crime and deviance - sociology · deviance given that most sociological explanations for crime and...

Chris. Livesey and Tony Lawson

3. The relationship betweendeviance, power and social control.

Crime and Deviance

1. Power and Control 02

2. Traditional Penology 05

3. New Penology 06

4. Actuarial Approach 08

5. Administrative Criminology 09

6. New Right Realism 11

7. New Left Realism 13

8. References 17

The relationship between deviance, powerand social control.

Contents

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Crime and Deviance 3. Power and Controla formal enforcement mechanism – a police orsecurity force, for example. Formal control systemsinvolve formal prosecution procedures. In the case ofcrime these may entail arrest, charge and trial,whereas in an organisation such as a school orbusiness some sort of disciplinary procedure will be inplace.

2. Informal controlsoperate between peoplein their everyday,informal, settings (thefamily or school, forexample) and don’tinvolve written rulesand procedures.Consequently, thesecontrols work throughinformal enforcementmechanisms, theobject of such controlsbeing the type ofinformal normativebehaviour wemight find goingon betweenfamily members,friends or indeed strangers (such as the normativebehaviour that occurs when you buy something from ashop).

Both types of control have a couple of things incommon: They can, for example, operate:

Directly: Here, the objective is to regulate a rule(normative standard). If you break the rule, you lay

yourself open to punishment (orsanction). If you break the law,you might be fined orimprisoned; if you’re cheeky to ateacher you might be givendetention.

Indirectly: As socialisedindividuals we don’t need to betold constantly whereboundaries lie because we learn(from personal experience orfrom others) the nature of normsand what might happen if webreak them. For example, if youcontinually skip your sociologyclass you may be asked toleave the course and, since youdon’t want this to happen, you(indirectly) control yourbehaviour to obey the norm.

In previous sections we’ve necessarily touched onsome aspects of the relationship between deviance,power and social control (in terms, for example, ofthinking about who makes rules and how they areenforced) and in this section we’re going to developthese ideas by looking more explicitly at concepts ofpower and control, beginning with an outline of howthese two concepts are related.

Power is an important concept in the sociology ofdeviance given that most sociological explanations forcrime and deviance (from functional consensus,through critical criminology, to social constructionism)draw on the concept at some point as a way ofexplaining rule creation, rule enforcement and,occasionally, rule-breaking.

Social control: Sociologically, deviance is both aproduct of social interaction and something that cannotexist without the power to proscribe and control socialbehaviour; concepts of power, control and devianceare, in this respect, symbiotic. In other words, fordeviance to be identified, someone has to establishwhere the normative behavioural line should be drawn(power) and then take action to defend that line(control).

Pfohl (1998) expresses this ideaneatly: ‘Imagine deviance asnoise – a cacophony ofsubversions disrupting theharmony of a given social order.Social control is the opposite. Itlabours to silence the resistivesounds of deviance . . . totransform the noisy challenge ofdifference into the music ofconformity.’

On this note (pun intended), wecan identify two basic types ofcontrol:

1. Formal controls relate tolegal/organisational codes ofbehaviour, operate at the overt,usually written, level and involve

The relationship betweendeviance, power and social control

Power and Control: Observations

“The music of conformity” - think of it as abit like a Queen album with all the

interesting bits taken out (that would be aQueen album then...)

Sometimes a look is all it takes...


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and ControlBlalock (1967) suggests two further forms of control:

1. Coercive involves the attempt tomake people obey through theexercise of some form of punishment(imprisonment, for example).

2. Placative involves control throughsome form of reward

(giving a child a sweet,for example, to stop

it crying).

Finally, both formaland informal socialcontrols involve theconcept of:

Sanctions: These, aswe’ve suggested, may bepositive (rewarding peoplefor conformity) or negative(punishments for deviance).

Although it’s tempting to thinkabout dimensions of control solely in terms ofsanctions, there are other, less obvious ways it isexercised.

• Time: Different parts of the day are divided intodifferent time periods during which we are expected todo different things (travel, work, eat, play, sleep).Shaw et al. (1996) noted how the ‘free time’ of youngpeople (especially young women) was ‘controlledor structured by the dominant adult culture’.

• Mind: While ‘mind control’ is probably toostrong a term to use (although experiments havebeen conducted in clinical psychiatry into‘behaviour modification’ through both chemicalmeans and brain surgery), one way controlreaches into the realm of thought is through:

• Language: The use of language (in everydaytalk, for example) is significant in terms of howwe classify people. Think, for example, about theway different accents are taken to indicatedifferent levels of sophistication, intelligence andclass. Language, therefore, involves the power toboth shape how we think about something andinfluence how we react to it. Language,for example, is linked to

sexuality and social control throughconcepts like ‘stud’ and ‘slag’ (something

that reflects the power of language toglorify or stigmatise).

The patrol and controlof different types of

space is an interestingaspect of power and

social control:

• Private space, for example, represents areas ofindividual control, such as the private spaces in yourhome.

• Public space, meanwhile, signifies areas whereaccess and activities are socially controlled. In otherwords, when someone enters these spaces theybecome liable to a range of control mechanisms(CCTV observation being a simple example).

