictors of adult recidivism with the view
positive and negative, are known as `hits'. A that the LSI-R is the current measure of choice.
222 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
banditry but also in the category of the urban the 1980s. Additionally, the current theoretical
`mob', provided a foundation for criminolo- environment has rather turned its back on
gists and historians seeking to understand class oriented accounts and related forms of
crime among the poor and minorities. Such radical theory ± in particular Marxist theory.
work focused on social crime in the eighteenth Nevertheless, especially if Hobsbawm's own
and nineteenth centuries, including poaching, cautions about romanticism are heeded,
smuggling, luddism, haystack burning and primitive rebellion still seems to promise
other crimes interpreted as upholding the old much for analysis of the inchoate politics of
`moral economy' and traditional rights of the some forms of contemporary crime among the
poor. It sought to give voice to poor criminals underclass and the excluded. Its implications
whose offences were related to resisting for feminist criminology have yet to be
egregious exploitation associated with early explored.
capitalist development. Much of this work
echoed Hobsbawm's caution that such crim- Pat O'Malley
inals would not simply appear as heroic and
attractive, but often bloody, reactionary and Associated Concepts: critical criminology, left
barbarous. Even so, the characterization of idealism, Marxist criminologies, moral econ-
contemporary urban street crime as primitive omy, political crime
rebellion and `social crime' by some criminol-
ogists in the 1970s, led others to become highly
Key Readings
critical of tendencies to `romanticize' hood-
Hay, D., Thompson, E. and Linebaugh, P. (eds)
lums and thugs.
(1975) Albion's Fatal Tree. Crime and Society in
Nevertheless, an attempt recently has been
Eighteenth Century England. London, Allen Lane.
made to revive this line of analysis. Citing the
Hobsbawm, E. (1959) Primitive Rebels: Studies in
emergence of new, urban `dangerous classes',
Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and
their exclusion from capitalist relations, and
20th Centuries. Manchester, Manchester Univer-
their participation in alternative economies,
sity Press.
Lea (1999) suggests that Hobsbawm's notions
Hobsbawm, E. (1969) Bandits. Harmondsworth,
of primitive rebellion and social crime may
Penguin.
once again enter criminological currency.
Lea, J. (1999) `Social crime revisited', Theoretical
Criminology, 3, pp. 307±26.
O'Malley, P. (1979) `Class con¯ict, land and social
Evaluation
banditry. Bushranging in nineteenth century
Australia', Social Problems, 26, pp. 271±83.
Primitive rebellion sensitized a generation of
Thompson, E. (1977) Whigs and Hunters. The Origins
social historians and critical criminologists to
of the Black Act. London, Allen Lane.
the nexus between popular crime and politics,
by broadening the notion of politics to include
the expressions of the inchoate and ignorant,
and by linking these to `criminal' acts of
resistance where criminal law operated as a PRIVATIZATION
means of oppression. Equally important, it
provided an important stimulus for develop-
ing a critical historiography within crimino- See Managerialism
logy. The historical analyses associated with
E.P. Thompson and his colleagues, that owed
much to Hobsbawm's pioneering work,
remain one of the most lasting, scholarly and PROBATION
elegant contributions to criminology. Such
work added considerable sophistication to a
radical criminological theory that had become De®nition
prone to rather literal and unsubtle translation
of Marxist theory. However, the concept of Supervision of offenders in conditions of
primitive rebellion has occupied a limited and freedom by designated of®cers of the court
diminishing place in criminology in the past (sometimes called probation of®cers or com-
two decades, and it seems unlikely to recover munity corrections of®cers). Nowadays
the high pro®le it held during the 1970s. Its regarded as an `alternative to prison',
decline is probably linked to the crystallization though, historically, has been viewed as an
of anti-romanticism into left realism during `alternative to punishment'.
224 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Associated Concepts: community corrections, and crime control. The majority of incidents
community sentences, evaluation research, with which police of®cers have to deal are
rehabilitation, social learning theory non-criminal in nature and police methods
should re¯ect this fact. The prioritization of
Key Readings the law enforcement function disproportio-
Brownlee, I. (1998) Community Punishment: A Critical nately in¯uences the operational practices,
Introduction. Harlow, Addison Wesley Longman. structure, training and recruitment policies of
Hamai, K., Ville, R., Harris, R., Hough, M. and police forces. It can also compound rather than
Zvekic, U. (1995) Probation Round the World: A resolve problems because it leads police
Comparative Study. London, Routledge. of®cers to think that the solution to the
McGuire, J. (1995) What Works? Reducing Reoffending. problems they face is more legal powers. For
Chichester, John Wiley. Goldstein, police forces need to accept that
Ruggiero, V., Ryan, M. and Sim, J. (eds) (1995) good police work requires the development of
Western European Penal Systems: A Critical Anat- the most effective means for dealing with a
omy. London, Sage. multitude of troublesome situations. Equally
Vennard, J. and Hedderman, C. (1998) `Effective crucially, these means will very often, but not
interventions with offenders', in P. Goldblatt and always, require the invocation of criminal law.
C. Lewis (eds), Reducing Offending: An Assessment The reactive, law enforcement based model
of Research Evidence on ways of Dealing with of police work should be replaced by proactive
Offending Behaviour. Research Study 187. `bottom-up' approaches which emphasize
London, Home Of®ce. getting to grips with the underlying conditions
Worrall, A. (1997) Punishment in the Community: The that create the problems police of®cers have to
Future of Criminal Justice. Harlow, Addison deal with. They can do this because many of
Wesley Longman. the incidents that take up police time are
recurring rather than random in nature. Police
forces should analyse patterns of crime
incident clusters to identify underlying
PROBLEM ORIENTED POLICING causes and problems and formulate appro-
priate responses. To do so requires disaggre-
gating vague and overly general categories
De®nition such as `crime', `disorder', `violence' and so on
into particular problems. It is not good enough
Problem oriented policing is a deceptively to break them down into `robbery', `theft',
simple and sensible idea. It requires police `assault', for example, because these concepts
forces to analyse the problems that they are are framed by the criminal law. There should
routinely called upon to deal with and to be as detailed a breakdown of problems as
devise more effective ways to respond to possible from the outset and the identi®cation
them. of key characteristics (location, time, partici-
pants' behaviour and so on). In addition,
information should be gathered from a range
Distinctive Features of police and non-police sources. Only then can
speci®c plans and imaginative strategies be
Problem oriented policing was ®rst developed developed to reduce or eradicate these recur-
by Herman Goldstein in the late 1970s and ring problems. In this way police of®cers will
represents an attempt to persuade the police concentrate not on organizational matters but
that it is in their interests to adopt a different the ends of their police work and the quality of
operational philosophy. He is critical of the the police product. Problem-solving policing is
traditional incident-driven policing strategies, more rewarding for of®cers and enables the
where the organization responds to individual organization to manage the demands made
calls for assistance as they happen and upon it more effectively because police work is
attempts to cope with the demand. Of®cers geared towards resolving the root causes of
or their colleagues repeatedly revisit the same related problems.
localities and social settings to deal with the
repetitive, all too predictable, behaviour of
individuals and groups. This is demoralizing Evaluation
for of®cers, a waste of organizational
resources and unsatisfactory for members of In many respects problem oriented policing
the public. Goldstein is also critical of police makes common sense, and yet for police forces
work, which concentrates on law enforcement to embrace this model requires them to engage
226 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
reform of criminal law and penal policy; for to a fall from favour for psychoanalytic
example, British psychoanalysts gave testi- thought in criminology. The extent to which
mony to the Royal Commission on Capital psychoanalysts had engaged from the outset
Punishment of 1952. These activities were upon a complex and sometimes heated debate
informed by a literature on the unconscious concerning the ethics of their practice and the
motivations of legal punishment, which fore- ef®cacy of their techniques was overlooked, as
grounded the aggression and ambivalence of was the profound disagreement between
subjective investments in punitive practices. A different genres of psychoanalysis.
general statement of this view is of the order Over the past century there have been many
of: `punishment of the criminal is punishment contentious debates among psychoanalysts.
of something which the individual feels to be The expulsion of various individuals from
present in themself.' particular circles of af®liation and professional
Psychoanalysis accords a central place to bodies, as well as the emergence of rival
gender and sexuality in its exploration of schools of thought and of clinical practice, is
psyche. From the early days, analysts pointed one lasting manifestation of the degree of
up the signi®cance of troubles with masculi- divergence. In addition to division pertaining
nity to the origins of men's criminality. A to institutional structures and doctrinal pre-
recent example of this kind of scholarship can ferences, a proliferation of different cultures of
be seen in Tony Jefferson's (1996) use of psychoanalysis in¯uenced by local socio-
Kleinian concepts such as projection to think political contexts has been marked.
about the case of Mike Tyson in terms of the The most intentionally provocative and self-
relationship between the constitution of black consciously political culture of psychoanalysis
masculine subjectivity and the crime of which emerged in France with the impetus of the
the boxer was convicted. `return to Freud' undertaken by Jacques
An understanding of the contemporary as Lacan. Lacan repeatedly differentiated his
the locus of a `risk society' or `actuarial society' work from the genre of American ego-
has recently attained prominence in theoretical psychology, which emphasized adaptation to
criminology. An alternative way of looking at dominant socio-cultural structures and mores.
this question of our actuality employs the idea In his address to the second international
of an affective society. Such a picture is offered congress on criminology of 1950, he asserted
by Hollway and Jefferson (1997), who employ that `the denunciation of the morbid Universe
a psychoanalytic conception of anxiety to think of the misdeed cannot have for its corollary,
about the fear of crime, and by Mark Watson nor for its aim, the ideal of an adaptation to a
(1999), in his essay on the paranoiac structure reality without con¯icts' (Lacan, 1984, p. 24).
of police discourse. Key respects in which the Lacan emphasized the emotional ambivalence
subject of a society construed as affective occasioned by the dialectical negativity by
differs from the subject of a risk society include which the ego is formed through an identi®ca-
the retrospective temporal orientation of the tion with the other. Two of his earliest works
former and his/her emotional and uncon- discussed the cases of certain criminal women.
scious re¯exivity, which predominates over Lacan's doctoral thesis of 1932 described the
the cognitive and rational. case of AimeÂe, who had attempted to stab a
famous actress. Lacan rejected organic expla-
nations of psychosis and saw her act as
Evaluation springing from con¯icts within her person-
ality. Her delusional system had turned these
Psychoanalytic thought exercised a consider- con¯icts into external persecutors. The wish
able in¯uence upon the British criminology of behind the delusions was one of unconscious
the inter-war and postwar periods (Valier, self-punishment. This was followed by a
1998). In the sphere of penal practice, proba- paper on the Papin sisters, two maids who
tion became reconceived as a process of had murdered their employers in 1933.
emotional re-education, and the role of the Lacan's re¯ection on these criminal cases
probation of®cer therein that of a caseworker. was crucial to the elaboration of his concepts
From the 1970s, radical, con¯ict and feminist of the imaginary and the mirror phase, the
criminologies with a commitment to political latter theorizing the alienation that resides at
critique denounced the psychoanalytic study the heart of all human subjects and initiates in
of the criminal as positivistic, normative and an act of self-misrecognition.
biologically deterministic. The rejection of the Lacanian thought has now exercised con-
rehabilitative ethos in penality under the aegis siderable in¯uence in areas such as literary
of the slogan `nothing works' also contributed and cultural criticism. There is a rich literature
228 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
extant which employs psychoanalytic thought in an age of anxiety: situating the fear of crime',
in the analysis of the plethora of visual and British Journal of Sociology, 48 (2), pp. 255±66.
literary representations of crime and punish- Jefferson, T. (1996) `From ``little fairy boy'' to ``the
ment with which we are daily confronted. compleat destroyer'': subjectivity and transforma-
The psychoanalytic understanding of the tion in the biography of Mike Tyson', in M. Mac
criminal cannot be simply condemned as a an Ghaill (ed.), Understanding Masculinities: Social
correctionalist, normalizing discourse. A more Relations and Cultural Arenas. Buckingham, Open
nuanced account of the kinds of psycho- University Press.
analysis taken up by criminology, and of the Lacan, J. (1984) `Psychanalyse et criminologie.
changes to classical technique thought neces- ReÂsumeÂ', Ornicar, 31, pp. 23±7.
sary to the treatment of criminals, as well as an Mucchielli, L. (1993) `Le sens du crime: histoire des
engagement with the extensive critical litera- r(apports) de la psychanalyse aÁ la criminologie',
ture on many aspects of psychoanalysis, are in L. Mucchielli (ed.), Histoire De La Criminologie
prerequisites to any assessment of relation- FrancËaise. Paris, L'Harmattan.
ships between psychoanalysis and crimino- Valier, C. (1998) `Psychoanalysis and crime in
logy. Further, the comfortable assimilation of Britain during the inter-war years'. The British
psychoanalytic thought into criminological Criminology Conferences, Selected Proceedings.
theory is both unlikely and undesirable. For Electronic journal at the website of the British
this eventuality to take place, a considerable Society of Criminology: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/
domestication of psychoanalysis would have departments/ss/bsc/bccsp/vol01/VOL01_12.HT
to occur. Watson, M. (1999) `Policing the affective society:
beyond governmentality in the theory of social
Claire Valier control', Social and Legal Studies, 8 (2), pp. 227±52.
of the `gay-panic defence' and for equal ages has embraced feminism it seems that any
of consent can be seen in this light. The logic of serious consideration of sexualities as impor-
queer theory, however, is that you need not be tant to criminology ± whether purely empiri-
homosexual in practice or identity to be queer. cal, standpoint or queer ± may take decades.
Whilst this makes political mobilization more However, without such consideration, even
dif®cult it should also be remembered that apparently simple issues ± like what do we
you don't have to be gay to suffer homo- mean by the expressions `going straight' and
phobia. `Doing' masculinity often involves the `bent copper' ± will elude criminology. Queer
rejection of the feminine and the queer. Thus theory seeks to ®nd the odd within the normal
many men operate under the fear of being or render the normal odd ± as in the mention
thought queer as the fewer openly gay men of `straight' and `bent' above. It is this sort of
operate under the fear of being bashed. The sub(per)version that will render it unpalatable
political task facing all men is to remove the to the criminological mainstream. Moreover,
distal fear of being called a `poof' or `faggot' queer practice and culture ± camp to kitsch ±
and the proximate fear of being bashed like long predates the turn to theory and may, like
one. Whilst gay liberation speci®cally aimed to some feminisms, wish to keep its distance
improve the lot of gay men and lesbians, queer from criminology.
theory opens up the possibility of a wider
liberation. Nic Groombridge
King by Los Angeles police of®cers, for theoretical positions whose main common
example, could be rede®ned as a situation characteristic is one of anti-positivism. Rather
where he was seen as endangering the than viewing crime as determined by indivi-
police. dual or social pathology, radical criminologies
assume humans are active agents in the con-
struction of their own biographies. They are
Evaluation more concerned with discovering the meaning
of criminal behaviour than trying to isolate
Unlike the term race relations, racialization speci®c causes.
always highlights the constructed nature of Within the broad classi®cation of `radical
`race'. It shifts the focus of attention away from criminology' there is a diverse range of theor-
black people to questions about how racializa- ies that contest the behavioural questions
tion structures and de®nes social relations. posed by positivist criminologies. Crime is to
Connections between `race' and, among many be found less in particular individual charac-
other things, locality, masculinity and sexu- teristics and environmental conditions and
ality could all be developed further. The con- more in relations of power and selective
tingent and constructed nature of `race' implies processes of criminalization. In labelling this
that other constructions are possible, though is expressed in terms of a `society' that creates
the extent to which some associations endure rules. Within Marxism and critical crimino-
indicates how deeply rooted racialization is. logy it is expressed in terms of `a capitalist
The multiplicity of racial constructions trans- state' that has the power to criminalize those
versing across biology, culture, politics and behaviours which are deemed `threatening'. In
nationality indicates how ¯exibly racialization some feminist perspectives it is expressed in
can operate. the social construction of `hegemonic mascu-
Karim Murji linities' within patriarchal societies. All such
notions have shifted the criminological agenda
away from popular ideas about causation.
Associated Concepts: criminalization, demoni-
zation, essentialism, institutional racism, John Muncie
social constructionism, stereotyping, stigma
Associated Concepts: critical criminology, fem-
Key Readings inist criminologies, interactionism, labelling,
Butler, J. (1993) `Endangered/endangering: sche-
Marxist criminologies, new criminology, new
matic racism and white paranoia', in R. Gooding-
deviancy theory
Williams (ed.), Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban
Uprising. New York, Routledge.
Gilroy, P. (1987) There Ain't No Black in the Union
Jack. London, Hutchinson.
Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and RADICAL FEMINISM
Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, The
State and Law and Order. London, Macmillan.
Keith, M. (1993) Race, Riots and Policing: Lore and De®nition
Disorder in a Multi-racist Society. London, UCL
Press. Radical feminism offers a systematic analysis
Solomos, J. (1988) Black Youth, Racism and the State. of the nature of women's oppression, includ-
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. ing the ways it is sustained through law and
Webster, C. (1997) `The construction of British criminal justice processes. Its aim is not only to
``Asian'' criminality', International Journal of the understand male dominance and control of
Sociology of Law, 25, pp. 65±86. women and children, but also to end it. It
de®nes what have been named variously as
`violence against women', `sexual violence'
and `gender violence' as key elements in the
RADICAL CRIMINOLOGIES power relations of patriarchy: that is, the
maintenance of male power and control over
women and children. Sexual violence has
De®nition become a central concept in radical feminist
theory and women throughout the world have
There is no one radical criminology. The term organized in a variety of ways to highlight,
is used to delineate a series of distinct respond to and campaign against it.
RADICAL FEMINISM 233
that of `survivor', while not denying the Nevertheless, the achievements of radical
reality of victimization (Kelly, 1988). More feminism do not represent a non-controversial
recent writings recognize both concepts as model of linear development or progress.
problematic at the level of identity, as both are Patriarchy has not been overthrown, violence
de®ned by unchosen experiences of violence. against women has not been eliminated. Law
Radical feminism accords agency to women and criminal justice systems still fail effec-
and men. At the individual level it recognizes tively to sanction or prosecute this violence or
that men are responsible for their own actions accord effective protection to women and
and the diversity of resistance, coping and children victimized. The radical feminist
survival strategies adopted by women. The project is not yet concluded.
presence of a vital radical feminist activism
against male violence further points to the Jill Radford
power of women's agency.
A more dif®cult question relates to radical Associated Concepts: family crime, hegemonic
feminist strategies relating to law as a site masculinity, liberal feminism, violence
(albeit one of many) of struggle for change.
Radical feminism identi®es law and criminal Key Readings
justice as patriarchal institutions, complicit in Dobash, R.E. and Dobash, R.P. (1992) Rethinking
oppression of women and children, and Violence Against Women. London, Sage.
identi®es sexual violence as a de®ning Hester, M., Kelly, L. and Radford, J. (eds) (1996)
characteristic of patriarchal societies. Yet it Women, Violence and Male Power. Buckingham,
campaigns for changes in law within a Open University Press.
patriarchal social order. This may appear Kelly, L. (1988) Surviving Sexual Violence. Cam-
contradictory. However, radical feminism bridge, Polity Press.
holds that law is too signi®cant an institution MacKinnon, C. (1987) Feminism Unmodi®ed: Dis-
to neglect. For example, tens of thousands of courses on Life and Law. Cambridge, MA, Harvard
individual women by necessity resort to the University Press.
law annually, to make best use of the limited Radford, J., Friedberg, M. and Harne, L. (eds) (2000)
protection it offers. Politically, struggle Women, Violence and Strategies for Action: Feminist
through law in campaigns for gender justice Research, Policy and Practice. Buckingham, Open
can play a signi®cant awareness-raising role, University Press.
at times securing some bene®cial change. Rich, A. (1980) `Compulsory heterosexuality and
Nevertheless, radical feminism is not unaware lesbian existence', Signs, 5 (4), pp. 631±60.
of the limits or ironies of reformism. Whereas
sociological theory has perceived irresolvable
tensions between working for long-term
structural change and short-term reform,
more creative approaches to this dilemma RADICAL NON-INTERVENTION
have been explored by radical feminism.
Consequently, rather than adopt simplistic De®nition
reformism, radical feminist strategies have
more in common with a transformative A criminal justice strategy which advocates a
approach to law, that is, one that involves minimalist approach to instances of law-
the transformation of male categories and breaking in order to reduce the range and
concepts to address women's experiences. depth of state intervention. The least amount
Radical feminist interventions in relation to of criminal justice processing as possible is
violence against women are de®nitively one of viewed not only as humanitarian, but as
the more successful areas of feminist practice: effective in preventing the development of
criminal careers. Tolerance is preferred to
moral indignation.
At the very least, their efforts have provided
support for tens of thousands of women
throughout the world and brought this issue Distinctive Features
into the public arena from which it cannot now be
removed. This has provided a vehicle for change The phrase `radical non-intervention' is
within institutions of the state as well as within widely attributed to Edwin Schur. It is the
wider society. Perceptions, discourses and reac- logical policy implication of a labelling
tions have all been challenged. (Dobash and approach to understanding crime and
Dobash, 1992, p. 298) deviance. If, as labelling theorists suggested,
RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY 235
social reaction does not prevent offending but RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY
establishes deviant identities and careers then
the reach of reaction should be reduced. If
state intervention causes crime and is a De®nition
signi®cant agency in the creation of the
crime problem, then steps must be taken to The starting point of rational choice theory is
limit its powers. In particular, Schur (1965) that offenders seek advantage to themselves
argued that a range of `victimless crimes' by their criminal behaviour. This entails
should be removed from the remit of criminal making decisions among alternatives. These
law. Drug use, gambling, juvenile status decisions are rational within the constraints of
offences (truancy, promiscuity), pornography time, ability and the availability of relevant
and so on, it is argued, may be undesirable, information.
but tackling them with the full weight of the
law is not only expensive, but also generally
ineffective. Criminalizing drug users, for Distinctive Features
instance, not only creates new classes of
criminals, but may also drive them to Rational choice theory is the perspective on
commit further offences to support their offender behaviour which underpins situa-
habits, encourages the development of orga- tional crime prevention. Ronald V. Clarke is
nized crime and law enforcement corruption the leading proponent both of the theory and
and redirects resources away from health and the situational prevention approach with
treatment programmes. In short, the removal which it is consistent. Demonstration that
of many troubling behaviours from criminal crime is distributed as if offenders were
law sanction has the potential to be a highly rational (Mayhew et al., 1976) predated full
effective measure of crime reduction. presentation of the theory (Cornish and
Radical non-intervention (and the labelling Clarke, 1986) by almost a decade. The Clarke
approach in general) grew in popularity and Cornish view dealt both with a person's
during the 1960s and was in part a re¯ection initial decision to become involved in crime,
of an emergent distrust of institutional inter- and the decisions leading up to a crime, the
vention that developed throughout that general decision to commit it having been
decade. It has had a profound impact on made. The theory has been used more in its
social policy (Empey, 1982). A series of second area of application, with the `choice-
measures ± decriminalization, diversion and structuring' properties of pre-crime situations
deinstitutionalization ± designed to limit the being the topic of most research in this
extent of the state's intrusion into offenders' tradition. Ways of thinking about choice-
lives, have been implemented to varying structuring properties focus increasingly on
degrees and with varying success in most `offending scripts'.
Western criminal justice systems. Rational choice theory has many similarities
with routine activity theory. The latter focuses
on the necessary conditions for a crime to
John Muncie occur, namely the convergence in time and
place of a motivated offender and a suitable
victim in the absence of a capable guardian
(Felson, 1997). The two perspectives hold in
common a focus on the crime event. They are
Associated Concepts: decriminalization, diver- both concerned with how the press of
sion, labelling, tolerance, victimless crime circumstances shapes individual acts (rational
choice) or acts of a particular class (routine
activities). Rational choice theory appears to
make no differential predictions that would
Key Readings allow a critical test against routine activity.
Empey, La Mar T. (1982) American Delinquency: Its Routine activity theory supposes that, in the
Meaning and Construction, 2nd edn. Chicago, aggregate, trends will look as if there were
Dorsey Press. (limited) rationality at the individual level.
Schur, E.M. (1965) Crime Without Victims. Engle- What rational choice theory adds is twofold.
wood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice±Hall. First, a more precise exploration of what
Schur, E.M. (1974) Radical Non-Intervention: Rethink- counts in people's heads as capable guardian-
ing the Delinquency Problem. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, ship and victim suitability. And second,
Prentice±Hall. offender-speci®c departures from presumptive
236 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
rationality, and thereby a theoretical platform Reasoning Criminal: Rational Choice Perspectives on
for offender pro®ling. Offending. New York, Springer-Verlag.
Since Ron Clarke and Marcus Felson are Felson, M. (1997) Crime and Everyday Life, 2nd edn.
now frequent collaborators, we may see the Thousand Oaks, CA, Pine Forge Press.
theories being consolidated. Indeed, the pro- Mayhew, P.M., Clarke, R.V., Sturman, A. and
cess has already begun and their collaboration Hough, J.M. (eds) (1976) Crime as Opportunity.
is increasingly concerned with ethical issues in Home Of®ce Research Study No. 34. London,
crime control (Clarke and Felson, 1993). The HMSO.
more explicit application of rational choice Trasler, G. (1993) `Conscience, opportunity, rational
theory to the practice of offender pro®ling choice and crime', in R.V. Clarke and M. Felson
would almost certainly prove fruitful. (eds), Advances in Criminological Theory. New
Brunswick, NJ, Transaction.
