Criminological Theory and Social Policy, Exams of Criminal Justice

Download Criminological Theory and Social Policy and more Exams Criminal Justice in PDF only on Docsity! SUMMARY • Social disorganisation theory has traditionally emphasised community-based and local interventions as the best response to crime • Strain theory affirms the importance of a national welfare system as an essen- tial crime reduction measure • Control theory can be interpreted as supporting the welfare state, but tends to emphasise family-centred and school-based interventions • Routine activities theory insist that the problem of crime ought not be confused with provision of social welfare Every theory of crime contains an argument about what should be done in response. While theories about the aetiology of crime do not always offer policy proposals as such, the theorised source of crime signals a preferred solution. A major distinction that applies, as we will see in this chapter, is the difference between individual and structural causes. Theories that identify social sources as the cause of crime tend to support social policy as a response, while theories built around psychological issues and individual choice do not necessarily lead in this direction. We will examine four theoretical traditions: two offering theoretical support for social policy, one that might make such a suggestion, and one suggesting that social policy has nothing to do with crime. The theories to be considered in this discussion were all invented to explain crime in the United States. To what extent they can be meaningfully applied to British society will be discussed along the way. There are obvious and important differences between the UK and the USA. But as a number of criminologists have argued, the ‘American Dream’ is not peculiarly American. Ian Taylor (1997: 298) has written that post-war America represents a ‘natural laboratory’ for understanding the effects of market hegemony now underway in Europe. The first part of the chapter reviews social disorganisation theory associated with the Chicago School and the ‘New Chicagoans’. The second part takes up the strain/anomie tradition and recent innovations in social support theory and institutional anomie. The third part describes control theory and its policy Criminological Theory and Social Policy 2 Knepper-3530-CH-02.qxd 2/3/2007 2:34 PM Page 19 implications. The fourth part reviews the routine activities approach and the argument that social policy does not matter. Social Disorganisation A good place to starting looking for a theoretical explanation of the link between social policy and crime is in Chicago. Not that the Chicago School produced the explanation, but the concepts they proposed have been impor- tant to a number of subsequent explanations. Zones of Delinquency Social disorganisation theory is often referred to as ‘the Chicago School’ given its association with the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Founded in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Department became known for its theoretical and methodological innovations. The Chicago sociolo- gists championed micro forms of sociological enquiry where the unit of analysis shifted from aspects of society to neighbourhoods, areas, and sectors within the city. Their commitment to ‘theories of the middle range’ allowed them to offer soci- ological analyses of numerous topics – gangs, delinquency, family, urban mobility, ethnic groups – important to criminology (Turner, 1988). Methodologically, they replaced the social survey with field research involving a combination of inter- views, observation, and personal histories. And for their ‘field’, they looked no fur- ther than Chicago itself. By 1900, Chicago had become not only a leading railway hub and the site for expanding industries, but a major reception centre for waves of immigrants. Immigrants from Europe – Irish and German poor, peasants from southern Italy, Jews from Eastern Europe – poured in, along with African Americans from the Southern United States. Observing patterns of city growth led Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay (1969) to ask an important question about crime: Why did the same neigh- bourhoods remain ‘delinquency areas’ despite frequent turnover among resi- dents? To find the answer, they turned to the work of their colleague, Ernest Burgess who imagined the ‘struggle for space’ in the city using concentric zones. Burgess began with the central commercial district, the ‘Chicago Loop’, then moved outward in wider rings delineated by land use and residential type. The core contained banks, corporate headquarters, insurance companies, and government offices. The second zone he called the ‘zone in transition’ because it contained a factory zone that encroached on the homes of the city’s poorest residents. Gangs, prostitutes, and drug addicts peopled the zone in transition, along with immigrants and ethnic minorities. The third zone was the ‘zone of workingmen’s homes’, and outside it, the zones of the more afflu- ent middle class, the ‘commuters’ and residents of ‘satellite cities’. The newest arrivals took up residence in the zone in transition, and as each immigrant group