The Grenfell report reveals that the avoidable deaths of 54 adults and 18 children resulted from systematic failures by various parties responsible for building safety. A kitchen fire ignited due to a faulty fridge-freezer, and the use of combustible cladding exacerbated the fire’s rapid spread. Budget constraints prioritized profit over safety, highlighting the consequences of neoliberal policies.
The deaths of 54 adults and 18 children in the Grenfell Tower fire were avoidable, according to the recent Grenfell report.
Those who died were failed over many years and in numerous ways by those responsible for the safety of the building.
The fire started in one flat due to a malfunctioning fridge-freezer. The first fire engine arrived by 00:59, and the initial kitchen fire was extinguished by 1:21. However, by that time, the fire had spread outside through the kitchen window and rapidly engulfed the building, reaching the roof by 1:27. By 4:00, all four sides of the building were ablaze.
The Grenfell Tower Fire: who was responsible…?
The main reason for the fire’s rapid spread was the combustible aluminium composite material used in the cladding during renovations in 2015–16: Reynobond 55 PE, manufactured by Arconic. It consists of two thin sheets of aluminium with a flammable polyethylene core, which burns intensely.
Between the cladding and the concrete wall was a further layer of combustible insulation, which released toxic gas as it burned.
Because the fire spread on the outside of the building, the compartmentalisation designed to prevent the internal spread of fire failed.
The architects, Studio E, initially intended to use non-combustible zinc panels but instead chose the cheaper, combustible materials under pressure from the Tenant Management Organisation, part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. This decision saved almost £300,000 on a £9.2 million refurbishment.
There was systematic dishonesty from those who sold the cladding—Arconic, Celotex, and Kingspan—all of whom deliberately manipulated testing processes and misled the market about the safety of their products.
The regulators failed as well. The cladding materials were certified by the BBA, a privatised certification body. It was their responsibility to scrutinise the testing procedures more closely.
The central government also failed. Fires involving ACM cladding had occurred in smaller buildings as far back as 1991.
David Cameron’s government, with its neoliberal deregulatory agenda, left safety regulations under-resourced. One junior civil servant was given responsibility for fire safety measures with little oversight.
The architects, Studio E, and the contractors who installed the cladding also bear some responsibility.
Finally, the fire brigade was found to have serious and systematic failings. The control room was overwhelmed, radios failed, the “stay put” order was incorrect, and there was no clear strategy for this particular scenario.
Relevance to A-Level Sociology
This case study highlights the continued relevance of the Marxist perspective on crime, which argues that we should focus on social harms rather than only on criminal acts. In the case of Grenfell, significant harm was done, but not everyone responsible will be held accountable because many of those involved did not technically commit criminal acts.
It also shows that victims of such incidents are more likely to be poor. Fire safety standards were not followed properly due to budget constraints. Grenfell was social housing, and the residents were poorer individuals living in London. The local authority aimed to save money during the renovation, which is why they opted for cheaper, unsafe cladding materials.
This is a strong example of the failures of neoliberal economic policies, especially in showing how deregulation can lead to devastating consequences.
NB: There may still be criminal prosecutions in the future, but it is likely that many people complicit in these failures will escape punishment.
Collier (1998) criticizes Messerschmidt’s concept of hegemonic masculinity as too limited, arguing that it fails to consider the complexity of social subjects. He uses the case of the Dunblane Massacre to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of masculinity and its influence on violent behavior. Collier’s nuanced approach provides insight into the specific violence of men.
Collier argues the concept of hegemonic masculinity is limited.
For collier this is simply a list of traits which are not common to men. Women can also express the traits of what Messerschmidt calls ‘hegemonic masculinity’.
Messerschmidt uses the concept of hegemonic masculinity to explain too many types of crime. He uses it to explain everything from sexual abuse to traffic offences, from burglary to corporate crime.
Messerschmidt’s’ concept of hegemonic masculinity isn’t really sociological. It is based on stereotypical ideas about what a typical traditional man should be, drawn from popular ideologies.
Collier’s Postmodernist Approach
Collier argues a postmodernist approach is needed to understand the relationship between masculinity and crime. Such an approach would address the complexity of the multi-layered nature of the social subject. Stereotypes and images of masculinity are important, because they do affect people’s understanding of what it means to be masculine.
However, they are always interpreted in particular contexts. For Collier, men do not simply try to ‘accomplish masculinity’, because masculinity is multifaceted and where crimes are perceived as related to masculinity emerges in the discourses that surround crime.
There is uncertainty around what it means to be masculine because of the changing configurations of childhood, family and fatherhood, and of heterosexual social practices and sexed subjects.
Collier believes it is preferable to examine the subjective expression of masculinity by individuals or groups of men through crime rather than generalise about hegemonic masculinity.
Generalisations are dangerous because male identities are precarious and never fixed.
The Dunblane Massacre
Collier’s approach can be demonstrated by his case study of Thomas Hamilton, the guy who carried out the Dunblane Massacre.
On 13 March 1996 Thomas Hamilton shot and killed 16 primary school children and their teacher in Dunblane, Scotland. He then committed suicide by shooting himself.
Hamilton was a local man who was 43 and single. He lived alone but kept in frequent contact with his mother, who was local.
He had been a scoutmaster but had been forced to leave because of ‘inappropriate behaviour’. He had failed, despite a number of attempts, to be reinstated.
Collier argued the media portrayed Hamilton as a monster. It was implied he was a repressed homosexual, because he was single, had never married and had an interest in male children.
The media saw him as an inadequate nobody, a man who had failed to express any kind of masculine success: not financially, socially, sexually, academically in sport or at work. Hence why he went on to express his masculinity in a violent way.
However Collier argues that failed masculinity doesn’t offer a full explanation of Hamiltons’ extreme violence.
He argues we need to take account of the multifaceted nature of his masculinity and the interface between the contexts in which Hamilton lived at the level of social structure and the specifics of his own life history.
Based on the evidence Collier argues there was no evidence that Hamilton was a predatory paedophile, it is more likely he felt a need to control and direct young boys in order to direct their development.
Hamilton was regarded as a paedophile because he went against the norm: it is mainly women who care for children and men who take on the role are automatically regarded with more suspicion.
Thwarted in his attempts to express his masculinity as a Scout Leader, Hamilton sought to express it through an interest in guns. This allowed him to draw on images of hypermasculine toughness. By attacking the school he was asserting male authority and turning it on the feminised world of primary education.
His act of violence wasn’t one of losing control, it was one of him taking control.
Evaluation
Collier’s account is nuanced and explains the specific violence of men based on both structure and their specific life histories.
However it is just down to his interpretation. We can never be certain about what led Hamilton to commit such a gross act of violence.
Messerschmidt (1993) notes that males commit most crimes and therefore any study of crime must include a study of masculine values.
He criticises sex-role theory for assuming socialisation is passive. This theory assumes boys are simply not taught to ‘act male’ in childhood and this then defines their behaviour into adulthood.
