There are three main types of crime prevention policy: situational, environmental and social/ community.
The three main types of crime control strategies are situation crime prevention, environmental crime prevention and community or social crime prevention strategies.
Situational crime prevention is very local – for example fixing shutters to a shop to make it harder to break into at night.
Environmental crime prevention is more regional and focused on a wider ‘problem area’ – an example is increasing Zero Tolerance Policing in a city with an increasing street-crime rate.
Community and social strategies are more focused on working with offenders or potential offenders and local communities to reduce offending.
This post has been written primarily as revision notes for A-level sociology students revising the Crime and Deviance topic.
Situational Crime Prevention
Includes strategies which focus on the specific point at which potential victims and criminals come together, making it harder for the criminal to commit crime.
Examples include ‘target hardening’ – shutters, window locks, anti-climb paint and also CCTV and security guards. Also ‘designing out’ features which encourage criminality – e.g. sloping seats at bus stops.
Based on rational choice theory and Cohen and Felson’s ‘Routine Activities’ theory which state that much crime is opportunistic, and if you reduce the opportunities to commit crime, you reduce the crime rate.
Appealed to policy makers because target hardening is cheap and simple.
Evaluations of Situational Crime Prevention
The Port Authority Bus Terminal Building is an example where this worked.
Newburn (2013) points to an obvious link between improved car security measures and reduced car crime.
Ignores factors such as inequality and deprivation as causes of crime (Garland 2001).
Ignores the role of emotion and thrill as a cause of crime (Lyng 1990)
Only tackles opportunistic street crime – won’t work for DV, white collar crime, or state crime.
It creates divided ‘Fortress cities’ (Bauman).
It leads to crime displacement.
Environmental Crime Prevention
Includes formal and informal social control measures which try to clamp down on anti-social behaviour and prevent an area from deteriorating.
Emphasises the role of formal control measures (the police) much more than situational crime prevention theory.
Examples include Zero Tolerance Policing, ASBOs, curfews, street drinking bans, dispersal orders and the three strikes rule in America.
Based on Wilson and Kelling’s Broken Windows Theory – signs of physical disorder give off the message that there is low informal social control which attracts criminals and increases the crime rate.
Evaluations of Environmental Crime Prevention
The New York ‘Zero Tolerance’ study suggests that zero tolerance policies work to reduce crime.
HOWEVER, Levitt and Dubner in Freakonomics found that this correlation was coincidental – other factors were responsible for the decline in crime.
It is more expensive than situational crime prevention – it takes a lot of police to patrol an area and clamp down on anti-social behaviour.
Reiner (2015) argues that the police would be better deployed focusing on more serious crime hot spots rather than clamping down on minor forms of anti-social behaviour.
From an Interactionist perspective, giving more power to the police will just lead to more labelling and more criminal careers.
Social and Community Crime Prevention
Focus on individual offenders and the social context which encourages them to commit crime.
There are two broad approaches – Intervention, identifying groups and risk of committing crime and taking action to limit their offending, and Community – involving the local community in combating crime.
Farrington’s (1995) longitudinal research comparing offenders and non offenders found various ‘risk factors’ which correlated with crime – such as low education and parental conflict.
Intervention programmes based on the above have included pre-school programmes to help with attainment and parenting classes.
Examples of this working include the Perry School Project (USA) and the Troubled Families Initiative (UK).
Evaluations of social and community crime reduction
If done effectively, these are the most costly of all crime prevention measures.
HOWEVER, if done properly, community prevention measures can save hundreds of thousands of pounds, by ‘turning’ a potential criminal into an employed tax-payer.
Marxists argue that these policies may tackle deprivation but they do not tackle the underlying structural inequalities in the Capitalist system which are the root cause.
Such approaches target working class, inner city communities and do not tackle elite crime.
Michel Foucalt and David Garland interpret the these strategies as being about surveillance and control rather than real social change which prevents crime.
Signposting
This post has been written primarily as revision notes for A-level sociology students revising the Crime and Deviance topic.
Labelling theory argues that criminal and deviant acts are a result of labelling by authorities – and the powerless are more likely to be negatively labelled.
The labelling Theory of Crime is associated with Interactionism – the Key ideas are that crime is socially constructed, agents of social control label the powerless as deviant and criminal based on stereotypical assumptions and this creates effects such as the self-fulfilling prophecy, the criminal career and deviancy amplification.
Interactionists argue that people do not become criminals because of their social background, but rather argue that crime emerges because of labelling by authorities. They see crime as the product of micro-level interactions between certain individuals and the police, rather than the result of external social forces such as socialisation or blocked opportunity structures.
The idea of reflexivity is central to labelling theory. People define themselves differently in different situations.
Howard Becker’s The Outsiders : becoming a marihuana user is one of the classic texts within labelling theory. This explores how becoming a marijuana user is a tentative process developing stage by stage. The user has to satisfactorily learn, master and interpret techniques, neutralise negative moral images of use and user and succeed in disguising signs of use in the presence of those who might disapprove.
Deviance is seen a moral career consisting of interlocking phases, each has different problems and opportunities, different actors, and each phase is contingent, never inevitable or irreversible.
Naming, or labelling is crucial to the process of an individual recognising themselves as a deviant or criminal.
Four Key concepts associated with Interactionist theories of deviance
Crime is Sociology Constructed – An act which harms an individual or society else only becomes criminal if those in power label that act as criminal.
Not everyone who is deviant gets labelled as such – negative labels are generally (deviant/ criminal) are generally given to the powerless by the powerful.
Labelling has real consequences – it can lead to deviancy amplification, the self-fulfilling prophecy and deviant careers.
Labelling theory has a clear ‘value position’ – it should aim to promote policies that prevent labelling minor acts as deviant.
Crime is Socially Constructed
Rather than taking the definition of crime for granted, labelling theorists are interested in how certain acts come to be defined or labelled as criminal in the first place.
Interactionists argue that there is no such thing as an inherently deviant act – in other words there is nothing which is deviant in itself in all situations and at all times, certain acts only become deviant in certain situations when others label them as deviant. Deviance is not a result of an act or an individual being ‘uniquely different’, deviance is a product of society’s reaction to actions.
As Howard Becker* (1963) puts it – “Deviancy is not a quality of the act a person commits, but rather a consequences of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’. Deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label.”
Howard Becker – One of the main theorists within Interactionism.