acquired social standing, migrated to the zone of workingmen’s homes 20 CRIMINOLOGY AND SOCIAL POLICY Knepper-3530-CH-02.qxd 2/3/2007 2:34 PM Page 20 social disorganisation’ based on the prevalence of social networks within communities. They decided that communities differ in the collective capacity of residents to influence (control) one another based on differences in their ability to control ‘teenage peer groups,’ such as street-corner congregating, ‘local friendship networks,’ or social ties among residents, and ‘formal and voluntary organisations,’ such as committees, clubs, and local institutions. They affirmed the ‘power and generalisability’ of social disorganisation theory, concluding that ‘Shaw and McKay’s model explains crime and delinquency rates in a culture other than the United States’ (Sampson and Groves, 1989). No single work, Lowenkamp, Cullen and Pratt (2003: 352) have remarked, did more to reinvigorate social dis- organisation theory in criminology than this article. Lowenkamp and associates replicated the Sampson and Groves analysis with data from the 1994 British Crime Survey; they conclude that the processes described represent an underly- ing empirical pattern that has persisted over time. Sampson’s policy suggestions have to do with changing communities; he emphasises the need for ‘changing places, not people’. Reducing social disorgani- sation and building collective efficacy are long-term propositions. Small successes accumulate to turn neighbourhoods around and this would lead to lowering crime in cities generally. These include: targeting specific neighbourhood sites known for frequent criminal activity; abating the ‘spiral of decay’ by removing rubbish and scrubbing graffiti from buildings; sponsoring youth activities to increase inter- actions between youths and adults; reducing residential mobility through pro- grammes enabling people to buy their own homes; scattering public housing2 across various neighbourhoods rather than concentrating it in poor neighbour- hoods; ramping up urban services, including police, fire, and public health ser- vices (especially aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy and child abuse); and promoting volunteerism and community organisations (Sampson, 1995). The Truly Disadvantaged In the 1990s, Sampson teamed up with William J. Wilson, another represen- tative of the ‘new’ Chicago sociology, to propose a theory about the overlap of inequality, urban location, and African American populations. ‘The basic the- sis,’ they wrote, ‘is that macro-social patterns of residential inequality give rise to the social isolation of the truly disadvantaged, which in turn leads to struc- tural barriers and cultural adaptations that undermine social organisation and hence the control of crime’ (Sampson and Wilson, 1995: 53). This explanation reflects much of Wilson’s work in Chicago on the changing economic fortunes of Black Americans and the creation of the Black middle class. While new arrivals to the city faced various forms of racism, in schools and neighbour- hoods, the expanding post-war economy brought economic opportunities for CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORY AND SOCIAL POLICY 23 2Housing built and operated by government agencies for low-income residents; multi-unit developments are colloquially referred to as ‘the projects’. Knepper-3530-CH-02.qxd 2/3/2007 2:34 PM Page 23 Blacks that did not threaten Whites. This bifurcated the African American community; it allowed some Blacks to escape menial labour into skilled blue- collar trades and white-collar professions. The middle-class did not remain in the city. Those who could afford better houses, moved out to the suburbs, leav- ing behind a ‘semi-permanent underclass’ (Wilson, 1980; 1987). Wilson referred to this underclass as ‘the truly disadvantaged’, individuals who experience long-term unemployment, who engage in street crime, and families in poverty and long-term welfare dependency (Wilson, 1987: 8). The same social and economic forces that allowed for the creation of the Black mid- dle class now conspired against them. During the 1970s and 1980s, de- industrialisation and the loss of entry-level positions in factories meant that they could not pursue the same route to the suburbs the middle-class had found before them. The departure of the middle class accelerated a downward spiral, the loss of contact with middle-class values and aspirations, and a deepening culture of despair. The Black underclass lost their ‘social buffer,’ their access to middle-class role models, to children who helped socialise neighbours into middle-class life, and members of professions who had supplied community leadership. The truly disadvantaged have responded by acting in deviant ways that deepen their isolation; they do not cling to families, insist on orderly schools, pursue employment, or resist alcohol and drugs (Wilson, 2003). Wilson has departed from the orthodox Chicago School emphasis on community-based interventions to the extent that he sees a vital role for the federal government in instigating urban development projects. Wilson gave his support to the Clinton Administration’s efforts to create universal health care, a