Evaluation
Key Readings
Clarke, R.V. and Felson, M. (eds) (1993) Routine RECIDIVISM
Activity and Rational Choice. London, Transaction.
Cornish, D. (1994) `The procedural analysis of
offending and its relevance to situational preven- De®nition
tion', in R.V. Clarke (ed.), Crime Prevention Studies
3, Monsey, NY, Criminal Justice Press. Recidivism is concerned with the reconviction
Cornish, D. and Clarke, R.V. (eds) (1986) The rates of offenders released from custody.
RECIDIVISM 237
· It implies that response is mandatory, (ed.), The Futures of Criminology. London, Sage,
without pre-de®ning the event as a crime, pp. 110±33.
an illness, or whatever. Van Swaaningen, R. (1997) Critical Criminology.
· It invites analysis of the event before Visions from Europe. London, Sage.
deciding or choosing a proper response.
· As a concept with ancient origins, it
invokes the consideration of historical
and anthropological forms of dispute REFLEXIVITY
settlement and con¯ict resolution for
possible clues to rational forms of
response. De®nition
To claim redress is merely to assert that an The process of monitoring and re¯ecting on all
undesirable event has taken place and that aspects of a research project from the
something needs to be done about it. It carries formulation of research ideas through to the
no implications concerning what sort of publication of ®ndings and, where this occurs,
reaction would be appropriate; nor does it their utilization. Sometimes the product of
de®ne re¯exively the nature of the initial such monitoring and re¯ection is a re¯exive
event. Since it invites an open discussion account which is published as part of the
about how an unfortunate event should be research report.
viewed and what the appropriate response
ought to be, it can be viewed as a rational
response par excellence. It puts forth the claim Distinctive Features
for a procedure rather than for a speci®c
result. Punitive claims already implied in Although important in all areas of social
de®ning an event as a `crime' are opened up to research, re¯exivity has an especial role in
rational debate. Thus, to advocate `redress' is ethnography in which the investigator is close
to call for `real dialogue' (Christie, 1982) at to the subjects and to the data. What is more,
every level of `crime' control proceedings. the whole process of formulating ideas,
In this way, the notion of `redress' is put collecting observations, analysing and reaching
forth in order to reconceptualize the familiar conclusions is part of the role of the investigator
concepts of `crime' and `punishment' and vis-aÁ-vis those who are the objects of enquiry. It
generate a critical and constructive alternative is for this reason that ethnographers see
to the politics of crime, punishment and penal re¯exivity as part of research in its own right
reform. It is an approach which is ambitious and not as a collection of afterthoughts on how
and modest at the same time. The politics of a project has been accomplished.
`redress' tries to combine principles of At one level, a re¯exive account will be
generalizability and universality with those descriptive in terms of providing an account
of contextuality, solidarity and care ± not as a of, for example, how interviews were carried
blueprint, but as a perspective and a commit- out, what methods of recording data were
ment, enabling criminology to liberate itself used and so on. However, at another ± much
from the punitive logic of exclusion. more important ± level a re¯exive account
should be evaluative in terms of providing
Willem de Haan some assessment of the likely validity of the
conclusions that have been reached. This
might, for example, involve a consideration
Associated Concepts: abolitionism, constitutive of whether respondents selected for interview
criminology, peacemaking criminology, are typical of the group about which conclu-
restorative justice, shaming sions are to be made; whether there is a
possibility that responses to questions were
Key Readings the outcome of exaggeration or even down-
Christie, N. (1982) Limits to Pain. Oxford, Martin right falsi®cation; and whether the method of
Robertson. recording data resulted in only a partial or
de Haan, W. (1990) The Politics of Redress. Crime, even distorted, account of reality. These are
Punishment and Penal Abolition. London, Unwin what are known as `threats to validity'. A
Hyman. researcher may not be able to anticipate and
Henry, S. and Milovanovic, D. (1994) `The constitu- rule these out. However, s/he should be
tion of constitutive criminology: a postmodern aware of them and provide some assessment
approach to criminological theory', in D. Nelken of their potential effects on the validity of
240 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
conclusions. At a minimum, the expectation is asking the questions what gets studied,
that the researcher will provide suf®cient when, by whom, what gets published, and
detail about the research process ± and deci- with what effect?
sions taken within it ± to allow the reader to
make some judgement by him/herself. Victor Jupp
Ethnographic research on criminal subcul-
tures has produced some classic and colourful Associated Concepts: appreciative criminology,
re¯exive accounts of `how it was done'. These Chicago School of Sociology, critical research,
include William Foote Whyte's account of ethnography, participant observation, triangu-
Street Corner Society, Clifford Shaw's life lation
history of The Jack Roller and Karl Klockars'
interviews with The Professional Fence. To take Key Readings
the latter as one example, Klockars describes Hughes, G. (2000) `The politics of criminological
how he used different data sources ± such as research', in V. Jupp, P. Davies and P. Francis
letters, newspaper articles, bills, sales receipts (eds), Doing Criminological Research. London, Sage.
and stock certi®cates ± with which to trian- Jupp, V.R. (1996) Methods of Criminological Research.
gulate his conclusions and thereby improve London, Routledge.
their validity. Klockars, C.B. (1974) The Professional Fence. London,
On occasions re¯exivity involves not just Tavistock.
monitoring and assessing validity (to what Shaw, C.R. (1930) The Jack Roller. Chicago, University
extent are conclusions credible and plausible?) of Chicago Press.
but also questions of ethics (has anyone been Whyte, W.F. (1943) Street Corner Society (2nd edn
harmed by the research?) and questions of 1955). Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
politics (whose side am I on, if any?). Validity,
ethics and politics can impact one on another.
For example, a decision not to publish inter-
view material collected from corrupt police-
men, for fear of exposing them, will not result REGULATION
in a full and valid account of the realities of
police subcultures. Therefore, re¯exivity often See Governmentality
involves the researcher in reaching a personal
standpoint in relation to trade-offs that often
have to be made between validity, politics and
ethics.
REGULATORY AGENCIES
Evaluation De®nition
Re¯exivity is concerned with the social The determination of bodies of law and the
production of knowledge. It involves re¯ect- establishment of some agency, usually a state
ing on the various social roles, interactions agency, for enforcing and overseeing compli-
and processes which resulted in the kinds of ance with such laws.
observations and conclusions that emerged. It
is possible to consider re¯exivity in a sense
wider than that of monitoring and assessing Distinctive Features
the validity of a particular research project.
This wider perspective involves viewing While social scienti®c concern with regulation
critical re¯ection as a form of research in its is long-standing ± the ®rst regulatory agency
own right, and as part of the school of critical (the British factory inspectorate) was docu-
thinking and theorizing in the social sciences mented by Marx in Capital ± this became
in general. A critical research agenda could prominent in the USA in the so-called
include a consideration of why particular (say, Progressive Era of 1900±16, and then again
punitive) law and order discourses take the during the New Deal of the 1930s, as part of a
form that they do and come to be accepted as general concern with the activities of `big
`truth' when they do. What is more, it could business'. Bernstein's (1955) path-breaking
consider the role of criminological research in work on regulation constituted a searing
the production and dissemination of such critique of the contemporary state of regula-
`truths'. This would involve re¯ecting on the tory enforcement, and set out a `Capture
criminological enterprise as a whole and Theory' of regulation, positing that regulatory
REGULATORY AGENCIES 241
agencies are not able to maintain themselves pertaining to occupational health and safety), it
as representatives of `public interest'; even if is fair to say that compliance-oriented enforce-
this is why they are formed, an inevitable life- ment techniques dominate (Pearce and Tombs,
cycle of enthusiasm, the provocation of 1998, pp. 229±45). There now exist a mass of
reaction from the regulated, and the demise studies ± mostly nationally based, though with
of original agency zeal, ensure that the some useful cross-national comparative studies
interests of some generalized public become also ± regarding the practices of a whole range
subsumed to the demands of a regulated of regulatory bodies. In general, non-enforce-
industry (Bernstein, 1955). Such a view of ment is the most frequently found character-
regulation continues to have some force. For istic. Enforcement activity tends to focus upon
some (instrumental) Marxists, a regulatory the smallest and weakest individuals and
agency is subordinated to a state which is organizations, and sanctions following regula-
itself simply an instrument of capital or a tory activity are light (Snider, 1993, pp. 120±4).
ruling class; for some neo-liberal thinkers, Hutter has recently pointed to a body of
regulatory agencies are inevitably captured by evidence from Australia, Britain, the Nether-
organized interests to distort `free' markets. lands, Sweden, and the USA, indicating that
The common feature of these (different) regulators increasingly favour compliance-
perspectives is that regulatory agencies oper- based methods, an emerging preference
ate in a biased fashion. Capture Theory has which extends to ®nancial regulation and
been challenged by other Marxists and some certain areas of `conventional' policing
critical criminologists who argue that regula- (Hutter, 1997, p. 243).
tion is the outcome of class con¯ict and
compromise; the role of regulatory agencies is
thus to mediate con¯icts between competing Evaluation
class interests as part of the process of
maintaining hegemonic domination. Much work on regulation not only documents
In the 1970s, studies of the enforcement of a compliance-oriented approach as that which
new social regulation ± for example, around regulators adopt, but tends to endorse (some
occupational safety and health and environ- version of ) this as the most appropriate
mental legislation ± began to emerge in enforcement approach (Pearce and Tombs,
various nation-states, though particularly in 1998, pp. 223±46). This endorsement is based
the USA. Simultaneously, the new social upon a combination of a recognition of the
regulation also prompted (largely neo-liberal) power of business vis-aÁ-vis regulators, and
critics to call for the removal of these laws and thus a concern not to provoke counter-
the bodies designed to enforce them. These productive tendencies through punitive enfor-
latter deregulatory arguments have assumed cement, and also the claim that business
increasing importance across advanced capi- offences call for different forms of regulation
talist economies ± albeit variably ± in the past than other kinds of law breaking, a view
quarter of a century. The dominant strand in reducible to the claim that business crime is
regulatory concern within and around crimi- not real crime, differing substantially from
nology has contributed to this `debate' `conventional' crime.
between regulation and deregulation, focusing Linked to such claims are arguments
in particular upon the issue of enforcement; around the potential of (enforced) self-regula-
that is, how do and how should regulatory tion, a form of enforcement where the onus for
agencies enforce law? compliance with the law is placed upon the
The distinction between compliance- regulated themselves, but distinct from dereg-
oriented and punitive modes of enforcement ulation, the latter term usually referring to the
is a key one within the literature on regulatory removal of laws designed to regulate the
enforcement. While the aim of the latter is said corporation. Increasingly allied to arguments
to be to apply a punishment for breaking a rule around enforced self-regulation are claims
and doing harm, the goal of a compliance regarding the utility of `goal-oriented' (re¯ex-
strategy is to prevent a harm rather than punish ive) over prescriptive (command and control)
an evil. Enforcers advise, educate, bargain, legislation. While the latter is said to specify
negotiate and compromise with the regulated. the means of securing compliance, the former
Whilst there are, of course, important national entails an agency negotiating `the substantive
differences in enforcement strategies, and in regulatory goal with industry, leaving the
enforcement strategies across different spheres industry discretion and responsibility of how
of business activity (for example, ®nancial to achieve this goal' (Ayres and Braithwaite,
regulation has generally been stricter than that 1992, p. 38).
242 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Regulation raises an enormous range of For example, it is clear from the research
complex issues which go to the core of debates literature that there is an association between
about the nature and role of law, corporations, unemployment and crime. A rehabilitative
contemporary economies and states. Current solution would therefore attempt to enhance
debates around the need or otherwise for the prospects of offenders gaining employ-
international regulatory structures seem to ment. This aim might be achieved through
become more pressing given the increasing legislation, or through working with employ-
momentum of claims regarding the demise ers, or through working with offenders to give
of the nation-state, the internationalization of them skills suited to the job market. Similarly,
business activity, and the proliferation of poor educational achievement is another
social harms associated with these processes. factor associated with crime. A rehabilitative
solution might be to improve school condi-
Steve Tombs and Dave Whyte tions and so raise educational standards, or to
have educational schemes speci®cally aimed
Associated Concepts: criminalization, corporate at offenders. As Cullen and Gilbert (1982)
crime, deterrence, extraterritorial law enforce- note, the rehabilitative ideal stands directly
ment, self-policing, social harm, the state, opposed to ever-escalating levels of punish-
transnational policing, white collar crime ment as a response to crime. The ethos of
rehabilitation holds that not all members of
Key Readings society are equal and that when crime arises
Ayres, I. and Braithwaite, J. (1992) Responsive from that inequality the constructive response
Regulation. Transcending the Deregulation Debate. is to redress that inequality. Some agencies
Oxford, Oxford University Press. within the criminal justice system, such as the
Baldwin, R., Scott, C. and Hood, R. (eds) (1998) A probation service, have historically had the
Reader on Regulation. Oxford, Oxford University rehabilitative ideal as their driving force. In
Press. other cases it is voluntary agencies, such as the
Bernstein, B.H. (1955) Regulating Business by Inde- National Association for the Care and Reset-
pendent Commission. Princeton, NJ, Princeton tlement of Offenders (NACRO), that seek to
University Press. put rehabilitation into effect.
Hutter, B. (1997) Compliance: Regulation and the The treatment model is a special case of the
Environment. Oxford, The Clarendon Press. rehabilitative model in that is has as its focus
Pearce, F. and Tombs, S. (1998) Toxic Capitalism: the individual offender. Historically, the
Corporate Crime and the Chemical Industry. Alder- development of psychological theories of
shot, Dartmouth. criminal behaviour led to attempts to turn
Snider, L. (1993) Bad Business. Corporate Crime in theory into practice. As new treatment
Canada. Toronto, University of Toronto Press. methods followed theoretical advances, so a
range of therapeutic approaches began to be
applied to work with offenders. The earliest
treatments aimed at offenders worked within
a psychoanalytic tradition. For example,
REHABILITATION August Aichhorn (1925/1955) articulated a
psychoanalytic formulation within which
De®nition delinquent behaviour was seen as the product
of a failure in psychological development;
The rehabilitation model takes the stance that from this position Aichhorn developed ther-
crime is best prevented by addressing directly apeutic methods to work with young offen-
the factors ± economic, social, or personal ± ders. From the 1930s through to the 1970s,
believed to be the cause of crime. The treat- treatment with offenders was dominated by
ment model is a special case of the rehabilita- psychodynamic theory and practice, with
tion model in that it seeks to work directly counselling and group therapy being particu-
with the individual offender in order to bring larly popular. Educational programmes were
about a reduction in offending. also widespread during that period: a trend
that is still evident today. While treatment
within a psychodynamic tradition continues,
Distinctive Features the decades since the 1970s have seen a rise in
treatment programmes based on behavioural
The basis of the rehabilitation model is that if and cognitive-behavioural theory.
the factors that bring about crime can be Jeffery (1960) notes, there are three assump-
addressed then it is possible to reduce crime. tions inherent within a rehabilitation, and
RELATIVE DEPRIVATION 243
particularly a treatment, philosophy: determin- 1995). Current concern is with the design,
ism, differentiation and pathology. Each of these implementation and evaluation of `high
assumptions sets advocates of rehabilitation in impact' treatment characteristics of pro-
potential con¯ict with a criminal justice grammes for offenders. While practical suc-
system that is built on principles of individual cess might be achievable, there remains the
responsibility. issue of rethinking the conceptual assump-
First, determinism maintains that factors tions of determinism, differentiation and
outside of the individual's control ± biological, pathology (Hollin, 1999).
psychological, social, or a combination of all
three ± bring about the individual's beha- Clive Hollin
viour. Secondly, the logical conclusion from a
deterministic position is that criminals must,
in some way, be different from non-criminals. Associated Concepts: behaviour modi®cation,
The origin of this differentiation may be conditioning, determinism, pathology, positi-
biological, psychological, or social, but it vism, probation, social learning theory
remains the case that criminals are different
from those who are not criminals. Thirdly, the Key Readings
notion of pathology, the logical step from Aichhorn, A. (1955) Wayward Youth (trans.). New
differentiation, is that the difference between York, Meridian Books. (Originally published
criminals and non-criminals is one of abnorm- 1925.)
ality. The cause of the abnormality may be Cullen, F. and Gilbert, K. (1982) Reaf®rming
individual to the offender (biological or Rehabilitation. Cincinnati, OH, Anderson Publish-
psychological) or social through learning ing.
from an abnormal environment. Hollin, C.R. (1999) `Treatment programmes for
As a net result, we arrive at a position in offenders: meta-analysis, ``what works'', and
which the offender is portrayed as a victim of beyond', International Journal of Psychiatry and
circumstance, with some level of individual or Law, 22, pp. 361±72.
social `wrongness' or abnormality as the root Jeffery, C.R. (1960) `The historical development of
cause of their behaviour. There are cases criminology', in H. Mannheim (ed.), Pioneers in
where the legal system makes due allowances, Criminology. London, Stevens.
as for example with mentally disordered McGuire, J. (ed.) (1995) What Works?: Reducing
offenders, but in the main determinism, Reoffending. Chichester, Wiley.
differentiation and pathology stand in direct Redondo, S., SaÂnchez-Meca, J. and Garrido, V. (1999)
con¯ict with a justice system based on the `The in¯uence of treatment programmes on the
notions of free will and individual agency in recidivism of juvenile and adult offenders: a
making choices. A deterministic position, in European meta-analytic review', Psychology,
which the individual is compelled to offend by Crime and Law, 5, pp. 251±78.
forces beyond their control, is not in accord
with the classical concept of rational hedonism
as the basis for dispensing justice.
During the 1970s and 1980s the rehabilita-
tive ideal fell heavily from favour as the REINTEGRATIVE SHAMING
notion that `nothing works' gathered momen-
tum. However, the 1990s saw a remarkable
resurrection of rehabilitation, certainly in See Shaming
Canada and Britain and also in parts of the
USA. The return to grace of rehabilitation
within the criminal justice system can be
directly traced to the impact of a string of
meta-analytic studies of the effects of offender RELATIVE DEPRIVATION
treatment (see for example Redondo et al.,
1999). The message that emerged from these
studies was that treatment with offenders can De®nition
have a small but signi®cant effect in terms of
reducing re-offending. Further, when certain A concept, latterly most associated with left
treatment factors are combined, the meta- realism, by which it is maintained that it is not
analyses suggest that this small effect can be necessarily absolute deprivation or poverty
ampli®ed. This research gave rise to the move- that causes crime but discontent arising from
ment known as `What Works?' (McGuire, perceptions of disadvantage and injustice.
244 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Key Readings damages and thus lacks penal value: that is,
Box, S. (1987) Recession, Crime and Punishment. payment of compensation does not necessarily
London, Macmillan. meet other penal aims (such as the prevention
Lea, J. and Young, J. (1993) What is to be Done About of future crime). Moreover, the use of such
Law and Order? London, Pluto. orders by the criminal courts means that
Runciman, W.G. (1966) Relative Deprivation and Social compensation for individual victims becomes
Justice. London, Routledge. dependent upon the particular offender being
Stouffer, S.A. (1949) The American Soldier. Princeton, caught and convicted and being willing and
Princeton University Press. able to pay. State compensation schemes,
Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society. London, Sage. which have been established in several juris-
dictions, may give better assurance of com-
pensation to victims (although eligibility and
levels of payment are often restricted), but,
since they require nothing from the offender,
REPARATION they cannot meet either the traditional aims of
punishment or the broader aims of restoration.
De®nition Advocates of the restitution and reparation
principle often argue that state compensation
Actions that aim to repair the damage caused provision is necessary as a back-up, but that
by crime. These can include restitution to the restitution should come from the offender
victim. wherever possible
The idea of reparation (and restitution in its
wider sense) implies more than the provision
Distinctive Features of compensation for victims. Repairing the
social damage of crime requires that offenders
Although the terms `reparation' and `restitu- should acknowledge the wrongfulness of their
tion' are often used interchangeably, a actions. Part of this involves making amends
distinction can be drawn between them. to the victim (through monetary compensation
Restitution implies the restoration of goods or, especially in the case of poor offenders, the
or monetary compensation for loss or injury to performance of some service) and/or the
the victim. Reparation has the wider aims of community (for example, through community
recognition of the social rights of victims and service, especially when there is no identi®-
repairing the social damage caused by crime, able victim). It also entails the active participa-
in which restitution may play a part. tion of both victim and offender in the process,
Principles of reparation and restitution giving both a chance to explain their position
emphasize the right of victims to obtain and to resolve their own con¯ict. Since formal
redress for the loss or harm they have court procedures do not allow these voices full
suffered. Modern Western criminal justice expression, particularly that of the victim,
systems, by contrast, give primacy to the pun- informal justice procedures, particularly med-
ishment of offenders in the general interest, iation, are seen as appropriate. The purpose is
re¯ecting principles of retribution (the offen- to address the full impact of crime on the
der should pay a debt to society) or the victim (for example, increased fear) and to
prevention of future crime. The rights of identify a way in which the offender can do
victims to seek redress have become, at best, something positive for them. Realization of the
marginal in the course of what Christie (1977) harm caused and the making of positive
famously described as the `theft' by the state amends may also facilitate the social re-
of con¯icts between victims and offenders. integration of the offender.
More recognition of the rights of victims has
been a feature of criminal justice systems in
recent decades, largely as a result of the Evaluation
growth of social movements to promote
victims' interests. One manifestation of this Principles of reparation and restitution have
has been a widening of the powers of courts to assumed greater importance in recent years, as
order offenders to make some form of resti- shown by the growth of state-sponsored
tution (compensation orders) to the victim, compensation, compensation ordered by crim-
either in addition to punishment or as an inal courts and of victim±offender mediation
alternative to it. One of several problems with schemes at pre-prosecution, pre-sentence and
these schemes (Ashworth, 1986) is that com- post-sentence stages of the criminal justice
pensation of this type is analogous to civil process. However, traditional principles of
246 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
punishment remain dominant. From some known that it will deal in stolen goods, or
critical penological perspectives (notably abo- leaving a frequently stolen vehicle type in a
litionism but also other communitarian the- high crime area, modi®ed to trap a would-be
ories such as `re-integrative shaming'), it is thief inside. Such operations are liable to the
seen as desirable that reparation, rather than charge of entrapment (literally, in the latter
punishment, should become the organizing case). A less contentious approach involves
principle of justice: reparative or restorative targeting people and places at high risk of
justice. Other commentators, whilst recogniz- crime. Recent crime victimization is a good
ing the importance of addressing the rights predictor of future victimization, almost
and needs of victims, have noted various certainly the best such predictor available
problems with reparative justice. These focus without any additional analysis being neces-
upon the issue of whether reparation involves sary (Pease, 1998). An of®cer attending a crime
adequate recognition of the harms to the scene needs no extra information to alert him
wider community and whether it has ade- or her to the elevated risk of future victimiza-
quate `penal value' to control crime. tion. Targeting prior victims for crime pre-
vention help is an attractive option, for several
Maggie Sumner reasons:
An important virtue of the concept and Associated Concepts: community crime preven-
associated research programme is that it picks tion, crime prevention, defensible space,
apart the crude notion of crime incidence, geographies of crime, situational crime pre-
de®ned as the number of crime events per vention, social crime prevention, victim sur-
population at risk. Incidence can be seen to be veys, victimology
a function of crime prevalence (the number of
those victimized within a population at risk) Key Readings
and crime concentration (the number of Ashton J., Senior, B., Brown, I. and Pease, K. (1998)
victimizations per victim). Thus, in a popula- `Repeat victimization: offender accounts', Interna-
tion of 100 homes, a total of 20 burglaries may tional Journal of Risk, Security and Crime Prevention,
be suffered. Thus, 0.20 is the burglary 3, pp. 269±80.
incidence. This may be a result of 20 homes Chenery S., Holt, J. and Pease, K. (1997) Biting Back
being burgled once (i.e. a prevalence of 0.20 II: Reducing Repeat Victimization in Hudders®eld.
and a concentration of 1) or of one home being Crime Detection and Prevention Paper 82.
burgled 20 times (i.e. a prevalence of 0.01 and London, Home Of®ce.
a concentration of 20), or any intermediate Forrester D., Chatterton, M. and Pease, K. (1988) The
pattern. Research carried out within a repeat Kirkholt Burglary Prevention Project, Rochdale.
victimization framework shows that the extent Crime Prevention Unit Paper 13. London, Home
to which areas differ in crime rate is to a Of®ce.
surprisingly large extent a function of area Lauritsen, J.L. and Davis Quinet, K.F. (1995) `Repeat
differences in crime concentration (Trickett et victimization among adolescents and young
al., 1992). Only when one can unpick the adults', Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 11,
contribution of prevalence and concentration pp. 143±66.
to an area's crime problem can a solution be Pease, K. (1998) Repeat Victimization: Taking Stock.
intelligently formulated. Crime Detection and Prevention Paper 90.
The prevention of repeat victimization has London, Home Of®ce.
been the means whereby some successful Trickett, A., Osborn, D., Seymour, J. and Pease, K.
crime reduction programmes have achieved (1992) `What is different about high crime areas?',
their effect (Chenery et al., 1997; Forrester et British Journal of Criminology, 32, pp. 81±9.
al., 1988). No doubt the mechanisms involved
are complex and varied, but repeat victimiza-
tion does have the central advantage of
directing crime prevention effort to indivi-
duals at high risk of crime, in areas with high REPLACEMENT DISCOURSE
rates of crime. The ®rst part of the advantage
is something which hot spot analysis lacks. See Constitutive criminology
The emerging link between proli®c offenders
and repeat victimization affords a means of
targeting proli®c offenders through the kinds
of crime which they are likely to commit, and
avoiding personal surveillance, with all its RESTITUTION
civil rights ambiguities.