The power to control public space is significantbecause it involves the ability to define the deviant useof space. An employer owns and controls the spaceoccupied by their workforce and is consequently ableto specify behaviour in such space. White (1993),among others, has noted how conflict between thepolice and youth is frequently based on differinginterpretations of the purpose and use of public space(such as shopping precincts and malls).

Controlled space involves the idea that institutions(prisons, mental asylums and hospitals, forexample) regulate space in ways that relate to thecontrol of things like body and language. In termsof the latter, for example, a relatively moderndevelopment is the concept of:

Types of Space

The home is generally considered a “private” space in our society (although differentrooms have public and private connotations - bedrooms, for example, are private family

spaces whereas kitchens are public family spaces).

Changing roomsare generally seen as publicspaces in our society, although gendersegregation is the norm in our society (male andfemale changing rooms, for example).


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and ControlMedicalisation, a situation in which deviantbehaviour is defined and treated as a physical ormental illness. This idea of deviance being defined,in some situations and contexts, as an “illness” forwhich the individual should not be held responsibleis an interesting example of the way social controlcan be linked to:

The Body - and the relationship betweenbodies and social control works in acouple of ways:

1. Personal control relates, in part, towhat we do with our bodies in terms ofindividual adornment,display, and so forth(although these choiceswill be conditioned bysocial norms governingsuch things as nudity).

2. Public control relatesto ideas about gender andsexuality (the socialmeaning of being male orfemale, for example, anddecisions about differenttypes of sexuality) that are,in no small measure,governed by social normsand controls. Our society,for example, generallyviews monogamous,heterosexual attractionas the norm. Publiccontrol also extendsinto areas such as:

• Body image –what size and shapethe body should be,for example – and

• Attitudes to areaslike physical disabilityand less tangible notionsof patriarchal ideas and practices.Morcillo (2005) suggests publiccontrols extend into areas such asattitudes to youth and ageing,reproduction and cyberbodies (theidea that computer technology allowsus to create private and public imagesin the relative anonymity ofcyberspace).

A further dimension here is thequestion of physical public controlover both body and space involved inideas like incarceration (prisons,mental institutions and, in somerespects, schools) and the variousforms of punishment that can be(legally and, in some instances,illegally) directed against the body.

We can apply some of the ideas we’ve just outlined toan understanding of crime control in contemporarysocieties in a range of ways. According to Cohen(1979a), contemporary systems of deviancy control inour society developed at the end of the eighteenthcentury around three basic ideas:

The state as a centralised, coordinating structure(considered in terms of definitions of crime, lawcreation and the construction of law-enforcementagencies).

Differentiation between criminal deviance (involvingpunishment) and dependent deviance (such as mentalillness) that involved care.

Institutionalisation – the separation of deviants fromnon-deviants in prisons, asylums and hospitals.

Power and Control: Explanations

Are attitudes to youth and ageing in our societydifferent now to attitudes 50 years ago?


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and ControlIn conventional terms, therefore, societal control hasbeen underpinned by three ideas that we can looselyterm ‘traditional penology’ (to differentiate it fromcontemporary penology):

1. Reactive control: Social controls are applied ‘afterthe event’ – following a crime, the offender is identifiedand processed through the judicial system on the basisof ‘what they’ve done’.

2. Difference: This involves the idea that ‘deviants aredifferent to non-deviants’, something expressed interms of:

Identification – the objective ways deviants differ fromnon-deviants in terms of, for example, their:

• Biology: Lombrosso and Ferrero (1895) attemptedto identify the physical signs of criminality – ‘acomparison of the criminal skull with the skulls ofnormal women reveals the fact that female criminalsapproximate more to males’.

• Psychology: Traditional forms of analysis focused onthe idea of crime as pathological (mental disturbance)or, as Lagassé (2005) notes, the result of ‘emotionaldisorders, often stemming from childhood experienceand personality disorders’.

• Sociology: Box (1983) notes how social factors(such as poverty) have traditionally been correlatedwith official crime statistics to produce a compositepicture of ‘the criminal offender’.

3. Quantification – the idea that once the specificorigins of deviance are established we can quantifycausality (whether in terms of chemical imbalances inthe brain, family upbringing, social conditions orwhatever) that serves as the basis for:

Treatment, considered in terms of punishment and / orcare.

As an example oftraditional penology wecan note how different

control roles are played out at the institutional level ofsociety.

1. The state, for example, has played a traditionallyreactive role in terms of both the way laws are created(largely ‘after the event’) and applied.

2. The police role was also traditionally interpreted asa reactive one (‘catching offenders’). This involveddifferent styles of policing, traditionally interpreted inthree (idealised) forms:

Consensus policing involves formal control agentsbeing integrated into the community they police. Theirrole, in effect, is one of policing with the cooperationand consent of thecommunity.

Patrol policing involves the use of technology (fastcars, mobile communications and the like) to patrolareas in a semi-consensual way. There is little day-to-day interaction between the police and the community,but relations between the two are not necessarilyantagonistic.

Military (or occupation) policing involves the policeplaying an occupying and pacifying role, one thatinvolves imposing order on a population, usuallythrough a physical show of strength. In this type ofpolicing the ‘consent’ of the community is neithersought nor freely given.

Traditional Penology

Styles of policing


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and Control3. The courts: In terms of traditionalpenological perspectives punishments givenout through the courts and judicialsystem are:

• Based on whatsomeone has done(rather than who theyare, for example).