Howard Becker illustrates how crime is the product of social interactions by using the example of a fight between young people. In a low-income neighbourhood, a fight is more likely to be defined by the police as evidence of delinquency, but in a wealthy area as evidence of high spirits. The acts are the same, but the meanings given to them by the audience (in this case the public and the police) differ. Those who have the power to make the label stick thus create deviants or criminals.
Becker provides a more extreme example in his book The Outsiders (1963) – in this he draws on a simple illustration of a study by anthropologist Malinowski who describes how a youth killed himself because he hand been publicly accused of incest. When Malinowski had first inquired about the case, the islanders expressed their horror and disgust. But, on further investigation, it turned out that incest was not uncommon on the island, nor was it really frowned upon provided those involved were discrete. However, if an incestuous affair became too obvious and public, the islanders reacted with abuse and the offenders were ostracised and often driven to suicide.
To be clear – in the above example, everyone knows that incest goes on, but if people are too public about it (and possibly if they are just disliked for whatever reason) they get publicly shamed for being in an incestuous relationship.
You could apply the same thinking to criminal behaviour more generally in Britain – According to a recent 2015 survey of 2000 people, the average person in Britain breaks the law 17 ties per year, with 63% admitting speeding, 33% steeling and 25% taking illegal drugs – clearly the general public is tolerant of ‘ordinary’ deviance – but every now and then someone will get spotted doing ‘ordinary’ criminal activities and publicly shamed.
All of this has led labelling theorists to look at how and why rules and laws get made – especially the role of what Becker calls ‘moral entrepreneurs’, people who lead a moral crusade to change the law in the belief that it will benefit those to whom it is applied. However, according to Interactionists, when new laws are created, they simply create new groups of outsiders and lead to the expansion of social control agencies such as the police, and such campaigns may do little to change the underlying amount of ‘deviant activity’ taking place.
In summary – deviance is not a quality that lies in behaviour itself, but in the interaction between the person who commits an act and those who respond to it. From this point of view, deviance is produced by a process of interaction between the potential deviant and the wider public (both ordinary people and agencies of social control).
Application of the concept of ‘social constructionism’ to drug crime –
Looking at how drug laws have changed over time, and how they vary from country to country to country is a very good way of looking at how the deviant act of drug-taking is socially constructed…
In the United Kingdom, a new law was recently passed which outlawed all legal highs, meaning that many ‘head-shops’ which sold them literally went from doing something legal to illegal over night (obviously they had plenty of notice!)
Meanwhile – in some states in America, such as Colorado, things seem to be moving in the other direction – it is now legal to grow, sell and smoke Weed – meaning that a whole new generation of weed entrepreneurs have suddenly gone from doing something illegal to something legal, and profitable too!
NB – There’s a lot more information about the social construction of drug use out there – think about the difference between coffee, nicotine, alcohol (all legal) and cannabis.
Discussion Question
Do you agree with the idea that there is no such thing as an inherently deviance act? Work your way through the list of deviance acts below and try to think of contexts in which they would not be regarded as deviant.
Violence
Theft
Fraud
Drug taking
Public nudity
Paedophilia
Vandalism
Not Everyone Who is Deviant Gets Labelled
Those in Power are just as deviant/ criminal as actual ‘criminals’ but they are more able to negotiate themselves out of being labelled as criminals.
NB to my mind the classic song by NWA ‘Fuck Tha Police’ is basically highlighting the fact that it’s young black males in the US that typically get labelled as criminals (while young white kids generally don’t)
Back to Labelling theory proper – the key idea here is that not everyone who commits an offence is punished for it. Whether a person is arrested, charged and convicted depends on factors such as:
Their interactions with agencies of social control such as the police and the courts
Their appearance, background and personal biography
The situation and circumstances of the offence.
This leads labelling theorists to look at how laws are applied and enforced. Their studies show that agencies of social control are more likely to label certain groups of people as deviant or criminal.
Aaron Cicourel – Power and the negotiation of justice
The process of defining a young person as a delinquent is complex, and it involves a series of interactions based on sets of meanings held by the participants. Cicourel argues that it is the meanings held by police officers and juvenile officers that explain why most delinquents come from working class backgrounds.
The first stage is the decision by the police to stop and interrogate an individual. This decision is based on meanings held by the police of what is ‘strange’, ‘unusual’ and ‘wrong’. Whether or not the police stop and interrogate an individual depends on where the behaviour is taking place and on how the police perceive the individual(s). Whether behaviour is deemed to be ‘suspicious’ will depend on where the behaviour is taking place, for example an inner city, a park, a suburb. If a young person has a demeanour like that of a ‘typical delinquent’ then the police are more likely to both interrogate and arrest that person.
The second stage is that the young person is handed over to a juvenile delinquent officer. This officer will have a picture of a ‘typical delinquent’ in his mind. Factors associated with a typical delinquent include being of dishevelled appearance, having poor posture, speaking in slang etc. It follows that Cicourel found that most delinquents come from working class backgrounds.
When middle class delinquents are arrested they are less likely to be charged with the offence as they do not fit the picture of a ‘typical delinquent’. Also, their parents are more able to present themselves as respectable and reasonable people from a nice neighbourhood and co-operate fully with the juvenile officers, assuring them that their child is truly remorseful.
As a result, the middle class delinquent is more likely to be defined as ill rather than criminal, as having accidentally strayed from the path of righteousness just the once and having a real chance of reforming.
Cicourel based his research on two Californian cities, each with a population of about 100, 000. both had similar social characteristics yet there was a significant difference in the amount of delinquents in each city. Cicourel argued that this difference can only be accounted for by the size, organisation, policies and practices of the juvenile and police bureaus. It is the societal reaction that affects the rate of delinquency. It is the agencies of social control that produce delinquents.
Discussion Questions
Q1 – Do you agree that the whole criminal justice system is basically biased against the working classes, and towards to middle classes?
Q2 – From a research methods point of view, what research methods could you use to test this theory?
The Consequences of Labelling
Labelling theorists are interested in the effects of labelling on those labelled. They claim that by labelling certain people as criminal or deviant society actually encourages them to become more so.