national child care system, and national education standards. More than once, President Clinton remarked that he had been inspired by The Truly Disadvantaged and referred to ‘the famous African American sociologist William Julius Wilson’ when asked about how Black Americans stood to gain from New Democrat eco- nomic policies (Steinberg, 1997: 32). To address the problem of the city poor, Wilson (1996) has recommended reviving the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Wilson’s WPA would follow along the same lines as the one established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the depression era. The new WPA would operate job centres not only to provide training but also to offer services such as organising car pools to bring individuals to places of employment. Not only would the new WPA improve the quality of life in impoverished neigh- bourhoods, but the jobs would also provide a conduit to permanent jobs by affording the opportunity to develop the ‘soft skills’ of employability. Critics argue that Wilson’s understanding of truly disadvantaged resembles neo-conservative thinking about the ‘underclass’, a term he has used (Bagguley and Mann, 1992; Wacquant, 1997). Essentially, his discussion places too much emphasis on the culture of poor people living in city neighbour- hoods and not enough on the structure of society at large that leads to their impoverishment. Wilson has conceded that ‘underclass’ does have a pejorative meaning, especially when read in the columns of journalists and neo-conservative commentators. The term ought to be rejected, he suggested, because it had 24 CRIMINOLOGY AND SOCIAL POLICY Knepper-3530-CH-02.qxd 2/3/2007 2:34 PM Page 24 ‘become a code word for inner-city blacks’, because it brought about a public denunciation of poor people living in the city, and because it lacked sufficient value as a guide to social scientific analysis. He resolved to substitute ‘ghetto poor’ for ‘underclass’. At the same time, he maintained that ‘simplistic either/or notions of culture versus structure have impeded the development of a broader theoretical context’ from which to investigate the impact of eco- nomic changes on the urban poor (Wilson, 1991: 1–4). Strain Theory Strain theory offers the most direct explanation for why social policy should be utilised for crime reduction. The strain/anomie tradition insists that crime is not brought about by poverty so much as inequality. In an economic system that prevents participation by some individuals, it is relative (rather than absolute) deprivation that pressurises them into criminal activity. Anomie and Opportunity The key question for strain theory is how to account for crime despite rising affluence. The United States is, by a number of measures, a wealthy country and yet it also has one of the highest rates of violent crime. For Robert Merton, who wrote the initial statement in the 1930s, the answer could be found in the difference between culture and structure. His essay, ‘Social Structure and Anomie’, remains among the most-cited in criminology (Featherstone and Deflem, 2003: 471). Culture establishes the meaning of success; it specifies ‘the goals’, what things are worth pursuing, and the ‘means,’ the ways to go about obtaining them. Structure has to do with distribution of the means. In a well-ordered society, the goals and means are consonant. That is, society affords all of its members a reasonable expectation of achieving success dur- ing their lifetimes. But too many of those in American society experienced dis- sonance between the goals and means, Merton felt, because they had been led to desire a way of life social circumstances made it impossible to achieve. ‘The cultural demands made on persons in this situation are incompatible,’ Merton (1938: 679) wrote, ‘On the one hand, they are asked to orient their con- duct toward the prospect of accumulating wealth and on the other, they are largely denied effective opportunities to do so institutionally’. Living under con- ditions of strain requires adaptation by one of several strategies. ‘Conformity’, he suggested, was followed by all those who were reasonably comfortable with their position in society or at least confident of their ability to improve their posi- tion. They accept the cultural goals in the belief that they benefit from the means afforded by the prevailing structure. Members of the working class would be tempted to pursue another strategy, ‘innovation’. Innovators accept the goals, but because the legitimate means are not available, pursue alternative means, which is to say illegal means, of obtaining them. CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORY AND SOCIAL POLICY 25 Knepper-3530-CH-02.qxd 2/3/2007 2:34 PM Page 25 Crime and the ‘American Dream’ In 1994, Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld published a major restatement of Merton’s work that has been called ‘institutional anomie’ theory. They attribute high-levels of criminal violence in American society to the ‘American Dream’ defined as a ‘broad cultural ethos that entails a commitment to the goal of material success, to be pursued by everyone in society, under conditions of open, individual competition’ (Messner