• Objective, in the sensethey follow agreedprocedures and practices.

• Delivered according tocertain rules and tariffs. Thepenalty for murder in the UK,for example, is greater than thepenalty for theft but both types ofpenalty are delivered according toa set of politically-defined criteria.Although the judiciary has a greatdeal of leeway, under the UK system,to set various types of penalty, in thecase of something like murder, forexample, there is a mandatory sentence (a minimumof 25 years in prison) and, unlike in some counties(such as China or parts of America) judges cannotdeliver a death sentence for murder.

• Impartial – regardless of social characteristics (suchas class or gender).

If the above represents abasic outline of ‘traditionalpenology’, what Feely and

Simon (1992) call the:

New penology involves subtle changes of emphasisin the roles played by control agencies incontemporary societies. We can outlinethese in terms of three related categories:

1. Extent of control: Cohen (1979a)suggests three ways to think about howsocial controls have gradually beenextended in modern societies:

a. Blurring the boundaries: Thedevelopment of ‘segregatedinstitutions of incarceration’(prisons and asylums, forexample) had onevirtue, according toCohen – theyclearly definedthe boundarybetween thedeviantand non-deviant.

Modern forms of penology blur theseboundaries, through variousprogrammes and treatments, tocreate a ‘continuum of control’,involving a range of preventative,diagnostic and screeninginitiatives, from ‘pre-delinquents’(those who haven’t ‘as yet’committed an offence) at oneextreme, to high riskpopulations (persistentoffenders) at the other.

b. Thinning the meshinvolves the idea of

‘interventions to combat crime’by catching deviance before it develops

and treating offenders before they developdeviant careers.

We can think in terms of crime control being a net –the larger the holes, the more fish (deviants) escape;by making the holes smaller (thinning the mesh), morepeople are brought into the overall crime controlprogramme. One effect of this is to:

c. Widen the net by increasing the total number ofpeople processed through various programmes(including prison). New forms of offence and theincreased application of current laws also draw moreand more people into the social control net.

2. Nature of control: Foucault(1983) argued that the panopticprison (an architectural design

that allowed warders to constantly monitor prisonerswithout the latter knowing exactly when they werebeing watched) represented ‘the essence of power’because it was based on differential access toknowledge - in this particular instance the warderscould see their prisoners but the prisoners could notsee the warders. Surveillance was also, he argued(1980), both ‘global and individual’ (warders could viewboth the whole prison and individual prisoners).

New Penology

Despite the best efforts of some newspapers,the judiciary no-longer have the ability tosentence people to death in the UK. The

last execution was in 1964.

Surveillance


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and Control

Shearing and Stenning (1985) develop this idea inthe context of the kind of processes described byCohen when they describe postmodern forms ofsurveillance in terms of:

Disneyfication: Disney World, they argue, is a cleversystem of social control (what you can do, where youcan do it), designed to keep people moving throughthe theme park without an awareness of beingcontrolled. Control, in this respect, is disguised asbeing ‘for the safety of the consumer’. In other words,controls in postmodern society, like those inDisney World, are:

• Pervasive – covering all areas of life.

• Invisible – there is little awareness of beingcontrolled.

• Embedded – in ‘other, less alarming, structures’(such as safety issues).

• Seamless – they have nobeginning or end.

Shearing and Stenning arguethat this creates a situationwhere control is apparentlyconsensual because peoplewillingly participate in their owncontrol (as with, for example,the use of CCTV cameras inshops and arcades). This typeofsurveillance is, they argue,indicative of:

3. Changes in controlexpressed, on one level, byproactive procedures designedto prevent crime by takingaction before an offence iscommitted, which leads Feelyand Simon (1992) to suggestanother level, the idea of:

‘At risk’ populations – people who, onthe basis of known probabilities, are themost likely to commit offences ‘at sometime in the future’.

The development of computer technologyand databases has made it easier forsocial control agencies (such as thepolice, social workers and teachers) togather, store and cross-reference data onindividuals. Variable analysis can then beused to identify those individuals andsocial groups who are most “at risk” ofcommitting crimes at some point in thefuture. As the head of the MetropolitanPolice’s violent crime directorate

Commander Mark Simmons argues,computer databases are “a powerful tool in the long-term struggle to counter youth violence…The principleis about sharing information with other agencies so weget a picture of the circumstances surrounding a youngperson”. In London alone, for example, the number of"at risk" children currently being identified amounts toupwards of 7,0000 per week.

More-recently, however, the concept of “at riskpopulations” has itself been widened, as the exampleof contemporary (2009) moral panics about knife crimesuggests. Here the concept of “at risk” itself has beensubtly widened and changed to mean not justidentifying those who, for whatever reason, carryknives - "A lot of the stuff we are doing around knifecrime is enforcement and dealing with it once it hasmanifested” – but also to identify those who are “atrisk” of carrying knives. As Commander Simmonseloquently puts it “We are also trying to get upstreamin the longer term…to identify people at risk early on,so potentially it is very useful”.

The “panopticon prison” - originally the idea of Benthamin 1887 - describes a circular building with a centraltower. Each glass-fronted cell faces the inside of the

circle and can be seen from the central tower.


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and ControlThe objective here, therefore, is to take preventativesteps (or “interventions” if you prefer) to stop theseidentified individuals embarking on a deviant career –in some cases before any evidence of crime has beenestablished. This type of development suggests thatCohen’s (1979b) arguments have some applicationand validity here.