In this section I cover:
Primary and Secondary Deviance (Edwin Lemert)
The Deviant Career, the Master Status and Subcultures (Howard Becker)
Labelling and the Self-Fulling Prophecy applied to education (Howard Becker and Rosenthal and Jacobson)
Labelling theory applied to the Media – Moral Panics, Folk Devils and Deviancy Amplification (Stan Cohen)
If the material below seems a little samely – that’s because it’s all subtle variations on the same theme!
Primary and Secondary Deviance
Many deviant acts are not witnessed. When people are witnessed they can usually resist attempts to avoid being defined as a deviant. (Most of us do this all the time, resisting advertising for example). However there are special occasions when the ability of the self to resist such definitions is circumscribed. Most fateful may be an encounter with formal agents of social control, because criminal justice agents work with the full power of the state.
In such meetings, criminals and deviants are forced to confront their own primary deviance (and others fleeting and insubstantial reactions) BUT ALSO content publicly with the formal reaction of others. Then deviance becomes a response to a response, it is secondary.
“When a person begins to employ his deviant behaviour as a role based upon it as a means of defence, attack, or adjustment to the overt and covert problems created by the consequent societal reaction to him, his deviation is secondary.” Lemur 1951, 76.
What is significant about secondary deviance is that it may also incorporate the myths, professional knowledge, stereotypes and working assumptions of the professionals and lay people who have interactions with the actual or alleged rule-breakers. Thus labelled drug users and mental patients may be obliged to organise their significant gestures and character around the public symbols and interpretations of their behaviour.
Thus public response and measures of control come to be written into the fabric of their identities.
Secondary deviance can also entail confrontations with new obstacles that foreclose future choices. For example Gary Marx (1988) lists a number of ironic consequences of undercover policing.
Generating a market for illegal goods
Provision of motives for illegal actions
Entrapping people
Retaliatory action against informants
And once labelled it becomes more difficult for the deviant to slip back into ordinary life.
Edwin Lemert’s study of the Coastal Inuit
Edwin Lemert (1972) developed the concepts of primary and secondary deviance to emphasise the fact that everyone engages in deviant acts, but only some people are caught being deviant and labelled as deviant.
Primary deviance refers to acts which have not been publicly labelled, and are thus of little consequence, while secondary deviance refers to deviance which is the consequence of the response of others, which is significant.
To illustrate this, Lemert studied the the coastal Inuit of Canada, who had a long-rooted problem of chronic stuttering or stammering. Lemert suggested that the problem was ’caused’ by the great importance attached to ceremonial speech-making. Failure to speak well was a great humiliation. Children with the slightest speech difficulty were so conscious of their parents’ desire to have well-speaking children that they became over anxious about their own abilities. It was this anxiety which lead to chronic stuttering.
Lemert compared the coastal Inuit which emphasised the importance of public speaking to other similar cultures in the area which did not attach status to public-speaking, and found that in such culture, stuttering was largely non-existence, thus Lemert concluded that it was the social pressure to speak well (societal reaction) which led to some people developing problems with stuttering
In this example, chronic stuttering (secondary deviance) is a response to parents’ reaction to initial minor speech defects (primary deviance).
Labelling, The Deviant Career and the Master Status
This is Howard Becker’s classic statement of how labelling theory can be applied across the whole criminal justice system to demonstrated how criminals emerge, possibly over the course of many years. Basically the public, the police and the courts selectively label the already marginalised as deviant, which the then labelled deviant responds to by being more deviant.
Howard Becker argued that the deviant label can become a ‘master status’ in which the individual’s deviant identity overrules all other identities. Becker argues that there are 5 stages in this process:
The Individual is publicly labelled as a deviant, which may lead to rejection from several social groups. For example, if someone is labelled a junkie they may be rejected by their family.
This may encourage further deviance. For example, drug addicts may turn to crime to finance their habit.
The official treatment of deviance may have similar effects. EG convicted criminals find it difficult to find jobs.
A deviant career may emerge. The deviant career is completed when individuals join an organised deviant group. This is the stage when an individual confirms and accepts their deviant identity.
This is the stage at which the label may become a master status, overriding all other forms of relationship outside the deviant group.
Labelling Theory Applied to Education
Labelling theory has been applied to the context of the school to explain differences in educational achievement (this should sound familiar from year 1!)
Within Schools, Howard Becker (1970) argued that middle class teachers have an idea of an ‘ideal pupil’ that is middle class. This pupil speaks in elaborated speech code, is polite, and smartly dressed, He argued that middle class teachers are likely view middle class pupils more positively than working class pupils irrespective of their intelligence. Thus teachers positively label the students most like them.
There is also evidence of a similar process happening with African Caribbean children. Sociologists such as David Gilborn argue that teachers hold negative stereotypes of young black boys, believing them to be more threatening and aggressive than White and Asian children. They are thus more likely to interpret minor rule breaking by black children in a more serious manner than when White and Asian children break minor rules.
Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968) argued that positive teacher labelling can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the student believes the label given to them and the label becomes true in practise. They concluded this on the basis of a classic ‘Field Experiment’ to test the effects of teacher labels, which consisted of the following:
Stage one – tested the IQ (intelligence) of all pupils in the school
Stage two – gave teachers a list of the top 20% most intelligent pupils. However, this list was actually just a random selection of student names
Stage three –One year later those students who teachers believed to be the most intelligent had improved the most.
Stage four –Concluded that high teacher expectation had resulted in improvement (= the self-fulfilling prophecy)
Key Terms: Moral Panics, Folk Devils and The Deviancy Amplification Spiral
Labelling theory has been applied to the representation of certain groups in the mainstream media – Interactionists argue that the media has a long history of exaggerating the deviance of youth subcultures in particular, making them seem more deviant than they actually are, which creates a ‘moral panic’ among the general public, which in turn leads to the authorities clamping down on the activities of those subcultures, and finally to the individuals within those subcultures responding with more deviance.
A moral panic is “an exaggerated outburst of public concern over the morality or behaviour of a group in society.” Deviant subcultures have often been the focus of moral panics. According to Interactionists, the Mass Media has a crucial role to play in creating moral panics through exaggerating the extent to which certain groups and turning them into ‘Folk Devils’ – people who are threatening to public order.
In order for a moral panic to break out, the public need to believe what they see in the media, and respond disproportionately, which could be expressed in heightened levels of concern in opinion polls or pressure groups springing up that campaign for action against the deviants. The fact that the public are concerned about ‘youth crime’ suggest they are more than willing to subscribe to the media view that young people are a threat to social order.