See Reparation
Evaluation
(rather than, for example, mercy or forgive- more) is permissible. Arguments in which
ness) has been found wanting (e.g. Honderich, desert and proportionality are employed as
1989; Walker, 1991). Retributivism can appear limiting principles are sometimes referred to
as no more than a primitive demand for as `negative retributivism'.
vengeance. A related criticism is that retribu- A number of jurisdictions, in¯uenced by the
tivism requires that punishment be in¯icted just deserts movement, have introduced
even where no positive good will be achieved, systems of mandatory or presumptive sen-
for example, in the case of a remorseful tences either through legislation or in the form
offender who is unlikely to commit further of guidelines for sentencers. Whilst these may
crime. The in¯iction of punishment on have led to increased consistency, the dif®cul-
grounds of the harm done, regardless of the ties of determining levels of proportionality
circumstances of the individual offender, may have often led to greater severity of punish-
be not only pointless but also lead to social ment, contrary to the implicit aims of the neo-
injustice. It is also dif®cult to translate the retributivist `just deserts' advocates (Hudson,
principle of proportionality, the idea that 1987).
punishment should re¯ect the degree of More fundamental criticisms of retributiv-
harm done, into practice. Two problems ism, even in its modi®ed form, concern the
arise. The ®rst is how to determine in absolute continued focus on the punishment of the indi-
terms what quantum or amount of punishment vidual offender, without questioning the nature
is proportionate to a particular offence (the of criminal justice and its relationship to social
problem of cardinal proportionality): there is a justice (e.g. Braithwaite and Pettit, 1990;
vast range of offences to which the `eye for an Hudson, 1987).
eye' principle is not very easily applied. A
second problem, that of ordinal proportionality, Maggie Sumner
is how different offences and the penalties
attached to them are to be ranked (whether, Associated Concepts: classicism, deterrence,
for example, a rape merits more or less pun- incapacitation, just deserts, proportionality,
ishment than a muti-million pound fraud). rehabilitation
Although strict retributivism is largely
discredited on these grounds, the 1970s saw Key Readings
a resurgence in the form of `just deserts' Braithwaite, J. and Pettit, P. (1990) Not Just Deserts: A
theory. This was in response to the alleged Republican Theory of Criminal Justice. Oxford, The
failings of the then dominant principle of Clarendon Press.
rehabilitation. Right-wing critics of rehabilita- von Hirsch, A. (1985) Past and Future Crimes.
tion saw it as a `soft option' and called for Manchester, Manchester University Press.
more traditional punitive responses. Liberal Honderich, T. (1989) Punishment: The Supposed
and more radical critics saw it as leading to Justi®cations. Cambridge, Polity Press.
injustice in the form of disparities in senten- Hudson, B. (1987) Justice through Punishment: A
cing, as well as the use of long and indeter- Critique of the Justice Model of Corrections. London,
minate sentences, in the name of preventing Macmillan.
future crime. They advocated a `justice model' Walker, N. (1991) Why Punish? Theories of Punishment
(as opposed to a treatment model) of senten- Reassessed. London, Opus.
cing, drawing upon retributivism.
In contrast to pure retributivists, `just
deserts' theorists argued that there is no
moral obligation to punish offenders: whether RIGHT REALISM
the power to punish is exercised in a
particular case can be decided on consequen-
See Administrative criminology; Neo-conser-
tialist grounds. However, punishment can be
vative criminology; Rational choice theory
given only when it is deserved: people should
be punished for what they have done and not
what they might do, for past rather than future
crimes (von Hirsch, 1985). The desert principle RISK
acts as a limit on the distribution of punish-
ment. Similarly, the principle of proportion-
ality provides a ceiling on the amount of De®nition
punishment. The severity of the punishment
does not always have to match the gravity of In criminology, risk refers to the probability of
the offence: something less (though nothing harm, the role of its calculation or assessment
RISK 251
in making decisions about whether to perform statistical, and are mobilized in different
criminal actions, and its role in criminal justice ways in different parts of criminal justice
decision-making. (O'Malley, 1998).
Crime risk thinking reaches well beyond
criminal justice. Under the banner of govern-
Distinctive Features ing crime risks, streetscapes, house design,
`gated communities' and the planning and
Risk has a foundational role in modern operation of shopping centres are being
criminology, in classical criminology's focus organized around crime prevention. In the
on the calculation of probable gains and losses government of illicit drug use, criminal justice
in projected offending, and ± as well ± much may be deliberately marginalized in favour of
current research focuses on crime as risk- preventative, risk-reducing programmes such
taking, especially where taking risks is a as needle exchanges and safe injecting facil-
source of excitement that brings people into ities, and police may be instructed not to
trouble with criminal justice. Today, risk enforce the law against drug users. Indeed, for
increasingly refers to governing crime through some writers the development of a `risk
of®cial discourses and techniques of risk society' implies a new governmental principle
management, especially `actuarial justice' in which the place of criminal justice, not
(Feeley and Simon, 1994), a term that refers merely its organization, changes dramatically
to the displacement of individually based (Simon, 1987).
justice by decision-making based on the Many fears have been raised about the
statistical probability of re-offending. spread of risk frameworks in criminal justice.
However, actuarial justice is only one risk First, is the potential for net-widening, as
managerial response to crime. For example, `unacceptable risks' become subjects of justice.
English `Sex Offender Orders', under the Secondly are fears concerning the margin-
Crime and Disorder Act 1998, allow for alization of individualized justice, abandoning
restraints on former offenders on the basis of the proportionality of offence and punish-
`reasonable' fears that they represent risks to ment, and diminishing judicial discretion.
the community. Such judgements are made Such fears generate considerable resistance to
by police, using traditional means of discre- risk-based justice, particularly by the judi-
tionary assessment rather than statistical ciary. More generally, however, the develop-
data or processes. Similarly, requiring com- ment of risk technologies and practices may
munity noti®cation about resident former create a society that is increasingly insecure:
sex offenders is the focus of `Megan's Laws' fear of crime may be exaggerated by high
in the USA, even though it is not clear this pro®le crime prevention initiatives, social
leads to risk reduction (Simon, 1998). As isolation and divisiveness may spread with
these examples also suggest, risk refers not the rise of `gated communities', and fears of
only to statistical probabilities of harm but `Big Brother' surveillance are increased as
also to other forms of estimating probability, invasive technologies preventatively govern
and to harm's moral magnitude: `high risk' crime `in the community' (Ericson and
may refer to intolerable risk of incalculable Haggerty, 1997).
or uncalculated probability (Beck, 1992). These observations raise the issue of a
Thus, much `risk' legislation of this sort politics of risk. Some argue that the emergence
arises out of community pressure rather of risk in government re¯ects the rise of neo-
than sound foundations in actuarial evi- liberalism (O'Malley, 1992). Such politics have
dence. `Risk talk' has also entered other shaped the character of risk, making citizens
areas of criminal justice without necessarily and communities (neighbourhoods, women,
implying statistical risk assessment. Deci- home-owners, etc.) more `responsible' for
sion-making about risk in areas such as managing their own crime exposure ± for
inmate security, pre-sentencing reports and example, by forming `partnerships' with
prison parole decisions usually re¯ects police and avoiding high-risk situations. Like-
expert evaluation of individual cases, rather wise, they foster a rational-choice `risk-taking'
than actuarial classi®cation. In all these image of offenders, who calculate the risks
instances, the spread of risk appears as a and bene®ts of their offending and thereby
matter of governmental fashion and popular become more criminally `responsible' than
consciousness that extends well beyond under therapeutic regimes of rehabilitation.
actuarialism's power to predict (Beck, 1992). Risk, in this view, is being politically
But they also indicate that discourses and reshaped, rather than actuarialized, in current
practices of risk are multiple, not just politics of crime risks.
252 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Evaluation SCAPEGOATING
order to help them maintain and restore social government asserted that it was made a
equilibrium. Strategic scapegoating describes scapegoat to justify US military action. Similar
the use of tactics to de¯ect blame by an claims have been made by Iraq following the
individual or group fearing exposure. Scape- Gulf War. At another level, the blaming of
goating is therefore a diversionary process individuals and/or paediatricians and social
that serves to demonize particular groups and workers for being perpetrators of or uncover-
may result in a moral panic. In this view, ing child abuse has been seen as a mode of
scapegoating is a form of mysti®cation that scapegoating for a society that could not accept
obscures the real or essential problem. Never- such transgressions of family norms, or to
theless, no uniform motivations of scapegoa- accept that there might be widespread abuse in
ters have been identi®ed. Their actions could society.
be seen as rational or irrational. Explanations The idea of scapegoating as a mode of
suggested are that scapegoaters act out of boundary maintenance is basically functional-
frustration, aggression, or to displace certain ist. This is problematic when boundaries have
feelings (the frustration±aggression hypoth- been transgressed, or at least become blurred.
esis), or projection and psychic discomfort (a The objects of scapegoating may also be much
reaction to, or denial of, tension), or a general more able to challenge images and representa-
hostility to others. The latter has been tions and this too indicates that understanding
associated with the idea of the authoritarian and accounting for scapegoating is a far from
personality (Douglas, 1995). straightforward process.
Scapegoating entails the drawing of a
boundary between good and evil. It is some- Karim Murji
thing that is usually seen as pre-criminological
superstition. However, Tannenbaum (1938) Associated Concepts: demonization, folk devil,
argued that criminological theories have labelling, moral panic, stigma, stereotyping
persistently reproduced this distinction, so
that terms such as normal and abnormal stand Key Readings
in exactly the same relation as good and evil. Douglas, T. (1995) Scapegoat. London, Routledge.
Instead of `demonic possession', classical Erikson, K.T. (1966) Wayward Puritans. New York,
criminology employed the idea of rational Wiley.
choice to do evil; positivism differentiated the Jenkins, P. (1992) Intimate Enemies. New York,
abnormal through various bodily manifesta- Aldine de Gruyter.
tions as predictors or determinants of crimin- Tannenbaum, F. (1938) Crime and the Community.
ality; while functionalists see the criminal as New York, Colombia University Press.
socially maladjusted. Each involves the dra-
matization and symbolization of difference
and, in the process, the deviant is tagged or
stigmatized. SECONDARY DEVIATION
often the result of calls for action from mem- maintenance of the `health of the social
bers of the public. Crime surveys tend to show body'. Fourthly, the idea of society as self-
that about one-half of the most common types policing may lend legitimacy in some
of crime are not reported to the police. This instances of the social reaction to alleged
suggests that members of the public judge that criminal wrong-doing, which would be better
formal invocation of the law enforcement characterized as vigilantism.
machinery is not necessary, even though the
instance in question is understood to be a James Sheptycki
crime or otherwise somehow answerable to
police action. Even quite serious issues can be Associated Concepts: community policing, crim-
negotiated without recourse to the criminal inal justice, informal justice, redress, social
law. Extended family, religious organizations, control, social justice
friendship and neighbourhood networks can
all be drafted in to control forms of rule- Key Readings
breaking, disorder and con¯ict that otherwise Ashworth, A. (1994) The Criminal Process: An
might become the object of the criminal justice Evaluative Study. Oxford, The Clarendon Press.
process. Brown, R.M. (1969) `The American vigilante tradi-
tion', in H.G. Graham and T.R. Gurr (eds), The
History of Violence in America. New York, Bantam
Evaluation Books.
offending surveys have been suggested for and back-checking what interviewees have
evaluating crime reduction strategies, as an said against police records. (In some studies,
alternative to re-conviction studies. The this back-checking has been done without the
method has also been used for comparative interviewee's consent, raising ethical con-
analysis of crime and deviance. cerns.) In general, surveys have tended to
Surveys using this method have contributed show greater levels of concealment than exag-
to knowledge about deviance, often producing geration and given that the extent of self-
a picture that contradicts `conventional reported offending is often much higher than
wisdom'. For example, self-report studies many people assume, it seems reasonable to
indicate that drug use and crimes including accept that they are a useful alternative
theft, violence and fraud are much more measure of people's unrecorded delinquent
widespread among the general population behaviour. The method has been shown to
than commonly imagined, most of which goes be reliable using various tools such as `test±
undetected. Self-report offending survey rates retest' and through the use of repeated
among males in one cohort study exceed 95 measurement.
per cent by the time of early middle age, many Self-report offending and drug surveys
more than the one in three who were con- uncover a very large number of people who
victed in court of a non-motoring offence have committed unlawful acts, some of which
(Farrington, 1997). Self-report offending sur- would result in harsh penalties in the event
veys conducted in the USA, UK and con- that they were caught, prosecuted and con-
tinental Europe also suggest that gender, victed. However, self-report surveys capture a
ethnic and class differences in offending are great deal of less serious offences, laying the
much smaller than the picture painted by method open to the charge that it places
arrest and imprisonment statistics. Despite excessive emphasis on trivial offences. Care
methodological weaknesses (see below), this has to be taken to identify the minority of more
®nding lends weight to the evidence that serious offenders among the great number of
suggests that selective enforcement and dis- people (the majority of the population) who
crimination in criminal justice processing admit to committing minor offences.
explain the disproportionate rates of impri- Self-report studies have been limited by a
sonment among particular ethnic groups. more or less exclusive focus on descriptive
The self-report method offers the possibility quanti®cation of offending rates. They can
of attempting to explain offending from the also be criticized for seeking to explain
offender's perspective and to discover the patterns at the population level, rather than
personal and social factors that can be identi- shedding much light on what happens in
®ed as the `correlates' of offending. This lends individual lives or on the dynamics of com-
itself to `control theories' of offending, focus- munities. To overcome these limitations, some
ing on aspects of the life of the `admitted surveys have combined self-report offending
offender', their social bonds to family and and victimization into one questionnaire
friends, school and work experiences, and (Anderson et al., 1994). Others have conducted
attitudes towards life in general. The statistical follow-up qualitative interviews to illustrate
correlations that emerge from self-report the dynamics of offending and desistance
studies cannot be taken as causative, however, (Graham and Bowling, 1995).
because so little light is shed on the mechan-
isms and processes required to explain
deviance and the process by which labels are Evaluation
attributed and acquired.
A method that relies on the honesty of In sum, the self-report method provides a
interviewees to disclose dishonest and violent helpful, but limited, alternative to recorded
acts is obviously vulnerable to a challenge to crime statistics and victimization surveys. It is,
its validity. How can we be sure that respon- arguably, the only way to estimate the extent
dents are not lying, or (more charitably) of `primary deviance' in the general popula-
saying what they think the interview wants tion (Box, 1981). Certainly, self-report studies
to hear? Attempts to test the extent to which uncover forms of behaviour that can be
self-report studies generate valid and mean- quanti®ed using no other means ± including
ingful information about crime and deviance `victimless' deviant acts (such as drug use),
have included the use of polygraph (`lie those that have a low likelihood of detection
detector') tests, the use of questions designed (such as handling stolen goods and fraud),
to identify exaggeration or embellishment and undetected offences in general. The
(such as questions about ®ctitious drugs), method has tended to focus on the crimes of
SERIAL KILLING 259
the powerless, whereas it could have a wider are repetitive or `serial' and, because the
application in estimating the extent of corpo- murder is in itself the motive, they will
rate and white collar crime. continue until the serial killer is caught.
Secondly, the majority of serial killers like to
Ben Bowling work on their own and this is why they are so
dif®cult to track down. There are, of course,
well-known `killer couples', `partnerships' and
Associated Concepts: hidden crime, labelling, `groupings', but they run a greater risk of
of®cial criminal statistics, social reaction, detection. Thirdly, there is little personal
social survey, victim surveys, victimology connection between the perpetrator and the
victim. These are classic stranger perpetrated
Key Readings murders and a signi®cant number are `motive-
Anderson, S., Kinsey, R., Loader, I. and Smith, C. less'. There is nothing personal in the choice of
(1994) Cautionary Tales: Young People, Crime and victim, other than s/he may belong to a
Policing in Edinburgh. Aldershot, Avebury. particular cultural/social grouping. Fourthly,
Box, S. (1981) Deviance, Reality and Society, 2nd edn. very few display a clearly de®ned or rational
London, Holt Rinehart and Winston. motive. It may not become apparent until a
Coleman, C. and Moynihan, J. (1996) Understanding killer is arrested that a series of unsolved
Crime Data. Buckingham, Open University Press. murders/attempted murders may be related.
Farrington, D. (1997) `Human development and Fifthly, increased spatial mobility and social
criminal careers', in M. Maguire, R. Morgan and fragmentation enable a serial killer to extend
R. Reiner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Crimino- and intensify his killing capacity. And because
logy. Oxford, The Clarendon Press. the communication ¯ows between different
Graham, J. and Bowling, B. (1995) Young People and police forces are haphazard and uncoordi-
Crime. Home Of®ce Research Study No. 145. nated, serial killers can escape detection.
London, HMSO. Sixthly, there is often a high degree of
Ramsay, M. and Spiller, J. (1997) Drug Misuse gratuitous violence. Experts argue that this is
Declared in 1996. Key Results from the British Crime because of the motivation for the crime. The
Survey. Home Of®ce Research Findings No. 56. killing is not the means to another end but an
London, HMSO. end in itself. Finally, because the majority of
serial killers are men, we need to consider the
complex relationship between particular
forms of masculinity and violent criminality.
Studies suggest that there are four main
SERIAL KILLING motivational typologies:
· Power seekers: Domination is the strong actions. Psychologists argue that in order to
motive force but these killers are aware of kill, a person must dehumanize their victim,
their behaviour and can describe their reducing the victim to the status of an object.
motivational state. Constant exposure to graphic, highly glamor-
ized violence desensitizes viewers and readers
In response to the inadequacy of traditional to the human pain and suffering and paves the
techniques of murder investigation, the FBI way for certain individuals to view murder as
began to develop a system of analysing a `normal' course of action. For certain serial
evidence, both tangible and intuitive, collected killers, it is clear that they view themselves as
by law enforcement of®cers from the scene of `actors' in a Hollywood ®lm scripted by
the crime. A `psychological pro®le' is built Quentin Tarantino or Oliver Stone. Again,
through a contextual analysis of (a) victim such connections have brought forth a chorus
traits, (b) witness reports, and (c) the method of demands for tighter regulation and control
of killing. A detailed list of physical and of the entertainment industry.
psychological characteristics is built up until a
portrait of the killer and her/his behavioural
patterns appears. Included in the list would Evaluation
be: age, sex, marital status, occupation, race, The mythological status of the threat posed by
criminal record, class, sexual preferences etc. the serial killer to American society has led to
A considerable amount of intuitive guesswork civil liberties objections being neutralized. In
is involved, but this does not seem to damage the twenty-®rst century, it seems as if there
the investigative procedure because, as David will be only one answer to the following
Canter argues (1992), a criminal leaves question. Which are more important, the civil
evidence of his personality through his liberties of law-abiding innocent citizens or
criminal actions. An individual's behaviour, those of a potential killer?
according to Canter, exhibits characteristics
unique to that person, as well as patterns Eugene McLaughlin
which are typical of the subgroup to which s/
he belongs. Law enforcement agencies
throughout the world have realized that they Associated Concepts: masculinities, neutral-
also need to develop sophisticated informa- ization (techniques of ), personality theory,
tion collection systems which can coordinate, victimology
analyse and review reports from different
agencies and identify early serial killing Key Readings
patterns. These developments have allowed Canter, D. (1992) Criminal Psychology. London,
law enforcement agencies to compile person- Routledge.
ality pro®les, which enhance the early identi- Egger, S.A. (1998) The Killers Among Us. New York,
®cation of a potential or `emergent' serial Prentice±Hall.
killer. Psychologists and psychiatrists working Fox, J.A. and Levin, J. (1994) Overkill: Mass Murder
in this ®eld argue that there are signi®cant and Serial Killing Exposed. New York, Plenum
levels of childhood violence, abuse and Press.
neglect present in the backgrounds of some Holmes, R.M. (1987) Serial Murder. Beverly Hills,
of the most notorious serial killers that may CA, Sage.
provide a clue to their subsequent actions. Leyton, E. (1988) Hunting Humans. New York,
Such connections lend weight to their argu- Pocket Books.
ments that efforts and resources should be Seltzer, M. (1998) Serial Killers: Death and Life in
focused on the early identi®cation of violent American Wound Culture. New York, Routledge.
behaviour that could escalate into murderous
thoughts and deeds. This will necessitate
monitoring the child-rearing practices of
families for signs of maladjusted relationships SEXUALITY
and pathological dynamics.
Others argue that there are very clear links De®nition
between alcohol dependency and violence,
and pornography and violence, and that their Literally being sexual, possessing the capacity
availability should be proscribed and policed for sex or sexual feelings. However, within
more rigorously. Yet others point to testimony lesbian and gay movements sexuality has
from serial killers that it was ®ctional rep- become a cornerstone of identity and political
resentations of violence that `triggered' their campaigning around it. Some gay activists
SEXUALITY 261
welcome `gay gene' research as af®rming the uni®ed `sisterhood' which simply aggregated
`normality' of all sexualities; for most, sexu- the problems faced by educated, middle-class
ality has been seen as de®ning of one's white wives with those of lesbians, women of
identity and self-hood. That is, gay liberation colour and so forth.
could be achieved by gay identi®cation. Apart from early criminology's assumption
`Coming out' came to be seen as revealing a of the pathology of homosexuality (main-
`true' self to oneself, family, friends and wider tained by psychology until the 1970s), issues
society. Both identity politics and popular of sexuality have been downplayed as purely
prejudice might concentrate on homosexuality personal or left to other disciplines. However,
and bisexuality ± in often opposing ways ± under the banner of the sociology of deviance
but heterosexuality needs to be considered a number of sensitive studies have been
too. Katz (1995) argues for the invention of carried out. Humphreys' (1970) study of men
`heterosexuality' by the discipline of sexology, who have sex with men in public toilets found
which also discursively produced `homosexu- that many men lived ostensibly heterosexual
ality'. Smart (1996) argues that probably only lives, and Reiss (1961/1968) explored the
the male heterosexual was conceived as extent to which young `delinquents' were
possessing a sexuality. In criminology, gen- prepared to receive oral sex from gay men
erally sexuality is normatively and implicitly without peer group damage to their hetero-
heterosexual and often only explicitly pos- sexual identity.
sessed by the young or black. Sexuality is
often seen as pathological.
Evaluation
Distinctive Features
In as much as criminology is concerned about
Typically, sociology has ignored sex and order it should be concerned with issues of
sexuality, leaving the debate and discourse to sexuality. Plummer argues that a `central
a variety of sexologies which derive their problem for sociologists is that of order and
methods and concerns primarily from medi- control, and sexuality is sometimes seen as
cine and psychoanalysis. Early criminology playing an important part in this order. Either
shared practitioners with medicine so some it is argued that through sexuality our social
mention of sexuality as pathology can be order is channelled, or it is argued that
found in early works. For instance, Lombroso through social order our sexuality is chan-
favoured light punishments for those nelled' (1975/1980). Yet, other than the
deprived of heterosexual outlets, but long- `commonsense' criminology that sees homo-
term incarceration for the congenital homo- sexuality as `symptomatic of treason and
sexual. The effect of this would be to deprive political deviancy' (Collier, 1995, pp. 97±8),
the offender of `homosexual outlets'. More- sexuality has been treated poorly in crimino-
over much homosexual ± and some hetero- logy. However, just as gender has begun to
sexual ± activity is illegal and therefore falls make an impression within criminology, it is
within the ambit of criminology. The con¯a- argued that sexuality must too. Empirically it
tion is evident in the UK Wolfenden Commit- has already begun (and largely remained)
tee's remit to study both homosexuality and outside the discipline with activists contesting
prostitution. homophobic violence and policing priorities.
The 1970s onward have shown small but Left realist victimology should be able to take
steady advances by feminism into sociology this on board without adopting a speci®cally
and eventually criminology. This has raised gay standpoint or perspective. It remains to be
the interest in and knowledge of gender as an seen whether a full blown ± possibly queer ±
issue in studies of crime and criminal justice. consideration of sexuality is possible within
With that recognition has grown an interest in criminology. Much of the work on male
masculinities ± the acceptance that whilst the heterosexuality has been carried out by
problem may still be men, men still had feminists ± as a problem to be explained ±
problems. However, this emphasis on gender and is now carried forward under the banner
has continued to obscure the cross-cutting of the `masculinities' literature. Much of that
issues raised by sexuality. There are sexist gay literature fails to acknowledge the work of
men but the main complaint of women and of lesbian feminists or gay men's attempts to
feminism has been against heterosexual men ± explain heterosexuality.
their sexual, domestic and economic violence.