This position, Feely and Simon argue, represents a‘new discourse’ surrounding how we view crime, onethat replaces ‘traditional’ moral or medical descriptionsof the individual with an:

This approach involvesprobabilistic calculationsand statistical

distributions applied to populations’ (actuariescalculate things like ‘early death’ probabilities for lifeinsurance companies – they mathematically calculatelevels of risk). This ‘economic approach’ to crime andsocial control involves:

• Identifying and managing ‘unruly groups’ with highprobabilities of criminalinvolvement.

• ‘Low-cost’ forms of control (such as electronictagging).

• Managing criminal activity through risk assessments(identifying possible situations and areas that requireadditional surveillance or police resources).

• Resource targeting: Some groups,such as young, working-class men, arestatistically more likely to offend thanothers, and by concentrating policeresources in the areas wherethese groups live,offending can bereduced.

• Sentencing according to risk: Incarceration inprisons doesn’t reform offenders, but when people arein prison they can’t commit further crimes. Rather thansentencing offenders for what they’ve done, therefore,sentencing should reflect the ‘risk of reoffending’;habitual offenders, a high-risk category, should begiven longer sentences than low-risk offenders.

Offender profiling: A major problem here, accordingto Dabney et al (2006), is that although there isnothing particularly wrong, in itself, with using “pastexperiences and information about known offenders toidentify behavioural and demographic correlates thatcan then be applied to a given population of offencesor offenders” the reliability and validity of the processrests on the assumption that such data are free ofbias. Drawing data from “an observational study ofshoplifting…to assess this assumption systematically”Dabney et al concluded that “trained observers”tended to over-sample shoppers on the basis of race,gender, and perceived age, thus misrepresenting thesefactors as predictors of shoplifting behaviour”.

In other words, although this kind of actuarial approachto crime has the appearance of objectivity - in terms ofthe data that are collected and used to create offenderprofiles and predictions about future behaviour - thismay not, in reality, be the case. The data runs the risk,in short. of reflecting the prejudices and assumptionsof those who collect it. If this is the case in terms of“trained workers” how reliable and valid is data likely tobe when drawn from “untrained workers” (such aspolice officers, social workers and teachers)?

Targeting: Things like the “management” ofcriminal activity through risk assessmentsand the identification of “unruly groups”present a couple of “unintended”

consequences in terms of crime andsocial control. In the first place the

targeted groups areinvariably lower class

(for variousreasons, some

relating to the

Economic Approaches

Actuarial Approach

Evaluation


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and Controltype of criminal activity that is policed - such as low-level opportunistic crimes, which is far easier to“target” and “manage” than more sophisticated formsof crime - and some relating to the power of varioussocial groups to resist “crime management”).

Secondly, the economic management of crimebecomes an exercise in its own justification. That is,where the “success” of these strategies is measured interms of the numbers prosecuted, imprisoned and soforth the targeting of certain groups and particulartypes of crime will result in higher levels of prosecution– a “result” that justifies the targeting. The problemhere, however, is that the outcome is itself a product ofthe process – in basic terms, the closer you look atpeople’s behaviour the more evidence of “crime” youwill find (something that relates to the idea of the“Iceberg effect” or dark-figure of crime – far morecrimes are committed in our society than are actuallyprosecuted. The more you look for these crimes themore you find and the greater the number drawn intothe criminal justice system).

Definitions of “crime” become blurred – people arebrought into the criminal justice system more for whatthey “might do” at some point in the future than whatthey actually do. There are two basic problems here.Firstly, where does this process end, in terms ofcontrols on behaviour (the ultimate logic of thisprocess is that “everyone” is “at risk” of committingcrimes and, in consequence, should everyone’sbehaviour be excessively policed “just in case”?)?

Secondly, where decisions aboutcriminalising individuals are basedon the assessments of (middleclass) professionals we reach asituation where the lower classesare effectively policed andcriminalised on the basis of whothey are (their social class orgender) than what they haveactually done.

Sentencing: One obvious problemwith sentencing people on the basisof the “risk of reoffending” ratherthan on the basis of the crimesthey’ve actually committed runs therisk of punishing persistent, minor,offenders more than seriousoccasional offenders.

We can complete this section bylooking at a couple of differenttheories of crime and deviance thatillustrate the relationship betweenpower and social control. The firsttype (administrative criminologyand New Right realism) is relatedto ecological theories, while thesecond (New Left realism) has aconnection to the strain andsubcultural theories we outlinedearlier.

This is anumbrella termfor a range oftheories that

draw on ecological ideas about people’s relationship totheir immediate environment and its impact on theirbehaviour. Although there are a number of differentstrands to this form of analysis, we can note that, aswith its human ecology predecessor, administrativecriminology focuses on the relationship between twoareas, cultural and physical environments.

This focuses on thedevelopment ofgeneral theoretical

ideas about the ‘nature of criminal behaviour’ in termsof thinking about why people offend (a theoreticalanalysis of crime and its causes) and how to preventoffending (a practical analysis that forms the basis ofthe type of situational analysis of crime preventiondiscussed below). In this respect, Clarke (1980)argues that crime theory should focus on a:

Realistic approach to crime prevention andmanagement that rejects traditional ways of viewingcriminal behaviour as:

Dispositional: Crime has traditionally, according toClarke, been theorised in terms of ‘criminaldispositions’; the idea, in short, that some people arepredisposed to crime for biogenetic, psychological orsociological reasons (boredom, poverty, socialexclusion and the like).