The final part of a moral panic is when the authorities respond to the public’s fear, which will normally involve tougher laws, initiatives and sentencing designed to prevent and punish the deviant group question.
The term ‘moral panic’ was first used in Britain by Stan Cohen in a classic study of two youth subcultures of the 1960s – ‘Mods’ and ‘Rockers’. Cohen showed how the media, for lack of other stories exaggerated the violence which sometimes took place between them. The effect of the media coverage was to make the young people categorise themselves as either mods or rockers which actually helped to create the violence that took place between them, which further helped to confirm them as violent in the eyes of the general public.
Labelling theory believes that deviance is made worse by labelling and punishment by the authorities, and it follows that in order to reduce deviance we should make fewer rules for people to break, and have less-serious punishments for those that do break the rules.An example of an Interactionist inspired policy would be the decriminalisation of drugs.
According to Interactionist theory, decriminalisation should reduce the number of people with criminal convictions and hence the risk of secondary deviance, an argument which might make particular sense for many drugs offences because these are often linked to addiction, which may be more effectively treated medically rather than criminally. (The logic here is that drug-related crime isn’t intentionally nasty, drug-addicts do it because they are addicted, hence better to treat the addiction rather than further stigmatise the addict with a criminal label).
Similarly, labelling theory implies that we should avoid ‘naming and shaming’ offenders since this is likely to create a perception of them as evil outsiders and, by excluding them from mainstream society, push them into further deviance.
Reintegrative Shaming
Most interactionist theory focuses on the negative consequences of labelling, but John Braithwaite (1989) identifies a more positive role for the labelling process. He distinguishes between two types of shaming:
Disintegrative shaming where not only the crime, but also the criminal, is labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society.
Reintegrative shaming by contrast labels the act, but not the actor – as if to say ‘he has done a bad thing’ – rather an ‘he is a bad person’.
A policy of reintegrative shaming avoids stigmatising the offender as evil while at the same time making them aware of the negative impact of their actions on others. Victims are encouraged to forgive the person, but not the act, and the offender is welcomed back into the community, thus avoiding the negative consequences associated with secondary deviance.
Braithwaite argues that crime rates are lower where policies of reintegrative shaming are employed.
Evaluation of Labelling Theory
Labelling theory emphasises the following
That the law is not ‘set in stone’ – it is actively constructed and changes over time
That law enforcement is often discriminatory
That we cannot trust crime statistics
That attempts to control crime can backfire and may make the situation worse
That agents of social control may actually be one of the major causes of crime, so we should think twice about giving them more power.
Criticisms of Labelling Theory
It tends to be deterministic, not everyone accepts their labels
It assumes offenders are just passive – it doesn’t recognise the role of personal choice in committing crime
It gives the offender a ‘victim status’ – Realists argue that this perspective actually ignores the actual victims of crime.
It tends to emphasise the negative sides of labelling rather than the positive side
It fails to explain why acts of primary deviance exist, focussing mainly on secondary deviance.
Structural sociologists argue that there are deeper, structural explanations of crime, it isn’t all just a product of labelling and interactions.
Marxist Criminologists argue that the costs of elite crime are greater than the costs of street-crime, yet the elite are more likely to get away with their crimes. The piece of research below strongly supports this view (refs to follow!)
In the UK Safety Crime has been studied extensively by Professor Tombs, and Dr Whyte (2008). To look at just one example from recent press releases of the Health and Safety Executive: 2.2 million people work in Britain’s construction industry, making it the country’s biggest industry. It is also one of the most dangerous. In the last 25 years, over 2,800 people have died from injuries they received as a result of construction work. There were 77 fatalities last year; many more were injured or made ill.
In March 2008 the HSE reported that over one in three construction sites visited put the lives of workers at risk and operated so far below the acceptable standard that inspectors served 395 enforcement notices and stopped work on 30% of the sites. That followed the report of the HSE on over 1000 spot checks of refurbishment sites across Great Britain during February this year as part of its rolling inspection programme. Work was stopped on site immediately during approximately 300 inspections because inspectors felt there was a real possibility that life would be lost or ruined through serious injury. The inspectors were appalled at the blatant disregard for basic health and safety precautions on refurbishment sites across Great Britain. Basic safety precautions were being flouted. Last year over half of the workers who died on construction sites worked in refurbishment, and the number of deaths rose by 61 per cent.
Tombs and Whyte analyse the causes of such high rates of death and injury in the construction industry: the casualised, sub-contracted and increasingly migrant workforce; the long and complex supply chains; aggressive management; market pressures; industry norms; and problems in regulatory processes.
Weak or non-existent trade unions add to the dangers. An instructive example is a comparison between Norwegian and UK offshore oil industries. The North Sea, while an inhospitable environment, is not inherently dangerous in the sense that it necessarily produces high numbers of worker deaths and injuries. Research has shown that the improved offshore safety in Norway compared to the UK is due to rights for union representatives to stop work when they think that safety is jeopardised, as well as “the maintenance of strong offshore unions with a comprehensive network of trade union-appointed safety representatives; this is in marked contrast to the strident anti-trades unionism of the UK sector”
Tombs and Whyte also looked at the use made of powers under the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 to disqualify directors for health and safety failures in the management of companies. Despite the HSE’s spot checks revealing that 30% of construction sites did not meet safety standards, they were able to identify just ten directors who had been disqualified for health and safety reasons between the date when the 1986 Act took effect and the end point of their study in 2005.
In 2013 Kweku Adeboli was jailed for 7 years for committing the biggest White Collar fraud in UK history. This case study can be used to selectively criticise aspects of the Marxist theory of crime.
A City trader recklessly gambled with illicit trades to boost his bonus, and ran up potential losses of more than £7bn at one point, a sum big enough to sink his employer, the global bank UBS, a court has heard.
Kweku Adoboli, a trusted and experienced member of UBS’s exchange traded fund (ETF) desk in London, risked ever-greater sums in an attempt to conceal his losses over two and a half years before he was caught in September 2011, Southwark crown court was told.
Sasha Wass QC, prosecuting, said “Mr Adoboli’s motive was to increase his bonus, his status, his job prospects and his ego. Like most gamblers he believed he had the magic touch. Like most gamblers, when he lost, he caused chaos and disaster to himself and all of those around him.”