and Rosenfeld, 1994). This cultural ethos generates strong pressure for acquiring wealth, but does not contain suf- ficient prohibitions about the means of achieving that fortune. Messner and Rosenfeld, as Bernburg (2002) explains, depart from Merton in their portrayal of the structural sources of anomie within the cultural sensibili- ties of the capitalist market economy. The values engendered by market society, the pursuit of self-interest, accumulation of wealth, and individual competition, have become exaggerated relative to the values related to the family, education, and even politics. Messner and Rosenfeld point to the overwhelming influence of economic institutions in American society. Other institutions – family, school, and even politics – tend to be overwhelmed by the market. These other institu- tions would be instilling cultural beliefs about the importance of playing by the rules, that family is important, and so on. These institutions are important for ‘socialising’ members into accepted social standards. For Messner and Rosenfeld, the market not only shapes the cultural definition of success and the distribution of labour, but also limits the effectiveness of other social institutions in their ability to address the imbalance (Bernburg, 2002: 733). Messner and Rosenfeld make several policy recommendations aimed at reducing the influence of money in American life. Pro-family policies, such as family leave for workers, job sharing, flexible work schedules and employer- organised child care would give parents more time to devote to their families. Severing the link between educational credentials and employment (by de- emphasising the high school diploma as the qualification for work) would allow students motivated to work to begin a job, and students interested in learning to pursue an education. They would lobby for creation of a national service corps to engage people in the ways that emphasize collective goals rather than individual material success. And, they advocate cultural transfor- mation generally – American culture should be steered toward mutual support and collective obligations and away from individual rights, interests, rewards, and privileges (Messner and Rosenfeld, 2006). While Messner and Rosenfeld entitled their work to reflect their critique of American society, they have extended this critique beyond its borders. The threat posed by the American Dream is not peculiarly American, because mar- ket hegemony is actually a planetary phenomenon. Drawing on Karl Polanyi’s framework, Messner and Rosenfeld (2000: 13) stress the ‘fundamental issue confronting all capitalist societies: the need to restrain the market and prevent the economy from dominating other institutional realms’. In The Great Transformation (1944), Polanyi offered an account of the progress of industrial 28 CRIMINOLOGY AND SOCIAL POLICY Knepper-3530-CH-02.qxd 2/3/2007 2:34 PM Page 28 capitalism during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One process in this transformation involved the expansion of the market as the mechanism for centring economic activity. The other involved counter-moves to prevent the market from undermining social order altogether. This was necessary because market exchange is ‘disembedded’ from other social relationships. To allow the market to expand unchecked would prove disastrous because it would undermine the cultural and moral foundations of human existence. Capitalist societies staved off the worst effects of the market by construct- ing welfare states, essentially a strategy for re-embedding (Messner and Rosenfeld, 2000). The difficult task confronting market societies is thus to ‘nurture cultural orientations’ that sustain market exchange, but at the same time, instil ‘considerations of collective order and mutual obligation’. While markets promote the values of individual rights and liberties, it falls to gov- ernment to supply counter-balancing political and social values. Market dominance promotes high rates of crime through both structural and cultural processes. Messner and Rosenfeld suggest that crime rates in advanced industrial states vary with the extent and scope of welfare provisions. Globalisation, the ‘confluence of social and cultural changes that loosen the con- straints of geography on the actions of individuals and collectivities’ threatens to elevate crime rates unless governments take steps to mitigate its impact (Messner and Rosenfeld, 2000: 18). Savolainen (2000) took a look at cross-national homi- cide rates to examine the welfare state effect. He surmised that homicide rates would differ by nation depending on the strength of the welfare state in mitigat- ing the impact of economic inequality. Consistent with institutional anomie the- ory, he found economic inequality to be a strong predictor of national homicide rates in nations with under-developed welfare structures. He suggested that homicide may not be a function of inequality so much as the size of an econom- ically marginalised population; nations most resistant to the effects of economic inequality are those with tiny or nonexistent underclass populations. Control Theory Control theory presents an unlikely explanation for the link