Administrative Criminology

The Iceberg Effect

Cultural Environment



These ideas have been questionedin various ways.

Genetic predispositional theories, for example, ignorethe weight of evidence suggesting that the behaviourof offenders changes over time. Most crime in the UKis committed by young males, which suggests that, asthey get older and take on a range of personal andfamily commitments, their behaviour is modified bysocial factors.

Sociological explanations focusing on areas likepoverty as ‘causes of crime’ are also questionedbecause people from similar social environmentsbehave in different ways – some choose to offendwhereas others do not. Clarke argues, therefore, thattheoretical difficulties can be avoided by seeing crime“…as the outcome of immediate choices and decisionsmade by the offender” – something that leads neatlyinto a range of ‘preventative options’ to either limit thepossible choices available to ‘potential offenders’ ormake the consequences of ‘choosing to offend’outweigh the possible benefits.

Part of the ‘realistic approach’ advocated by writerssuch as Clarke stems from the observation that ‘crime’is not an:

Homogeneous category: Criminal behaviour comesin many shapes and sizes – property theft, forexample, is very different to rape – and it makes littlesense to assume that just because they share acommon label (crime) they have similar causes oroutcomes. Clarke argues that just as we don’t view‘illness’ in an undifferentiated way (a doctor would seea heart attack and a cold as having differentcausalities), we should similarly see crime as beingdifferentiated. If this is the case, different types ofcrime respond to different forms of ‘treatment’. Inparticular, there are two basic characteristics ofcrimes, both of which fit neatly with the idea of rationalchoice, that make them amenable to various forms ofprevention:

Opportunity: The majority of crimes in our society arethose of opportunity – as Felson and Clarke (1998)argue, ‘no crime can occur without the physicalopportunities to carry it out’ – and opportunism. Inother words, many crimes are unplanned; offendersdon’t particularly look to commit crimes, but if anopportunity occurs (a purse left unattended, forexample) they may be tempted to offend if the chances

of being detectedare less than the

likely benefits.

Territoriality: Most crime, according to Wiles andCostello (2000), is local to the offender. Theirresearch showed the ‘average distance travelled tocommit domestic burglary was 1.8 miles’, whichconfirmed Forrester et al.’s (1988) research intopatterns of burglary in Rochdale.

These ideas are linked, within administrativecriminology, in two ways:

First, offences committed outside the offender’s localarea are mainly related, as Wiles and Costello argue,to opportunities presenting themselves ‘during normalroutines’, rather than being consciously planned.Second, if measures can be taken to reduceopportunities for crime in a particular area, crime rateswill fall, since the denial of opportunity, allied toterritoriality, means the majority of crimes will not bedisplaced to other areas (there are exceptions –activities like drug smuggling and prostitution, forexample, are sensitive to displacement).

Where administrativecriminology rejectsthe idea that there is

anything unique about offenders – just about anyone,given the right conditions, is capable of offending –crime can be limited by a variety of measuresdesigned to make it more difficult, less attractive andultimately more costly for the potential offender.Examples of crime prevention strategies include:

Crime awareness – making people more aware ofopportunities for (mainly low level) crime. Advertisingcampaigns, for example, focus attention on simpleways people can protect their property (‘Lock It or LoseIt’) or be more aware of crime (‘Look Out – there’s athief about’).

Community involvementincludes initiatives topromote both ‘self-policing’strategies such asNeighbourhood Watch orCrimestoppers (providingcash rewards to people forinforming on offenders)and closer relationsbetween the police and thecommunity. Thedevelopment of communitysupport officers in the1990s was designed tohelp the police developcommunity linkages(although Gilling (1999)has doubted theireffectiveness in this role).

Built environment: Acentral (ecological) ideabehind administrative criminology is the managementof physical space, examples of which we noted earlierin Wilcox and Augustine’s (2001) ideas about howpeople think about and relate to their physicalenvironment (levels of street lighting, for example). Asignificant idea here is:

Physical Environment

Evaluation

The explosion inmobile phoneownership has

opened up a wholenew world ofopportunistic

crime...

Community Support Officers - likereal police officers, only different.


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and ControlDefensible space, which involves ‘structuring thephysical layout of communities to allow residents tocontrol the areas around their homes’ (Newman,1996). The objective here is ‘to bring an environmentunder the control of its residents’ using a mix of ‘realand symbolic barriers, strongly defined areas ofinfluence, and improved opportunities for surveillance’.‘Alleygate’ projects, for example, have been developedaround the UK as a means of limiting access to‘outsiders’ on housing estates – gates preventpotential offenders both gaining access to houses andmaking their escape through a maze of alleyways. Afurther example is the use of CCTV surveillance.

On another level (quite literally) writers such asColeman (1985) have criticised the replacement of‘the traditional street of houses-with-gardens byestates of flats’. The result, she argues, was not the‘instant communities’ envisaged by governmentplanners, but rather the reverse – ‘problem estates’.She identified two main reasons for this:

1. Lack of community ownership of ‘common space’(no one took responsibility for corridors, for example)and:

2. Freedom: The ability of non-residents to movefreely – and anonymously – through blocks of flats(something Alleygate projects seek to prevent).