The total losses to UBS were eventually calculated at $2.3bn, or just over £1.4bn. Wass told the jury: “This colossal loss rose purely as a result of Mr Adoboli’s fraudulent deal making, which amounted to naked gambling.” However, she added, at one point the scale of Adoboli’s liabilities to the bank through vast trades, reached almost $12bn which risked the very existence of the bank itself.
Adoboli racked up the giant losses undetected through three means. First, he often exceeded the official daily trading limit per employee of $100m. He also failed to hedge trades by making balancing trades to mitigate potential losses, an insurance method that also caps potential profits. Finally, he falsified data so as not to record his trades properly, often inventing false clients and trades for hedges.
But on 14 September, under intense scrutiny and aware a number of trades were “about to hit the buffers”, Adoboli panicked and walked out of the UBS office, saying he had to see a doctor. Using his home email account he sent his bosses a message which, Wass argued, admitted his guilt.
In the email, read to the court, Adoboli said he had tried to suppress losses from “off book” trades, a number of which were, he warned, still “live”. It continued: “I have now left the office for the sake of discretion. I will need to come back in to discuss the positions and explain face to face but for reasons that are obvious I did not think it was wise to stay on the desk this afternoon.”
Adoboli, a former public schoolboy, denies four counts of fraud and false accounting between October 2008 and September 2011.Adoboli became a trader in December 2005, was promoted to associate director in March 2008 and then director in March 2010. His salary rose dramatically as his career progressed. In 2007 he earned £40,000 and a bonus of £55,000; in 2008 he earned £50,000 and a bonus of £15,000. Then in 2009 he earned £100,000 with a £95,000 bonus; and in 2010 his salary was £100 000 and bonus £200 000
What aspects of the Marxist theory of crime does this support or criticise?
All of the material below takes you to evidence that broadly supports two ideas held by Marxists about Crime – you could also use the examples from the ‘data response exercise – no.2 above.
Are the crimes of the capitalist class more costly than street crime?
Research by Tombs and Whyte – VERY IMPORTANT – illustrates how little money goes into enforcing health and saftey law and regulating the financial sector.
The theory of crimogenic capitalism suggests that Capitalism encourages selfishness, materialism and non-caring attitudes, it breeds a dog-eat-dog society. The link below takes you to an example of some of the worst cases of Corporate harms. To what extent do you think Capitalism breeds crime in society?
There are quite a few case studies of members of the elite classes seemingly getting away with crime. NB All of the material below is also backs up the Marxist idea that all classes commit crime (part of point 2).
The Fifa fraud is a good example of selective law enforcement in international football – peope basically accepting bribes for votes over what country gets the world cup – such blatent corruption goes unpunished
Covering crimogenic capitalism, selective law enforcement and the ideological functions of crime control
Marxists argue that capitalism is crimogenic, and that all classes commit crime but the crimes of the elite do more harm. They also argue that law enforcement is selective, working in favour of elites and that crime control and punishment perform ideological functions.
NB this post has been written primarily for students of A-level sociology studying for the second year exam in crime and deviance with theory and methods.
Introduction/ The basics
Traditional Marxist theories explain crime in relation to power inequalities created by the capitalist system
The inequalities and injustices within Capitalism generate crime.
Class based analysis – both classes commit crime, the crimes of the elite are more harmful
The Bourgeoisie h- have economic power and because of this control the criminal justice system – they defined their own harmful acts as legal and are less likely to be prosecuted for the crimes they commit.
Historical Period (for Marxist Criminology) The 1970s
Crimogenic Capitalism
Crime is a consequence of the economic structure of capitalism
Capitalism is harsh, exploitative and breeds inequality, materialism and selfishness, which combined make crime in Capitalist societies inevitable. See David Gordon’s work on the ‘Dog eat Dog’ society
The Elite Make the Law in Their Own Interests
William Chambliss: At the heart of the capitalist system lies the protection of private property
Laureen Snider – Many nation states are reluctant to pass laws which restrict the freedom of Transnational Corporations to make profit
There is unequal access to the law – the more money you have, the better lawyer you can get
Harmful and exploitative acts in capitalist systems are not formally labelled criminal if these harmful activities make a profit – e.g. Colonialism/ Numerous Wars/ Pollution.
All Classes Commit Crime and the Crimes of the Powerful are of particular interest to Marxist Criminologists
White Collar Crime = Individual middle class/ elite crime within a company , Corporate = Institutional crime
Typical e.g’s include various types of fraud and negligence regarded health and safety at work.
The economic costs of Corporate Crime are greater than street crime (Laureen Snider/ Corporate Watch.
High profile Corporate Crimes = Bernie Madhoff, the Enron $100bn fraud and the 20 000 dead people as a result of Union Carbide’s corporate negligence in Bhopal, India.
Despite being more costly to society, the crimes of the elite tend to go unpunished – As research by Tombs and Whyte suggests
The ideological functions of selective law enforcement
According to Gordon ‘selective law enforcement’ benefits the Capitalist system in three major ways:
we ignore the failings of the system that lead to the conditions of inequality which generate crime.
The imprisonment of selected members of the lower classes neutralises opposition to the system.
sweeps out of sight the ‘worst jetsam of Capitalist society’ such that we cannot see it.
Positive Evaluations of Marxist Theories of Crime
Dog eat Dog explains both WC and Elite crime
TTIP is good supporting evidence for point 2not lone individuals
Lots of case studies and stats support the view that Corporate Crimes are harmful – Bhopal!
Tombs and Whyte’s research – strongly supports point 3
Criticisms of Marxist Theories of Crime
X – Crime has been decreasing in the UK in the last 20 years, yet we’re increasingly ‘neoliberal’
X – Crime existed before Capitalism and in Communist societies
X – Consensus theories argue most people today have private property, so most people are protected by the law
X – It’s unfair to compare corporate crime such as Fraud to street crime, the later has a more emotional toll.
X – Some Corporate Crminals are punished (e.g. Madhoff)
Signposting and Related Posts
These are brief revision notes for A-level sociology, written with the AQA sociology A level paper 2: crime and deviance with theory and methods (7192/3) in mind.
Subcultural Theory explains deviance in terms of a deviant group, split apart from the rest of the society which encourages deviance
Historical Period: The 1940s- 60S, Underclass Theory – 1980s
Albert Cohen: Status Frustration
working class boys try to gain status within school and fail, thus suffer status frustration
Some such boys find each-other and form a subculture
status is gained within the subculture by breaking mainstream rules.