He also rejects biological explanations for higher rates of male offending.
Messerschmidt points out that cross cultural comparisons show that masculinity varies across cultures. Both men and women are active agents in the construction of their identities. They do not just act on the basis of their biology or sex-roles they have been taught in childhood. They make active decisions as they go through their lives.
Messerschmidt thus argues that any theory which explains why men commit crime must take account of different masculinities. Different conceptions of masculinity tend to lead to different social actions and different types of criminality.
Applying structuration theory
Messerschmidt applies Giddens’ strucuration theory to better understand gender and crime. Like Giddens he believes social structures exist, but they only exist through structured social action. In other words, people’s actions are needed to maintain social structures.
Accomplishing masculinity
Gender is something people do, something they accomplish. In everyday life they try to present themselves in their interactions as adequate or successful to men or women.
Masculinity is never a finished product, men construct masculinities in specific social situations and in doing so reproduce social structures.
From this point of view a man chatting with his mates at a bar, or playing football, or watching and Andrew Tate video, are all attempts to accomplish masculinity.
Men construct a variety of masculinities, at least in part because they find themselves in a variety of social situations which they have little control over.
Some men are not in a position to accomplish certain desired forms of masculinity such as being good at sport or being a higher income earner. One’s ability to accomplish these desired forms of masculinity are shaped by one’s class and ethnic background.
Hegemonic and subordinate masculinities
Messerschmidt divides masculinity into hegemonic and subordinate.
Hegemonic masculinities are the most highly valued. These include economic and sporting prowess within mainstream society.
Subordinate masculinities are less powerful and carry lower status. These include violent, street-based activities.
The nature of hegemonic masculinity varies from place to place and time to time, but is generally based on the subordination of women. Hegemonic men benefit from their power over women. Men with less dominant forms masculinity may also try to gain power over women but it is less easy for them to do so.
Criminal behaviour can be used as a resource for asserting masculinity. As Messerschmidt puts it:
“Crime by men is a form of social practice invoked as a resource, when other resources are unavailable, for accomplishing masculinity.”
Different groups of males turn to different types of crime in attempts to be masculine in different ways.
Masculinities and crime in youth groups
White middle-class boys tend to enjoy educational success and frequently also display some sporting prowess. In these ways they are able to demonstrate the possession of hegemonic masculinity.
However, these are achieved at a price. Independence, dominance and control largely have to be given up in school. In order to achieve success they have to act in subservient ways in school. Their masculinity is undermined, they are emasculated.
Outside school some white middle class boys try to demonstrate some of the masculine characteristics which are repressed within school. This involves pranks, excessive drinking, vandalism and minor thefts. Because of their backgrounds these boys tend to be able to avoid the criminal label.
Such young men adopt ‘accommodating masculinity’ within school. This is a controlled, cooperative rational gender strategy to achieve institutional success. Outside they adopt a more ‘oppositional masculinity’ which goes against some middle class norms but asserts some of the hegemonic masculine traits they are denied in school.
White working-class boys also experience school as emasculating. However they are much less likely to achieve academic success within school. They therefore tend to construct masculinity around physical aggression. It is important to be tough, or hard, and to oppose the imposition of authority by teachers. They construct an oppositional masculinity both inside and outside of school. The Lads Paul Willis researched in Learning to Labour are an example of this.
A third group, lower working-class boys from minority ethnic groups struggle to find reasonably paid, secure employment. They are unable to construct masculinity through economic success and the breadwinner role. They are also too poor to do so through conspicuous consumption.
They thus turn to expressing their masculinity on the street. They use violence both inside and outside the school and are most likely to get involved in serious property crime.
Messerschmidt quotes a number of American studies showing how robbery is used to make offenders feel more masculine than their victims. Gang and turf wars are also attempts to assert masculine control. Rape is sometimes used to express control over women.
Horrific crimes such as gang rape can help to maintain and reinforce an alliance among boys by humiliating and devaluing women, strengthening the fiction of male power.
Recourse to these more violent forms of masculinity happen when social conditions of poverty, racism and lack of opportunity limit options.
Different types of masculinity and crime
Different types of masculinity can be expressed by different adult males in different contexts leading to crime.
Pimping
On the street, pimping is one way to express masculinity. Pimps usually exert strong control over the prostitutes they pimp out. They get them to turn over their earnings and can thus enjoy material success. Their attitude is one of the cool badass, displaying features such as control, toughness and detachment.
Pimps tend to be loud and flamboyant and display their success through luxury consumer goods. For black pimps this is away to transcend race and class domination.
White-collar crime
To achieve success within large-scale institutions crime may be necessary. In Corporate contexts crime may be tolerated, even encouraged if it can lead to more profit.
Messerschmidt quotes an engineer at Ford explaining why no one questioned the continued production of the Pinto model in the USA. This car was prone to bursting into flames if it was in a rear-end collision, and a number of people died as a result, but Ford still continued to produce it. The engineer explained that ‘safety didn’t sell’ and anyone questioning this would be sacked.
Domestic violence
Messerschmidt argues that relatively powerless men use domestic violence to assert control when women threaten their masculinity.
Much violence occurs when a man believe his wife or children have not carried out their duties, obeyed his orders or shown him adequate respect.
Evaluations of Messerschmidt
Messerschmidt’s theory allows for the existence of different types of masculinity and for the way these masculinities can change.
It also makes plausible attempts to link different types of crime to different types of masculinity and helps explain why men are more criminal than women.
However his theory fails to explain why particular individuals turn to crime when others do not.
Messerschmidt also seems to stereotype men, and he has very negative views of working-class and ethnic minority men. There is no room in his theory for the many men who reject hegemonic masculinities.
He might also be accused of exaggerating the importance of masculinity in explaining crime. Not all male crimes are about asserting masculinity!
Other theorists, such as Bob Connell (1995) do not portray men as negatively.
Alexander Mullins was sentenced to 19 years for running a drugs ring from prison. He used smuggled phones and drones to orchestrate the operation, with complicit prison staff and understaffing aiding the smuggling. The case highlights challenges in prison management, technology enabling crime, and the limitations of adopting a tough approach in combating criminal activity.
Mullins used mobile phones which had been bought by his mother and smuggled into prison. The prosecution uncovered evidence of 73 such phones having been used between 2016-2019.
Mullins was at the centre of a large network of people who produced and supplied a range of drugs. They supplied Spice, Cannabis, Cocaine and Heroin both inside and outside of prisons.
Drones were used to import drugs into SwaleCliff Prison where Mulins was serving time. He also organised drone deliveries to WormWood Scrubs.
At Swalecliff the drugs were kept in another inmate’s cell. He used a mop handle with a hook to get the drugs off the parked drone. When officers searched his cell they found several packages of drugs.
The gang also imported Spice by impregnating paper with it and then smuggling the paper in during visits.
They were so brazen after a couple of years of operating they started using social media to advertise their services.