However, much of that feminism assumed a Nic Groombridge
262 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
enforcement cameras to anti-climb paint; from attempts to change the disposition of the
encryption of ®nancial data to CCTV in banks; offender; and growing academic awareness of
from better laid-out housing estates to hard- the general limits of `personality' in explaining
to-forge holographic labels to discourage behaviour. Two main theoretical approaches
counterfeit vodka; from airport metal detec- now underlie SCP. Both take offender charac-
tors and security guards to Farm Watch and teristics, including motivation, as given.
similar community-based schemes. The rational choice perspective sees the
SCP does not rely on past improvements in fundamental causal mechanism of SCP as
society, treatment regimes for offenders or making the commission of speci®c sets of
early interventions in children's socialization crimes more risky (deterrence), requiring of
to reduce current criminality; nor on the sheer more effort and less rewarding (discourage-
aversive intensity of sanctions anticipated at ment), or less comfortable (removing excuses)
some remote point in the future to deter or (adapted from Clarke, 1997). For SCP to work ±
incapacitate present offending. It does not at least in the short term ± deterrence and
directly aim to change offenders' propensities discouragement need only be perceived barriers.
or motives for crime at all. It takes these as Routine activity theory (Felson, 1983) takes a
given and, proceeding from an analysis of the wider causal view. Here, criminal events stem
circumstances engendering particular crimes, from the conjunction of a likely (motivated)
it introduces speci®c changes to in¯uence the offender, a suitable target and the absence of
offender's decision or ability to commit these capable guardians. SCP is about changing the
crimes at given places and times. These last two. A related approach, which attempts
interventions usually act on the here-and- to understand and predict what brings these
now of the immediate crime situation, remov- ingredients together in terms of spatial
ing or altering some of its components or arrangements, patterns of travel etc., is
preventing them coming together. The generic environmental criminology (Brantingham and
components of the crime situation include a Brantingham, 1995).
human, material or informational target of
crime; a target enclosure, such as a safe or a
building; a wider environment, such as a Evaluation
housing estate or town centre; and people or
institutions playing two opposing roles ± The main practical criticism of SCP centres on
preventers, who make crime less likely, and displacement, that is where an offender,
promoters, who carelessly or deliberately blocked by an SCP measure, seeks a similar
make it more likely. The interventions may target at another time or place, changes
sometimes act on prior `scenes' (Cornish, 1994), methods or changes target altogether. Clarke
in which offenders prepare, or become primed (1997) has, however, shown displacement to
for, crime (such as acquiring weapons, getting be limited in effect and sometimes even
drunk or engaging in disputes over parking). reversed (diffusion of bene®t, where cautious
Interventions may be implemented indirectly offenders avoid more than just the of®cially
± for example, helping people protect their protected site); but the possibility of displace-
own homes, or naming and shaming manu- ment can never be ruled out in any speci®c
facturers of insecure vehicles so they are circumstances.
motivated to make them harder to steal. Aesthetic criticisms centre on fears of `fort-
SCP methods are widely adopted in society, ress society', and ethical ones on loss of privacy
shading into common-sense `routine precau- or freedom. According to advocates of SCP,
tions' (Clarke, 1997). But only in the past 20 both can be minimized through good design of
years has the `of®cial' world of government products, environments and procedures to
and police taken them seriously. In the USA, reconcile security with these potentially con-
the approach developed through the Crime ¯icting requirements. Some practitioners ± and
Prevention through Environmental Design criminologists ± whose primary interest is in
movement (National Crime Prevention Coun- offenders and their motives ®nd SCP trivial;
cil, 1997). In the UK, a programme of practical some situationalists in their turn regard
research directed by Ron Clarke at the Home offender-oriented approaches as over-optimis-
Of®ce inspired the search for a more theore- tic or misguided. Having `two cultures of pre-
tical foundation built around the concept of vention' blocks practical and theoretical
crime as opportunity. This was based (at a time progress.
of `nothing works') on dissatisfaction with the Theoretical criticisms highlight the limits to
limited effectiveness of crime prevention offenders' rationality ± but these are neither
through conventional means, particularly fatal to SCP, nor contested by its protagonists.
SOCIAL CENSURE 265
More recently (e.g. Ekblom, 2000) there have category expressing cultural disapproval, or a
been attempts to integrate SCP with a wider sign of blame.
understanding of offenders ± their criminal
predispositions, immediate motives to offend
and resources for offending (tools, weapons, Distinctive Features
knowledge and skill). From this perspective,
the concept of opportunity for crime is not The process of blaming and stigmatizing
simply a property of the crime situation, but is others in general is of core interest to
conjointly dependent on the offender's criminology, but the social patterns of censure
resources to exploit it and cope with the are of particular concern to sociologists.
risks (an open window three ¯oors up is only Psychologists are interested in the censorious
an opportunity to someone with agility, personality or the roots of individual pre-
courage and maybe a ladder). judice; sociologists in the political uses and
social functions of scapegoating.
Paul Ekblom The concept of social censure refers to those
censures which are common within a culture
Associated Concepts: carceral society, commu- and which re¯ect the dominant or key
nity safety, crime prevention, defensible space, relationships or structures of the society.
geographies of crime, rational choice theory, Censures mostly reinforce the established
routine activity theory, surveillance order and its institutions ± for example, the
social censure of bastardy reinforces the
normative reverence for procreation within
Key Readings marriage. Some can be seen as master-
Brantingham, P. and Brantingham, P. (1995) `Crim-
censures in that they are so deep-rooted
inality of place: crime generators and crime
within the culture and its forms of thought
attractors', European Journal on Criminal Policy
that they permeate many other forms of
and Research, 3 (3), pp. 5±26.
censure. However, some are counter-censures,
Clarke, R.V.G. (1997) Situational Crime Prevention:
expressing the opposition or criticism of
Successful Case Studies, 2nd edn. Albany, NY,
subordinate social groups to the social
Harrow and Heston.
system or its institutions.
Cornish, D. (1994) `The procedural analysis of
The concept of social censure differs from
offending and its relevance for situational preven-
that of the label because the latter belongs to a
tion', in R. Clarke (ed.), Crime Prevention Studies, 3.
theoretical standpoint, which emphasizes
Monsey, NY, Criminal Justice Press, pp. 151±96.
conscious blaming practices using ideas as a
Ekblom, P. (2000) `The conjunction of criminal
kind of stick to beat people with. This is a
opportunity ± a tool for clear, ``joined-up''
liberal `voluntarist' approach which supposes
thinking about community safety and crime
all is rational choice ± and that categories of
reduction', in K. Pease, S. Ballintyne and V.
blame are not generated by the social structure
McLaren (eds), Key Issues in Crime Prevention,
nor creep quietly into our unconscious minds
Crime Reduction and Community Safety. London,
loaded with ideological or cultural baggage.
Institute for Public Policy Research.
Censure theory, as developed by Sumner
Felson, M. (1983) `Linking criminal choices, routine
(1990, 1994, 1997), is lodged within a theore-
activities, informal control, and criminal out-
tical analysis that emphasizes that feelings of
comes', in D. Cornish and R. Clarke (eds), The
disapproval are as much unconscious and
Reasoning Criminal. New York, Springer-Verlag.
emotional as they are conscious and rational,
National Crime Prevention Council (1997) Designing
that social structures by their very nature
Safer Communities: A Crime Prevention through
imply, and predispose us to, certain categories
Environmental Design Handbook. Washington, DC,
of blame, and that social censures come to us
NCPC.
already steeped and rooted within the struc-
tures and events of social history and thus
coated with acquired meanings and implica-
tions.
SOCIAL CENSURE The concept draws upon the idea of a vote
of censure in Parliament or Congress to imply
that even everyday social censures have a
De®nition political, organized, dimension ± something
which re¯ects the fact that most practices and
To censure is to blame, criticize, express dis- institutions in modern `disciplinary' societies
approval, or condemn. A social censure is a are deeply permeated, and even structured, by
266 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
on without the expenditure of social energy. socialization processes through which core
They may, then, be reproduced differently social values are transmitted and internalized.
through con¯ict, contestations and challenge. This benign reading of `social control' as a
functional and political necessity was mir-
John Clarke rored in traditional positivist criminology.
Within such readings it is widely assumed
Associated Concepts: crime, deconstruction, that a consensus exists in society, that primary
deviance, discourse analysis, interactionism, socialization is largely successful in achieving
labelling, left realism, social reaction a widespread and uncontested conformity and
that external agencies are only called upon to
Key Readings `mop-up' those deviants who have suffered a
Bacchi, C. (1999) Women, Policy and Politics: The failure or lack of adequate socialization.
Construction of Policy Problems. London, Sage. In the late 1960s an alternative view of social
Becker, H. (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of control came to the fore. Generated by the
Deviance. New York, The Free Press. protest movements in America (civil rights,
Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The Social Vietnam, Counterculture) and the emerging
Construction of Reality. New York, Doubleday. utopian and personal politics of the New Left
Burr, V. (1996) An Introduction to Social Construction- in Britain, arguments concerning the essential
ism. London, Routledge. consensual nature of society became harder to
Clarke, J. (1999) `Coming to terms with culture', in sustain and social control came to be seen as
H. Dean and R. Woods (eds), Social Policy Review organized repression. In particular, the label-
10. London, Social Policy Association. ling perspective argued that social control was
Saraga, E. (ed.) (1998) Embodying the Social: Con- not simply a reactive and reparative exercise,
structions of Difference. London, Routledge/Open but an active force in the identi®cation and
University. creation of the deviant. In effect, labelling
challenged notions of `social control' as `doing
good' and replaced them with notions of
`doing bad'.
Such a premise became particularly in¯u-
SOCIAL CONTROL ential in critical readings of a wide range of
purportedly reformist and welfare-related
De®nition practices. The coercive ± but often hidden ±
aspects of control entailed in the professional
A poorly de®ned concept which has been used practices of youth training, social work, law,
to describe all means through which con- probation, medicine, schooling and psychiatry
formity might be achieved ± from infant were highlighted and analysed as part of a
socialization to incarceration. It has been burgeoning social control culture. An image of
employed in various guises within interac- society as moving incessantly towards more
tionism, labelling, control theory, feminism, sophisticated means of repressive control was
critical criminology and post-structuralism. created. The intrusion of the state into the
private and familiar, the capacity for beha-
viour to be continually subjected to surveil-
Distinctive Features lance, monitoring and regulation and the
spectre of mind control constructed a power-
The precise parameters of `social control' ful portrayal of a one-dimensional society in
escape any straightforward demarcation. The which `social control has become Kafka-land'
standard de®nition simply describes all the (Cohen, 1985, p. 6).
means and processes through which social Whilst moving the concept of social control
conformity is achieved, ranging from primary from its benign underpinnings, this new
socialization, through informal mechanisms interpretation maintained that social control,
(such as peer group pressure) to formal whether weak or strong, informal or formal,
methods associated with the police and the remained all-pervasive. But the key neglected
legal system. Within interactionism the key issues remained of how and why such control
concern is with how cooperation and social operated differently in different social con-
integration are achieved, usually without texts. It was also often in danger of caricatur-
recourse to a coercive and authoritarian dis- ing all police, social workers and teachers as
cipline. Interactionists broadly conclude that agents of repression. Lacking any precise
the key to the maintenance of social order de®nition and consistent use, the concept
lies in the realm of informal and primary was aptly described by Cohen (1985, p. 2) as
SOCIAL CONTROL 269
`Mickey Mouse' and by Lowman et al. (1987, But throughout, the growing invisibility and
p. 4) as `a skeleton key opening so many doors diversi®cation of the state's role does not
that its analytic power has been drained . . . a mean it has withered away. The prison
spectral category which becomes all things to remains at the core of the system.
all theorists'. Lowman et al. (1987, p. 9) argue that these
It was only following the work of Foucault developments can best be captured in the
that the term `social control' was resurrected concept of transcarceration. They argue that as
in the 1980s as a means through which the old institutions of control remain and the
analytical justice could be done to the complex new are created, we are now confronted with
and contradictory means by which order is a `peno-judicial, mental health, welfare and
achieved in democratic societies. Foucault's tutelage complex . . . for delinquents, deviants
recognition of processes of diffuse societal and dependants this means that their careers
power (or the `microphysics of power') are likely to be characterized by institutional
signi®cantly broadened the concept of social mobility as they are pushed from one section
control to include not only institutional of the help±control complex to another. For
practices, but the realms of discursive con- control agents, this means that control will
struction, ideology and the production of essentially have no locus and the control
meaning. For example, Foucault refers to a mandate will increasingly entail the ``®tting
continuous disciplinary discourse, in which no together'' of subsystems.' This formulation of
one source is given privileged attention, which control continues to acknowledge its versati-
informed and was intertwined with all forms lity: in®ltrating many levels of discourse and
of social control in the late eighteenth century. `arenas of action' and serving and constituting
Thus the reform of prisoners, con®nement of a diversity of interests. Of particular note is
the insane and supervision of industrial how, by the 1990s, much of this control had
workers as well as the training and education become privatized ± that is, removed from
of children, all formed part of an emerging direct state control and activated by commu-
carceral society, in which it was not only nities, voluntary agencies and private security
deviance or crime that was controlled, but also companies. It is in this context that Cohen
every irregularity or the least departure from (1994, p. 74) begins talking of social control as
the norm. This power emanates not simply a commodity: as something to be purchased
from the state or a mode of production but, for and sold.
Foucault, from forms of knowledge that
inform all social relations. It is because of David Wilson
this broad canvas that Foucault's work
remains in¯uential in historical and contem-
porary readings of social control. It allows for Associated Concepts: carceral society, govern-
a greater sensitivity to the interrelations of mentality, labelling, net widening, social
social structure with processes of power, control theory, social reaction, the state,
knowledge and governance. It is more attuned transcarceration
to processes of domination and enablement; of
constraint and resistance. As a result terms Key Readings
such as `regulation', `knowledge', `normal- Cohen, S. (1979) `The punitive city: notes on the
ization', `governmentality' and `discipline' dispersal of social control', Contemporary Crises,
have come to hold a central place in a 3 (4), pp. 341±63.
`revisionist' literature of social control. Cohen, S. (1985) Visions of Social Control. Cambridge,
Of note is Cohen's (1979, 1985) `dispersal of Polity Press.
discipline' thesis which contends that as Cohen, S. (1989) `The critical discourse on ``social
control mechanisms are dispersed from cus- control'': notes on the concept as a hammer',
tody into the community they penetrate International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 17, pp.
deeper into the social fabric. A blurring of 347±57.
boundaries between the deviant and non- Cohen, S. (1994) `Social control and the politics of
deviant, the public and the private occurs. A reconstruction', in D. Nelken (ed.), The Futures of
`punitive archipelago' is expanded as new Criminology. London, Sage.
resources, technology and professional inter- Cohen, S. and Scull, A. (eds) (1983) Social Control and
ests are applied to an increasing number of the State: Historical and Comparative Essays. Oxford,
`clients' and `customers'. Entrepreneurs are Martin Robertson.
drawn into the control enterprise in search of Lowman, J., Menzies, R.J. and Palys, T.S. (eds) (1987)
pro®ts. Communities are mobilized to act as Transcarceration: Essays in the Sociology of Social
voluntary control agents in their own right. Control. Aldershot, Gower.
270 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
behaviours. Both Nye and Hirschi argued that positive communication. Although all are cor-
the utility of direct monitoring and super- related with delinquency to about the same
vision by parents is probably limited, since degree, they may re¯ect different dimensions
adolescents are relatively autonomous from of parental attachment.
their parents. The inference is that the major Furthermore, there is a lack of conceptual
controlling mechanisms will be through development by social control theorists about
attachments or indirect controls. the interactive effects of various variables.
Indeed, there is a tendency to predict the
impact of one measure of social control quite
Evaluation independently from other variables, implying
a simple additive model. For example, what is
On the one hand, much of Hirschi's theory has the probability of delinquency under the
been corroborated by empirical research, condition that attachment to both parents is
indicating that delinquents often feel detached strong, while simultaneously the adolescent is
from typical societal bonds. Indeed, research strongly attached to delinquent peers? Simi-
generally supports Hirschi's basic proposition larly, what is the conjunctive impact of both
that weak school and parental attachments direct (monitoring) and indirect (attachment)
increase the probability of delinquency. On parental controls on delinquency? A child
the other hand, various measures of belief and may place little value on parental approval but
especially involvement (e.g., sports activities, conform to parental expectations out of a
hobbies, extracurricular school activities) have belief that they monitor his or her behaviours
revealed few statistically reliable associations closely and will punish any deviation. On the
with delinquency. In addition, evidence other hand, some children may behave solely
suggests that strong attachments to delinquent because they desire parental acceptance.
peers actually increase deviance rather than Generally, explications of social control
having a bene®cial effect, as suggested by theory have failed to predict behavioural out-
Hirschi. Research also has indicated that direct comes beyond the bivariate level. Because
parental controls should not be dismissed as little theoretical and empirical attention has
theoretically and empirically irrelevant, as been directed toward the examination of such
suggested by both Nye and Hirschi. Empirical effects, many questions remain unresolved.
evidence indicates that direct parental controls In sum, empirical research has generally
(such as monitoring, rewards, punishments) supported the core concepts of Hirschi's
are just as effective as indirect controls or version of social control theory. While some
attachments in controlling delinquency. critics question its validity, few would ques-
Furthermore, Agnew (1985) suggests that tion that it has been the most in¯uential theory
the temporal ordering of the variables in of delinquency over the past 30 years.
Hirschi's model should be reversed. Rather
than weak social bonds being a cause of delin- Joseph Rankin and Roger Kern
quency (as suggested by Hirschi), Agnew's
research indicates that delinquent behaviour
may actually lead to weakened social bonds. Associated Concepts: conditioning, containment
While plausible, this criticism can be levelled theory, cross-sectional design, delinquency,
against virtually all theories tested by means longitudinal study, neutralization (techniques
of empirical research that is cross-sectional of )
(rather than longitudinal) in design.
Generally, however, social control theory is
probably more incomplete than it is incorrect; Key Readings
thus, researchers have sought to extend, Agnew, R. (1985) `Social control theory and
clarify and re®ne its basic tenets. Most of this delinquency: a longitudinal test', Criminology, 23,
research has led to modi®cations in the pp. 47±61.
operational measures and conceptual quali®- Briar, S. and Piliavin, I. (1965) `Delinquency:
cations in the empirical interpretation of the situational inducements and commitment to
perspective rather than to an outright rejection conformity', Social Problems, 13, pp. 35±45.
or overhaul of the entire theory. For example, Hirschi, T. (1969) Causes of Delinquency. Berkeley,
researchers have interpreted the actual mea- CA, University of California Press.
surement of parental attachments in a variety Hobbes, T. (1985 [1651]) Leviathan. New York, Viking
of ways, including indicators of affection and Penguin.
love, interest and concern, support, encour- Nye, F.I. (1958) Family Relationships and Delinquent
agement, desire for physical closeness and Behavior. New York, John Wiley.
272 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Reckless, W. (1967) The Crime Problem. New York, crime prevention form part of most commu-
Appleton±Century±Crofts. nity safety programmes, although Elliott
Reiss, A.J. (1951) `Delinquency as the failure of Currie (1988) makes the useful distinction
personal and social controls', American Sociological between those projects that view crime as an
Review, 16, pp. 196±207. outside threat to the community (in which
situational crime prevention is paramount)
and those where crime is sees as a product of
the institutions and structure of the commu-
SOCIAL CRIME PREVENTION nity (in which social crime prevention is seen
as appropriate).
Social crime prevention is viewed by left
De®nition realists as the key platform for tackling crime
(Currie, 1998; Young, 1991), although both
Measures to prevent crime which are aimed at situational crime prevention and the criminal
the social causes of crime rather than those justice system are accorded supporting roles.
concerned with the mechanical reduction of
opportunities (situational crime prevention) or
Jock Young
with deterrence (the criminal justice system).
Associated Concepts: communitarianism, com-
munity crime prevention, community safety,
Distinctive Features crime prevention, left realism, situational
crime prevention
The distinction between social and situational
revolves around the focus on causes (Craw- Key Readings
ford, 1998). Both situational crime prevention Crawford, A. (1998) Crime Prevention and Community
and deterrence explicitly disavow causality Safety. London, Longman.
(hence their designation as administrative Currie, E. (1988) `Two visions of community crime
criminology). The difference does not hinge prevention', in T. Hope and M. Shaw (eds),
on the social ± for situational crime prevention Communities and Crime Reduction. London, HMSO.
can have social aspects, for example, the Currie, E. (1998) Crime and Punishment in America.
increase in the facilitation of surveillance in New York, Metropolitan Books.
neighbourhood watch and in environmental Hughes, G. (1998) Understanding Crime Prevention.
design of housing estates. The emphasis on Buckingham, Open University Press.
social causes, therefore, relates social crime Walklate, S. (1996) `Community and crime preven-
prevention to any causal theory of crime (for tion', in E. McLaughlin and J. Muncie (eds),
example, whether strain, relative deprivation, Controlling Crime. London, Sage.
control, labelling or criminal careers are Young, J. (1991) `Left realism and the priorities of
highlighted as causative factors). In common crime control', in K. Stenson and D. Cowell (eds),
with crime prevention strategies in general, it The Politics of Crime Control. London, Sage.
is aimed at intervention before the offence has
occurred rather than after (for example, in the
arrest and punishment of offenders and victim
support). Interest in both situational and social
crime prevention has risen concomitantly with SOCIAL DEFENCE THEORY
the postwar rise in crime in industrial societies
and the recognition of the strained resources De®nition
and limits of ef®cacy of the criminal justice
system. In general, situational crime preven- A penal philosophy developed in the early
tion has been predominant in neo-liberal twentieth century that adhered to the `protec-
political contexts and social crime prevention tion of society' by the neutralization and
in those that have a stronger social democratic resocialization of the offender, whereby ®xed
setting (see Hughes, 1998). Social crime pre- penalties were set aside for individualized
vention is seen as being expedited by multi- punishment.
agency initiatives outside of the criminal
justice system ± the precise forms of inter-
vention and the major institutions involved Distinctive Features
depending on whether causality is located
primarily in employment, the family, educa- The development of a `social defence theory'
tion or community. Both situational and social has been accredited to the Belgian jurist
SOCIAL DEFENCE THEORY 273
Adolphe Prins following the publication of his nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one
book La DeÂfense sociale in 1910 (see Ancel, that classi®ed criminals into categories
1965). As a penological concept, however, its (insane, habitual, degenerate, weak-minded
origins are to be found in the early nineteenth etc.) and subsequently tailored punishment on
century. In 1831, the Italian jurist Carmignani an individual basis. For Pratt `the individua-
argued that the rigid administration of crimes lization of punishment' served a broader
and punishments should be replaced with a social purpose. He argues, `[the penal process]
new penal theory based on the concepts of would now be a form of social defence,
`social offence' and `social defence' (see providing insurance against the risks that the
Pasquino, 1980). Its origins are clearly Eur- habitual criminals presented, alongside the
opean, notably Italian, German, French and other strategies that the emerging welfare state
Belgian. Carmignani's vision of a social had introduced to protect its citizens from risk
defence doctrine gathered momentum and and ensure their security' (Pratt, 1997, p. 47).
acceptance during the positivist revolt of the As a concept, social defence in the ®rst half
late nineteenth century. Radzinowicz of the twentieth century received much
describes the place of social defence within criticism because of its suppression of the
positivist ideology: individual in favour of social protection, or as
Radzinowicz (1999, p. 38) has argued `social
It was not the business of the criminal justice defence [sliding] into social aggression'.
system to assess and to measure the moral guilt of Individual freedoms were viewed as subsidi-
an offender but only to determine whether he was ary to those justi®ed measures that aimed to
not the perpetrator of an act de®ned as an offence protect the moral and legal fabric of society.
and then to apply to him one of the measures of Social defence has also been interpreted as a
`social defence' so as to restrain him from com- form of social hygiene. The International
mitting further crimes. (Radzinowicz, 1961, p. 17) Union of Penal Law founded in 1889 com-
prised an alliance of European penal refor-
Social defence is a phrase that has been mists. It adopted an interventionist approach
subject to widespread interpretation and to penology and interpreted social defence to
distortion (Ancel, 1962). During the late mean `social hygiene', involving the `mop-
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ping-up of the social breeding grounds of
some social theorists and penal philosophers crime' (Pasquino, 1980).
in Europe, such as Tarde and Signorel, argued Marc Ancel (1965) describes the more
that social defence was the repression of crime extreme applications of social defence
by the criminal law and the administration of expressed through repressive governmental
`stern' punishment, thus re¯ecting classicist regimes such as those of Communist Russia,
doctrine or principles of the ancien reÂgime. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, where social
However, the positivists of this era adopted an defence was viewed as a form of `community
alternative interpretation that was more protection' and completely eroded human
widely adopted into criminal science rhetoric. rights and civil liberties.
For them, social defence centred on the
protection of society from dangerous and
habitual criminals (see Ancel, 1965). Enrico Evaluation
Ferri used the term `social defence' to describe
the purpose and justi®cation of punishment as The earliest usage of social defence is, there-
an indeterminate treatment re¯ecting the fore, founded on broad and changing inter-
needs of the individual rather than moral pretations. Its `modern' de®nition and
culpability and retribution. application are, however, applied with greater
The Italian positivist school at the end of the consistency. The United Nations resurrected
nineteenth century referred to the failures of the term in 1948 as `the prevention of crime
social defence, as expressed by the repressive and the treatment of offenders'. This de®nition
criminal law and deterrent-based punish- has focused on positivist explanations of
ments of the nineteenth century. In its place, criminality and penal solutions that serve to
they argued that a doctrine of social defence protect society whilst addressing the crimino-
should no longer focus on individual and genic characteristics of the offender. Nowa-
moral responsibility but be replaced with days, social defence theory is rarely used
preventative measures that would address the within criminal justice rhetoric. However, its
criminal's `dangerous condition' (Ancel, 1962, underlying principles of protecting society
p. 498). Pratt (1997) argues that a `new through individualized punishment, for exam-
penality' emerged in Europe in the late ple, indeterminate sentences, preventative
274 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
detention, dangerousness legislation, have re- and within cities there are presumed to be
emerged in late modernity as important facets `criminal areas' or `hot spots' of crime. To
of penal and criminal justice policy and realist explain these patterns of crime distribution
criminological thinking. analogies have been made between the ecology
of plant life and human organization. Cities are
Reece Walters viewed as akin to living and growing organ-
isms, with individuals growing together over
Associated Concepts: crime control model, crime time and declining when superseded by other
prevention, deterrence, positivism, risk individuals with different forms of social
organization. In the 1920s and 1930s sociolo-
Key Readings gists at the University of Chicago embarked on
Ancel, M. (1962) `Social defence', The Law Quarterly a systematic study of all aspects of their local
Review, 78, pp. 497±503. urban environment. Park, a newspaper repor-
Ancel, M. (1965) `Social defence', in A Modern ter turned sociologist, and Burgess, his
Approach to Criminal Problems. London, Routledge collaborator, were particularly in¯uential.
and Kegan Paul. They noted that, like any ecological system,
Pasquino, P. (1980) `Criminology: the birth of a the development and organization of the city
special saviour. Transformations in penal theory of Chicago was not random but patterned, and
and new sources of right in the late nineteenth could be understood in terms of such social
century', Ideology and Consciousness, 7, pp. 1±17. processes as invasion, con¯ict, accommodation
Pratt, J. (1997) Governing the Dangerous. Dangerous- and assimilation. They likened the city to a
ness, Law and Social Change. Sydney, The Federa- living and growing organism and viewed the
tion Press. functions of various areas of the city as
Radzinowicz, L. (1961) In Search of Criminology. fundamental to the survival of the whole. The
London, Heinemann. city's characteristics, social change and dis-
Radzinowicz, L. (1999) Adventures in Criminology. tribution of people were studied by use of
London, Routledge. Burgess's concentric zone theory. The city was
divided into ®ve areas: zone 1, the central
business district; zone 2, a transition from
business to residences; zone 3, working-class
homes; zone 4, middle-class homes; zone 5,
SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION commuter suburbs. Zone 2 ± the zone in
transition ± was a particular focus of study.
