Critical Criminology

Question 1

What doesn’t critical criminology like about conventional criminology? What does it want instead?

Answer 1

1. It supports the econo-political status quo
2. Ignores the structural causes of criem
3. It focuses on biological and psychological causes of crime
   Critical crime wants a fully social criminology:
4. Where crime is put into a sociocultural context
5. Crime is examined for its structural, political, and economic factors
6. Where the relationship between crime and mode of production is examined (how crime will be defined based on what is needed for the work force)
7. Where the effect that power and conflict have on criminal justice is questioned
8. Where it looks at how the law is developed in capitalism (many things are made criminal because the government can’t profit off of it)
9. Where it analyzes the effect that PEOPLE have on the the system!

Question 2

Compare left realists with left idealists

Answer 2

Left Idealists: They started abstract, with ideas from Marxism and other places, and were accused of seeing criminals as a “revolutionary force”
Left realists: Looked through a BUNCH of surveys to fully understand crime. They were against “right realists”, who really like punitive sanctions, but they didn’t get a lot of headway because they were too “reform-based”

Question 3

What was Foucault’s schtick?

Answer 3

Governmentality and power!!

• Governmentality is the way the government shapes and directs its citizens. It puts into question how we govern ourselves, how to BE governed, and how to govern others in such a way that they wouldn’t rebel
• Power: It’s relational! It doesn’t really exist unless its being used. Foucault likes to examine it for its outcome, in a positive sense. A Micro-power is an everyday government relation, like traffic control
• Discipline: Meticulous training that ensures obedience, which involves things like observation, judgment, and surveillance. You need to be organized throughout space and time. This concept got some criticism because it portrays humans as passive agents that the government directs however it likes

Question 4

Describe actuarialism and risk

Answer 4

• Actuarial: All about Insurance-based strategies of control, such as police, probation, and risk-prevention methods
• Risk: Here, a risk is a calculated probability of an eventuality, through the reoccurrence of events over time in relation to the individual.
• Probabilistic calculation: 4 principle
  1. Risk: Criminal behaviour occurs in predictable patterns
  2. Needs: Tendency to reoffend (aka recidivism) is reduced through targeting the issues and treating them!
  3. Responsivity: Treatment needs to be delivered through SUCCESSFUL means!!!
  4. Professional Discretion: Don’t be an idiot

Issues:

1. It’s hard to differentiate between risks and needs
2. It Doesn’t work well for women and colours dfolk, because we don’t factor in that they are different

Question 5

What is risk society? How does it affect criminology?

Answer 5

The production of human-made risks, like nuclear destruction, and the building of society around managing these risks
Affects criminality by:
1. Social problems are risks to be managed, rather than problems to be solved. We just work to minimize social costs (storing criminals away instead of treating them)
2. Risk mentality changes criminal justice practices: you gotta collect risk data and risk assessments when you charge anyone.

This is helpful because it demonstrates the effects of broad societal shifts on how we approach criminal justice

Question 6

What are the factors of cultural criminology?

Answer 6

The social reaction perspective: crime is an interaction between the victim, offender, bystanders, and justice agencies
Cultural criminology says that crime is negotiated through social interaction!
5 motifs:
1. The importance of “adrenaline” in crime: Crime is felt, through anger, insecurity, etc.
2. The soft city, or the underbelly: While a lot of our lives are directed, the deviant are those who “get creative” and say “screw your intentions!”
3. Transgression and acts the challenge the justness of laws
4. Attentive gaze: Method where researchers enter high crime areas in order to better understand crime
5. The knowledge that cultural criminologists get is considered dangerous knowledge, since it questions everything, including criminology itself, and has some CRAZY sources!

Question 7

Describe Bourdieu’s Field Theory

Answer 7

• Field: e.g. artistic field, academic field, where people with varying social power in these areas vie for control. These fields are often tilted in the direction of the powerful
• Habitus: The “feel for the game”, things that you do without thinking once you know how your field works. Help you gain dominance in your field
• Capital: The top field, (aka bureaucratic field) where people compete for the control of government resources and priorities

Question 8

What is the bureaucratic field, and what is Wacquant’s perspective on it?

Answer 8

• The bureaucratic field: 2 axes
  Vertical: On top is the higher state political elite, like finance ministers, who are often vying for socially dominant groups. Lower down are those who deal with citizens face to face in health, education, housing
  Horizontal: These sides compete over public goods
  a) Left hand: Government social protection and support
  b) Right hand: State institutions that represent might and force
  Right hand horizontal: Police, courts, prisons, vying for an increase in punitive action, which results in less government support
  Carceral assistential mesh: A double regulation where right and left punish the poor for being poor. Causes “deadly symbiosis between prison and ghetto”. The risky are stored in prisons, and the poor are stored in ghettos

Question 9

What did Agamben focus on?

Answer 9

Agamben focused on sovereignty and the estate of exception - the government’s ability to suspend human rights

• Sovereign: One who holds supreme power in a space. Can declare a state of exception (suspends civil liberties “for the sake of the nation”)
• Human rights as protection is only offered through the virtue of citizenship, while still suppressing citizens
• Naked life: One who is excluded from human rights

Question 10

What are Derrida’s thoughts on deconstruction and justice

Answer 10

They are the same thing! Derrida says that sovereignty is intrinsic to everyone, because we are all able to ACT. He wants to completely look on the other side of language
- Deconstruction: Exposure of the hidden language of language! We do not just consider the words, but all of their implied meaning
- Trace: Silent element of language that is essential to meaning
e.g. community: To create a community, there is the implication and necessity of exclusion! They may even be united around exclusion, like a youth justice committee deciding the fate of the youth. This necessary exclusion can lead to stuff like genocide!
- Broken Windows policing: More police in poor areas, scares away people who are considering moving in
Justice: He doesn’t give a definition, just says that it’s something we’re working towards!