Mullins received a 19 year sentence to add on to his existing sentence. Around a dozen other members of the gang were also convicted, but most of them only received non-custodial sentences…
How can someone run a drugs ring from jail…?
Mobile phones are banned in SwaleCliff Prison. Mullins was able to get access to phones because of them being smuggled in, probably by drones, along with the drugs.
Once an inmate has a mobile phone it’s quite an easy thing to hide in a cell.
Swalecliffe was apparently very understaffed during the period 2016-19. This would have made it difficult to search cells regularly and for staff to spot night time drone deliveries.
Prison staff may also have been complicit in this. Several prison officers have been fired from Swalecliffe because of corruption.
Moreover even those staff who are straight might turn a blind eye to drug use in jail. Some of them may lack the confidence to investigate which involves challenging prisoners. Simply put, it just makes for an easier life to ignore drug smuggling.
Low pay for prison staff doesn’t help with effective prison management either.
This shows how difficult it is to adopt a Right Realist approach and be tough on crime.
Here we have an individual who has received a prison sentence yet there aren’t sufficient resources to prevent him carrying on a criminal lifestyle.
It also shows us how technology can enable criminals more than the agents of social control.
There is probably technology that can detect drones, or prevent them being flown near prisons, for example. However Swalecliffe Prison doesn’t have these.
Prison overcrowding may also have affected the sentencing of some of the gang. The person who flew the drones containing drugs into jail received 150 hours community service, for example.
The Chivalry Thesis states that women are let of relatively lightly by predominately male police and judges. It is one explanation for why official statistics report so few female crimes compared to male crimes. It could also explain why there are so few female prisoners than male prisoners.
The key idea of the Chivalry Thesis is male police are less likely to arrest and prosecute female criminals compared to male criminals, even if they are caught committing similar crimes. Similarly, male judges will give female prisoners more lenient sentences compared to males for the same offences.
The first person to coin the term ‘Chivalry Thesis’ was Otto Pollak, in 1950.
Otto Pollak: The ‘masked’ female offender
Writing in 1950, Otto Pollack argued official statistics on gender and crime were misleading. He claimed statistics underestimated the extent of female criminality.
Pollak analyzed statistics from several countries and claimed to have identified certain crimes that are usually committed by women but which tend to go unreported.
nearly all offences of shoplifting and criminal abortions were carried out by women. Both of these often went unreported to authorities.
Female domestic servants were in a position to commit theft from properties, which often went unnoticed.
In the case of prostitution Pollak saw the female prostitutes as committing criminal acts, but not the male clients.
Women’s domestic roles gave them opportunities to get away with poising their husbands and abusing their children.
Pollack argued the police, magistrates and other law enforcement officials tended to be men. Brought up to be chivalrous, they were usually lenient with female offenders so fewer women appeared in the statistics.
However, according to Pollack, the chivalry thesis only explained a small part of the low female offending rate in the official statistics. A more significant factor was that women were very good at hiding their crimes. This Pollak attributed to their biology. Women were good at deceiving men because they were used to hiding pain and discomfort which due when menstruating.
Criticisms of Pollack
Heidenshon (1985) criticises Pollak’s work for being based on unfounded, stereotypical assumptions about women.
Stephen Jones (2009) pointed out that Pollak provided a lack of evidence to back up his points. He had no actual evidence that female domestic servants committed crimes against their employers, for example.
Despite the obvious sexism in Pollak’s theory, he is important as he was the first person to raise the possibility of ‘chivalry’ being a factor in explaining gender differences in the official crime statistics. The Chivalry Thesis has been taken a little more seriously by criminologists!
Evidence supporting the Chivalry Thesis
Historical self report studies have shown a difference in the reported rates of offending by males and females. These differences are NOT as great as the imprisonment statistics.
For example the 2006 Offending, Crime and Justice survey 12% of males admitted to committing more serious offences compared to 8% of females.
When offence type is controlled for women receive 4.5 years less than men.
However this does not factor in the precise details of the offence, plea or previous convictions.
Evidence against the Chivalry Thesis
The latest trends from Women in the Criminal Justice System shows that women are receiving more harsher punishments compared to previous years. Thus catching up with men.
This could be linked to the fact that there are proportionally more female police and judges today than ever before.
Feminist criminologists argue that far from being chivalrous towards women the criminal justice system is in some ways biased against women.
Signposting
This material is mainly relevant to the Crime and Deviance module, usually taught as part of second year A-Level sociology.
Feminist criminology, stemming from the 1970s second wave feminism, offered perspectives that reshaped modern criminology. Early feminist critique highlighted the gender blind assumptions within criminology and the need to recognize male and female experiences of crime. Contributions included theories on women’s crime, control theory, poverty’s role in crime, and a focus on intersectionality. JETPACK_AI_ERROR
Early feminism criticised the extreme male bias in early to mid 20th century criminology. Most criminological theories from consensus theories to radical criminology focused exclusively on men, ignoring women, issues of patriarchy and gendered discourses altogether.
One key early feminist criminology text was Carol Smart’s (1976) Women, Crime and Criminology 1976.
Smart argued that the sociology of deviance had to become more than just about men if it was ever to fully understand crime. She criticised the gender blind assumptions inherent within criminology, which saw male and female experiences of crime and criminal justice as largely the same.
Smart argued criminology should focus on highlighting the similarities and differences between male and female experiences of crime and the criminal justice system and the importance of creating a space for women’s experiences and voices within criminological research and theory.
Feminist contributions to criminology can be broken down into four main categories:
An early focus on developing theories of why women do and don’t commit crime.
A focus on‘ doing gender’: how masculinity is a main driver of crime.
Criticising the Chivalry Thesis by focusing on how women are seen as doubly deviant by the criminal justice system
A later focus on intersectionality and how factors such as ethnicity and age intersect with gender resulting in diverse experience of crime and criminal justice.
These contributions throughout the 1970s and 1980s reshaped the contours of modern criminology.
The rest of this post explores some of the contributions of mainly second wave feminism to the development of criminology in the 1970s, 1980s and into the early 1990s.
Much of this involved criticising existing criminological theory and practice.
Control theory: why do women commit less crime than men?
Fracnces Heidensohn (1985) argued that male dominated patriarchal societies control women more effectively than they do men, making it more difficult for women to break the law. She developed Hirschi’s Control Theory but adapted it to focus on gender.
Control operates across three spheres:
At home
In public
At work.
Control of women at home
Being a housewife directly restricts women by limiting the opportunities for criminality. Heidensohn describes domesticity as a form of detention. The endless hours spent on housework and the constant monitoring of young children leaves very little time for illegal activities. A pervasive value system persuades women they must carry out their domestic responsibilities dutifully or they will have failed as mothers and wives. Women who challenge the traditional roles of women within the family run the risk of having them imposed by force. Heidensohn says many observers confirm that wife battering is in fact an assertion of patriarchal authority.
If they are the main or only breadwinner men may also use their financial power to control women’s behaviour. The family more closely controls daughters as well as wives. They are usually given less freedom than boys who may come and go as they please or stay out later at night, and girls are expected to spend more time doing housework.