See Chicago School of Sociology; Geographies Here the expansion of the business sector
of crime; Social ecology continually meant that residents were dis-
placed. It became the least desirable living
area. It was characterized by deteriorating
housing stock, poverty, pawn shops, cheap
theatres, restaurants, casual workers, new
SOCIAL ECOLOGY immigrants and a breakdown in the usual
methods of social control. It was hypothesized
De®nition that it was in zone 2 that crime and vice would
¯ourish. Shaw (1929) and Shaw and McKay
Social ecology explanations of crime are a (1942) set out to test this hypothesis by using
variant of sociological positivism. They imply juvenile and adult court and prison statistics to
that crime is not caused by aberrant indivi- map the spatial distribution of the residences
duals but by the `pathological' conditions of of delinquent youths and criminals throughout
particular areas or communities. They draw the city. They were eventually to conclude that
upon modes of analysis developed within as this particular zone maintained a regular
human geography and biology to argue that crime rate even when its populations comple-
one outcome of the structuring of space is a tely changed, then there must be something
patterned distribution of crime. about particular places that sustains crime.
Crime is always subject to uneven geographi- Such early social ecology theory has subse-
cal distribution. Urban areas appear to have quently been critiqued for its denial of human
higher recorded crime rates than rural areas choice; its reliance on of®cial de®nitions and
SOCIAL EXCLUSION 275
statistics as `true' indices of crime; and its Shaw, C.R. (1929) Delinquency Areas. Chicago,
inability to account for contra evidence, such University of Chicago Press.
as high rates of crime in stable communities or Shaw, C.R. and McKay, H.D. (1942) Juvenile
low rates in areas of high social disorganiza- Delinquency and Urban Areas. Chicago, University
tion. Nevertheless, the approach experienced of Chicago Press.
something of a revival in England in the 1970s
and in the USA in the 1980s. These have
added spatial analysis, victimization data and
accounts of political economy to the original
formulation. For example, Morris (1957) found SOCIAL EXCLUSION
that the areas of peak crime rates in Croydon,
South London were two of the inter-war
council housing estates and two older resi- De®nition
dential areas noted for slum housing and
physical deterioration. From this he argued Social exclusion refers to the dynamic, multi-
that the political decision by local authorities dimensional process of being shut out, fully or
to concentrate certain of their tenants in less partially, from the various social, economic,
desirable housing was central to the creation political or cultural systems which serve to
of distinct `criminal areas'. assist the integration of a person in society.
Later studies widened the focus further to When combined, acute forms of exclusion are
include not only the study of differential created that ®nd a spatial and concentrated
access to housing space and of the effects on expression in particular localities and com-
people compelled to live in low-grade housing munities.
in `rough' areas, but also the relevance of
social class and differential access to power for
understanding the continuing `competitive Distinctive Features
struggle for space'. New versions of spatial
analysis (Bottoms and Wiles, 1992; Branting- Social exclusion can be best thought of as a
ham and Brantingham, 1984) have succeeded dynamic and ¯uid process rather than as a
not only in substantiating that crime is static and clearly de®ned condition. It refers to
spatially as well as socially de®ned, but that marginalization, social isolation and disloca-
it is a natural and normal expression of social tion, disaf®liation and vulnerability. More
interaction given the organization of particular than simply the circumstances of the poorest
localized communities. In particular, it is how individuals, social exclusion describes a
individuals recognize the role of space in their pattern of profound changes in social arrange-
own biographies and how space mediates the ments and the ever-increasing growth in
relationship between individual and environ- inequalities and insecurities produced by
ment that creates different opportunities for those changes. Thus the concept of social
crime. exclusion has to be understood within the
context of the transition from modernity to
John Muncie late modernity. It covers not only the
unemployed and economically inactive but
also the `working poor' and those sections of
Associated Concepts: Chicago School of Socio- the economically active increasingly affected
logy, defensible space, geographies of crime, by the `structural insecurity' generated by the
sociological positivism new `¯exible' labour market. It is an extended
concept that includes situations of distress,
discrimination and disadvantage that are
Key Readings largely, although not exclusively, socio-eco-
Bottoms, A. and Wiles, P. (1992) `Explanations of nomic in nature. Social exclusion occurs
crime and place', in D.J. Evans, N.R. Fyle and D.T. primarily on three levels: the economic and
Herbert (eds), Crime, Policing and Place. London, material exclusion of individuals denied
Routledge. access to paid, full-time employment; the
Brantingham, P.J. and Brantingham, P.L. (1984) isolation from relationships produced by
Patterns of Crime. New York, Macmillan. social and spatial segregation, and the ever-
Morris, T. (1957) The Criminal Area: A Study in Social increasing exclusionary policies and practices
Ecology. London, Routledge. of the criminal justice system.
Park, R.E. (1936) `Human ecology', American Journal During the 1960s and 1970s the cultural
of Sociology, 42 (1), p. 15. revolution of individualism and the economic
276 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
aim to address these patterns and thereby Sutherland's position was criticized by Paul
reduce the power of the excluders. Tappan on the grounds that regulatory
offences are inherently different from criminal
Trevor Bradley offences, that they are mala prohibita rather
than mala in se ± that is, acts that are `illegal
Associated Concepts: left realism, risk, social but not immoral' rather than acts that are
crime prevention, underclass `wrong in themselves'. According to this view
criminologists needed to restrict their focus to
the criminal law or risk undermining their
Key Readings academic objectivity by de®ning anything
Byrne, D. (1999) Social Exclusion. Buckingham, Open
they disapproved of as criminal.
University Press.
Sutherland countered Tappan's argument
Donnison, D. (1998) Policies for a Just Society.
by showing how these `technical violations'
London, Macmillan.
were in fact distributed along a continuum
Finer, C. and Nellis, M. (eds) (1997) Special Edition:
with mala prohibita at one extreme and mala in
`Broadening perspectives on social policy: crime
se at the other. Furthermore, he showed how
and social exclusion', Social Policy and Adminis-
such regulatory laws were adaptations of
tration, 31 (5).
common law prohibitions against theft and
Jordan, B. (1996) A Theory of Poverty and Social
assault and thus not qualitatively different
Exclusion. Cambridge, Polity Press.
from criminal sanctions.
Madanipour, A., Cars, G. and Allen, J. (eds) (1998)
The extent to which the state ought to
Social Exclusion in European Cities. London, Jessica
enforce morality and thus attempt to prevent
Kingsley.
socially harmful actions was the subject of a
Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society. London, Sage.
debate between Patrick Devlin and H.L.A.
Hart. Lord Devlin claimed that the law exists
for the protection of society and the indivi-
duals within it from harm. `Society' consists of
SOCIAL HARM not just the individuals who make it up, but
also of a shared moral code without which
society cannot exist. Any attack on this moral
De®nition code threatens the viability of society and the
state is therefore justi®ed in defending society
Injury or damage in¯icted on society or social by using criminal sanctions. For Devlin `The
institutions either intentionally or unintention- suppression of vice is as much the law's busi-
ally. ness as the suppression of subversive activ-
ities; it is no more possible to de®ne a sphere
of private morality than it is to de®ne one of
Distinctive Features private subversive activity'.
Hart countered Devlin's position by arguing
The concept of social harm is closely asso- that although society could not exist without
ciated with notions of crime and immorality some shared morality, a deviation from a part
but is not reducible to them. While many of that moral code was in no way tantamount
socially harmful acts are immoral and criminal to a destruction of society. There was no
there are some actions which may be con- reason to assume that a person who rejected
sidered to be socially harmful but are neither part of the shared morality would in any other
criminal nor immoral. manner be `hostile to society'.
Edwin Sutherland in `Is ``White Collar The debate between Devlin and Hart high-
Crime'' Crime?' (1945) claimed that the lights the dif®culty in drawing boundaries
de®ning features of a criminal act were that between the individual and society. While
there was a `legal description of an act as social harm is by de®nition an injury to society
socially injurious and a legal provision of a and may therefore become encompassed
penalty for the act'. By employing this within the criminal law, harms that affect
de®nition of crime Sutherland sought to only individuals are seen as being more
show that illegal actions committed by cor- appropriately dealt with in civil litigation as
porations and persons of high social status in torts. However, the boundary between the
breach of civil or administrative law were individual and society is not easily drawn.
qualitatively little different from those actions There is a very real sense in which `no man is
committed by individuals of low social status an island' and any injury in¯icted on an
in breach of criminal laws. individual has a wider impact on the society
278 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
to which this individual belongs. As Keith But a concept of social harm does hold some
Bottomley (1979, p. 35) observed, advantages over that of crime to the extent
that it enables the criminological gaze to go
Whether we look at socially injurious acts from beyond legal and state de®nitions of injurious
the point of view of the victim (if any), the practices (Tifft, 1995) and to recognize certain
intentions of the actor, or in the light of the nature legal behaviours as harms in themselves.
of the harm done, it seems clear that there is no
hard and fast distinction between torts, crimes Mark Thornton
and non-criminal harm. In practice there is a very
blurred demarcation line between those acts or Associated Concepts: constitutive criminology,
omissions which are the concern of the civil law corporate crime, crime, deviance, natural
and of the criminal law ± or no law at all. justice, political crime, proportionality,
redress, state crime
Evaluation Key Readings
Bottomley, K. (1979) Criminology in Focus. Oxford,
The relationship between social harm, crime Martin Robertson.
and immorality is a complex one. Not all that Devlin, P. (1968) The Enforcement of Morals. London,
is socially harmful falls within the domain of Oxford University Press.
criminal or civil law. Inadequate health care, Hart, H.L.A. (1963) Law, Liberty, and Morality.
unemployment, overcrowded housing and London, Oxford University Press.
insuf®cient educational opportunities are all Sutherland, E. (1945) `Is ``white collar crime''
socially harmful but attempting to alleviate crime?', American Sociological Review, 10, pp.
such social problems by the use of criminal 132±9.
sanctions would be fraught with dif®culties Tappan, P. (1947) `Who is the criminal?', American
both practical and ethical. Natural disasters Sociological Review, 12, pp. 96±102.
such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions Tifft, L. (1995) `Social harm de®nitions of crime',
are undoubtedly socially harmful but Critical Criminologist, 7 (1), pp. 9±12.
obviously fall outside of the scope of the
criminal law, while actions that are racist or
sexist may or may not, depending on
particular jurisdictions. Similarly, activities
that result in unforeseen and unpredictable SOCIAL JUSTICE
harm to society cannot be condemned as
immoral. There is little doubt that the De®nition
manufacturing and distribution of CFCs has
led to widespread social harm through the Fair distribution of opportunities, rewards and
depletion of the ozone layer and the resultant responsibilities in society. Principles and
health defects which this has caused, but these institutions for the distribution of meaningful
adverse consequences were not at the time social goods ± income, shelter, food, health,
predictable and it therefore may not be education, freedom to pursue individual
appropriate to attribute moral turpitude. goals.
Conversely, unjust laws may be deemed
socially harmful, such as the `apartheid' laws
of South Africa. Victimless crimes such as Distinctive Features
some sexual acts between consenting adults,
drug taking and prostitution are also often Theories of social justice focus on two main
cited in this context. Civil disobedience, questions. First, how rules for a fair distribu-
including law-breaking, when opposing such tion of meaningful social goods can be deter-
laws has been justi®ed on the grounds that the mined; secondly, how much or how little
law-breaking is less socially harmful than the inequality is permissible in a socially just
law that is opposed. Criminal acts do not society.
therefore always necessarily cause harm to Over the past few decades, the most
society. There is no clear unequivocal stan- in¯uential theory of social justice has been
dard for determining whether a particular John Rawls's (1972) notion of justice as fairness.
action is socially bene®cial or harmful. Such He draws upon social contract theory and the
judgements are informed by political and Kantian philosophical tradition of justice as
ethical theories concerning what constitutes impartiality, stating that for people to devise
`the good life' for both individuals and society. rules that are fair to all, they must be unaware
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY 279
of their own position in society. A rich person, in communist societies the dominant good
or someone who con®dently expects to may be political in¯uence.
become rich, for example, would favour
rules that advantage the rich, such as low
taxation and low public spending, whereas Evaluation
someone who is poor or expects to be poor
would probably favour high taxation and high Social justice is relevant to criminology in
public expenditure. Only someone unaware of several ways. Rawls's justice as fairness is
their own position or expectations would re¯ected in contemporary just desert theories
come up with levels of taxation and spending of punishment, and a major point of conten-
fair to all. Rawls therefore says that rules and tion between desert theorists and their critics
institutions of a just society can only be has been the extent to which criminal justice
arrived at by people acting in an `original' should take account of social injustice. It is
(pre-social) position, or from behind a `veil of also suggested that high levels of social
ignorance' in which they are unaware of their injustice bring into doubt the legitimacy of
own actual or potential social position. He law and criminal justice.
realizes, of course, that people deciding actual High rates of social inequality are associated
rules for actual societies are not in this with high crime rates and high imprisonment
position; he is suggesting that fair distribution rates, and criminologists have criticized reli-
can only be arrived at by procedures designed ance on penal policy rather than social policy
to secure impartiality as far as possible. to combat crime in the UK and USA (Young,
Rawls's answer to the question of degrees of 1999). Some criminologists explicitly advocate
inequality is his difference principle: social and social justice as a value-base for criminology,
economic inequalities are just to the extent that and have argued that penal, crime prevention
they bene®t everyone. This principle allows and community safety policies need to be
some inequality, but protects the least well-off, mindful of the rights and opportunities of
and because of this protection his theory is those at whom they are targeted (Arrigo, 1999;
often classi®ed as welfare-liberalism. Van Swaaningen, 1997).
Rawls tries to strike a balance between Barbara Hudson
equality and freedom; alternative theories
prioritize one or the other. Marxist theories
prioritize equality, whereas libertarian and Associated Concepts: criminal justice, human
neo-liberal theories prioritize freedom. Liber- rights, just deserts, natural justice, social
tarians argue that governments should not exclusion
involve themselves in the distribution of social
goods. A just distribution, for libertarians and Key Readings
neo-liberals, arises from individual decisions Arrigo, B. (ed.) (1999) Social Justice/Criminal Justice.
to give or exchange goods which they legally Belmont, CA, Wadsworth.
hold. Any state interference with distribution, Bouchier, D. and Kelly, P. (eds) (1998) Social Justice:
beyond establishing property laws, is unwar- From Hume to Walzer. London, Routledge.
ranted interference with individual freedom. Rawls, J. (1972) A Theory of Justice. Oxford, Oxford
A variant of welfare-liberalism is put University Press.
forward by Michael Walzer (1983). Walzer Van Swaaningen, R. (1997) Critical Criminology:
argues that Rawls was mistaken in trying to Visions from Europe. London, Sage.
suggest one principle of distribution for all Walzer, M. (1983) Spheres of Justice: A Defense of
social goods. For Walzer, the principle of Pluralism and Equality. New York, Basic Books.
distribution and the amount of inequality in Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society. London, Sage.
its distribution that is socially just, arise from
the nature of the good in question. With
medical care, for example, distribution should
be on the basis of need, and there should be no SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
inequality of access; for education, the princi-
ple should be that each should have as much
education as s/he desires and can derive De®nition
bene®t from. For Walzer, the key issue is
domination: the distribution of no one good A theory of learning that maintains that to
should dominate the distribution of others. In understand behaviour it is necessary to
capitalist society, the distribution of money account for the reciprocal relationship
can dominate the distribution of other goods; between the person and their environment.
280 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Its de®ning characteristic as a learning theory state, level of interest in the other person,
is the role it gives to cognitive variables. and so on. The social tasks facing those
engaged in an interaction are ®rst to be
sensitive to this social information, then to
Distinctive Features decode or understand the information, and
®nally to use this information to inform their
As originally formulated, behavioural theory own behaviour. It is argued that biases at
concentrated on the relationship between the any of these cognitive stages can result in
environment and observable behaviour. The socially dysfunctional behaviour, particularly
contribution of social learning theorists was to aggressive behaviour (Akhtar and Bradley,
attempt to incorporate more explicitly the role 1991).
of cognition into an account of human Social learning theory has been applied to
behaviour (Bandura, 1977, 1986). The begin- the study of criminal behaviour by psychol-
nings of the departure from mainstream ogists (e.g., Nietzel, 1979); and interventions
behavioural thinking came with research that based on the principles of social learning
focused on the phenomenon of learning by have also been developed for use with
observation. Traditionally, the accepted posi- offenders (e.g., Hollin, 1990). These interven-
tion within learning theory was that behaviour tions might include working with offenders
developed through the individual's experi- to help improve levels of social ability, as
ence of the rewarding or punishing conse- with social skills training and social problem-
quences, contingent on their actions, that were solving skills training; or to challenge
delivered by the environment. Social learning offenders' thinking by, for example, increas-
theorists departed from this position in that, ing awareness of the effects of victimization,
while continuing to acknowledge the role of or beliefs about, say, sexual acts with young
external reinforcement, they suggested that children.
learning could also take place purely at a Criminologists have also attempted to
cognitive level. Thus, behaviour could be develop a mainstream theory of crime using
acquired simply through observing models differential association theory, reinforcement
in the social world. Bandura suggested that theory, and social learning theory (e.g., Akers,
there are three potent sources of modelled 1990). In a social learning theory account, the
behaviour: these models are family members, acquisition of criminal behaviour (that is,
members of one's peer group, and symbolic attitudes and skills as proposed by differential
models as, for example, in the popular media. association theory) is via direct reinforcement
Further, Bandura advanced the concept of from the environment, as in operant terms, or
`motivation' to supersede reinforcement. In through modelling and imitation. The models
social learning theory terms motivation is held for all behaviour, including criminal behav-
to take three forms: external reinforcement, in iour, are to be found directly in the behaviour
the traditional sense that the term is used in of friends and family and more abstractly in
behavioural theory; vicarious reinforcement, cultural forces such as visual images and the
where actions are based on observing what written word. (This is close to Sutherland's
happens to other people who behave in a differential association theory articulated
particular way; and actions that produce self- before the theoretical advances of social
reinforcement, as in a sense of personal pride or learning theory.) In terms of its maintenance
achievement. As social learning theory stimu- and in line with traditional learning theory,
lated interest in the role of cognition within an criminal behaviour is reinforced by the
overarching behavioural framework, the term external rewards that it produces: these
cognitive-behavioural became more widely rewards include tangible, often ®nancial,
used. gain, along with social rewards such as peer
One of the consequences of the rise of group status. However, social learning theory
social learning theory was an upsurge in would add personal, internal rewards as
interest in cognition and cognitive processes. factors that maintain criminal behaviour:
The notion of social information processing these rewards might be the excitement of
seeks to develop an understanding of the stealing a car and joyriding; or a sense of
cognitive processes when we interact with personal pride in avoiding detection for a
other people. The basis of this approach is theft.
that when we interact socially, there is a ¯ow Further, the meaning (or de®nitions in
of verbal and non-verbal information differential association terms) of criminal
between those involved. This ¯ow of infor- behaviour for the offender should be taken
mation communicates details of emotional into account as they give some level of
SOCIAL REACTION 281
the exposure, nature and strength of societal it presented crime and deviance as social
reaction. Recognizing both formal and infor- constructs. Furthermore, it examined the
mal responses to crime and deviance, he unintended consequences of media, public,
argued that formal agents of social control political, and criminal justice responses to
extended and formalized informal responses. crime and deviance, providing impetus for
The 1960s witnessed further development of non-interventionist criminal justice strategies.
these ideas by Kitsuse (1962), Becker (1963) Overall, social reaction has proved a valuable
and Erikson (1966). In what came to be known theoretical concept for explaining processes of
as the labelling perspective, the concept of marginalization, especially where gender,
social reaction was pivotal. Following their ethnicity, mental illness and youth are con-
theoretical predecessors, proponents of this cerned. Indeed, in the case of young people,
perspective focused on the social processes by social reaction has highlighted the continued
which persons and behaviour come to be association between `youth' and `crime',
de®ned as deviant, and on who has the power which has contributed to the criminalization
to confer such a label. As the most famous of youth and non-criminal behaviour, and
advocate of labelling suggested, `social groups perceptions of youth as `other'.
create deviance by making the rules whose Many of the criticisms of labelling apply to
infraction constitutes deviance, and by apply- social reaction, including that it does not
ing those rules to particular people and explain the causes of primary deviance
labelling them as outsiders. From this point (although advocates argue they did not seek
of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the to explain them). Furthermore, the extent to
person commits, but rather a consequence of which social reaction to crime and deviance is
the application by others of rules and wholly subjective is questionable, for example,
sanctions to an ``offender''' (Becker, 1963, p. in the case of societal responses to murder.
9). Thus, nothing was inherently criminal and Finally, the extent to which social reaction
social reaction created deviance. causes deviance is surely unmeasurable, and
While interactionism and labelling are the thus unknowable.
key theoretical perspectives associated with
social reaction, there are also a number of inter- Anna Duncan
related theoretical concepts crucial to illustrat-
ing the nature and impact of societal responses Associated Concepts: criminal careers, crimina-
to crime and deviance. As Lemert suggested lization, deviancy ampli®cation, folk devil,
`[m]ythologies, stigma, stereotypes, patterns of interactionism, labelling, moral panic, scape-
exploitation, accommodation, segregation, and goating, social constructionism, stereotyping,
methods of control spring up and crystallize in stigma
the interaction between the deviants and the
rest of society' (1951, p. 55). Indeed, the crux of Key Readings
social reaction is that behaviour that is Becker, H. (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of
subjectively stigmatized, stereotyped, labelled Deviance. New York, The Free Press.
and criminalized, may create moral panics and Cohen, S. (1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics. New
`folk devils' (Cohen, 1972), facilitate `criminal York, St Martins Press.
careers' and self-ful®lling prophecies of Erikson, K. (1966) Wayward Puritans: A Study in the
deviance ampli®cation and scapegoating. Sociology of Deviance. New York, Macmillan.
Up until this point, social reaction has been Kitsuse, J. (1962) `Societal reaction to deviant
examined as an `active' concept. However, in behaviour', Social Problems, 9, pp. 247±56.
some instances social reaction may also be Lemert, E. (1951) Social Pathology: A Systematic
`inactive' or lacking, for example, in terms of Approach to the Theory of Sociopathic Behavior.
the lack of negative societal responses to white New York, McGraw±Hill.
collar and corporate crime, as compared to Tannenbaum, F. (1938) Crime and the Community.
`conventional' crime. New York, Columbia University Press.