In terms of the impact of the physical environment oncrime (and crime prevention) Power and Tunstall’s(1995) longitudinal study of ‘twenty of the mostunpopular council estates in the country’ confirms thatchanges suggested by writers such as Newman andColeman do have the effect of reducing many forms ofoffending behaviour.

Administrativecriminology is, in someways, related to afurther general variation

on ecological theories, namely New Right Realism,a perspective that has a number of core themes:

Rational choice: This involves a general ‘cost/benefit’explanation which we have outlined previously.Although some of the cruder applications of thisconcept suggest individuals are fundamentally rationalin their behaviour (people always weigh the likely costsof crime against possible benefits), Wilson (1983)notes that, at the:

Individual level, this is not always possible or likely.Try calculating, for example, your chances of beingarrested should you decide to embark on a career ofcrime and it’s probable you’ll have little idea whatthese chances might be, which suggests rationalchoice can operate only at a:

General level, where beliefs about arrest chances arepropagated through the media, family and peer group– people whom, Wilson suggests, ‘supply a crudelyaccurate estimate of the current risks of arrest,prosecution, and sentencing’. In this situation – whereknowledge is, at best, rudimentary – potentialoffenders are unlikely to be deterred by things likelength and type of possible punishment; they are,however, likely to have a good working knowledge of:

Situational variables: That is, the best places andtimes to commit crimes with the least possible chancesof being detected or caught. Wiles and Costello’s(2000) research supports this idea when they noteconvicted offenders gave three main reasons for theirchoice of place to burgle:

1. Poor security2. Unoccupied3. Isolated / quiet.“Alleygate” projects have increased in popularity in recent years as

an effective way of “designing out crime”

Tower blocks offer a perfect environment for crime - high densityoccupation, easy access and plentiful escape routes, public

corridors, anonymity...

New Right Realism


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and ControlThis is a key idea here since, forWilson, the way to combat crime is toincrease the risk for potential offenders,something related to ideas about

deterrence. If a community puts in place measures todeter crime, the associated risks rise. These measuresare many and varied, but all ultimately devolve toanother core idea, the importance of:

Community and informal social control, involving anumber of crime preventionstrategies:

Maintaining order: Although not the first to suggest it,Wilson (1982) observed the broken window effect. If aneighbourhood is allowed to physically deteriorate itbecomes a breeding ground for unchecked criminalactivities. This follows because urban decay indicatesthe breakdown of informal social controls that keepcrime in check – “One unrepaired broken window is asignal that no one cares”. This, in turn, is related tothe:

Fear of crime within a community. As Kleiman (2000)argues, where people fear crime they take steps toavoid it – to the detriment of community life (thestreets, for example, become the preserve oflawbreakers).

Low-level regulation involves maintaining ‘communitydefences’ against non-conformity. These includethings like community surveillance, such asNeighbourhood Watch in theUK, or:

Zero-tolerance policing: Every deviant or illegal act,no matter how trivial, needs to be acted on by thepolice and community because it sets clearbehavioural markers and boundaries for potentialoffenders and the law-abiding alike.

Self-regulation: If the people of acommunity take pride in theirneighbourhood, they learn how toprotect it. If criminal behaviour isnot tolerated at any level thepotential offender learns thatthe costs of offending aregreater than the benefits.

Community policing: Thepolice must be fullyintegrated into and trusted bythe community. This means astrong local presence ‘on theground’, with foot officers buildingrelationships with law-abiding citizens.

Risk

“Broken windows” have become a modern metaphor for working classcrime and deviance (it should really be a similie, but it wasn’t

alliterative enough).


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and ControlAdministrative criminology and NewRight realism share some relatedproblems:

Displacement: While some writers (Town, 2001)suggest measures to combat crime (such as CCTV) donot result in offenders moving their activities to areaswhere such measures are absent. Osborn andShaftoe (1995) argue that the evidence is not clearcut; improvements in crime rates tend to be:

• Ineffective – physical measures reduce the fear ofcrime rather than crime itself – and

• Misplaced – concentrating on areas like businessand property thefts rather than areas, such asviolence, that cause greater concern.

Interventions: Osborn and Shaftoe (1995) concludethat policy interventions in ‘traditional areas of concern’– relieving poverty, eliminating economic inequalityand supporting family life – give more effective long-term returns in terms of reducing crime and offending.

Self-fulfilling prophecies: Strategies such as criminalprofiling (where the police build up a picture of typicalcriminals) result in some groups and individuals beingtargeted as ‘potential criminals’. When the police targetsuch groups they discover more crime (especially if azero tolerance policy is being pursued), whichconfirms’ their initial profiling and feeds into continuedprofiling.

New Left Realism uses athree-cornered approachto understand deviant

behaviour and its relationship to social control. AsYoung (2003) puts it: ‘The job of realism is to tackle allthree sides of the deviancy process.’ In other words,where administrative criminology, for example, focuseson one or other of these areas, left realism focuses onboth the content of each area and, more importantlyperhaps, the relationship and interaction betweenthem.