between social policy and crime. It is frequently classified as rational choice theory, meaning that individual choice is more important to the explanation of crime than social conditions constraining that choice. But control theory can be read in different ways, leading W. Byron Groves and associates to argue that it should be regarded as a radical theory consistent with Marx’s theory of political economy (Lynch and Groves, 1989; Groves and Sampson, 1987). The Social Bond Travis Hirschi decided that most criminological theories start with the wrong question. Rather than asking what is it that leads some people to break the CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORY AND SOCIAL POLICY 29 Knepper-3530-CH-02.qxd 2/3/2007 2:34 PM Page 29 law, Hirschi invites criminologists to ask: Why is it that most people abide by the law? If inequality pressurised society in the way strain theory says it does, then the real mystery would be why more people are not involved in crime. His answer, in the form of social bond theory, has ranked as the most popular explanation of crime among American criminologists (Walsh and Ellis, 1999). Most people, Hirschi (1969) reasons, have motivations other than fear of arrest and imprisonment for behaving themselves. They have made invest- ments in society, ‘stakes in conformity’, that would be jeopardised by an adventure into lawbreaking. They are bonded to society to an extent sufficient to render them unwilling to break the rules. The social bond can be under- stood as the rewards that accrue from participation in conventional social activities; it is comprised of the relationships, ambitions, and moral beliefs that commit people to law-abiding behaviour Delinquents engage in anti-social behaviour and crime because their ties to conventional order have been weak or broken. He identified four elements of the social bond: attachment (sensi- tivity to the opinions of others), commitment (pursuit of conventional behav- iour), involvement (time spent in conventional activities), and belief (accepting that people should obey the rules). In other words, law-abiding behaviour must be purchased; it must have some payoff for individuals (Lynch and Groves, 1989). If this sort of reward system fails, crime can be suppressed only by coercive measures such as punishment and threat of punishment. To make conformity attractive, society must offer something to its members – something of use for meeting human and cultur- ally-defined needs. The moral of the control story, then, is grasping the struc- tures and processes by which these rewards are unequally distributed so that social bonds are not the same for everyone (Lynch and Groves, 1989: 79–80). It is easy, given this reading of control theory, to see how the social bond varies in proportion to social exclusion: the greater the experience of social exclusion, the weaker the social bond. This reading of social bond theory explains its pop- ularity among self-described liberal criminologists in the USA who think of broken social bonds in terms of unfair economic opportunities and lack of educational opportunities (Walsh and Ellis, 1999). ‘Eight Simple Rules’ Control theory has been classified as a conservative approach because of the tendency to read it alongside Hirschi’s later work. A General Theory of Crime, co-authored with Michael Gottfredson (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 2002), sets out self-control as the explanation for criminal behaviour, and since its publi- cation, interpreters have tended to project the Hirschi of self-control onto the Hirschi of social bond. In this way, ‘control theory’ becomes an unlikely place for social policy. Jock Young (1999) places Gottfredson’s and Hirschi’s approach on the ‘right of the political spectrum’ and suggests that they cham- pion an individualist explanation of crime consistent with a criminal justice 30 CRIMINOLOGY AND SOCIAL POLICY Knepper-3530-CH-02.qxd 2/3/2007 2:34 PM Page 30 factors related to burglary in the UK, USA, and the Netherlands based on victimisation surveys conducted in these countries during the 1990s. They conclude that burglary of American households displayed more idiosyncratic patterns than European households, but that some cross-national patterns sup- port the application of routine activities theory. Wittebrood and Nieuwbeerta (2000) carried out an innovative study in the Netherlands using information culled from life histories data rather than victimisation surveys. They affirmed the usefulness of the routine activities perspective in explaining repeat victimisation: individuals who have once been victimised suffer a higher risk of subsequent victimisation. The Welfare State Fallacy? Although Felson’s theory has been taken as theoretical support for situational crime prevention, there is an argument for sociological intervention on a macro scale. When Felson talks about situational crime prevention, he has in mind ‘natural social control’ maintained through relationships among passers-by, neigh- bours, and family members (Felson, 1987: 912). He is decidedly unenthusiastic about the ‘unnatural’ social control carried out by police, courts and prisons. Felson is also unenthusiastic about