Evaluation
SOCIAL SURVEY
Together with interactionist and labelling
perspectives, and related theoretical concepts, De®nition
social reaction shifted the focus of sociological
enquiry from causes and explanations of crime A research design which, ®rst, collects and
and deviance to societal responses. In doing so assembles a structured set of data about a
SOCIAL SURVEY 283
large number of cases (or units of analysis) sampling, whereby everyone in the designated
and, secondly, involves a form of statistical population is given an equal chance of
analysis that seeks to describe the charac- selection. The other is known as purposive
teristics of the set of cases and sometimes also or non-probability sampling whereby indivi-
seeks to provide explanations of such charac- duals are deliberately selected for inclusion in
teristics. a sample because they have some distinctive
features which are relevant to the research (for
example, some specialist knowledge, particu-
Distinctive Features lar background attributes or willingness to
participate). Both random and purposive
Surveys can embrace a wide range of activities samples can have variations in terms of
involving a wide range of types of cases. design, for example to make them more or
However, the case or unit analysis about less representative of the wider population. In
which data are collected is often the indivi- order to make reasonably precise and calcul-
dual, although that is not an essential require- able estimates about characteristics of a
ment. For example, it is possible to survey population it is advisable to select random,
police±public interactions to describe them in but more importantly, representative samples.
terms of, say, `friendliness' or `hostility'; Data may be collected from samples of
incidents may be surveyed to count how individuals at one particular point in time, in
many of them are recorded as crimes; and which case it is common to refer to one-shot or
newspaper articles may be analysed to count cross-sectional designs. A crime survey that
how many argue for `justice through punish- involves interviewing a sample of the popula-
ment'. tion of a town during, say, January in order to
All of the cases in a given population may estimate the total amount of victimization
be surveyed, in which instance it is usual to during that month is a cross-sectional survey.
use the term census. For example, the British Sometimes researchers are interested in trends
Census has taken place every ten years since and patterns over time and may interview an
1801 and provides a count of the population of equivalent but different selection of people
England and Wales on one particular day and each January over a 10-year period. This is
describes the population in terms of basic known as a time series design. The British
characteristics. Most developed countries Crime Survey is an example of a time series
carry out a census. For example, the Census survey (Mayhew, 2000). Where the same
of Population of the United States has been group of people are interviewed at different
held every ten years since 1790. It is much periods of time, perhaps to study their
more common to study only a sample of the personal development, it is common to refer
population. This is done on the grounds of to them as longitudinal studies or cohort
cost and time and also because the principles studies. Longitudinal studies have been used
of statistical inference can permit accurate to follow up a cohort of individuals into early
estimates of the population to be obtained adulthood to see which ones engage in
(with calculable margins of error) from criminal careers, and why. An example is the
relatively small samples. It is because most Cambridge Study of Delinquency Develop-
surveys involve some form of selection that ment (West, 1982).
the term social survey is often taken as being
synonymous with a sample survey rather than
census. What is more, as indicated above, Evaluation
although a wide range of units may be
surveyed the most common is the individual. Social surveys are valuable instruments of
As a result, in the narrow sense, social criminological research because they provide
surveys are often taken to refer to the selection means of collecting a good deal of information
of individuals drawn from some wider about a lot of cases over a relatively short
population with the aim of making inferences period of time (with the exception of long-
from the sample to the wider population. In itudinal surveys) and at a reasonable cost per
such instances data are collected either by unit of analysis. They are means by which the
interview, usually structured interview, or by main features of populations can be described,
respondents completing a questionnaire by usually statistically, by studying relatively
themselves. small samples. What is more, forms of statis-
There are two broad strategies for selecting tical analysis ± especially those based on
individuals to be members of samples. The correlations ± allow the researcher to search
®rst is known as random or probability for patterns in the populations and to seek to
284 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
explain one set of characteristics in terms of West, D.J. (1982) Delinquency: Its Roots, Careers and
another set. For example, a researcher may Prospects. London, Heinemann.
move beyond estimating the number of
victims of crime towards explaining victimiza-
tion in terms such as age, gender, ethnicity
and lifestyle. SOCIO-BIOLOGY
It is, however, necessary to recognize the
limitations of social surveying. There are
many potential sources of bias, for example, See Biological criminology
in the ways in which interviewers ask
questions and the ways in which respondents
interpret them and answer them. The ques-
tionnaires or interview schedules may force SOCIOLOGICAL POSITIVISM
answers that do not truly re¯ect the ways in
which individuals wish to respond, and
samples may be so unrepresentative as to De®nition
make inferences drawn from them worthless.
Such matters can be addressed in careful Sociological positivism stresses the impor-
planning and research design. However, more tance of social factors ± such as anomie, social
fundamental issues have been levelled at disorganization and economic recession ± as
surveys. One is that by their very nature (for causes of crime. The broad aim is to account
example, collecting data from large numbers for the distribution of varying amounts of
of cases) they are shallow and super®cial and crime within given populations.
do not allow researchers to capture the depth
of meaning which criminological understand-
ing requires. Typically, such an argument Distinctive Features
comes from those who advocate an apprecia-
tive criminology. Other viewpoints are that A sociological form of positivism was ®rst
social surveys have certain in-built quantita- developed by philosophers such as Comte and
tive and positivist assumptions and also tend Saint-Simon in the early nineteenth century.
to be favoured research instruments of the Comte's insistence that society both predates
`of®cial' criminology of government depart- and shapes the individual psychologically
ments and other state institutions such as the provided the foundation for sociological
police and prison services. As such, they do criminology. This mode of analysis can be
not address fundamental issues of criminal traced back to the work of the French
justice such as inequality, power and oppres- statistician Guerry and the Belgian mathema-
sion. Typically, such an argument comes from tician Quetelet, in the 1830s. They analysed
those who advocate a critical criminology. of®cial statistics on variables such as suicides,
educational levels, crime rates and age and sex
Victor Jupp of offenders, within given geographic areas for
speci®c time periods. Two general patterns
emerged: types and the amount of crime
Associated Concepts: appreciative criminology, varied from region to region, but within
cross-sectional design, longitudinal study, speci®c areas there was little variation from
sampling, structured interviews, time series year to year. Because of this regularity it was
design, victim surveys proposed that criminal behaviour must be
generated by something other than individual
motivation. Quetelet (1842) found that the
Key Readings factors most strongly tied to criminal propen-
Jupp, V., Davies, P. and Francis, P. (eds) (2000) sity were gender, age, occupation and religion.
Doing Criminological Research. London, Sage. Fluctuations in crime rates were explained
Mayhew, P. (2000) `Researching crime and victimi- with reference to changes in the social,
zation: the BCS', in P. Davies, P. Francis and V. political and economic structures of particular
Jupp (eds), Victimization: Theory, Research and societies, while crime itself was viewed as a
Policy. London, Macmillan. constant and inevitable feature of social
Sapsford, R. (1999) Survey Research. London, Sage. organization.
de Vaus, D.A. (1995) Surveys in Social Research, 4th At the turn of the century its most in¯u-
edn. London, UCL Press, and Sydney, Allen and ential advocate was Emile Durkheim (1895).
Unwin. He argued that in any given social context, the
SOMATOTYPING 285
predictability of crime rates must mean they if not the abnormality of individuals, then
are social facts, and thus a normal phenom- dysfunctions in social systems. The study of
enon. Crime is rarely abnormal ± it occurs in crime remains in the tradition of scientism,
all societies, it is tied to the facts of collective essentialism and positivistic method: that is, it
life and its volume tends to increase as can be measured and evaluated by means of
societies evolve from mechanical to more statistical methods and empirical data. It also
complex organic forms of organization. assumes that there must be something
Above all, crime and punishment perform a distinguishable about crime that differentiates
useful function for society because they it from normal behaviour. A consensus, or in
maintain social solidarity, through establish- Durkheim's terms, a `collective conscience'
ing moral boundaries and strengthening the exists which marks out the criminal from the
shared consensus of a community's beliefs non-criminal. The role of social con¯ict
and values. Crime, then, is positive ± an between individuals and among competing
integrative element in any healthy society. In groups is downplayed. Compared to indivi-
other words, Durkheim reasoned that societies dual positivism, sociological theories appear
without crime must be extremely repressive less interested in crime as a particular pattern
and incapable of adapting to social change. of behaviour and more in probabilistic accounts
One of the most in¯uential forms of socio- of variations in crime rates given particular
logical positivism was developed by the social, geographical and economic circum-
Chicago School in the 1920s. Their early work stances. They focus on general patterns of
argued that crime rates were determined by criminality rather than on individual motiva-
certain economic, environmental and spatial tions. Nevertheless, the concern remains to
conditions. They noted that rates of truancy, isolate key causal variables, such as social
delinquency and adult crime tended to vary disorganization and criminal area, and to infer
inversely in proportion to their distance from that such conditions determine rates of crimin-
the city centre. The closer to the city, the higher ality. Crime remains a violation of a social
the rate of crime. These rates re¯ected differ- order that is considered to be based on a
ences in the physical make-up of different consensus of legal and moral codes. Little
communities. High crime rates occurred in room is given for the contrary positions that
areas characterized by deterioration and crime may be a freely chosen course of action
declining populations. Moreover, relatively and that it may be due to different forms of
high rates of crime persisted in certain areas socialization, rather than lack of socialization.
even when the composition of their population
had changed signi®cantly. John Muncie
These observations suggested that it was the
nature of neighbourhoods, and not the nature Associated Concepts: anomie, Chicago School of
of the individuals who lived there, that Sociology, geographies of crime, positivism,
determined levels of criminality. As a result, social ecology
this line of reasoning has also been termed
`environmental determinism'. The concentra-
tion of crime and delinquency in particular
Key Readings
Durkheim, E. (1895/1964) Rules of Sociological
areas was also viewed as indicative of
Method. New York, The Free Press.
processes of social disorganization. As industry
Quetelet, A. (1842) A Treatise on Man. Edinburgh,
and commerce invaded, and transient popula-
Chambers.
tions entered such areas, community ties were
Shaw, C.R. (1929) Delinquency Areas. Chicago,
destroyed and resistance to deviance lowered.
University of Chicago Press.
Evaluation
Marxist accounts sought to conceptualize ruptured social formation together' (Hall et al.,
the state in more substantive and speci®c 1978, p. 217).
terms. Quinney straightforwardly argued that This line of thinking led to an analysis of the
the state and rule of law served to secure the ideological aspects of state power: how
interests of the dominant class. This instru- popular consent for state coercion was pro-
mentalist view developed out of the writings duced and struggled over; how the hegemony
of Marx and Engels who depicted the state as of ruling economic and political alliances was
an arena for the material and ideological established through negotiation and compro-
organization and continued dominance of the mise; and how, ultimately, in times of econ-
ruling class. Ralph Miliband continued this omic crisis, the popular masses come to
perspective through his examination of the support processes of criminalization in the
formal and informal connections between construction of social consensus. Hall termed
those in positions of power within the state this `authoritarian populism'. Thus state
and ruling class fractions. For others in the institutions are very much at the centre of
Marxist tradition this was a crude model of social struggles and through the process of
state processes tainted with a `functionalist' criminalization construct discourses of censure
gloss. Poulantzas was particularly critical of and moral culpability ± particularly aimed at
Miliband's functionalism and pointed to the the powerless ± in the attempt to order and
shift towards a more authoritarian state form lead the society in a particular direction. This
that was emerging in Western Europe in the process reinforces the interests of the powerful,
1970s. This he termed `authoritarian statism'. the majority of whose own crimes and illegal
Althusser, another structural Marxist, also activities are not subject to scrutiny, sanction-
expanded the analysis by focusing on the ing or punishment. Importantly, when the
different sites where the authority of capitalist consensus fragments, coercion will be mobil-
social relations were maintained and repro- ized to restore order. However, unlike earlier
duced. These he termed `ideological state Marxist formulations the state does not always
apparatuses' (family, school and media) and `win' this struggle in every instance. Instead,
`repressive state apparatuses' (police, courts, the state was itself characterized as an arena of
prisons and army). struggle where de®nitions prescribing what is
Other neo-Marxist studies followed. criminal and the responses to crime could be
Thompson, Hay and Linebaugh's work on challenged, resisted and occasionally over-
the eighteenth-century state as a social turned, as in the case of feminist struggles
relationship pointed to its position both as a around the law on rape and marriage.
site of class struggle and its role in the forma- Feminist perspectives that emerged in the
tion and reproduction of the new bourgeois 1970s and 1980s questioned the view that
social order. Hall et al. (1978) developed a depicted state institutions in class terms and
model of the capitalist state derived from the as always repressive in their actions. Feminist
work of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. writers pointed to what the state omitted to do
Here the state is conceived of as a historically as much as what it did. Thus it was not so
speci®c set of institutional arrangements much a case of over-regulation but the under-
whose `independent' stance becomes unten- regulation of crimes against women ± for
able in times of crisis and whose leadership or example, in areas of domestic and sexual
hegemony is a matter of struggle within and violence. The state was reconceptualized as a
outside of state institutions. The work focuses gendered set of apparatuses, serving the aims
on the structural economic crisis of British of a patriarchal order. It is not only that state
capitalism which underpinned the social, institutions are overwhelmingly staffed by
political, cultural and moral crisis of authority men but that masculinist ideologies inform the
signalled by youth rebellion, industrial mili- policy and decision-making process. This
tancy, anti-racist and anti-sexist movements, analysis has focused on the differential treat-
student protest and the rise of permissiveness ment of women within state criminal proce-
in the 1960s and1970s. In times of crisis the dures and how regimes of control are as much
`spontaneous consent' for state rule becomes about the penalization of behaviours that step
exhausted and the more coercive character of outside of ascribed feminine boundaries as
state rule becomes visible. In this context, the about the control of crime (Hester et al., 1996).
state: `is progressively drawn . . . down into This work also emphasized engaging with the
the arena of struggle and direction, and state in order to generate social change for
exhibits more plainly than it does in its women. This perspective was particularly
routine manifestations what it is and what it evident in the work of a number of Australian
must do to provide the cement which holds a feminists, such as Sophie Watson.
STATE CRIME 289
More recently, under the impact of privati- women) and the homeless. At the same time,
zation and managerialist discourses some crimes committed by the powerful including
writers have identi®ed a fragmentation of the the state's own servants remain effectively
state both in practical and theoretical terms. beyond scrutiny and punishment. In different
Thus policies of decentralization, partnership ways such writers have helped maintain a
and the growth of private policing in theme critical focus on the processes of state forma-
parks and retail centres has led some to argue tion (its shifting boundaries, central±local
that the state monopoly on policing and justice relations) and the exercise of state power in
is being eroded. Corporations and other the arena of crime control (its targets,
private interests are increasingly de®ning legitimating discourses and impact on social
and responding to problems of order without divisions and inequality).
any recourse to the public interest. Following
the work of Michel Foucault, this has led to a Roy Coleman and Joe Sim
move away from the state as a privileged
centre of power relations. This perspective is Associated Concepts: authoritarian populism,
particularly critical of Marxist theorists and critical criminology, hegemony, radical crim-
what is regarded as their homogeneous and inologies, radical feminism, social control,
economically reductionist views of state state crime
institutions. Much of this work has focused
on `neo-liberalism' as a form of rule that Key Readings
traverses and empowers a range of non-state Barry, A., Osborne, T. and Rose, N. (eds) (1996)
agencies that `seek to employ forms of exper- Foucault and Political Reason. London, UCL Press.
tise in order to govern society at a distance, Clarke, J. and Newman, J. (1997) The Managerial
without recourse to any forms of direct State. London, Sage.
repression or intervention' (Barry et al., 1996, Coleman, R. and Sim, J. (1998) `From the dockyards
p. 14). Thus a range of expertise is at work in to the Disney store: surveillance, risk and security
the assessment and containment of risks from in Liverpool city centre', International Review of
crime which moves beyond so-called moder- Law, Computers and Technology, 12 (1), pp. 27±45.
nist views of the state as a clearly de®ned set Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and
of institutional mechanisms with precise Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis. London,
boundaries. The state's decline in power and Macmillan.
in¯uence has been depicted in terms such as Hester, M., Kelly, L. and Radford, J. (1996)
the `lean' state, the `hollowed out' state and `Introduction', in M. Hester, L. Kelly and J.
the `stretched' state. Radford (eds), Women, Violence and Male Power.
Other writers, particularly in the Marxist Buckingham, Open University Press.
and neo-Marxist traditions, continue to Jessop, B. (1990) State Theory. Cambridge, Polity
develop and re®ne a concept of the state that Press.
does not presuppose fragmentation, ideologi-
cal coherence, institutional unity or function-
ality. These writers include: Jessop (1990),
with his emphasis on contingency and contra-
diction inherent in state practices; Clarke and STATE CRIME
Newman (1997), on the state as a managerial
set of institutions; and Coleman and Sim's De®nition
(1998) analysis of the dialectical inter-relation-
State crime covers forms of criminality that are
ship between `old' forms of state power (e.g.,
committed by states and governments in order
the police) and `new' forms of state control
to further a variety of domestic and foreign
(e.g., CCTV cameras). Writers working around
policies.
the human rights group Statewatch have
argued that the state is becoming increasingly
authoritarian and increasingly international- Distinctive Features
ized through the interpersonal and ideological
connections of those working within different State crime is one of the most serious forms of
nation-states. Consequently, Europe is witnes- criminality for the following reasons. First, the
sing the emergence of a pan-European, mini- monopoly of violence enjoyed by the state
mally accountable state designed to manage means that it has the potential to in¯ict
an increasingly unmanageable detritus com- massive violations of human rights on its
prising conventional criminals, asylum see- own citizens and foreign nationals. Secondly,
kers, drug users, single parents (particularly the state is the primary source of laws and this
290 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
parents) or to vent frustration against those coherence and unity to sensory inputs, such as
who deny autonomy. observing the actions of others) and also with
prejudice (negative attitudes towards a group
of persons based not on individual qualities
Evaluation but on traits assumed to be uniformly shared
by all members of the group). In addition to
The effect of status frustration on crime and exploring the negative aspects of stereotyping,
delinquency has not been well tested, especially in its connection with prejudice,
although several observational studies suggest they also examine its positive functions as a
that the above types of status frustration do means by which individuals can bring order to
contribute to crime. And limited survey data a potentially complex ± even chaotic ± social
suggest that individuals high in status environment, thereby facilitating ease of
frustration may be more likely to engage in communication and interaction.
crime, although status frustration does not Sociologists have located stereotyping
lead to crime in most cases. within interactionist, labelling and new
deviancy approaches. All of these share a
Robert Agnew
concern with examining the ways in which
rounded images are applied so as to de®ne
Associated Concepts: anomie, masculinities, some people as `deviant' or `other' and others
strain theory, subculture as `normal'. They emphasize the tendency for
stereotypes to be structural, that is embedded
Key Readings in key criminal justice agencies and also in the
Agnew, R. (1992) `Foundation for a general strain everyday practices of their personnel.
theory of crime and delinquency', Criminology, 30, Although stereotypes are expressed in inter-
pp. 47±87. actions between individuals, they are not
Cloward, R.A. and Ohlin, L. (1960) Delinquency and idiosyncratic nor applied randomly: rather
Opportunity New York, The Free Press. they exhibit patterns and regularity in the
Cohen, A.K. (1955) Delinquent Boys. New York, The ways in which they are generated and applied.
Free Press. A sociological approach seeks to explore the
Merton, R.K. (1938) `Social structure and anomie', relationship between such patterns and the
American Sociological Review, 3, pp. 672±82. exercise of power by one group of people over
Messerschmidt, J.W. (1993) Masculinities and Crime. another. In this respect, sociologists tend to
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little®eld. focus on the process of negative stereotyping
by one group and its effect on another group.
The concept `stereotype' is relatively impre-
cise and there can be variations in the ways in
which it is applied. In some cases it is
STEREOTYPING
restricted to negative, unfavourable imagery
whereas for others it can embrace positive
De®nition portrayals of categories of people. Stereotypes
may be viewed as relatively ®xed, rigid and
The process of applying condensed images to enduring or subject to manipulation and
a group or category of people. These images change. There are also differences as to
represent over-simpli®ed and over-general- whether stereotypes necessarily involve
ized abstractions regarding such people, their biased and inaccurate as opposed to valid ±
values, behaviour and lifestyle. Stereotyping although simpli®ed ± portrayals. Finally,
not only involves categorizing and classifying stereotypes are sometimes conceptualized as
people but also acting towards them in representing a universally shared set of
particular ways. beliefs: alternatively they are viewed as
means by which one group characterizes and
acts towards another group with adverse
Distinctive Features consequences for the latter. This formulation
links the process of stereotyping to the
As a theoretical concept stereotyping has a exercise of power.
disciplinary base in both social psychology There are overlaps between the concept
and sociology. Social psychologists focus on `stereotype' and others used within an inter-
stereotyping as part of unconscious and actionist perspective such as `label', `symbolic
conscious thought processes and explore its representation' and `folk devil'. The notion of
link with perception (how individuals give folk devil was central to Cohen's (1973)
292 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS
Evaluation
De®nition
Despite these advantages, structured inter-
Research interviews in which questions are views can have weaknesses. For example, they
asked in accordance with precisely de®ned can be too shallow, especially where the
instructions and the answers are recorded in researcher is seeking to examine the variety
pre-determined categories. Such interviews and depth of meanings or attitudes which
are usually facilitated by a formal interview respondents hold. For this reason some argue
schedule for the collection and analysis of that structured interviews are only appropri-
data. Structured interviews are in contrast to ate to the collection of responses on factual
other forms of interviewing which give much matters. A further problem is that structured
greater freedom to the respondent to answer interviews can result in data degradation, that
in his or her own terms, such as life histories, is, the irretrievable loss of data as a result of
oral histories and conversational analysis. reducing the breadth of responses to a few
categories. What is more, the imposition of
structure may produce distortion of the ways
Distinctive Features in which respondents would want to respond,
for example because the range of categories
Structured interviews are used to collect offered is inappropriate or not suf®ciently
observations from respondents in ± usually exhaustive. One way of trying to overcome
large-scale ± social surveys. The same ques- this is by exploratory in-depth research, for
tions are asked of every respondent, in the example by using in-depth interviews or focus
same way. The range of answers is usually groups to uncover a range of issues and of
pre-set and may even be pre-coded. The responses that are valid in so far as they are
interviewer should be able to categorize the grounded in the frames of reference of the
responses to any questions into a set of subjects themselves rather than those of the
mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories. researchers. Such exploratory research with
As far as possible, the context in which the small, but representative groups can provide a
interview is carried out, and the procedures basis for the design of valid and meaningful
which are followed, should be standardized. questions for use in structured interviews with
In some cases the role of the interviewer is large samples. Even after this has been done,
reduced to a minimum by respondents inter- structured questionnaires or interview sche-
acting with a laptop computer. An example of dules should be `tested' for their appropriate-
a structured interview is a battery of questions ness in pilot surveys.
that collectively measure or `scale' the atti-
tudes of respondents, such as attitudes Victor Jupp
296 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
offending rates were taken as given. Subse- along racial lines, with a strong sense of local
quent studies, based in particular on self- territory, mutual obligations and, latterly,
reports, found that most people, irrespective direct involvement in extortion, traf®cking
of gender and class position, commit acts for and the drugs trade. However, in the British
which they could be adjudicated criminal or version of subcultural theory, criminal activity
delinquent. In ignoring both the ubiquity of is not a key concern. Rather it is argued that
crime, and its white collar variants, it conveys leisure and delinquency combine to provide
the impression that lawlessness is exclusively the conditions in which aspects of subcultural
a lower-class and male phenomenon. The behaviour can become criminalized. Indeed, in
degree to which behaviour is determined by Britain, Downes's study was in¯uential in
structure and class position and the sharp various respects. Not only did it shift the
separation of delinquent and non-delinquent debate away from discourses of crime and
values on which these studies were based has delinquency and towards discourses of leisure
also been heavily criticized. and entertainment as a means of securing
For example David Matza's (1964) research `cultural space', but it also recognized how
found that individual members of a gang were subcultural experiences and opportunities
only partially committed to subcultural were structured by class-based material and
norms. Rather than forming a subculture that economic conditions.
stands in antithesis to the dominant order, he These twin concerns were elaborated by
argued that the delinquent drifts in and out of various subcultural studies published by `the
deviant activity. This is made possible because Birmingham School' at the Centre for Con-
there is no consensus in society ± no set of temporary Cultural Studies in the UK during
basic and core values ± but rather a plurality the 1970s. On the one hand, the meaning of
in which the conventional and the delinquent subcultural style was examined through
continually overlap and interrelate. Instead of various ethnographic and semiological ana-
delinquent acts being conceived as a direct lyses; on the other, the political implications of
expression of delinquent norms and thus deviancy were explored through investiga-
system-determined, Matza was more con- tions of the structural and class position of
cerned to illustrate how their diversity was various subcultures and their propensity to
dependent on particular individuals and create `moral panics' (Hall and Jefferson,
situations. He insisted that pluralism rather 1976). By drawing on the work of the Marxist
than consensus and interaction rather than author Gramsci, subcultures were located not
determinism provided more adequate means just in relation to their parent cultures, but in
of studying deviant behaviour. relation to structures of class con¯ict. The
Downes's (1966) research in Britain also British working class, it was argued, has
found little evidence of Cohen's `status developed its own historical cultures and the
frustration' among the working-class boys of relations between these and the dominant
East London, either in school or work. Rather culture are always negotiable. Working-class
they dissociated themselves from the labour culture is always in a position to win `space',
market and de¯ected their interests, achieve- for the hegemony of the dominant culture is
ments and aspirations into leisure pursuits. As never completed. It is always in the process of
such, leisure, rather than delinquency, pro- being contested and fought for. Subcultures
vided working-class youths with a collective contest this space through their `focal con-
solution to their problems. The connection cerns' and in the moments of originality
between leisure and delinquency only created by the formation of deviant subcul-
becomes apparent if leisure aspirations also tural styles. Above all, subcultures were
remain unful®lled. Some working-class youths viewed as symbolic representations of social
reached a `delinquent solution' by `pushing contradictions and as offering a symbolic
the legitimate values of teenage culture to their critique of the established order: they were
logical conclusion' (Downes, 1966, p. 134). viewed as oppositional rather than simply
Neither did this research ®nd any evidence of deviant formations.
structured gangs in Britain. Whilst de®nitions
of the `gang' are often loose and variable, the John Muncie
term implies some form of identi®able leader-
ship, membership criteria and organizational
structure. Contemporary and classic subcul- Associated Concepts: anomie, delinquency,
tural studies of white, black, Chinese and differential association, neutralization (tech-
Puerto Rican gangs in America paint a picture niques of ), new deviancy theory, status
of neighbourhood groups, organized largely frustration, strain theory
298 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
to information and data, the disciplinary tested and contingent and may enable as well
surveillance of the Panopticon identi®ed by as constrain. Lyon (1994), for example,
Bentham and Foucault is increasingly being considers that modern surveillance brings
dispersed beyond architectural boundaries real bene®ts as well as real harms. By linking
and walls. Observation is no longer limited the expansion of surveillance to a simulta-
to what the eye can see. As Gandy (1993, p. neous growth in citizenship, he argues that it
15) argued, this is not just a vision of the is the very improvements in civic and political
future. Rather the `panoptic sort' has been entitlement which have generated demand for
institutionalized: `It is standard operating a greater documentary identi®cation, which in
procedure. It is expected. It has its place. Its turn depends on a growing sophistication in
operation is required by law. And where it is methods of recording and surveillance. As a
not, people call out for its installation. Its result he identi®es no single omnipotent Big
work is never done. Each use generates new Brother, but a variety of dispersed `little
uses. Each application justi®es another.' It has brothers'. Panoptic power is partial, contin-
become a system of power on which the gent and unevenly developed. The sheer
survival of corporate capital exists. It end- volume of new data becoming available is
lessly seeks for the norm and disregards always likely to create contradictory and
those who are classi®ed as `abnormal'. It contingent simulations of people and places.
selectively allocates privilege on the basis of Its meaning becomes ever less veri®able and
information stored, perpetuating inequality forever open to contestation.
and a mistrust which leads to further sur- These macro political economic visions also
veillance: `each cycle pushes us further from need to be balanced with ®ner-grained
the democratic ideal' (Gandy, 1993, p. 230). analyses of how surveillance impacts differ-
A similar vision is offered by Bogard's ently on different populations, at different
(1996) notion of a `telematic society'. For times and in different places. Selective sur-
Bogard the surveillance capacities of late veillance has clearly played a role in further-
modern societies are characterized by: ing processes of spatial segregation and social
polarization. There are obviously different
· The application of military initiated simu- risks involved in the entrenchment of `suspect
lation technologies and command and populations' in outcast under-protected ghet-
control communications. tos and of `innocent populations' in over-
· The comodi®cation of spaces of cities and protected consumerist citadels and residential
spaces of information. enclaves. A measured response to modern
· Globalization, whereby corporate state regulation and surveillance probably requires
interests depend on global words of neither outright acceptance nor paranoia.
digitally interconnected control systems. Subtle distinctions need to be made to unravel
the complexities involved in addressing
Surveillance and simulation have become whether the future holds a nightmare vision
increasingly interwoven. Telematic technolo- of zones of exclusion and zones of safety or
gies, such as virtual reality and image data- whether surveillance can allow us to re-
bases, continually produce electronic data imagine the urban as rejuvenated, repopulated
which is then taken to be `reality' by dominant and more secure.
institutions. The key to understanding modern
social control, Bogard argues, lies not simply John Muncie
in the extension of surveillance but in the
generation of simulated notions of order/
disorder. Social relations are reduced to a Associated Concepts: defensible space, govern-
`space between keyboard and the screen'. mentality, panopticism, risk, situational crime
People are known and situated only as they prevention, social control
are reproduced in the hyper-real space
generated by electronic data banks, electronic
communities or genetic algorithms. It is Key Readings
surveillance without limits. Bogard, W. (1996) The Simulation of Surveillance:
These visions of a dystopian future (and Control in Telematic Societies. Cambridge, Cam-
present) rely on a reading of Foucault which bridge University Press.
promises the `disciplinary society'. But Fou- Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish. London,
cault's work can also be read as allowing for Allen Lane.
resistance. Strategies of power and knowledge Gandy, O. (1993) The Panoptic Sort. Boulder, CO,
are never pre-determined but always con- Westview Press.