Cloward and Ohlin: Illegitimate Opportunity Structure(IOS)
A combination of strain theory and subcultural theory
The type of subculture an individual joins depends on existing subcultures (which form an IOS)
There are three types of subculture: Criminal (working class areas/ organised petit crime), Conflict (less table populations), and Retreatist (e.g. drug subcultures) which C and O saw as being formed by people who lacked the skills to join the former two).
Walter Miller: Focal Concerns
Saw the lower working class as a subculture with its own set of unique values
Working class culture emphasised six focal concerns (or core values) which encouraged criminal behaviour amongst working class youth.
Three examples of these focal concerns where toughness (physical prowess), excitement (risk-taking) and smartness (being street-smart)
Charles Murray: Underclass Theory
By the 1980s an Underclass had emerged in Britain.
Key features = long term unemployment, high rates of teen pregnancies and single parent households
Means children are not socialised into mainstream norms and values and have become NEETS
The underclass is 20 times more criminal than the rest of society.
Overall Evaluations of Subcultural Theories of Crime
Positive
Negative
Unlike Bonds of Attachment Theory recognises that much crime is done in groups, not lone individuals
Unlike Functionalism does not see crime as functional.
X – Contemporary research shows gang (subculture) membership is more fluid than the above research stuggests
X – Recent research shows that the underclass doesn’t really exist and working class culture is more complex
X – There is a much wider variety of subcultures today
X – Ignores the role of agents of social control labelling in subculture formation
X – Underclass Theory is ideological – based on moral panics
Consensus Theory – Social Institutions generally work, social control is good, crime is dysfunctional (bad)
Closely related to Subcultural Theories
1890 -1940s
Durkheim’s Functionalist Theory
Crime is natural and inevitable, society needs crime.
There are three positive functions of crime – social integration/ social regulation/ social change
Hirschi’s Social Control/ Bonds of Attachment Theory
Crime is most common amongst individuals who are detached from society
Four types of attachment – Commitment, Involvement, Attachment, Belief
Correlation between truancy, single parent households, unemployment and crime
Merton’s Strain Theory
There is a strain between society’s cultural value system (valuing money) and the social structure which fails to provide opportunities for everyone to achieve these goals legitimately.
In times of strain, there are five adaptations
Three of these are deviant – innovation, retreatism and rebellion.
Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT)
Merton’s Strain Theory on steroids.
The cultural value system of achieving monetary success has now the core value taught in every institution – The media, and education especially.
Overall Evaluations of Functionalist and Strain Theories of Crime
Positive
Negative
Generally – recognise the relationship between social structure and crime
Durkheim – Crime does exist in every society
Durkheim – Recognises that a crime-free society is an unrealistic goal
Hirschi – Official Statistics support
Merton – Explains different types of deviance
IAT – Recognises recent social changes
X –Can’t explain hidden crimes such as Domestic Violence
X – Durkhiem – Fails to ask ‘Functional for whom’ – ignores victims (Left Realism)
X – Can’t explain elite crimes, elites are attached (Marxism)
X – Ignores Power and Labelling, doesn’t recognise that crime stats are socially constructed and elite crimes happen but generally aren’t recorded. (Interactionism)
Consensus theories generally see crime as unusual, dysfunctional and believe something has ‘gone wrong’ for the people who commit crime.
Consensus theories include functionalism, strain theory and subcultural theory.
Consensus Theory: the Basics
According to consensus theories, for the most part society works because most people are successfully socialised into shared values through the family and education. Socialisation produces agreement or consensus between people about appropriate behaviour and beliefs without which no human could survive.
According to consensus theorists this process starts from a young age in the family and education. These institutions enforce what are known as positive and negative sanctions, or rewarding good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour. Both of these institutions perform the function of social control, and this is a good thing for both the individual and society.
Students might like to think about HOW the family and education control individuals….
Institution
Positive Sanctions (rewards)
Negative sanctions (punishments)
Examples of Norms and Values enforced
Family
Education
Consensus Theories argue that a ‘healthy society’ is one characterised by a high degree of value consensus – or general agreement around shared values. They see stable institutions such as the nuclear family and education as crucial for socialisation children into these shared norms and values. True, individual freedom is reduced in such a situation, but this is seen as a good thing for society in general, and also for the individual.
From this perspective, crime is generally seen as dysfunctional (bad for society): Crime is a result of a family, or a part of society failing in its duty to effectively socialise the young and individuals or groups becoming detached from society in some way.
There are several different theories within Consensus Theory you need to know about, but the main ones are as follows:
Marxism focuses on how crime is a ‘natural outgrowth of the capitalist system and how the criminal justice system works for the benefits of elites and against the lower social classes.
Marxist criminologists see power being held by the Bourgeoisie and laws are a reflection of Bourgeois ideology. The legal system (lawyers, judges and the courts) and the police all serve the interests of the Bourgeoisie. These institutions are used to control the masses, prevent revolution and keep people in a state of false consciousness.
For the purposes of Second Year Sociology, the Marxist perspective on crime may be summarised into four key points:
Capitalism is Crimogenic –This means that the Capitalist system encourages criminal behaviour.
The Law is made by the Capitalist elite and tends to work in their interests.
All classes, not just the working classes commit crime, and the crimes of the Capitalist class are more costly than street crime.
The state practices Selective Law Enforcement – The Criminal Justice system mainly concerns itself with policing and punishing the marginalised, not the wealthy, and this performs ideological functions for the elite classes.
Key Sociologists associated with this perspective are William Chambliss (1978) and Laureen Snider (1993). Examples of more contemporary theorists include Professors Tombs and Whyte (See later).
Capitalism is Crimogenic
Many Marxists see crime as a natural ‘outgrowth’ of the capitalist system. The Capitalist system can be said to be crimogenic in three major ways –
Capitalism encourages individuals to pursue self-interest rather than public duty
Capitalism encourages individuals to be materialistic consumers, making us aspire to an unrealistic and often unattainable lifestyle.
Capitalism in its wake generates massive inequality and poverty, conditions which are correlated with higher crime rates.
Capitalism, self-interest and crime
Capitalism is Crimogenic because it encourages individuals to pursue self-interest before everything else.