Control of women in public
In public women are controlled by the male use of force and violence, by the idea of holding onto a good reputation and the ideology of separate spheres.
Women often choose not to go out into public places because of the fear of being attacked or raped. Heidensohn quotes the 1986 Islington crime survey which found that 54% of women but only 14% of men often or always avoided going out after dark because of fear of crime. She quotes Susan Brownmiller’s claim that rape and fear of rape is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear. Heidensohn stops a short of endorsing this view but she does argue that the sensational reporting of rapes and the unsympathetic attitude of some police officers and judges to rape victims act as forces controlling women.
Women also tend to limit their behaviour in public Places because of the risk of being labelled unrespectable. The wrong sort of dress, demeanour, makeup and even speech can damage your women’s reputation in the eyes of men.
The ideology of separate spheres which sees women’s place as being in the home has become part of the system that subtly and sometimes brutally confines women. Women are not expected to raise their concerns in public or place them on the political agenda. If they try they may be ridiculed and told to return to where they belong in the home. such a fate befell of the Greenham Common women who during the 1980s protested about the sighting of American nuclear weapons in Britain.
Control of women at work
At work male superiors in the hierarchy usually control women and men also dominate trade unions. Women may also be intimidated by various forms of sexual harassment that discourage female employees from asserting themselves and from feeling at home. Sexual harassment ranges from whistles and cat calls and the fixing of pinups and soft p*** pictures to physical approaches and attacks which could be defined as indecent and criminal. Heidensohn quotes surveys that find that up to 60% of women have suffered some form of sexual harassment at work.
Conclusion
Heidensohn’s arguments about the causes or conformity by women fits in well with consensus views on the causes of deviance. Based on control theory, both agree the crime and deviance by women takes place when controls break down and women lose the real or imagined incentives to conform. Heidensohn suggests that some female criminals may be those who have perceived the biases of the system and decided to push against it.
For other women it is the restrictions themselves that force them into reliance upon crime. Heidensohn says women are particularly vulnerable because they are so economically exploited if they lose protection of a man and may turn to crimes such as prostitution as the only way of earning a reasonable living.
Evaluation of Heidensohn’s Control Theory
Many of her arguments are based upon generalisations, some of which do not apply to all women..
Heidensohn does not always support her claims with strong empirical evidence. Furthermore, she admits that many of the empirical tests of control theory have been carried out on juvenile offenders rather than adults.
Control theory does sometimes portray women as passive victims.
However Heidensohn does present a plausible explanation of why such a gap remains between men’s and women’s crime rates. In doing so she highlights some of the inequalities that remain between men and women. Furthermore the theory is supported by some empirical studies.
There is still some relevance today. In 2023 23% of women (compared to only 8% of men) said they had experienced sexual harassment in the previous year. 75% of those reported they’d experienced harassment in public places, 25% in the workplace. (Source: Office for National Statistics).
Pat Carlen: women crime and poverty
In 1985 Pat Carlen conducted a study with 39 women aged 15 to 46 who had been convicted of one or more crimes. She carried out lengthy and in-depth unstructured interviews with each of the women. Most were from the London area and 20 were in prison or youth custody centres at the time of interviewing. Most of the women were working-class and they had committed a range of offences. 26 had convictions for theft or handling stolen goods, 16 for fraud or similar offences, 15 for burglary, 14 for violence, 8 for arson, six for drugs offences and four for prostitution related crime.
Carlen criticised Freda Adler’s Liberation Theory. She did not believe that liberation had resulted in increased crimes by women; most of her sample had been touched little by any games that women had experienced through increasing opportunities in the job market for example.
Carlen argued that the type of working-class background of most of her sample was typical of female offenders convicted of more serious crimes. 30 members of her sample were from working-class backgrounds.
By reconstructing the lives of such women from in-depth interviewing, Carlen hoped to identify the set of circumstances that led to their involvement in crime.
Control Theory
Carlen adopted control theory as her theoretical approach. She argued that working-class women have been controlled through the promise of rewards stemming from the workplace and the family; such women are encouraged to make what she called the class deal and the gender deal.
The class deal offers material rewards such as consumer goods for those respectable working-class women who work dutifully for a wage. The gender deal offers psychological and material rewards from either the labours or the love of a male breadwinner. When these rewards are not available for women, or they have not been persuaded these rewards are real or worth sacrifices, then the deals breakdown and criminality becomes a possibility.
Factors encouraging deviance
Carlen found that the women she studied attributed their criminality to four main factors. These were drug addiction (including alcohol), the desire for excitement, being brought up in care and poverty. She placed particular emphasis on the last two factors: very often the abuse that drugs and the desire for excitement the consequence of being brought up in care will be important
In all 32 the women had always been poor, four of the remaining seven were unemployed at the time of being interviewed and only two had good jobs. 22 of the women had spent at least part of their lives in care.
Rejection of the class deal
Poverty and being brought up in care led to the women rejecting the class and gender deals. Few of the women had experience of the possible benefits of the class deal. they never had access to the consumer goods and leisure facilities which Society portrays as representing the good life.
Attempts to find a legitimate way of earning a decent living had been frustrated. For example six of the women had been through the youth training scheme but they had returned to being unemployed at the end of their training. A number had gained qualifications in prison but found them to be of no use in finding a job. Many had experience of day-to-day humiliations, delays and frustrations in trying to claim benefits. They had a strong sense of injustice, oppression and powerlessness. Crime was a way of resisting these justices and trying to solve the problems of poverty. The women had little to lose by turning to crime and potentially a good deal to gain.
Rejection of the gender deal
According to Carlen women generally are deterred from committing crime because they are brought up to see themselves as the guardians of domestic morality. They have less opportunities to commit crimes because they are more closely supervised than males first by parents, later by husbands. Patriarchal ideology promises women happiness and fulfilment from family life. For most of the women in the study though the gender deal had not been made or had been rejected. They felt they had been freed from family life or felt so closely supervised they felt oppressed by the family.
Some of the women had been sexually or physically abused by their fathers. Eight of them had been physically attacked by male partners.
For the 22 women who had been in care there had been little opportunity to acquire the psychological commitment to male related domesticity. spending time caring.
Broken attachments to friends and family had reduced some of the potential social costs of isolation that could result from crime. Some had run away from care usually with no money and some had experienced homelessness and unemployment, all of which can easily lead on to crime.
Many of the women saw crime as their only route to a decent standard of living. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Convictions and prison sentences served to restrict the women’s legal opportunities even further and make the attractions of crime greater.
West and Zimmerman: Doing gender
Feminist Criminology also engaged in a closer consideration of masculinity, and the social construction of maleness. For example West and Zimmerman (1987) in their article ‘Doing Gender’.
West and Zimmerman proposed that women and men engage in gendered practices i.e ‘do gender ‘in response to situated social hierarchies and expectations about masculinity and femininity thus contributing to the reproduction of social structure.