300 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
of missing persons, and black notices concern agency was ®rst put under way in January
the ®nding of unidenti®ed bodies. Addition- 1994, with a brief to support member states of
ally, there is circulation of information about the European Union in drug-related law
stolen goods and noti®cations regarding the enforcement, including money laundering. In
modus operandi of criminals and criminal July 1999 Europol took up its activities under
groups. Interpol has developed databanks the Europol Convention with speci®c compe-
relating to drugs importation and manufac- tence over a range of criminal activities. These
ture and has developed systems of crime include: illegal immigration and `human
analysis to mine this data, which signal the smuggling' ± especial mention is made of
priorities for international law enforcement. child pornography and the sex industry in this
The organization also holds conferences on a regard ± traf®cking in stolen vehicles and
range of matters such as counterfeiting, fraud, nuclear materials, the counterfeiting of cur-
drug smuggling and money laundering. It is rency ± especially the new Euro ± money
thus through the circulation of information, laundering and terrorism. Like Interpol,
and by shaping the interpretation of that Europol of®cers have no powers of arrest,
information, that Interpol in¯uences the but instead depend on domestic police acting
nature of transnational policing. within their respective national jurisdictions to
At ®rst sight it seems that this organization undertake this aspect of police operations. The
would be the obvious choice to develop as the difference between Europol and Interpol is not
institution for coordinating transnational poli- so much in the way that the agencies are
cing in Europe as well as more globally. It organized (both are essentially institutions
provides an established international infra- that process knowledge about criminals and
structure and communication network and criminal activity), but rather in their legal
has an accumulation of relevant expertise. Yet constitution. Europol has recognition under
it has been displaced as the transnational the Treaty of European Union. Further, under
policing institution in Europe by the develop- the terms of the Europol Convention, the
ment of Europol. One reason for this is the Council of Ministers is accorded executive, but
uncertainties caused by the unusual legal not legislative, authority while two other
position of the organization. Importantly, institutions, the European Commission and
Interpol was not established by any interna- the European Parliament, are also accorded
tional treaty but rather was developed by formal, although limited, oversight. While
police agencies themselves. At present there is mechanisms of accountability for Europol
no method of making Interpol democratically can be characterized as meagre (Anderson et
accountable, the organization publishes no al., 1995, p. 253), there is not the degree of
®nancial records (despite, ultimately, being ambiguity that surrounds Interpol.
funded by taxpayers' money), and there is The role of the `liaison of®cer', an of®cer
only limited provision in respect of data seconded to another force in something akin to
protection (despite the organization's accu- a `diplomatic capacity', has been developed
mulation of large amounts of data). There are internationally since the 1970s. These of®cers
also lingering doubts about the organization's also facilitate the smooth transnational ¯ow of
ef®ciency and concerns about its lack of police information, but, in comparison with
security. the Europol and Interpol frameworks, this
The idea of Europol was ®rst put forward information exchange is much less formal and,
by Helmut Kohl in 1991. Then Chancellor of hence, it is much less visible. The development
West Germany, Kohl envisaged an agency of training schools and the exporting of
akin to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in policing expertise should also be considered
the USA. However, while the FBI could be a transnational activity, but very little sys-
fostered in the context of the US federal tematic attention has been given to these
system (in order to overcome the logistical programmes to date. Increasing attention is
problems of policing inter-state crimes), in the being paid to the transnational activities of
European context the lack of harmony private security providers.
between national criminal justice systems
and the concurrent effects of the doctrine of
sovereignty have, thus far, limited the devel- Evaluation
opment of the new institution. The conse-
quence is that Europol has evolved to be Overall, outside of academic circles debates
primarily concerned with the acquisition, about the accountability of transnational
analysis and dissemination of criminal intelli- policing enterprises have been muted. While
gence pertaining to transnational crimes. The academic criminology has maintained an
308 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
interest in comparative police systems for navigation and with surveying, whereby one
many years, the study of transnational police `®xes' a position in relation to two or more
activity is quite new. As such, evaluation landmarks or objects. The rationale is that the
studies have not yet produced a measure of position will be more accurate and precise
ef®cacy or effectiveness and the doubts that than it would be if located in relation to only
have been raised about the accountability of one landmark or object. When transferred to
the transnational police enterprise have yet to the context of social research, the argument is
be comprehensively articulated. that if the same conclusions can be reached by
using different methods of research there can
James Sheptycki be a stronger belief in the validity of these
conclusions than if they were founded on the
Associated Concepts: extraterritorial law enfor- use of only one method. There is, therefore, a
cement, transnational organized crime strong link between triangulation and validity,
which is the extent to which conclusions are
Key Readings believed to be plausible and credible. At the
Anderson, M., de Boer, M., Cullen, P., Gilmore, heart of this argument is the viewpoint that
W.C., Raab, C. and Walker, N. (1995) Policing the different methods of research have different
European Union. Oxford, The Clarendon Press. strengths and weaknesses and that triangula-
Sheptycki, J.W.E. (1995) `Transnational policing and tion ± in theory at least ± can serve to `trade-
the makings of a postmodern state', British Journal off' the weaknesses of one method against the
of Criminology, 35 (4), pp. 613±35. strengths of another. In this way the conver-
Sheptycki, J.W.E. (1997) `Transnationalism, crime gence of methods or of data produces `value-
control and the European state system: a review added' in terms of validity.
of the scholarly literature', International Criminal There is a much less bold and precise claim
Justice Review, 7, pp. 130±40. for triangulation, namely that the use of
Sheptycki, J.W.E. (1998) `The global cops cometh', different methods can assist in examining
British Journal of Sociology, 49 (1), pp. 57±74. different aspects or dimensions of the same
Sheptycki, J.W.E. (1998) `Policing, postmodernism problem. For example, victim surveys which
and transnationalization', British Journal of Crimi- use structured questionnaires are able to
nology, 38 (3), pp. 485±503. measure the extent of victimization in a
community but they would need to be
supplemented with in-depth semi-structured
interviews with individuals (such as narrative
interviews) in order to gain some appreciative
TREATMENT MODEL understanding of the experience of victimiza-
tion for those individuals. Similarly, quasi-
See Rehabilitation experimental methods can be used to assess
the ef®ciency of criminal justice policies but
would need to be combined with qualitative
methods such as observation or interviews to
understand the social processes by which
TRIANGULATION policies do or do not work.
It is common to distinguish different types
De®nition of triangulation. Data triangulation refers to
the collection of different types of data on the
The use of different methods of research, same topic, for example statistical indicators of
sources of data or types of data to address the fear of crime complemented with appreciative,
same research question. qualitative accounts collected from indivi-
duals. These different types of data may be
collected at different phases in the ®eldwork,
Distinctive Features for instance, qualitative data collected in focus
groups or by in-depth interviews may be used
The term triangulation was ®rst propounded to uncover the dimensions of the concept `fear
in the context of social research by Campbell of crime' (such as psychological dimensions
and Fiske in 1959 but became much more and social dimensions or fear of different
widely known after the publication in 1966 of types of crime such as personal crimes and
Unobtrusive Measures: Non-reactive Research in property crimes). This is known as the process
the Social Sciences by Eugene Webb and others. of elaborating a concept into dimensions. Such
The concept emanates from an analogy with qualitative work can act as a precursor to the
TRIANGULATION 309
restore lawfulness and take criminal young Associated Concepts: `broken windows', demo-
males off the streets. As far as he is concerned, nization, neo-conservative criminology, racia-
crime levels are low when criminals realize lization, social exclusion
that crime does not pay.
Key Readings
Levitas, R. (1998) The Inclusive Society? Social
Evaluation Exclusion and New Labour. London, Macmillan.
Murray, C. (1989) `Underclass; a disaster in the
Murray has been heavily criticized for indivi- making', Sunday Times, 26 November, pp. 26±45.
dualizing and racializing the problem of Murray, C. (1994) `Underclass: the crisis deepens',
poverty, pathologizing the poor, absolving Sunday Times, 22 May, pp. 10±11.
the state of welfare responsibilities and Murray, C. (ed.) (1997) Does Prison Work? London,
demonizing young single mothers. However, Institute of Economic Affairs.
despite the intensity of the criticism, it is Murray, C. (2000) The British underclass', Sunday
important to note that many of his core ideas Times, 13 February, News Review section, pp. 1±2.
have found `softer' moral expression in
Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society. London, Sage.
`workfare' policies in the USA and `social
exclusion' policies in the UK. They also
continue to echo in the UK in New Labour's
highly moralistic `tough on crime' discourses
on anti-social behaviour, incivility and public UTILITARIANISM
disorder.
Eugene McLaughlin See Classicism; Deterrence; Rational choice
V
President Johnson's war against crime as institutional arrangements for dealing with
expressed in the Commission on Law Enforce- crime and with victims in particular.
ment and Administration of Justice, estab-
lished in 1965. There was recognition of the
need to supplement of®cial crime statistics Evaluation
with data collected at ®rst hand from victims.
After a number of pilot studies, the National Victim surveys have played an important role
Crime Survey was carried out in 1972. It in criminology and in policy-making espe-
comprised three parts: commercial surveys, cially, in providing better estimates of the
city surveys and a large-scale National Crime extent of crime than those provided by of®cial
Panel survey. This last is the only remaining criminal statistics and by giving insights into
part of the US National Crime Survey. victims' experiences of crime and of the
In the UK national trend studies are typi®ed criminal justice system. However, they do
by the British Crime Survey (BCS), sponsored have de®ciencies, for example in not being
by the Home Of®ce. The BCS is an example of able to provide estimates of `victimless' crimes
what is known as administrative criminology such as drug-taking, in not addressing crimes
because of its close association with govern- affecting large populations, such as mass
ment and with of®cial policy-making. The ®rst pollution, and in not providing measures of
survey was conducted in 1982 and subsequent crimes, for example fraud, of which indivi-
surveys have been carried out at regular duals are not aware.
intervals. Different independent samples are
selected at each sweep and therefore a panel Victor Jupp
element is missing. For example, in 1994 a
sample for England and Wales of 15,000 adults
Associated Concepts: appreciative criminology,
over 16 years of age was chosen. Respondents
cross-sectional design, hidden crime, left
were interviewed and asked about their
realism, of®cial criminal statistics, self-reports,
experience of crimes committed against them
victimology
as individuals and against their household
since the beginning of the previous year
(Mayhew et al., 1994). The BCS facilitates an Key Readings
examination of trends in the extent of crime, Crawford, A., Jones, T., Woodhouse, T. and Young,
the risk of crime and the fear of crime J. (1990) Second Islington Crime Survey. London,
(Mayhew and Hough, 1991). This examination Centre for Criminology, Middlesex Polytechnic.
is for the country as a whole or for sub- van Dijk, J.J.M., Mayhew, P. and Killias, M. (1990)
categories and local areas. The lack of a panel Experiences of Crime Across the World: Key Findings
element does not permit such analysis for of the 1989 International Crime Survey. Deventer,
particular individuals. A major ¯aw with the Gower.
BCS is that it is believed that it does not Jones, J., Maclean, B. and Young, J. (1986) The
capture suf®ciently the extent of sensitive Islington Crime Survey. Aldershot, Gower.
crimes, especially sexual crimes and domestic Mayhew, P. and Hough, M. (1991) `The British
violence. A Computer Assisted Personal Crime Survey: the ®rst ten years', in G. Kaiser, H.
Interviewing (CAPI) system of self-completion Kury, and H.-J. Albrecht (eds), Victims and
was introduced in 1998 to alleviate this. Criminal Justice. Freiburg, Max-Planck Institute
A fourth type of study is concerned with for Foreign and Penal Law.
cross-national comparisons of rates of victimi- Mayhew, P., Mirrlees-Black, C. and Aye Maung, N.
zation. For example, the International Crime (1994) Trends in Crime: Findings from the 1994
Survey (ICS) is a large-scale survey of British Crime Survey. Home Of®ce Research and
experiences of crime in 17 countries. A Statistics Department, Research Findings No. 14.
standardized interview schedule, translated London, HMSO.
into different languages, is administered to O'Brien, R. (1985) Crime and Victimization Data.
respondents by telephone using a method of London, Sage.
random dialling of private phone numbers
(van Dijk et al., 1990). The survey provides a
valuable source of data in victimization
among different groups and areas within VICTIMIZATION
countries and between countries. It does not,
however, consider the experiences of victims
in relation to the economic and social See Victimology; Repeat victimization; Victim
conditions of each country nor to the varying surveys; Victimless crime; Violence
314 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
more concerned with `victim culpability', that emphasis on passivity and powerlessness and
is, the extent to which the victim could be held prefer instead to focus on ways in which
responsible for the events that had occurred. women actively resist the oppression of their
This latter concept has been particularly personal and structural locations. However,
in¯uential in articulating one way of under- whilst these terms are presented as opposi-
standing the process of victimization: the tional, in experiential terms such oppositions
notion of victim precipitation. The use of this are much more dif®cult to identify. It is
concept as a way of explaining cases of rape possible to think in terms of both active and
led those associated with the feminist move- passive victims and active and passive survi-
ment to see victimology as shorthand for vors in relation to experience. This is more than
victim blaming. an argument of semantics. Understanding
Later victimologists looked to less indivi- victimization as a process in which individuals
dual and more structural understandings of express different feelings at different points
the process of victimization by understanding and make choices about what to do or not to do
the impact of patterns of lifestyle on patterns as a consequence, is as important as under-
of criminal victimization ± the lifestyle standing victimization as a structural location.
exposure model (Hindelang et al., 1978). This Both differently inform policy responses and
concept has underpinned much of the thinking the appropriateness of support services.
associated with, and has contributed to the
development of, the criminal victimization Sandra Walklate
survey. Hence the inclusion of questions
concerning routine patterns of behaviour Associated Concepts: family crime, fear of crime,
such as use of public transport or drinking left realism, repeat victimization, victim
habits. This understanding of victimization, surveys, victimless crime, violence
however, whilst structural in its approach,
remained focused on understanding patterns Key Readings
of criminal victimization largely associated Davies, P., Francis, P. and Jupp, V. (2000) Victimiza-
with crime as it is conventionally understood, tion: Theory, Research and Policy. London, Macmil-
that is, street crime and household crime. In lan.
order to incorporate an understanding of other Hentig, H. von (1948) The Criminal and his Victim.
forms of victimization, for example, that which New Haven, CT, Yale University Press.
occurs behind closed doors (child abuse, Hindelang, M.J., Gottfredson, M.R. and Garofalo, J.
domestic violence), Mawby and Walklate (1978) Victims of Personal Crime: An Empirical
(1994) articulate a view of victimization as Foundation for a Theory of Personal Victimization.
structural powerlessness. This view of victi- Cambridge, MA, Ballinger.
mization recognizes that the impact of criminal Karmen, A. (1990) Crime Victims: An Introduction to
victimization is mediated and rendered more Victimology. Paci®c Grove, CA, Brooks Cole.
complex by factors such as age, sex and race. Mawby, R. and Walklate, S. (1994) Critical Victimol-
ogy. London, Sage.
Mendelsohn, B. (1956) `Une nouvelle brouche de la
Evaluation science bio-psycho-sociale: victimologie', Revue
Internationale de Criminologie et de police technique.
Whilst it can be seen that, at an analytical level, pp. 10±31.
victimization can be understood as an indivi-
dual or a collective attribute of powerlessness,
experientially there are different ways in
which individuals might respond to such
powerlessness. The uneasy relationship that VIGILANTISM
exists between victimology and feminism
See Informal justice
articulates some of the tensions between
analysis and experience. Feminism's prefer-
ence for the term survivor rather than victim is
not just a matter of semantics; though it is the
case that the genealogy of the term victim VIOLENCE
connotes the sacri®ciant, who was more often
than not female. Indeed when the word is itself De®nition
gendered, as in French, it is denoted as female.
Feminists, recognizing the power of linguistics, Our thinking about what constitutes `violence'
object to the term victim because of its is distorted by the traditional way violence is
316 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
treated as a phenomenon in law and in everyday life. Its use has meaning to victims
criminology. Framed by criminal statute, and to offenders in terms of people's
legal de®nitions of violence emphasize the grounded social knowledge about the way
outcome ± how badly the person was hurt ± the social world `works' to maintain personal
injury, proof of identity of the particular and institutional power. This understanding is
assailant and so forth ± and the intention, mens used by those who threaten and hurt ± either
rea of the violent act. Its impact and the as individuals acting alone, on behalf of a
motivation of the offender are in¯uential in collective group or on behalf of the state.
de®ning its seriousness. When a court of law Violence and its threat can be mobilized on
considers a case of criminal assault, most of us behalf of institutions or the state to keep
assume that these are the most serious forms particular people `in line'. The brutality of a
of violence. However, crime surveys show police of®cer or a prison of®cer, for instance,
quite clearly that most violence is kept away has additional impact on people's lives
from the purview of the criminal justice because the individual meting out violence is
system. Research shows that individuals authorized to do so. Even if unauthorized, it is
largely manage the violence of others without up to the victim of the violence to demonstrate
the aid of so-called expert systems, such as the that such brutality was `outside' the of®cial
criminal justice system. Those who are its remit of the person who committed the act on
victims are most likely to seek advice from behalf of the state. Victims of violence also
family and friends ®rst when searching for understand that its use is woven into the basic
ways of minimizing the impact of violence. fabric of social relations. Depending on the
Feminist researchers, and those studying other circumstances (or lack) of intervention,
forms of hatred such as racist or sexualized together with the meanings individuals give
hatreds, also consistently demonstrate that to such threats and acts, violence may be
many very serious acts of violence fail to be treated as acceptable, unacceptable, lawful or
reported to the police. unlawful.
Perhaps a more adequate description of
violence would include the following. It
Distinctive Features involves any form of behaviour by an indi-
vidual that intentionally threatens or does
Violence is `rarely' random or without a cause physical, sexual or psychological harm
purposeful target (Stanko, 1998). Violence to others or to her/himself. It is not a
typically (although not exclusively) takes phenomenon framed only through/by crim-
place between those who are familiar with inal statute. It is framed through and by the
each other. Harris and Grace's (1999) report on perceptions of and actions of those directly
rape found that so-called stranger rapes only involved as well (Cretney and Davis, 1995). It
constituted 12 per cent of rape complaints in is then re-framed through and by institution-
the 1990s, as opposed to 30 per cent in 1985. ally based decision-makers, witnesses and
Whether the very low conviction rate (only 6 commentators (Harris and Grace, 1999;
per cent in the 1990s) for rape in the criminal Hoyle, 1999; Stanko, 1985). How authorities
justice system in England and Wales is linked and individuals label acts as violence and
to judges' and juries' dif®culty in under- assess its impact depends on the situational
standing sexual violence between those who contexts within which violence occurs. The
are known to each other is dif®cult to say. institutional circumstances, which intersect
However, this study leads one to ask how both, affect this process of labelling acts `as
familiarity and sexual violence might pose violence'. How the parties involved and
dif®culties to criminal justice decision-makers institutional decision-makers make judge-
who might link rape to the actions of strangers. ments about violence has consequences. As
Thus, even if violent acts are reported to the Stanko (1990) argued, many of our experiences
police, considerations other than the serious- of threat and physical harm are considered
ness of the act may also in¯uence whether law ordinary and routine parts of everyday life.
mediates an act of violence. The way in which people de®ne violence
The complexities of the way violence dove- and institutional responses to it remains
tails with social relations continue to show us highly contested ground. Work on bullying,
that the criminal law is a blunt instrument sexual harassment, racist abuse and so forth
when it comes to intervening into violence and speci®es a whole range of interactions and
threat. In order to think about minimizing its actions, implicit and explicit verbal abuse that
impact, violence must ®rst be understood as people interpret as threatening and hurtful.
part of the wider social foundations of The wide range of types of threatening
317
behaviour may include name calling, stalking, vein, the debate about bullying at school is
vandalism and other forms of intrusive presented as a problem of the working
behaviour that make people feel uncomforta- conditions for teaching staff as well as for
ble and unsafe, that is, feeling under intimida- the education of students. Alongside this
tion of violence. Such a continuum of harm not impediment to learning that bullying poses
only contains elements of physical, sexual and are the detrimental consequences of such
psychological damage. People's wider social intimidation to the health and development
contexts exacerbate or minimize the psycho- of children. But what is important here is how
logical and social consequences of violence. many forms of violence that were once treated
Such differential damage is evidence that as part and parcel of everyday life are now
individual violent behaviour has varying elevated to social problems. The harassment of
impacts on people. People's vulnerability to women, for instance, was considered a routine
violence and its effects are rooted in indivi- part of being female. However, when it was
dual and social resources. For instance, sexual problematized as a condition of being female,
abuse and threat, by all research ®ndings, the consequences of such harassment for
impact women's lives more than men's lives. women's feelings of safety become the
The consistent evidence of higher levels of evidence of gender discrimination.
sexual harassment, abuse and threat women
experience, feminists argue, underpin gen-
dered discrimination. Similarly, higher levels Evaluation
of racist abuse reported by minority groups
demonstrate the way in which inequalities What continues to hamper our understanding
founded in the hierarchies of `raced' social about violence is the persistence of a frame-
privilege impinge on many people's everyday work that has long outlived its usefulness, but
lives. Such abuse based on and in racialized not its popularity. Violent offenders are still
knowledge of the way threats intimidate imagined as people `out-of-control', psycholo-
different people who have differential social gically disturbed, distant and different from
capital (so to speak), holds a unique but often the rest of us law-abiding folk. An emphasis is
hidden place in the way people understand placed on people's psychological motivation
their social worlds. This is one way to link for committing acts of violence. The result of
violence to other structures of social exclusion. looking to biology or psychology to explain
One interesting observation from research on any violent act overlooks many common
violence is that actual physical harm is not features of violence. Because most violent
necessary to demand and to receive compli- acts are committed by men against other men,
ance from people. Threats `work' because such violence is explained as part of men's
people do not wish to experience physical nature. When violence occurs between women
harm. Debate about how social differences are and men, this violence is assumed to ¯ow
maintained through violence and intimidation from men's right to control women. And when
can be found in the scholarly discussions of women commit violence, they are often
gender, race, age, religious and ethnic social treated as if they have stepped beyond the
exclusion, poverty and social assistance, respectable boundaries of non-violent femi-
employment discrimination, homelessness ninity. The common explanations about
and so forth. These are often linked to the violence dominate popular culture and
naming of violence and fear of violence as a media representation.
serious problem for many categories of people The use of violence, how victims, offenders
simply because of who they are. and institutions de®ne it, and its public
In this way, debates about forms of violence imagery show the complex set of social
often challenge institutions to recognize their relations embedded in hierarchies of the
role in the perpetuation of violence and how it distribution of power in society. Its impact is
creates and maintains social disadvantage not only limited to the personal consequences
in contemporary society. To a large extent, for individuals linked to their own health and
violence as a phenomenon has been made well-being. Its impacts are ®rmly rooted in
more visible through these challenges to insti- social structures and social privileges of
tutional practices. For example, the debate individuals and social groups. Those who
about the high levels of violence met by assess the impact of violence on behalf of
Health Service staff is as much about the institutions and in particular on behalf of the
potential for experiencing physical harm as it criminal justice apparatus display their knowl-
is about being expected to work under edge of such social relations when deciding
conditions that are dangerous. In a similar when, how and why intervening in violence is
318 THE SAGE DICTIONARY OF CRIMINOLOGY
important for the health and well-being of the Investigating and Prosecuting Rape in the 1990s.
nation as a whole. Home Of®ce Research Study No. 196. London,
HMSO.