Marxist Sociologist David Gordon says that Capitalist societies are ‘dog eat dog societies’ in which each individual company and each individual is encouraged to look out for their own interests before the interests of others, before the interests of the community, and before the protection of the environment. If we look at the Capitalist system, what we find is that not only does it recommend that we engage in the self-interested pursuit of profit is good, we learn that it is acceptable to harm others and the environment in the process. Please see KT’s blog post – ‘On The incredible immorality of corporate greed’ for referenced examples of Corporations acting immorally in the pursuit of profit.
Marxists point out that in a Capitalist society, there is immense competitive pressure to make more money, to be more successful, and to make more profit, because in a competitive system, this is the only way to ensure survival. In such a context, breaking the law can seem insignificant compared to the pressure to succeed and pressures to break the law affect all people: from the investment banker to the unemployed gang member.
Marxists theorise that the values of the Capitalist system filter down to the rest of our culture. Think again about the motives of economic criminals: The burglars, the robbers, and the thieves. What they are doing is seeking personal gain without caring for the individual victims.
Capitalism, materialism and crime
Capitalism is Crimogenic because it encourages us to want things we don’t need and can’t afford
Companies such as Coca Cola and McDonald’s spend billions of dollars every year on advertising, morphing their products into fantastical images that in no way resemble the grim reality of the products or the even grimmer reality of the productive processes that lie behind making their products. Advertising is a long way beyond merely providing us with information about a product; it has arguably become the art of disinformation.
It is doubtless that corporations benefit through advertising, and modern Capitalism could not exist without the culture of consumerism that the advertising industry perpetuates, and activities have pointed to many downsides. One of the most obvious is that the world of advertising presents as normal a lifestyle that may be unattainable for many people in British Society.
For those millions who lack the legitimate means to achieve the materialist norm through working, this can breed feelings of failure, inadequacy, frustration and anger at the fact that they are working-but-not–succeeding. In short, Advertising creates the conditions that can lead to status frustration, which in turn can lead to crime.
Merton and Nightingale have pointed out that for some the desire to achieve the success goals of society outweigh the pressure to obey the law, advertising only adds to this strain between the legitimate means and the goal of material success.
Capitalism, Inequality and Crime
Thirdly, Capitalism is Crimogenic because it creates inequality and poverty
The Capitalist system is one of radical inequality. At the very top we have what David Rothkopf calls the ‘Superclass’ , mainly the people who run global corporations, and at the very bottom we have the underclass (in the developed world) and the slum dwellers, the street children and the refugees in the developing world.
The Sociologists Zygmunt Bauman points out that the super wealthy effectively segregate themselves from the wealthy, through living in exclusive gated communities and travelling in private jets and armoured vehicles with security entourages. If people can afford it, they move to a better area, and send their children to private schools. However, this doesn’t prevent the poor and the rich from living side by side.
Marxists argue that this visible evidence of massive inequalities give people at the bottom a sense of injustice, a sense of anger and a sense of frustration that they are not sharing in the wealth being flaunted in front of them (the flaunting is the point is it not?) As a result, Capitalism leads to a flourishing of economic crime as well as violent street crime.
William Chambliss even goes so far as to say that economic crime ‘’represents rational responses to the competitiveness and inequality of life in capitalist societies”. As we have seen from previous studies. Drug dealers see themselves as innovative entrepreneurs. So internalised is the desire to be successful that breaking the law is seen as a minor risk.
Marxists hold that more egalitarian societies based on the values of the co-operation and mutual assistance, have lower crime rates, as can be evidence from Bruce Parry’s visit to the extremely egalitarian Island of Anuta
Discussion Questions:
Does Capitalism encourage competition over co-operation?
Does exploitation lie at the heart of the Capitalist system?
Does Capitalism encourage us to be selfish consumers?
Does Capitalism cause crime?
The Law benefits the elite and works in their Interests
Basic Marxist theory holds that the superstructure serves the ruling classes, thus the state passes laws which support ruling class interests.
Evidence for this can be found in the following:
Property rights are much more securely established in law than the collective rights of, for instance, trade unions. Property law clearly benefits the wealthy more than those with no property. William Chambliss has argued that ‘at the heart of the Capitalist system lies the protection of Private Property. Consider the fact that there are roughly 100, 000 people recognised as homeless in the United Kingdom1, and 300, 000 houses lying empty2. The rights of the property owners to keep their properties empty are put before the rights of the needy to shelter.
Laureen Snider (1993)argues that Capitalist states are reluctant to pass laws which regulate large capitalist concerns and which might threaten profitability. Having tried so hard to attract investment the last thing the state wants to do is alienate the large corporations. The state is thus reluctant to pass – or enforce – laws against such things as pollution, worker health and safety and monopolies.
While the lack of regulation in these areas is obvious in the third world, in most of Europe, there are many laws protection the environment and health and safety, but fines for them are relatively low, and, until 2007, no individual member of a corporation could be prosecuted for damaging the environment or endangering worker safety through corporate practise.
A further recent example which could be used to support this is the deregulation of financial markets prior to the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent ‘credit crunch’ and economic recession. The activities of the vast majority of bankers and financiers were not seen as illegal and, far from being prosecuted, many grew rich through the payments of large bonuses.
Also, People have unequal access to the law. Having money to hire a good lawyer can delay trials, meaning the difference between being found not guilty or guilty, and influence the length of one’s sentence and the type of prison one goes to. Thus for Marxists, punishment for a crime may depend and vary according to the social class of the perpetrator. Poorer criminals tend to receive harsher punishments than rich criminals. As evidenced in one of the examples above, Mark Thatcher received only a suspended sentence for assisting mercenaries in a military coup against a democratically elected government.
Discussion Question: Can you think of any other ways in which the law works in the interests of the elite?
All classes Commit Crime
Marxists remind us that people from all classes commit crime. Theres no better contemporary reminder of this than the case of Donald Trump in the USA. As the ex president of the country and a billionaire, you don’t get much more elite than him!
Case Study: The Crimes of Donald Trump
The former U.S. President Donald Trump currently stands accused of committing 87 crimes between 2017 and 2022. The details of these are complex, as this article in The Conversation points out. Four of the most basic crimes he is accused of include:
Falsifying business documents (you might do this to increase the sale value of your assets or decrease the amount of tax you pay).
Hoarding classified documents (these may contain details of Trump’s allegedly criminal activities).
Interference in the 2020 presidential election.
Attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results (e.g. through the Capitol Hill insurrection).