Messerschmidt (1993) has developed this arguing that for many men crime served as a resource for doing gender and that different crimes were useful for demonstrating masculinity depending on men’s social structural positions across axes of race and class.
Masculinity was seen as a crucial point of intersection of different forms of power stratification and identity formation . Feminist theoretical work on the social construction of gender asserted that male power was crucial in understanding crime.
Feminist Criticisms of the Chivalry Thesis
The Chivalry Thesis stated that women were treated less leniently by the police and courts than men which partially explained their lower levels of representation in the official crime statistics.
One of the first criticisms of this was put forward by Francis Heidensohn (1968). Heidensohn argued that women were treated more harshly by the criminal justice system because they were seen as doubly deviant: They had broken social norms by breaking the law and also broken the social norms of their gender, thus they received harsher punishments.
Research from 1987 found that compared to men women were more likely to be put in jail for robbery and assault compared to property crime. This suggests women are punished more harshly for being violent than men.
Research from 2018 found that mothers receive harsher penalties than fathers. This suggests women are punished more when they break the ‘good mother’ stereotype.
Carol Smart (1989) argued male offenders are sometimes treated more sympathetically than their female victims. This is particularly the case with rape trials She argued such trials ‘celebrate notions of male sexual need and female sexual capriciousness’. She quoted some historical comments by judges in rape trials as evidence:
“It is well known that women in particular and small boys are likely to be untruthful and invent stories.” Judge Sutcliffe, 1976.
“Women who say no do not always mean no. It is not just a question of how she shows and makes it clear. If she doesn’t want it she only has to keep her legs shut”. Judge Wild, 1982.
“It is the height of impudence for any girl to hitch-hike at night. That is plain, it isn’t really worth stating. She is in the true sense asking for it”. Bertrand Richards, 1982.
Sandra Walklate (2004) argued that it is the female victim who ends up on trial. Women have to establish their respectability if their evidence is to be believed.
From a feminist perspective rape trials tend to see things from the male point of view which accepts that men become unable to restrain their sexual desires once women give them any indication they may be available for sex.
Female victims of rape are portrayed as not knowing their own mind, not being able to determine whether they want sex or not.
Prison is a harsher form of punishment for women
Pat Carlen’s work revealed that prisons were outdated, outmoded and gender insensitive forms of punishment for women. She argued that women’s prisons both infantilize and medicalice their occupants. Women and girls confinement was revealed to be shaped by powerful and pervasive ideologies about femininity and the proper place of women
Intersectionality and Criminal Justice
Third wave Feminism celebrated multiple ways of ‘doing Feminism’. More focus on intersectionality and on the impact of criminal justice on those who cross identities.
Some third and fourth wave feminists criticised early feminisms as being based on the experience of white women. They sought to understand more how gender inequality intersected with cross cutting systems of oppression such as race, class, sexuality, ableism and age. (Collins and Bilge 2016)/.
An intersectional lens is now increasingly used to understand how intersecting social identities mediate crime and experiences of victimisation. And focus critically on how criminal justice systems both embody and perpetuate existing social inequalities. (Healy and Colliver 2022).
Signposting and sources
This material is part of the Crime and Deviance module, taught in the second year of A-level Sociology.
Restorative Justice encompasses victim-offender mediation, family group conferences, and sentencing circles, emphasizing core values and ethical principles. It promotes lay encounters, narrative expression, and ritual dynamics, empowering communities and promoting emotional restoration. The approach aligns with principles of fairness, accountability, and empowerment and has shown promise in reducing reoffending rates.
Restorative Justice includes activities such as victim-offender mediation, family group conferences, restorative conferences, sentencing circles and community reparation boards.
Defining restorative justice
Restorative justice has been defined as both a set of values and practices, but also as a set of processes and even outcomes. There is no agreement on how to define the concept.
The goal of restorative justice for those focusing on values is to ‘cement a common set of core values and ethics’ (Shapland 2014).
Others prefer to define restorative justice in more concrete terms, as a set of practices, as this makes it easier to research.
Home Office researcher Tony Marshall defines restorative justice as a process whereby all parties with a stake in a particular offence come together to resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its implications for the future.
In this definition restorative justice is both a practice, as people come together, and it includes a forward looking element. It is also a process involving dialogue, and an outcome, people agreeing on what should be done to repair the harm done by the offence.
Including an outcome as part of a definition is a problem because this means the definition may not be inclusive enough. For example in some restorative practices the victims may not consent to the outcomes.
A more useful definition may thus be provided by Daly (2016)…
“Restorative justice is a contemporary justice mechanism to address crime, disputes, and bounded community conflict. The mechanism is a meeting (or several meetings) of affected individuals, facilitated by one or more impartial people. Meetings can take place at all phases of the criminal process, pre-arrest, diversion from court, pre-sentence, and post-sentence, as well as for offending or conflicts not reported to the police. Specific practices will vary, depending on context, but are guided by rules and procedures that align with what is appropriate in the context of the crime, dispute, or bounded conflict.”
This definition is a practice and a process but not a value or an outcome. The core elements in this definition are
Lay encounters
Expresses narratives
Ritual dynamics
Lay encounters
Restorative Justice practices empower lay people – victims, families, friends and community members – to actively participate in the process.
This stands in contrast to traditional justice mechanisms in industrial societies, Usually the State takes control of justice through professional bureaucracies, denying communities any say in the process.
It is a bottom-up encounter where lay people interact to address the specific impacts of a particular criminal offence or conflict. The main forms this encounter can take include victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing and circle sentencing.
Victim-offender mediation, found in North America and Europe, involves an encounter between victim and offender, convened by a neutral third party facilitator.
Family group conferencing, mainly found in New Zealand and Australia, involves a larger circle: victims, offenders and direct stakeholders such as family, friends and respected community members.
Circle sentencing, usually found in North America, Australia and New Zealand is normally embedded within communities. It is especially common among First Nations peoples and includes the offender, victims, community elders, justices and other criminal justice officials.
While community members are involved, so are professionals such as facilitators, social workers, the police and probation officers.
Narrative Expression
Restorative Justice allows victims and offenders to tell their stories in their own words. It involves the development of a narrative that articulates the voices of lay people. Most encounters involve a carefully designed and managed script. As a bare minimum this process of narrative expression should involve:
The facilitator asks the offender to describe the events leading up to the offence and the details of it.
Then the victim and other participants speak about they have been affected
The facilitator asks the offender how they have been affected and what they have heard.
The expression of emotion is central to the restorative justice process and two narratives emerge: harm and accountability.
The narrative of harm emerges that allows victims to articulate the impact of the offence in their own words.
The narrative of accountability allows the offender to accept responsibility and express remorse
This is very different to the ‘hegemonic tales’ that dominate in courtroom interactions (Ewick and Silbey, 1995).
Victims may be allowed to speak in court, often through a victim statement, but this isn’t the same as a narrative that is co-produced and negotiated.