Elizabeth Stanko Hoyle, C. (1999) Negotiating Domestic Violence.
Oxford, The Clarendon Press.
Associated Concepts: crime, family crime, hate Stanko, E.A. (1985) Intimate Intrusions. London,
crime, hegemonic masculinity, masculinities, Routledge.
personal safety, social harm, victimization Stanko, E.A. (1990) Everyday Violence. London,
Pandora.
Key Readings Stanko, E.A. (1998) Taking Stock: What Do We Know
Cretney, A. and Davis, G. (1995) Criminalizing about Violence in the UK? ESRC Violence Research
Assault. London, Routledge. Programme, Royal Holloway, University of
Harris, J. and Grace, S. (1999) A Question of Evidence: London, Egham, Surrey, TW20 OEX.
W
relatively high levels of trust, and made of Sutherland's work, focusing ®rst on
possible by their legitimate employment. Sutherland's sociological de®nition of crime,
Such crimes typically include fraud, embez- and seeking to provide a `rigorous' (legalistic)
zlement, tax violations and other accounting de®nition, organizing this around intention,
offences, and various forms of workplace theft the criminal law and successful prosecution
and ®ddling in which the organization, its following due process. In Tappan's view, it is
customers or other organizations are the illegitimate to describe people as criminal
victims. when they have not been successfully prose-
cuted for a crime; this is to engage in
normative reasoning, or moralizing. Ironically,
Tappan went on to argue that much of what
Distinctive Features Sutherland wants to label crime constitutes
`normal business practice', and in so doing
In developing the concept of `white collar argues that those offences typically committed
crime' ± `a crime committed by a person of by business people are inherently different
respectability and high social status in the from criminal offences, a view held by many
course of his [sic] occupation' (Sutherland, academics who comment upon white collar
1945, 1949) ± Sutherland challenged the and corporate crime (Pearce and Tombs, 1998).
stereotypical view of the criminal as typically
of lower class, arguing that the powerful
routinely commit crimes. Some individual
white collar offenders avoid criminal prosecu- Evaluation
tion because of the class bias of the courts, but
more generally they are aided by the power of These ± and other ± aspects of the dispute
their class to in¯uence the implementation between Sutherland and Tappan have
and administration of the law. Thus the crimes endured and remain pertinent for contempor-
of the upper and lower classes differ mainly in ary attempts to de®ne and understand white
the implementation of the criminal laws that collar crime. These disputes entail disagree-
apply to them. Given that `upper-class' ments about values, politics, theory, episte-
criminals often operate undetected, that if mology and methodology.
detected they may not be prosecuted, and that Amongst recent debates around white collar
if prosecuted they may not be convicted, crime, perhaps the most signi®cant has been
Sutherland argued that the criminally con- that which distinguishes between occupa-
victed are far from the closest approximation tional and organizational crimes. Thus, one
to the population of violators. view is that the term white collar crime should
Sutherland produced a more encompassing be restricted to the study of crimes by the
and abstract version of `crime', de®ned individually rich or powerful which are
through the `legal description of an act as committed in the furtherance of their own
socially injurious and legal provision of a interests, often against corporations or orga-
penalty for the act' (1949, p. 46). While nizations with, for or within which they are
retaining reference to law, he seeks to working. These occur when individuals or
encompass acts beyond those proscribed by groups of individuals make illegal use of their
criminal law; the content of laws and the occupational position for personal advantage
nature of legal distinctions are social products, and victimize consumers or their own
and `crimes' are illegalities which are contin- organization, for example, either directly
gently differentiated from other illegalities by through theft or indirectly by damaging its
virtue of the speci®c administrative proce- reputation. Such acts or omissions are distinct
dures to which they are subject. Sutherland's from organizational illegalities or corporate
arguments regarding the nature and signi®- crimes, designed to further organizational
cance of `white collar' crime were part of a ends.
much broader theoretical project which sought This indicates that opportunity structures
to rede®ne the scope and substance of are important in understanding the incidence
criminology, organized around the explana- of white collar crime. Some criminologists
tory concept of differential association, have begun to shift from a focus upon the
through which he sought (highly imperfectly) status of the offender to the nature of the
to provide an explanation for lower-class and crime; Shapiro (1990), for example, focuses
upper-class crime. upon the (differential) levels of opportunity
In his article `Who is the criminal?' (1947), and temptation to commit crime in different
Paul Tappan developed a systematic criticism social situations, her central concern being the
WHITE COLLAR CRIME 321
way that trust is differentially distributed the arti®ciality of all de®nitions of crime'
throughout occupational hierarchies. (Nelken, 1994, p. 84).
For others, white collar crime is an illusory
concept. Thus, for example, Hirschi and Steve Tombs and Dave Whyte
Gottfredson have argued that as with conven-
tional crime, the white collar offender seeks
personal bene®t (short-term grati®cation), and Associated Concepts: anomie, crime, corporate
that the setting of the offence or the status of crime, criminalization, critical criminology,
the offender is simply not relevant to the cause deviance, differential association, governmen-
of crime and criminality. tality, social control theory, social harm
White collar crime, then, is certainly a
contested concept. In that the term empha- Key Readings
sizes the social characteristics of individual Friedrichs, D. (1996) Trusted Criminals. White Collar
offenders, it invariably leads us into inade- Crime in Contemporary Society. Belmont, CA,
quate attempts to characterize certain forms Wadsworth.
of criminality in terms of respectability, Nelken, D. (1994) `White collar crime', in D. Nelken
status, trust, and so on. Moreover, it sub- (ed.), White Collar Crime. Aldershot, Dartmouth.
sumes within one category what are a Pearce, F. and Tombs, S. (1998) Toxic Capitalism.
heterogeneous group of phenomena with Aldershot, Dartmouth.
different rationales, methods, effects, like- Shapiro, S. (1990) `Collaring the crime, not the
lihood of detection, and so on. Indeed, while criminal: reconsidering the concept of white collar
Sutherland `named' white collar crime, his crime', American Sociological Review, 55, pp. 346±
own, fundamental concern was with what is 65.
now commonly known as corporate crime. Sutherland, E.H. (1945) `Is ``white collar crime''
The value of retaining a focus on white collar crime?' American Sociological Review, 10, pp. 32±9.
crime is perhaps that this topic `illustrates Sutherland, E.H. (1949) White Collar Crime. The Uncut
the possibility of divergence between legal, Version. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press.
social and political de®nitions of criminality Tappan, P. (1947) `Who is the criminal?', American
[and] . . . in so doing it reminds us of Sociological Review, 12, pp. 96±102.
Z
± particularly the murder rate ± across New cops off the leash' had given licence to certain
York boroughs and reclaiming the main of®cers to over-ride civil liberties and human
thoroughfares and parks of `Gotham City' rights. In the aftermath of these cases, William
from the criminal and disorderly elements. A Bratton and senior police of®cers in other
central attraction for police chiefs in various countries who were converts to his aggressive
parts of the world was that zero tolerance policing philosophy became considerably
policing provided badly needed proof that more cautious in their use of the term `zero
order maintenance policing was central to tolerance policing', preferring to emphasize
effective crime control and to garnering the value of community and problem oriented
support amongst both the general public and policing strategies and policing by consent.
rank and ®le of®cers. However, critics of zero
tolerance policing insisted that as a result of Eugene McLaughlin
the relentless PR activities of Bratton and
Giuliani zero tolerance policing had been Associated Concepts: `broken windows', com-
given more credit than it deserved for munity policing, problem oriented policing
reductions in serious crime. There is evidence
that the crime rate was falling in New York Key Readings
before zero tolerance policing was introduced Bratton, W.J. and Dennis, N. (eds) (1997) Zero
and that the downward trend in the murder Tolerance: Policing a Free Society. London, IEA
rate across the USA was related to the waning Publications.
of the crack epidemic of the early 1990s and Bratton, W.J. and Knoblach, P. (1998) Turnaround:
broader demographic shifts. There was also How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime
mounting evidence that the strategy was: Epidemic. New York, Random Books.
promoting an aggressive attitude amongst Chua-Eoan, H. (2000) `Black and blue: cops, brutal-
police of®cers; encouraging discriminatory ity and race', Time, 6 March, pp. 24±8.
and insensitive policing; resulting in the Human Rights Watch (1998) Shielded from Justice:
harassment and criminalization of powerless Police Brutality and Accountability in the United
groups who were already disproportionately States. New York, Human Rights Watch.
represented in the criminal justice system; and Kelling, G. and Coles, C. (1996) Fixing Broken
en¯aming racial divisions. The zero tolerance Windows. New York, The Free Press.
policing philosophy came into disrepute as a Silverman, E.B. (1999) NYPD Battles Crime. Boston,
result of a sharp rise in complaints and public MA, Northeastern University Press.
protests about the torture of Abner Louima, a
Haitian security guard, by of®cers from the
70th precinct in Brooklyn in August 1997 and
the murder of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed
ZONAL THEORY
West African street vendor, in February 1999
by the NYPD's renowned Street Crimes Unit.
The police brutality associated with these See Chicago School of Sociology; Social
incidents provided evidence that `letting the ecology
SUBJECT INDEX
justice see actuarialism; crime control model; moral economy, 174±5, 223
criminal justice; due process model; informal moral panic, 76, 91, 125, 143, 175±7, 282, 292
justice; just deserts; natural justice; popular moral position on crime, 59
justice; restorative justice; social justice motivation, 280
Justice for Women, 233 mugging, 125, 140, 170, 176
multi-agency crime prevention, 63, 177±8
Kerner Commission on Urban Disorders, 68 multiple regression, 180
Khmer Rouge, 132 multivariate analysis, 178±80, 301
knowledge, 216 Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Act (1965),
power-knowledge axis, 71, 73, 148, 191, 219, 269 24
labelling, 13, 68, 88, 100, 110, 124, 125, 155, 159±60, National Deviancy Conference (NDC), 70, 187
188, 232, 262, 287, 291, 293 nationality principle, 115
and decriminalization, 82 natural justice, 158, 181±2
and deviancy ampli®cation, 91, 156 neo-classicism, 212±13
and dispositional theories, 100 neo-colonialism, 70, 71
and essentialism, 109 neo-conservative criminology, 69, 169, 182±4
and left realism, 164 neo-liberalism, 2, 241, 251, 252, 276, 289
and new deviancy theory, 188, 189 neo-Marxism, 161
and social constructionism, 266±7 net widening, 1, 45, 69, 184±5, 251
and social control, 268 neuroticism, 116, 209
and social reaction, 281, 282 neutralization, techniques of, 86, 186, 191
labour, social division of, 10, 11, 173 new criminology, 49, 70, 187±8
learning by association, 47, 209 new deviancy theory, 12, 110, 124, 188±90, 291
left idealism, 8, 69, 161±3 New Labour, 162, 169
left realism, 69, 70, 71, 119, 161, 162, 163±4, 171, 176, new penology, 5
223, 243, 244, 261, 272, 312 New Public Managerialism (NPM), 169
Level of Supervision Inventory-Revised (LSI-R), New Right, 14±15, 161, 162
221±2 newsmaking criminology, 76, 190
liberal feminism, 120, 165±6 non-intervention, radical, 234±5
localized policing, 41±2 normalization, 191±2, 269
logistic regression, 180 Northern Ireland, 108, 140, 162, 211
longitudinal study, 166±7, 283 numbing, psychic, 86
Nuremburg Tribunal, 193, 319
Ma®a, 199
Malicious Trespass Act (1827), 84 obedience, crimes of, 193±4
managerialism, 7, 82, 103, 169±70, 177, 178, 289 objectivity, in feminist research, 122
marginalization see social exclusion of®cial criminal statistics, 194±6
Marxism, 187, 188, 202, 223, 232, 279, 287±8, 289 Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Anti-Terrorism
and class relations, 49, 70, 79, 140, 202 Act (1986), 115
instrumental, 241 opportunity, 265
and left idealism, 161 opportunity reduction, 6±7, 17, 63
and notion of praxis, 220 opportunity theory, 11, 197±8, 253
structural, 218 organized crime, 198±9
Marxist criminologies, 140, 170±2, 188 transnational, 305±6
Marxist feminism, 220
masculinities, 138, 172±4, 261 panel studies, 166, 167
masculinity, 121, 172±3, 227 panopticism, 26, 148, 200±1, 219, 298, 299
hegemonic, 2, 138±9, 173, 232 parole, 105
mass media, 76, 91, 124, 125, 175, 176, 177, 292 participant observation, 31, 110, 155, 201±2
and newsmaking criminology, 190 partnership strategies, 42
mediation see reparation; restorative justice passive personality principle, 114
mirror phase, 227 path analysis, 58
modernism, 216, 229 pathology, 12, 202±3, 243, 285
modernist criminology, 138, 153±4 patriarchy, 69, 70, 71, 121, 173, 202, 215, 220, 232±4,
modernity, 10, 11 288
Mods and Rockers, 91, 124, 125, 175, 176, 292 peacemaking criminology, 8, 203±4
moral culture, 183, 184 penal system, 1, 2±3
moral discourse, 2 penality, 204±6
328 SUBJECT INDEX
penology, 5, 205, 206±7 race, 68, 69, 71, 138, 139, 162, 173, 176
personal safety, 208 Race Relations Acts, 98
personality theory, 116, 208±10 racial discrimination, 24±5, 67
piracy, 115 racialization, 231±2
bio-, 172 racism, 4, 5, 61, 71, 136, 317
pleasure, pursuit of see hedonism individual, 151
policing see `broken windows'; community policing; institutional, 71, 151±2
problem oriented policing; self policing; social radical criminologies, 6, 70, 187, 211, 220, 222, 223,
control; surveillance; transnational policing; 227, 232, 236
zero tolerance radical feminism, 208, 215, 229, 232±4
political crime, 211±12 radical non-intervention, 234±5
popular culture, 76 rape, 3, 65, 173, 316
popular justice see informal justice Rape Crisis Federation, 233
population studies, 74±5 rational action, 32
populism, authoritarian, 14±15, 141, 176, 288 rational choice theory, 88, 92, 100, 137, 138, 198,
positivism, 12, 33, 88, 126, 164, 167, 212±13, 232, 256, 235±6, 264
268 realism
and biological criminology, 19, 130, 213 left see left realism
and con¯ict theory, 48 legal, 182
and content analysis, 53, 54 right see administrative criminology; neo-
and dispositional theories, 100 conservative criminology
individual, 149±50, 213 realist criminologies, 236
and interactionism, 155, 156 recidivism, 108, 221, 236±8
redress, 238±9, 245
legal, 182
re¯exivity, 73, 110, 121, 239±40
and social defence theory, 273
regulation see governmentality
sociological, 213, 236, 274, 284±5
regulatory agencies, 240±2
post-colonial criminology, 214
rehabilitation, 64, 146, 157, 227, 237, 242±3, 250
post-colonialism, 215
reintegrative shaming see shaming
postmodern feminism, 215, 217
relative deprivation, 164, 243±4
postmodernism, 60±1, 75, 80, 120, 138, 153±4, 162,
relativism, 182
216±18, 219, 220, 229
reparation, 245±6, 248
post-structuralism, 162, 174, 215, 218±19
repeat victimization, 246±7
power, 219, 267
replacement discourse see constitutive criminology
patriarchal, 69, 70, 71, 121, 173, 202, 215, 220,
restitution see reparation
232±4, 288
restorative justice, 40, 41, 151, 246, 247±9
structures of, 48, 50, 60±1, 71, 73, 95, 139, 156, retribution, 245, 248, 249±50
161±2, 170, 275 right realism see administrative criminology; neo-
power-knowledge axis, 71, 73, 148, 191, 219, 269 conservative criminology
praxis, 219±20, 233 rights, 181±2
prediction studies, 221±2 human, 57, 70, 71±2, 79, 98, 108, 144±5, 181, 186,
prejudice, 97±8 187, 303±4
primary deviation see labelling; social reaction risk, 5±6, 6, 7, 119, 134, 137, 206, 221±2, 250±2
primitive rebellion, 222±3 routine activity theory, 88, 197, 198, 235, 252±3,
private property, 7, 8, 266 264
privatization see managerialism Rwanda, 132, 193
probation, 5±6, 44, 184, 185, 223±4, 227
problem oriented policing, 42, 225±6 safety
proportionality see discrimination; disparity; community, 42±3
disproportionality; due process; just deserts personal, 208
prostitution, 128, 314 Salient Factor Scale, 221
protective principle, 115 sampling, 254±5, 283
psychoanalytic criminology, 226±8, 242 scapegoating, 85, 86, 90, 125, 140, 255±6, 265
psychogenic school, 150 secondary deviation see labelling; social reaction
psychopathology, 116 sectarianism, 136
psychoticism, 116, 209 self-interest, 33
punishment see penality; penology self-policing, 256±7
self-reports, 142, 257±9
queer theory, 229±30 the self, 155
SUBJECT INDEX 329
Gold, R., 201 Hollin, C., 17±18, 46±8, 87, 91±4, 116, 197±8, 208±10,
Goldblatt, P., 237 221±2, 242±3, 279±81
Goldman, E., 7 Hollway, W., 227
Goldstein, A.P., 18 Holsti, O.R., 53
Goldstein, H., 225 Home Of®ce, 19, 237
Goode, E., 85, 176 Honderich, T., 87, 250
Gordon, L., 118 Hood, R., 24, 25, 100±1, 211
Goring, C., 149, 286 Hooton, E., 286
Gottfredson, S., 321 Hope, T., 39, 43
Grace, S., 316 Horkheimer, M., 184
Graham, J., 178 Hotaling, G.T., 117
Gramsci, A., 15, 138, 140±1, 288, 297 Hough, M., 313
Greek, C., 190 Howard, J., 206
Greenberg, D., 65±6, 294 Howard, M., 19
Greenwood, P., 146 Howe, A., 205, 206
Gresswell, D.M., 94 Hoyle, C., 316
Groombridge, N., 191±2, 202±3, 229±30, 260±1 Hudson, B., 66±7, 73, 99, 158, 181±2, 250, 278±9
Guattari, F., 216 Hughes, G., 35±43, 62, 62±3, 110±11, 177±8, 247±9,
Gudjonsson, S.B.G., 209 262±3, 272
Guerry, A.M., 133, 284 Huizinga, D., 154
Hulsman, L., 2, 3, 82
de Haan, W., 2, 3, 82, 238±9, 248 Humphreys, L., 261
Habermas, J., 2, 182, 184 Hutchings, B., 20
Hagan, F.E., 211 Hutter, B., 241
Hagan, J., 61
Haggerty, K., 251, 252 Ignatieff, M., 148, 206
Hale, C., 68 Immerigeon, R., 248
Hall, S., 14±15, 125, 140, 141, 170, 176, 288, 297 Irigaray, L., 215, 216
Hamai, F., 37
Hamai, K., 224 Jacobs, J., 82
Hamilton, C.V., 151±2 Jamieson, R., 86±7, 193±4
Hamilton, V.L., 193 Jefferson, T., 138±41, 172±4, 227, 297
Haraway, D., 215 Jeffery, C.R., 21, 93, 242±3
Harris, J., 316 Jeffery, R., 153
Harrison, M., 175 Jenkins, P., 211
Hart, H.L.A., 126, 182, 277 Jensen, G., 53
Harvey, L., 73 Jessop, B., 289
Hay, D., 288 Jones, J., 312
Hayward, K., 30±2 Jongman, A.J., 145
Healy, M., 229 Jordan, B., 36, 41
Hebdige, D., 75 Jung, C., 116
Hedderman, C., 224 Jupp, V., 12±13, 45±6, 53±4, 74±5, 103±4, 110±11,
Heidensohn, F., 165±6 123±4, 124±5, 141±3, 155±6, 188±90, 239±40,
Henry, S., 30, 50±1, 59±61, 154, 190, 238 254±5, 282±4, 291±2, 295, 301±2, 312±13
Hentig, H. von, 314
Heritage, J., 55 Kambanda, J., 132
Herrnstein, R.J., 20, 21, 127, 154, 286 Kant, I., 249
Hillyard, P., 108±9, 211±12 Katz, J., 26, 137, 138, 186, 261
Hindelang, M.J., 315 Kelling, G., 22±3, 182, 322
Hippocrates, 209 Kelly, L., 5, 121, 233, 234
Hirsch, A. von, 157, 207, 250 Kelman, H.C., 193±4
Hirschi, T., 321 Kendall, P., 123
Hirschi, T., 53, 270±1 Kern, R., 52±3, 270±1
Hobbes, T., 10, 270 Kershaw, C., 238
Hobbs, D., 199 King, R., 231±2
Hobsbawm, E., 143, 222±3 Kirchheimer, O., 148, 205
Hoffman, P.B., 221 Kirchoff, G., 46
Holdaway, S., 201 Kitsuse, J., 159, 282
Holland, J., 121±2 Klein, D., 121
334 NAME INDEX
Klein, M., 102 Marx, K., 10, 68, 126, 170, 171, 220, 240, 288
Klockar, K., 240 Mathiesen, T., 1, 3, 79
Kohl, H., 307 Matza, D., 12, 86, 186, 297
Kretschmer, E., 286 Mauer, M., 147
Krisberg, B., 185 Mawby, R., 46, 315
Kristeva, J., 215, 216, 218 May, C., 107
Kropotkin, P., 7±8 May, T., 37
Mayhew, H., 133, 159
Lacan, J., 216, 217, 218, 227 Mayhew, P., 235, 283, 313
Laclau, E., 15 Mead, G.H., 155, 188, 281
Lanier, M., 61 Mednick, S., 20, 127, 149
Lauritsen, J.L., 246 Meehl, P.E., 221
Lawrence, S., 136, 152 Mendelsohn, B., 314
Lea, J., 163, 171, 223 Merton, R., 10, 11, 123, 128±9, 244, 290, 293
Lee, M., 79±82, 102±3 Messerschmidt, J., 139, 173, 290
Lemert, E., 159, 281±2, 293 Michael, J., 59
Lemkin, R., 131 Mies, M., 5
Lenin, V.I., 140 Milgram, S., 193
Lerman, P., 185 Miliband, R., 288
Leucippus, 87 Mill, J.S., 165
Levi-Strauss, C., 218 Miller, W., 137
Lewin, K., 4 Milovanovic, D., 28±30, 50±1, 60, 154, 216±18,
Lewis, C., 237 238
Lifton, R.J., 86 Mooney, J., 164
Linebaugh, P., 288 Morris, A., 102, 157
Loader, B.D., 77 Morris, T., 275
Locke, J., 302 Morrison, W., 10±12
Lockwood, R., 9 Mortimer, E., 107
Lombroso, C., 33, 130, 212±13, 286 Mouffe, C., 141
Lowman, J., 269, 304 Moynihan, J., 195, 257
Luckmann, T., 267 Mucchielli, L., 226
Lyman, S., 86 Mulcahy, A., 192
Lyng, S., 27 Muncie, J., 19±21, 48±9, 82±5, 90±1, 99±100, 117±18,
Lyon, D., 95 149±50, 157±60, 184±5, 187±8, 194±6, 201±2,
Lyon, F., 299 212±13, 232, 234±6, 274±5, 284±6, 292±3, 296±9
Lyotard, J.-F., 216 Murji, K., 85±6, 175±7, 231±2, 255±6
Murray, C., 20, 146, 310±11
McDougall, C., 210 Muste, A.J., 204
McGowen, R., 206
McGuire, J., 224, 243 Naylor, R.T., 198, 199
McGurk, B.J., 210 Nelken, D., 56, 321
MacInnes, J., 174 Nellis, M., 40, 41
McKay, H., 31±2, 91, 133, 274 Neuman, W., 73
MacKinnon, C., 122, 233 Newburn, T., 191, 192
McLaughlin, E., 5±8, 22±3, 41±2, 64±5, 88, 95±6, 109, Newman, J., 289
118±19, 127±9, 130±3, 136, 151±2, 169±70, 186, Newman, O., 82±3
214, 218±19, 225±6, 252±3, 259±60, 289±90, Ni Aolain, F., 108
303±4, 310±11, 314, 319, 322±3 Nietzel, M.T., 280
Maclean, B., 164 Nietzsche, F., 10, 28, 218
McMahon, M., 185 Nye, F.I., 270±1
Magarey, S., 84
Maguire, M., 195 Ohlin, L., 11, 244, 290, 293, 294, 296
Manning, P.K., 75 O'Malley, P., 64, 134±5, 136±8, 222±3, 250±2
Manson, C., 4
Marcuse, H., 302 Packer, H., 62, 67, 105
Markusen, E., 86 Parenti, C., 69
Marshall, P., 34, 237 Park, R., 30±1, 133, 274
Martin, G., 17 Parker, H., 12, 191±2, 201
Martinson, R., 111, 224, 237 Parsons, T., 55, 127, 287
NAME INDEX 335