Class, Power and Crime Flashcards
In what way do Marxists agree with labelling theory?
The law is enforced disproportionately against the w/c and therefore the official crime stats cannot be taken at face value.
In what way do Marxists criticise labelling theory?
Fails to examine the wider structure of capitalism within which law making, law enforcement and offending take place.
Briefly explain how Marxists view capitalist society.
Divided into two classes:
- Ruling class (bourgeoisie) who own the means of production.
- W/c (proletariat), whose labour the bourgeoisie exploit to produce profit.
Explain what is meant by criminogenic.
Causing or likely to cause criminal behaviour.
Briefly outline three ways in which capitalism may lead to working-class crime.
- Poverty may mean that crime is the only way the w/c can survive.
- Crime may be the only way they can obtain the consumer goods encouraged by capitalist adverts, resulting in utilitarian crimes e.g theft.
- Alienation and lack of control over their lives may lead to frustration and aggression, resulting in non-utilitarian crimes e.g violence and vandalism.
According to Gordon, why is crime found in all social classes in capitalist society?
Crime is a rational response to the capitalist system and hence it’s found in all social classes even though official stats make it appear to be a largely w/c crime.
According to Marxists, whose interests do law making and law enforcement serve?
Capitalist class. For example, Chambliss argues that laws to protect private property are the cornerstone of capitalist society.
Use the example of East African colonies to explain the Marxist view of law.
At the time, the local economy wasn’t a money economy so to force reluctant African pop. to work for them, British introduced a tax payable by cash, non-payment was punishable offense. Cash to pay taxes was only available by working on plantations therefore law served economic interests of capitalist plantation owners.
According to Snider, what laws is the state reluctant to pass?
Laws that regulate the activities of businesses or threaten their profitability.
According to Marxists, who is criminalised by the justice system?
W/c and ethnic minorities.
According to Pearce, why are some laws passed that seem to benefit the working-class?
They benefit r/c too. E.g by giving capitalism a ‘caring’ face, such as laws also create false consciousness among the workers.
Why are some laws not rigorously enforced? Give an example.
Despite a new law against corporate homicide being passed in 2007, in its first 8 years there was only one successful prosecution of a UK company - despite large numbers of deaths at work estimated to be caused by employers’ negligence.
What is the impact of selective law enforcement?
Crime appears to be a w/c phenomenon which divides w/c by encouraging workers to blame the criminals in their midst of problems, rather than capitalism.
How do the media and criminologists contribute to the portrayal of criminals?
They portray criminals as disturbed individuals, thereby concealing the fact that it’s the nature of capitalism that makes people criminal.
Briefly explain the positive aspects of Marxists theory.
Shows link between law making and enforcement and interests of the capitalist class.
By doing so, it puts into a wider structural context the insights of labelling theory regarding the selective enforcement of the law.
Briefly outline the five criticisms of Marxist theory.
- Largely ignores relationship between crime and non-class inequalities e.g ethnicity and gender.
- Too deterministic and over-predicts amount of crime in w/c: not all poor people commit crime, despite pressures of poverty.
- Not all capitalist societies have high crime rates: e.g homicide rate in Japan + Switzerland is roughly 1/5 of that in the US.
- CJS does sometimes act against interests of capitalist class e.g prosecutions for corporate crime do occur. (However, Marxists argue that such occasional prosecutions perform an ideological function in making system seem impartial).
- Left realists argue Marxism ignores intra-class crimes such as burglary and ‘mugging’, which cause great harm to victims.
Briefly outline three ways in which Taylor et al agrees with Marxists.
- Capitalist society’s based on exploitation + class conflict + characterised by extreme inequalities of wealth + power. (Key to understanding crime)
- The state makes + enforces laws in the interests of capitalist class + criminalises members of w/c.
- Capitalism should be replaced by a classless society. This would greatly reduce the extent of crime for even rid society of crime completely.
According to Taylor et al, in what way is Marxism deterministic?
It sees workers as driven to commit crime out of economic necessity.
Briefly explain what is meant by a voluntaristic view.
Voluntarism is the idea that we have free will - the opposite of determinism.
Briefly outline the two main sources of this theory.
- Marxist ideas about the unequal distribution of wealth and who has the power to make and enforce the law.
- Ideas from interactionism and labelling theory about the meaning of the deviant act for the actor, societal reactions to it, and the effects of the deviant label on the individual.
Briefly outline the six aspects of a fully social theory of deviance.
- The wider origins of the deviant act: in the unequal distribution of wealth + power in capitalist society.
- The immediate origins of the deviant act: the particular context in which the individual decides to commit the act.
- The act itself: and the meaning for the actor e.g was it a form of rebellion against capitalism?
- The immediate origins of societal reaction: the reactions of those around the deviant, such as police, family and community, to discovering the deviance.
- The wider origins of societal reaction: in the structure of capitalist society - especially the issue of who has the power to define actions as deviant and to label others, and why some acts are treated more harshly than others.
- The effects of labelling: on the deviant’s future action e.g why does labelling lead to deviance amplification in some cases but not others?
In what way do the following perspectives criticise critical criminology?
- Feminists
- Left realists
Feminists:
- ‘Gender blind’.
- Focuses excessively on male criminality and at the expense of female criminality.
Left realists:
- Critical criminology romanticises w/c criminals as ‘Robin Hoods’ who’re fighting capitalism by re-distributing wealth from the rich to the poor. Reality: these criminals mostly prey on the poor.
- Taylor et al don’t take such crime seriously + ignore its effects on w/c victims.
Briefly outline Walton and Young’s defence of ‘The New Criminology’.
- Calling for greater tolerance of diversity in behaviour, the book combated ‘correctionalist bias’ in most existing theories - assumption that sociology’s role is simply to find ways of correcting deviant behaviour.
- Book laid some of the foundations for later radical approaches that seek to establish a more just society such as left realist and feminist theories.
According to Reiman and Leighton, how are crimes committed by higher classes treated in comparison to ‘street’ crimes?
The more likely a crime is to be committed by higher-class people, the less likely it is to be treated as an offence. Higher prosecution rates for crimes committed by poor people. However, CJS takes a more forgiving view towards crime committed by higher class.