Offenders and other people are usually excluded from speaking. When they do they are obliged to speak in the alien formal language of the court.
Ritual Dynamics
It is widely acknowledged by sociologists and anthropologists that rituals play an important role in social life. (Durkheim 1995, Douglas 1984). As Durkheim pointed out over a century ago, rituals are important as they help people to make sense of a society’s collective values and give structure to otherwise shapeless social events. Rituals also provide social solidarity and help sustain a belief in a moral order.
Criminologists have noted that most criminal justice systems have developed increasingly sophisticated ‘degradation rituals’ to mark the guilt and punishment of an offender (Garfkinkel 1956). However, unlike other social institutions, criminal justice fails to provide corresponding ‘reintegrative rituals’. Restorative Justice allows for the performance of these reintegrative rituals.
The aspects of restorative justice rituals that make them unique are staging, choreography, casting, scripting and symbols.
There are clear physical boundaries: participants usually sit in a circle with no hierarchy. There is a clear delineation between who is part of the circle and who is an outsider. This sets it apart from the adversarial settings of a court.
Facilitators make an effort to design a seating arrangement that supports vulnerable parties and maximises interaction.
Effort goes into encouraging a ‘community of care.’
The process usually encourages some kind of agreement that reflects the consensus reached. The steps the offenders are to make to right the harms they have done are usually written down and signed by all present.
There will be variation in restorative justice processes. They will vary depending on the nature of the offence and who is involved.
Restorative values, principles and standards
Braithwaite (2008) distinguished between procedural standards and outcome standards.
Constraining standards
Constraining standards include empowerment, non-domination and accountability. These must be honoured as ‘fundamental procedural safeguards’.
Maximising standards
Maximising standards include restoration of relationships, emotional restoration, and the prevention of future injustice, usually interpreted as a reduction in offending. Maximising standards are conditional on the desires and capabilities of the parties.
Emergent standards
Emergent standards include remorse, apology, censure of act, forgiveness and mercy. These can only emerge organically, they can’t really be actively encouraged like maximising standards. For instance, a victim of crime should never be required to express forgiveness just an offender should never be compelled to show remorse, as this would violate the constraining standards of non-domination and empowerment.
Visually, constraining standards would be at the basis of a pyramid, they form the basis on which any restorative justice encounter is built upon..
Restorative Justice mechanisms are ritual dynamics, lay encounters and expressive narratives.
Depending on the dynamics in a session, maximising standards may be encouraged and emergent standards may emerge.
Braithwaite (2022) has argued that both crime and justice can be experienced as forms of domination. He sets out a theory of justice that is based on freedom as foundational in the fight against domination.
This concept of freedom here is located within a republican conception that is respectful, inclusive and intolerant to all forms of domination.
Restorative Justice values also reflect a deeply relational way of doing justice. This reflects a long history of indigenous and feminist ways of seeing and knowing the world. This takes as a starting point that we live in relations with others, and transforming these, both on a micro and macro level is central.
Explanatory theories of how restorative justice works
A number of criminological theories attempt to account for some of the claims made by restorative justice advocates. The three main theories are:
Shame theories
Procedural Justice Theory
Ritual theories.
Shame theories
Shame is the central emotion around which restorative justice is built. Braithwaite’s reintegrative shaming theory is the most well-known theoretical foundation for restorative justice.
In his groundbreaking Crime, Shame and Reintegration (1989) Braithwaite makes the distinction between stigmatic and reintegrative shaming.
Braithwaite demonstrates that most criminal justice processes shame both the act and the offender. This effectively ostracises the offender from the community making it difficult for them to reconnect.
Reintegrative shaming however shames the act but allows the offender a chance to express remorse and be welcomed back into the community.
Reintegrative shaming allows for a community to strengthen social bonds and allows remorse, apology, mercy and forgiveness to emerge.
Scheff and Retzinger (1991) have suggested that shame is a repressed emotion in contemporary society. Thus we are often ashamed about feeling shame. If an offender is ashamed about committing a crime he will feel worse because of the shame about feeling ashamed. This can lead to further aggression, violence and general dysfunctional behaviour.
Restorative Justice may work because it allows for both the offender and victims to express their shame, to openly feel it, and work through this, thus breaking the above negative cycle.
Procedural justice theory
Respect lies at the heart of procedural justice theory. If citizens feel that their treatment at the hands of authority figures is fair, inclusive and respectful, they are more likely to obey the law.
Defiance can result in a rejection of the law and future offending when an offender views a sanction as illegitimate, has weak bonds to the sanctioning agent, or denies his or her shame in an offence. Deterrence, on the other hand, is more likely if the sanctions are regarded as legitimate, offenders express shame for their actions and they have strong bonds to mainstream society.
The voluntary nature, deliberative structure and encouragement of stakeholder participation in restorative justice can lead to increased perceptions of fairness, legitimacy and social bonding (Tyler 2006).
Ritual theories
Ritual theories argue that one’s sense of morals, community bonds, and the self are a function of the rituals in which one partakes, both sacred and profane.
The restorative justice ritual brings together victims and offenders, their emotions, and their stories to produce solidarity and other conciliatory emotions. (Rosner 2013).
When bringing people together in a face-to-face encounter with clear barriers to outsiders and a shared focus of attention, a certain rhythm will build up between participants as they become more in sync with each other’s emotions and perspectives. This rhythm leads to entrainment – people are focused on and feel connected to each other akin to Durkheim’s notion of collective effervescence. Solidarity and shared emotion may then be demonstrated through expression of apology and forgiveness and symbolic integration through handshakes, eye contact and hugs.
This is a particularly striking type of ritual when one considers the asymmetrical degradation rituals of Court.
Bolitho (2017) draws on the concept of memory reconsolidation to explore how restorative justice can help victims. Through the ritualised act of telling one’s story within the supportive and structured confines of restorative justice circles a victim may rewrite a harmful emotional memory substituting it with the positive emotions experienced during the restorative encounters.
Empirical research on restorative justice
Restorative justice has been subjected to an enormous amount of empirical research, perhaps more than any other criminal justice innovation in recent history. More recent studies draw on randomised control trials.
Participant experiences with restorative justice
Research suggests that respect, accountability, empowerment, non-domination, apology and forgiveness are experienced on average in greater quantities by participants in restorative justice conferences compared to those whose cases end up in traditional courts.
Both offenders and victims perceive restorative justice as a more satisfying and legitimate process than that which is offered in the courtroom. Offenders who participate in restorative justice have a better understanding of what is happening, are more actively involved with their case and are more likely to report that they are treated with respect and fairness. Restorative justice conferences can also result in a higher frequency and amount of restitution paid to victims.
In a comprehensive study of restorative justice for British offenders Chaplin and colleagues (2007) reported that the large majority of victims and offenders found the process to be useful, felt a sense of closure and were more satisfied with their procedures and those who went to court. Notably those whose offences were more serious were significantly more likely to find their conferences useful compared to those who committed less serious offences.