social policy as a means of crime pre- vention, going so far as to refer to the ‘welfare state fallacy’. He is sceptical of the claim that the USA is a world-leader in crime rates because it refuses to deliver more than a minimalist welfare state. America certainly offers less in the way of welfare benefits than European welfare states, but this does not translate into higher crime. The welfare state neither causes crime nor reduces crime – ‘crime variations in industrial nations have nothing to do with the wel- fare state’ (Felson, 2002: 12). Felson points out that according to victimisation surveys, the USA does not have a higher crime rate than Europe. He cites the work of Van Kesteren, Mayhew, and Nieuwbeerta (2001), who coordinated victimisation surveys in 17 industrial countries, and found the USA to rank eleventh in overall victimisation. Countries with generous welfare benefits – Netherlands and Sweden – were found to have higher overall criminal victim- isation than the USA (Van Kesteren, Mayhew, and Nieuwbeerta, 2001: 38). As is always the case in comparative criminology, finding appropriate points of comparison is difficult. The weakest link in Felson’s argument is that victimisa- tion surveys provide better information about property crime than about violent crime. The Netherlands, for example, falls into the ‘high’ band of overall victim- isation along with Australia, England and Wales, and Sweden. But much of this is a function of higher rates of petty crime, such as bicycle theft and car vandal- ism, which account for half of all reported victimisation (Van Kesteren, Mayhew and Nieuwbeerta, 2001). In other words, the Netherlands does have a high rate of crime when it comes to bicycle theft and the USA has a high rate of crime when it comes to murder. That said, the point Felson wants to make is that policy rhetoric about social welfare should not be confused with that of crime CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORY AND SOCIAL POLICY 33 Knepper-3530-CH-02.qxd 2/3/2007 2:34 PM Page 33 reduction. One can believe the welfare state will bring about poverty reduction without believing that it will also bring about crime reduction. Tham (1998) reports on an interesting ‘natural experiment’ to test the wel- fare effect on crime. He compared crime rates in the UK and Sweden during the 1980s, following the Conservative victory in the UK of 1979 and a victory for the Social Democrats in Sweden in 1982. The differing approaches to crime during these years should have, according to the logic of the welfare state, led to differences in crime. But in carrying out his analysis, Tham could not point to evidence showing that ‘welfare-state policies actually might have dimin- ished crime’ in Sweden. Similarly, Bondeson (2005) observes that crime rates have increased in all the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway) since the 1960s. Similar trends can be observed for crimes of theft and assault in the Scandinavian countries and in Austria, England and Wales, Germany, and the Netherlands. The welfare model, she proposes, has not less- ened crime but has softened the criminal justice policies in the welfare states. Conclusion In this chapter, we have seen how four questions about crime lead to differ- ent conclusions about the impact of social policy. Why do ‘high crime’ areas of cities persist despite turnover among residents? How is it that a wealthy society also has high rates of crime? Why do most people living in conditions of social inequality not turn to crime? How is it that some people are vic- timised by crime much more than others? At the policy end, this translates into emphasis on community-based and local programmes, affirmation of the welfare state, programmes targeting parents and schools, and efforts to redi- rect the social activities that comprise everyday life. Criminologists working within each of these frameworks agree that conventional methods of policing and prisons will be ineffective. Questions for Discussion 1. The UK government plans to redevelop blighted areas of East London in prepa- ration for the 2012 Olympic Games. Will rebuilding this area achieve long-term poverty reduction? 2. Does pursuit of the American Dream explain crime in British society? Is the ‘British Dream’ slightly or significantly different? 3. Is it fair to say that police and prisons are short-term solutions to the problem of crime and that social policy presents a long-term solution? 4. Is it appropriate to justify social polices with reference to their (potential) crime reduction qualities? 34 CRIMINOLOGY AND SOCIAL POLICY Knepper-3530-CH-02.qxd 2/3/2007 2:34 PM Page 34 Further Reading Robert Lilly, Francis Cullen, and Richard Ball (2006) Criminological Theory: Context and Consequences (4th edn). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Wayne Morrison (1995) Theoretical Criminology: From Modernity to Post-Modernism. London: Cavendish. John Tierny (2006) Criminology: Theory and Content (3rd edn). Essex: Pearson. Rene van Swaanigen (1997) Critical Criminology: Visions from Europe. London: Sage. CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORY AND SOCIAL POLICY 35 Knepper-3530-CH-02.qxd 2/3/2007 2:34 PM Page 35