From this viewpoint explanations forcrime and deviance have to beconstructed in the light of therelationship between all three elementsin the triangle – offenders, victims andsocial; control agencies. It is not enoughsimply to concentrate on one element at theexpense of the others since it is onlythrough an understanding of how eachimpacts on the other that we canunderstand the nature of crime anddeviance.

This represents a ‘realisticapproach’ in two senses:

First, ‘the problem of crime’ is not an academic one inthat, to use Mills’ (1959) formulation, crime is both a:

• Private problem, in the sense of its social andpsychological effects on victims, and a

• Public issue, in the sense of the cultural impact ithas on the quality of peoples' lives andexperiences.

Second, it addresses the multidimensional nature ofcrime in terms of the relationship between offender,victim and social reaction – something we canunderstand more easily by considering eachdimension in turn.

1. Offender profiles suggest the majority of crime inour society is committed by young, working-classmales. Although there may be areas ofoverrepresentation (black youths, for example, figuredisproportionately in official crime statistics) and under-representation (in terms of the extent of middle-classor female criminality, for example), the statisticalpicture is, for left realists, broadly accurate – there isnot, for example, a vast reservoir of undetected ‘crimesof the elderly’.

In terms of explaining crime, Lea and Young (1984)suggest that three related factors explain why peoplechoose or reject criminal behaviour:

a. Relative deprivation: Concepts like poverty andwealth are subjective categories relative to whatsomeone feels they should have when compared withothers (a reference group such as ‘society’, peers orwhatever). Lea and Young use this concept for twoReasons:

• Deprivation alone cannot ‘cause criminality’; manypoor people do not commit crimes.

• Relativity allows them to include the ‘well-off ’ oraffluent in any explanation of offending. An objectivelyrich individual may, for example, feel relatively

deprived when they compare theirsituation to a reference group that hasgreater income and wealth.

b. Marginalisation relates to socialstatus. As writers such as Willis (1977)have shown, young, working-class men are

frequently ‘pushed to the margins ofsociety’ through educational failure and

low-pay, low-status work. A furtheraspect of (political) marginalisation is

the idea that, where deviantindividuals see themselves as

facing problems and need toresolve grievances, ‘no one is

listening’. Criminal activity,therefore, becomes the

social expression of

Evaluation

New Left Realism


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and Controlmarginalisation, especially when itcombines with:

c. Subculture (although the conceptof neotribes would probably fit just asneatly – loose conglomerations ofpeople who have something incommon). The ability to form andmove around in groups is seen as acollective response to a particularsocial situation. In this instance, theform of the subcultural/tribal group isdetermined by feelings of relativedeprivation and marginalisation.Specific subcultural values, in thisrespect, are not independent of theculture in which they arise and, for Leaand Young, it is precisely becauseworking-class youths, for example,accept the general values of capitalistsociety that they indulge in criminal behaviour –the pursuit of desired ends by illegitimate means.

Once again, the strength of this general theory is that‘subcultural-type groupings’ are not restricted to theyoung and the working class – middle-class companydirectors who deal illegally in shares or fix prices todefraud the public may have their behaviour supportedby a (sub)culture that sees such behaviour aspermissible.

2. Victim profiles: As Burke (1999) notes, left realismtries to bring victims into the picture in a number ofways:

Problematising crime: In this respect Burke notes‘crime is a problem for ordinary people that must beaddressed’ by criminologists, especially the ‘plight ofworking class victims of predatory crime’ whose viewshave been variously ignored (by radical criminologists,for example) or marginalised (by administrative

criminology and the New Right). In this respect, leftrealists argue the:

Lived experiences of crime victims (or those who livein high-crime areas) need to be considered andaddressed. In other words, we need to understandhow ‘fear of crime’, for example, is related to ‘livedcrime rates’. That is, how the experience of crime islocalised in the sense of affecting different individualsand groups in different ways – the chances of being avictim differ in terms of factors such as class, age,gender, ethnicity and region.

As Burke notes, official crime statistics suggestwomen are less likely to be murdered than men, butblack women have a greater chance of beingmurdered than white men. Victim impact is similarlyfragmented; men tend to feel anger, whereas womenare more likely to report shock and fear, and suchimpact, Burke suggests, ‘cannot be measured inabsolute terms: £50 from a middle class home willhave less effect than the same sum stolen from a poorhousehold’. In addition, someone living on a councilestate is more likely to experience crime thansomeone who owns a country estate, and, in a similarway to their New Right counterparts, left realists arguethat part of the process of understanding andcombating the effects of crime is to work with localcommunities to build safer environments.

Relationships: Many forms of criminology, as we’vesuggested, overdetermine the relationship betweenoffender and victim. In other words, the two are seenas practically, and therefore theoretically, distinct andseparate. Some forms of criminology under-determinethe relationship; everyone is seen as a ‘potentialoffender’, an idea reflected in increasingly restrictiveforms of social control and surveillance in the school,workplace and community. For left realists theoffender–victim relationship, for many types ofeveryday crime, is more complex in two ways:

a. Personal: Offenders may be well known to theirvictims.

b. Cultural: People may be, at different times, bothoffenders and victims.

An important feature of Left Realism is its ability to explain middle and upperclass “crimes of the powerful” - not just the “crimes of the powerless”.