Research from Australia examining the role of shame in restorative justice reports that offenders who participate in conferences experienced both reintegrative and stigmatic shame in higher quantities than offenders who go to court.
Healing victims
Victims who meet their offender and receive an apology are more forgiving, feel more sympathetic towards the offender and are less likely to desire physical revenge. Paulsons (2003) early review of restorative justice illustrates a range of positive psychological outcomes for victims.
Randomised trials in Great Britain provide strong evidence of increased well-being for victims who meet with their offender compared to victims who do not.
A minority of victims and offenders feel worse after a conference specifically when they reported not being involved or disrespected.
A minority of participants that were unhappy with their conference pointed to instances where they felt they were not being taken seriously or where they felt uninformed or not Included. When victims are unhappy with their experience it is often when they feel little attention has been paid to the process and most of the focus is on developing suitable outcomes for the offender.
Reoffending
The best research on restorative Justice and reoffending shows a modest but consistent positive effect on recidivism reduction. However much research on restorative justice and recidivism has been hindered by the lack of an adequate comparison groupS, little statistical power or other methodological issues.
Early reviews of the evidence on restorative justice resulted in cautiously optimistic conclusions about its effectiveness (Braithwaite 2002).
All studies conclude that restorative justice, compared to court, results in a modest reduction in offending. There is also a secondary benefit of a reduction in the desire for revenge by victims, possibly resulting in a reduction in revenge crimes.
Strang et al (2013) report on a systematic review of the most rigorous randomised control trials. This analysis indicated restorative justice may be more effective for violent crime than for property crime and for adults rather than for young offenders.
There is also evidence that Restorative Justice is cost effective compared to court.
Not all RJ conferences are the same. It is more likely to be successful when…
offenders are remorseful.
an outcome was agreed by consensus.
when offenders report it has been useful in helping them realise the harm their offences had done.
Also high intensity emotional conferences result in a greater reduction in reoffending.
One needs to be careful about generalising from the findings on restorative justice and realise it only works when done well, however such settings are difficult to replicate!
The Future of Restorative Justice
The United Kingdom government has committed to invest millions of pounds in restorative justice processes. However a 2020 review found that only 5.5% of victims were offered the opportunity to meet their offender.
Lack of government investment aside, there is ground-up expansion, Braithwaite (2021) refers to restorative justice as a street level meta strategy, with initiatives springing up in many areas:
Sexual violence
Hate crime
Environmental harm
Declaration and the movement for racial justice.
Potential barriers to the evolution of restorative justice
Restorative justice needs support, it’s been ‘about to take off’ since the 1980s.
We need to keep evaluating it as it expands. It doesn’t work all the time. Hurdles need to be overcome for it to be successful.
There is a tension between institutionalising community justice which may undermine its spirit!
Only one in 20 offenders in the UK get charged. This is because of two main reasons: Tory funding cuts leading to declining police numbers and the increasingly complex nature of crime.
Only one in 20 offenders now get charged, according to a recent BBC Panorama documentary: Will my Crime get Solved…? For burglaries, only 4% of home burglars are charged.
And in 39% of crimes police fail altogether to identify a suspect.
The documentary does the ususual job of combining case studies and interviews with experts who drill down into the statistics.
The case studies are with three victims who haven’t had their crimes cleared up. In two of the cases the victims have even done their own work identifying the criminals. However the police haven’t pursued prosecutions in either case, despite having clear evidence.
Why is there such a low clear up rate for crimes in the UK?
It isn’t due to rising crime rates overall. Most crimes have decreased over the last few decades according to the Crime Survey of England and Wales. Despite the low prosecution rates, burglary is falling, for example.
However, two crimes in particular have increased: cybercrime and sexual related violence, mainly against women.
Both of these crimes are very difficult to get prosecutions for, which goes some way to explain the very low clear up rates for crime.
Cyber crime has increased dramatically in recent years, and is very difficult to solve because the perpetrators are often unknown, and quite possibly based abroad in the case of organised cybercrime.
Sexual violence has seen an increase in reporting but it can be difficult to get prosecutions and victims are unwilling to to pursue the peretators in the courts because of fear of retribution, shame, and the historically low chances of getting a successful prosecution
A second reason for the low clear up rates for crime is that the police are overstretched and increasingly inexperienced. Tory cuts to police funding saw 20 000 police officers leave the force after 2010. These have now been replaced but with younger and less experienced officers.
And this now less experienced cohort of officers have to deal with increasingly complex crimes compared to a decade ago. This means more time is being spent on cyber crime, sex crimes, but not only that, more police time is being spent on dealing with global crimes too.
This means that crimes such as burglary have been pushed to the back of the priority list. The police today are under increased pressure given their numbers and lack of experience.
Public confidence in the police in the UK is at an all-time low.
Relevance to A-level sociology
This is very relevant to left-realist criminology which argues victims should be put first when it comes to policing strategies. This evidence suggests such an approach is not working and victims are being let down. With such very low clear up rates, public trust in the police is at an all time low, and left-realist approaches rely on the public trusting and working with the police.
It also shows us how the police are struggling to cope with the changing nature of crime.
It is also possibly evidence of how neither left nor right realist approaches to tackling crime control are relevant today. Crime is increasingly global and complex and maybe new and innovative crime control measures are required.
The British public today are not so much concerned about crime in the classic sense of the word. They aren’t so worried about being victims of burglary, or theft, or street violence for example.
People today are less concerned about their chances of being a victim of formally defined crimes. People are more concerned about a broader and more general range of social problems which more subtly undermine their feelings of safety and security.
For example, people today are more likely to be worried about:
Low level bullying such as with children at school.
Gender based harassment, violence and abuse, including grooming.
Hate crimes such as racism.
The effects of climate change, so environmental harms.
Immigration and the effects this has on local social cohesion.
People trafficking and human slavery.
With the possible exception of climate change, not everyone is going to be immediately affected by the above harms. However people are more aware that they exist and that such things are going on in their neighbourhoods. None of these harms are as public or obvious as ‘classic’ crimes such as vandalism, street violence, or thefts.
The increased awareness that these social harms are part of everyday social life has created a growing sense of unease among many people.
From fear of crime in the 1990s to a general concern about safety and security in the 2020s.
Back in the late 1990s in Britain people were more concerned about ‘classic crimes’ such as burglary and car theft. The crime discourse at that time was largely shaped by mainstream television and newspapers as well as face to face contact. One Ipsos-Mori poll from the mid 1990s showed that 41% of people listed crime (and reducing crime) as one of the three biggest problems facing Britain at that time.
These findings were largely backed up by a study conducted by Girling et al (2000): Crime and Social Change in Middle England. This was a two year qualitative study of people’s feelings about crime and policing in Macclesfield. (Selected because it was a reasonably affluent, small town where crime wasn’t an immediate day to day problem.) People naturally talked about being concerned about being victims of car theft and feeling threatened by groups of young people hanging out on the street.