The final one is just about as serious as you can get!
Trump has pleaded not-guilty to all of these charges, and has been in and out of various courts since his presidency ended. However prosecutors don’t normally pursue a prosecution unless they think they have a good chance of getting a guilty verdict. So Trump is probably guilty of all these crimes.
This is a great example of how all classes commit crime, Trump being a member of the true global elite. It is also a good example of how someone with huge wealth can stay out of jail. Trump is doing this by challenging every little detail of every charge. So this is also an example of how the legal system can work in the interests of the rich.
However the very fact that Trump is being prosecuted shows that we don’t have selective law enforcement here!
We will have to wait and see what the outcome of this is.
The ‘Crimes’ of the Elite are more harmful than Street Crime
Marxists and other critical criminologists tend to focus on ‘social and environmental harms’ rather than crimes. If we take this approach then the violence and destruction carried out by elites are by far the worst in history.
The reason for focussing on harms rather than crimes is that historically elites define the violence they do against others as legitimate, or not criminal. However from a Marxist perspective this is only because they have the power to do so.
If we look at harms through history events such as colonialism and slavery, carried out by European powers have done enormous harms across Africa, Asia and the Americas. However throughout the colonial period, these harms were not seen as criminal. But from a Marxist perspective we should redefine them as criminal. As Angela Davis puts it….
‘The real criminals in this society are not all the people who populate the prisons across the state, but those people who have stolen the wealth of the world from the people’
Angela Davis, former leader of the Black Panthers.
Marxists argue that although they are hidden from view, the crimes of the elite exert a greater economic toll on society than the crimes of the ‘ordinary people’. Laureen Snider (1993) points out that the cost of White Collar Crime and Corporate Crime to the economy far outweighs the cost of street crime by ‘typical’ criminals. Two contemporary organisations: Multinational Monitor and Corporate Watch, specialise in documenting the illegal activities of corporations.
In the section below we look at two types of white collar crime – Fraud and Health and Safety infringements. Both of these sound either terribly complex or terribly unexciting (or both) which means people are generally uninterested in hearing about them, and this general lack of public interest is something which helps the elite get away with an incredibly high level of criminality.
Key Concepts
White Collar Crime: Crimes committed in the furtherance of an individual’s own interests, often against the corporations of organisations within which they work.
Corporate Crime: Those crimes committed by or for corporations or businesses which act to further their interests and have a serious physical or economic impact on employees, consumers and the general public. The drive is usually the desire to increase profits.
The Cost of Financial Crime (Fraud)
Organisations such as Corporate Watch and…. Multinational Monitor, suggest that Corporate Fraud is widespread. The General Accounting Agency of the USA has estimated that 100s of savings and loans companies have failed in recent years due to insider dealing, failure to disclose accurate information, and racketeering. The cost to the taxpayer in the USA of corporate bail outs is estimated to be around $500 billion, or $5000 per household in the USA.
Case Study: Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion Fraud
In 2009 the disgraced financier Bernie Madoff was sentenced to the maximum 150 years in prison for masterminding a $65bn (£38bn) fraud that wrecked the lives of thousands of investors.
Bernie Madoff’s crimes had thousands of victims
The US district judge Denny Chin described the fraud as “staggering” and said the “breach of trust was massive” and that a message was being sent by the sentence. There had been no letters submitted in support of Madoff’s character, he said. Victims in the courtroom clapped as the term was read out.
Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 counts of fraud, theft and money laundering. The sentencing, in what has been one of the biggest frauds ever seen on Wall Street, was eagerly anticipated. Described by victims in written testimony as a “thief and a monster”, Madoff has become an emblem for the greed that pitched the world into recession. Nearly 9,000 victims have filed claims for losses in Madoff’s corrupt financial empire.
Madoff masterminded a huge “Ponzi” scheme. Instead of investing client’s money in securities, it was held with a bank and new deposits used to pay bogus returns to give the impression that the business was successful. At the time of his arrest in December, he claimed to manage $65bn of investors’ money, but in reality there was just $1bn left.
Corporate America has suffered a series of massive frauds during the past decade, including scandals at Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and more recently the financial empire run by Texas billionaire Allen Stanford. Former WorldCom chief Benrard Ebbers is serving 25 years for accounting fraud. Former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison although the sentence was overturned. He remains in prison awaiting resentencing.
Discussion Question: Are crimes such as fraud more harmful to society than violent crime?
The Ideological Functions of Selective Law Enforcement
David Gordon argues that the police mainly focus on policing working class (and underclass) areas and the justice system mainly focuses on prosecuting working and underclass criminals. By and large the system ignores the crimes of the elite and the middle classes, although both of these classes are just as likely to commit crime as the working classes.
Gordon argues that the disproportionate prosecution of working class criminals ultimately serves to maintain ruling-class power and to reinforce ruling class ideology (thus performing ‘ideological functions’ for the ruling class.)
According to Gordon ‘selective law enforcement’ benefits the Capitalist system in three major ways:
By punishing individuals and making them responsible for their actions, defining these individuals as ‘social failures’ we ignore the failings of the system that lead to the conditions of inequality and poverty that create the conditions which lead to crime.
The imprisonment of selected members of the lower classes neutralises opposition to the system.
The imprisonment of many members of the underclass also sweeps out of sight the ‘worst jetsam of Capitalist society’ such that we cannot see it.
We may also add a fourth benefit, that all of the police, court and media focus on working class street crime means that our attention is diverted away from the immorality and greed of the elite classes.
Criticisms of the Marxist Perspective on Crime
Although there are MANY examples of elites committing VERY harmful crimes, SOME of them get prosecuted. This means the elites do not always get away with crime. The case of Sam Bankman-Fried’s guilty verdict following the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX criticises the Marxist Perspective on Crime.
However a counter claim by Marxists would be that the system has to prosecute some elites to maintain legitimacy. Most of them still get away with their crimes.
While it may be true that the economic costs of corporate crime and fraud are greater than street crime, the direct emotional impact of street crimes are greater. If you are a victim of robbery or other types of street violence, you feel it more than being a victim of a corporate crime which you may not even notice!
This is part of the reason why people are more concerned about immediate street crime, which is something Left Realists addressed.
Communist countries are not crime free. Nor are the people who live in them free of persecution by the state! China and North Korea have pretty bad human rights records, for exampl!