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and ControlThe ideas we’ve just noted concerning offenders andvictims impact on the third corner of the left realistapproach in terms of:

3. Social reactions: Unlike Interactionist sociology,which has been concerned largely with demonstratinghow different forms of public reaction contribute to the‘problem of crime’, left realism focuses on how differenttypes of social relationship (between police and public,offender and victim, and so forth) create different socialreactions and, more importantly, different (policy)solutions to the problem of crime.

Young (1997) sketches the broad relationshipsinvolved in the understanding of social reactions interms of what he calls the ‘square of crime’. In thisrespect, social reactions are mediated through a rangeof different reciprocal relationships, such as thatbetween the police and offenders – how, for example,the police view ‘potential and actual offenders’ and, ofcourse, the reverse view, how potential offenders viewtheir relationship with control agencies. This generalrelationship, and different levels of social reaction, is:

Multidimensional, in the sense that the relationshipbetween formal control agencies and offenders will bemediated further by things like how the general public(informal control agencies) views both offenders andtheir victims. For example, where an offender or victimcan’t be easily identified, public reactions may bemuted (or uncooperative), which, in turn, may hinderformal police attempts to control a particular type ofoffending (as may occur with complicated and opaqueforms of white-collar/business crime). Similarly, inrelation to ‘victimlesscrimes’ (such as illegaldrug use) ‘offender’and ‘victim’ may be thesame person.

For left realism,therefore, policysolutions to crime areframed in terms ofdifferent ‘forms andpoints of intervention’in the deviancycreation process, andsuch interventionsoccur at all levelsof society. ForYoung (1997),therefore, theconcept of socialreaction involvesreacting to ‘crime’ asa general behaviouralcategory rather thansimply reacting tocriminal behaviour atparticular moments(such as when a crimeis committed).

Reactions, therefore, shouldn’t just focus on what to doafter an offence; rather, interventions (or acting prior toan offence) need to occur at all levels of society:

• Cultural/ideological in terms of improving ourunderstanding of the causes of offending, the role andrelationship of the police and public, and so forth.

• Economic in terms of things like educationalprovision and prospects, support for families, jobcreation and training.

• Political in terms of both punitive aspects of control(a variety of ways of dealing with different offenders)and the general climate within which offenders andvictims operate (levels of tolerance over crime, forexample).

The Square of Crime


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and ControlAlthough we’ve isolated these ideas for theoreticalconvenience, they are, of course, interrelated;economic interventions (such as providing educationand training) are mediated through ideologicalinterventions (how we view different types of offenderand victim, for example) and political interventions (thepractical measures developed to control crime, forinstance).

Left realism suggests therelationship between crime,deviance and social control is a

complex one that, in consequence, requires complextheorising and solutions. The problem of crime is notone (as history shows) that can be solved by relativelysimplistic ‘solutions’ (the idea that imprisonment is bothappropriate for all forms of crime and that ‘it works’ asa deterrent rather than simply as a form of punishment,for example). ‘Solutions to crime’ require complexanalyses that involve thinking about the genesis ofdeviant behaviour in terms of offenders – the socialand psychological conditions that give rise to suchbehaviour – and control agencies (the role of thepublic, police and courts, etc.).We can, however,identify two problematic areas:

Operationalisation: The complexity of the left realistposition makes it difficult to operationalise in its totality,and although complexity is not a criticism, it doesmean that certain forms of intervention are more likelyto be pursued than others. These include, for example,the types of intervention we’ve previously discussed inrelation to both administrative criminology and NewRight realism, which in some circumstances makes itpractically impossible to disentangle these differenttypes of theory. On a practical level it’s difficult to seehow specific concepts like relative deprivation andpolitical marginalisation can be measured, and if wecan’t quantify something like ‘marginalisation’, how dowe know it has occurred for an offender?

Common sense: Mugford and O’Malley (1990) arguethat a significant problem with left realism is the‘overdetermination of the real’; in other words, it makeswhat people believe about crime (in terms of its causesand explanations) a central theoretical consideration.

The experiences of ‘ordinary people’, in this respect,are considered ‘more real’ than explanations producedby social scientists, and this leads to the idea that thepolice concentrate on working-class forms of crimebecause ‘that is what people want’. Although this mayreflect the idea that street crime, for example, is acause for concern for people, it neglects the idea thatless visible, more subtle forms of white-collar crimemay have greater long term impact on the generalquality of peoples' lives.

In America, for example, Bernard Madoff, a formerchairman of the Nasdaq stock market, was arrestedand charged with fraud in January 2009. He iscurrently free on bail accused of effectively stealingaround £30 billion of investors’ money.

Evaluation

Imprisonment - is it part of the solution to crime - or part of

Although he may look like the kind of inoffensive, charming, guyyou’d trust with your life savings “Bernie” (as he was once probably

known to his many friends) managed to “lose” around £30 billionpounds of his investors’ money (which is either very careless of him

or the largest criminal fraud the world’s ever seen...).



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References


Crime and Deviance 3. Power and ControlYoung, Jock, 2003, ‘The Left and Crime Control’; 1997, ‘Left Realist Criminology: Radical in its Analysis, Realistin its Policy’; 2001, ‘The Extent of Crime’; 1994, ‘Self Report Studies’, www.jockyoung.org.uk

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Wilson, James Q., 1983, ‘Thinking About Crime: The debate over deterrence’, Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 252, No. 3

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