The researchers revisited Macclesfield more recently and found that people were no longer concerned about classic crimes. What they expressed was a complex and varied sense of unease about the issues mentioned in the previous section.
Why are people more concerned about safety and security today?
People’s increasing sense of unease and susceptibility to feeling insecure is related to the following social changes:
Economic growth and then collapse in 2008 has made us feel more vulnerable in general. There is more of a sense that what we have gained can also be lost.
The rise of digital media. The previous 2000 study was done before the age of digital media. Today people access the social world online, meaning a very different, varied, and risk-on public landscape.
Climate change has become much more of a visible issue.
Brexit brought the issue of migration to public attention.
The Pandemic made us more aware of domestic abuse.
The way the State responds to more global threats such as global terrorism, through increasing surveillance of certain types of people, can also affect how some people experience security issues today.
Implications
The idea of fear of crime seems to have had its day. We need to focus on people’s more general sense of danger and difficulty in their daily lives and how they seek safety and security.
Traditional victim surveys such as the Crime Survey of England and Wales have tended to measure people’s fear of specific crimes in public spaces, such as fear of being assaulted in public or fear of social disorder. These are possibly no longer fit for purpose!
We shouldn’t make any presumptions about what people are concerned about. What people are worried about varies. It might be anything from how going online opens them up to potential harm in the form of scams, or risk of flooding due to climate change.
In this sense security can be conceptualised as ‘a set of political practices, governmental speech acts mobilised to justify decisive, speedy, exceptional measures in the face of what is presented as a conceptual threat’.
Emerging in the late 1960s and 70s, Radical Criminology, aka New Criminology combined Marxist and Interactionist approaches, emphasizing capitalism’s role in producing crime, and the subsequent societal reactions. It called for understanding crime through several factors such as wealth distribution and societal response to deviance. Critics argue it offers no practical solution to crime and romanticizes criminals, while ignoring crime victimization of women.
Radical, new or critical criminologies of the late 1960s and 1970s had their basis in Marxism, Libertarianism, anarchism or American populism.
They sought to understand crime control by referring to power, politics and inequalities and emphasised the need for political activism or praxis.
Chambliss (1976, Box 1983) saw crime control as an oppressive and mystifying force. Legislation and law enforcement and ideological stereotyping preserved unequal class relations.
The radical political economy of crime sought to expose the hegemonic ideologies that masked the real nature of crime and repression in capitalist societies.
Most mundane offending was less harmful than exploitation, alienation, racism and pollution.
Much proletarian crime could be redefined as a form of rebellion or redistributive class justice. Or the possessive individualism endemic to capitalist society.
Criminal justice itself created visible crowds of working-class black scapegoats to deflect attention away from a capitalist system in terminal crisis.
If the working classes did turn to crime they were themselves victims of false consciousness which inflated the nature of petit problems while hiding harms the bourgeoisie did.
Black prisoners were the victims of race wars, prison the ultimate form of state repression.
Most people were unaware of how power worked and it was the job of the radical criminologist to demystify.
Socialism was the answer to the problem of crime.
The New Criminology
In 1973 Taylor, Walton and Young published The New Criminology which combined Marxist and Interactionist approaches to crime. They argued criminologists should examine all the different aspects surrounding why a crime takes place – the immediate and wider political reasons as well the societal reaction.
They argued criminologists should examine how capitalism generates the circumstances of crime, the responses of the police, media, criminal justice system, offender and victim, and how all of these factors interact to influence how the situation develops.
New Criminologists argued that criminals were lashing out against capitalism, in fact they say that they were mistakenly expressing their anger at capitalism through crime, rather than politics. They also argued the media created moral panics and scapegoats about particular crimes to divert attention away from issues which may potentially be damaging to the ruling classes.
The New Criminology, published 1973.
The New Criminology was similar to Marxism….
It accepted that the key to understanding crime is the material basis of society – the economy is the most important part.
Believed that capitalist societies are unequal and these inequalities are the root of crime.
Supported a radical change of society – theories of crime are useless unless they offer hope to liberate people from oppression.
The New Criminology also criticised previous criminological theorising…
Marx was too economically deterministic. Taylor et al insist that criminals choose to break the law. External forces do not determine human behaviour.
They dismissed most causal theories of crime and saw control, labelling, and biological theories as too determinist. They believed crimes were deliberate and conscious acts with political motives.
Deviants were not just the passive victims of capitalism, they were engaged in active political struggle.
They wanted socialism not communism. They envisaged a society where hippies, LGBTQ people, and maybe even drug users would be accepted and not turned into criminals.
The Fully Social Theory of Deviance
Taylor, Walton and Young developed the Fully Social Theory of Deviance to emphasise seven factors we need to look at to fully understand crime.
To understand Crime fully we need to look at..
The way in which wealth and power is distributed in society. Here we need to look at the Crimogenic Capitalist system and cyclical economic crises within Capitalism. Also the role of the state in oppressing and marginalising certain groups.
The particular circumstances surrounding the decision of an individual to commit an act of deviance
The deviant act itself and the meaning the individual deviant attaches to it.
How and why other people in society react to deviance – how do family members, friends and the police react? We also need to look at the media’s power to create ‘folk devils’
The reaction needs to be explained in terms of the social structure. How do the public and the police respond to the creation of folk devils ? (the societal reaction)? More broadly, who has the power to make the rules? Why do agents of social control punish some deviant acts more severely than others?
The effect labelling has on the people being labelled. How do the ‘criminalised’ respond to being labelled?
All of the above together.
Stuart Hall applied this approach to his study of mugging in the 1970s. He found that the Government wanted to divert attention away from the economic crisis of the time, so a moral panic was created about black youths in London.
Criticisms of Radical Criminology.
Critical Criminology offers us no realistic solution to the problem of crime – if it is Capitalism and the state that are the problems – then a revolution is the only answer. Radical criminology did not receive government funded ‘soft money’ for empiricist research. Some departments closed down.
It was too idealistic. It is based on some idealised vision of a free future. All capitalist societies are not the same an socialism can be repressive.
The New Criminology romanticised criminals. In reality most criminals are not struggling against their oppressors in the name of political change, they are just thugs.
Victim surveys of the 1970s and 80s showed the extent of working class victimisation. They showed us that crime was intra-class, not inter-class. In other words the working classes victimised other working class people, hardly a class struggle against the elite! They ignored the impact street crimes can have on Victims – Left Realism in particular gets back to a ‘victim centred’ approach to crime
They also ignored the victimisation of women.
The legacy of New Criminology
Reflecting back on Radical Criminology in the late 1990s, new criminologists accepted some of the criticisms, especially from Feminism.
In defence of New Criminology they pointed out that it stood up against correctionalism. It encouraged agents of social control to not eradicating deviant behaviour, and encouraged more tolerance!
New Criminology does have a critical legacy. Feminism, Left Realism and Postmodernism are all rooted in the New Criminology .
Signposting and relevance to A-level sociology
This content is relevant to the crime and deviance aspect of A-level sociology.
