Marxism, class and crime Flashcards
What do Marxists say about laws?
The law is enforced disproportionally against the working-class
For Marxists, is crime inevitable in capitalism?
Yes because capitalism is criminogenic - its very nature causes crime
What does a profit motive by the capitalist class encourage?
A mentality of greed and self-interest
What is Gordon’s view on crime?
Crime is a rational response to capitalism and hence is found in all social classes
In what ways is capitalism damaging to the working-class?
- Causes poverty
- Crime may be the only way they can obtain consumer goods encouraged by capitalist advertising
- Alienation and lack of control over their lives may lead to frustration and aggression
What does Chambliss argue?
Laws to protect private property are the corner stone of the capitalist economy
How does the study of East Africa by Chambliss support the Marxist view of crime?
- By showing how the British law imposed was used to coerce the population into working on the British colonists’ plantations
- Made tax payable by cash, if you did not work you were labelled a criminal
Identify two ways in which crime and the law perform an ideological function for capitalism.
- Some laws (e.g. health and safety) appear to benefit the working class, giving capitalism a ‘caring face’ (Pearce)
- Occasionally prosecuting capitalists makes it seem as if there is not one law for the rich and one for the poor
What are 2 criticisms of Marxism?
- Too deterministic, over-predicts crime in WC
- The criminal justice system does sometimes act against the interests of the capitalist class
Explain the difference between deterministic and voluntaristic views of behaviour.
- A deterministic view of behaviour suggests that crime is caused by external factors, such as subcultures or poverty
- A voluntaristic view of behaviour sees the criminal as having free will and their crime is therefore the result of choice.
Who comes up with the idea of deterministic and voluntaristic behaviour?
Taylor et al
What was Taylor et al’s ‘fully social theory of deviance’?
- Wider origins of the deviant act
- The immediate origins of the deviant act (particular context)
- The act itself
- The immediate origins of social reaction (police, family and community)
- The wider origins of social reaction (who has the power to define actions as deviant)
Explain why critical criminology has been accused of being too idealistic to be useful in tackling crime.
Because it romanticises working‐class crime as revolutionary, ignores the victims and does not suggest useful ways to tackle crime
What is meant by the ‘correctionalist bias’ in some theories of crime?
The assumption made by some theories that the purpose of the sociological study of crime is to find ways of correcting criminal or deviant behaviour
What is Sutherland’s definition of White Collar crime?
Crime committed by persons of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupations