Tag: crime

Evaluate the Contribution of Marxism to our Understanding of Crime and Deviance (30)

An essay plan on the Marxist Theory of Crime and Deviance – starting with an introduction outlining the Marxist conception of social class and then covering 4-5 key points such as the costs of corporate crime, selective law enforcement and crimogenic capitalism, with some overall evaluations and a conclusion to round off. 

Brief intro outlining key ideas of Marxist Theory (links to Theory and Methods):

  • Conflict Perspective
  • Class Structure (Bourgeoisie/ Proletariat)
  • Capitalism/ Economic Power = other forms of power (Private Property)
  • Exploitation/ extraction
  • False consciousness/ ideological control
  • Political Perspective supports working class struggle and revolution

Point One – The law is made by the elite and supports their interests

  • William Chambliss said this
  • Against the consensus view of the law
  • Most of the law is protection of Private Property
  • The whole history of Colonialism supports

Point Two – All classes commit crime, the crimes of the elite are more harmful and they are more likely to get away with it

  • Laureen Snider said this
  • High profile case studies support this – Bernie Madhoff/ Bhopal
  • Statistically supported by Tombs and Whyte

Point Three – Selective Law Enforcement and Ideological Functions

  • Working class crime more likely to be punished and criminals jailed
  • NOT interactionism, although their work supports this
  • 3* ideological functions – e.g. neutralisation of opposition

Point Four – Crimogenic Capitalism

  • Crime is a natural outgrowth of Capitalism
  • David Gordon ‘Dog Eat Dog society’
  • Capitalism breeds desire, selfishness, materialism

Bonus Point Five – Add in Neo-Marxism – The Fully Social Theory of Deviance

  • Taylor, Walton and Young – Moral Panics against WC crime = a tool of social control
  • Stuart Hall – Policing the Crisis – good illustration of the above
  • See criminals as a ‘revolutionary vanguard’

Best Overall Evaluations

Positive 

  • + Better than Consensus Theory – doesn’t ignore power and inequality
  • + The law does benefit the rich more because the poor have no significant property
  • + Highlights the cost of Corporate Crime and the injustice (links to Victimology)
  • + On the side of the many victims of Elite Crime

Negative 

  •  – Economically Deterministic – Evidence that crime exists in non-capitalist societies and crime is going down in the UK
  • – Postmodernism – Doesn’t explain recent changes in crime – causes are more complex
  • – Realisms – Not pragmatic – offers not immedate ways of controlling crime
  • – Realisms – out of touch with working class victims of crime

Conclusion – How Useful is this theory?

  • + Useful if you’re a victim of elite crime and think long term political change is required to end this problem.
  • – Not useful if you’re a victim of ‘ordinary working class crime’ and want immediate solutions to your problems.

Official Crime Statistics for England and Wales

The two main sources of official statistics on Crime in the UK (or rather England and Wales!) are:

  1. Police Recorded Crime – which is all crimes recorded by the 43 police forces in England and Wales (as well as the British Transport Police)

  2. The Crime Survey for England and Wales which is a face to face victim survey in which people are asked about their experiences of crime in the previous 12 months.

NB – There are other sources of official statistics on crime, which I’ll come back to later, but these are the two main ones.

Below are three very good web sites which you can use to explore crime stats from the above two sources. The point of this post is really just to direct students to good sources which they can use to explore these statistics (strengths and limitations of crime statistics posts will be forthcoming shortly!)

One – Crime in England and Wales –

Published by the Office for National Statistics, Crime in England and Wales provides the most comprehensive coverage of national crime trends. I’d actually recommend starting with the methodology section of this document, which states

‘Crime in England and Wales has 2 main data sources: The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and police recorded crime. The CSEW is a face-to-face victimisation survey in which people are asked about their experiences of crime in the 12 months prior to the interview. Police recorded crime figures are supplied by the 43 territorial police forces of England and Wales and the British Transport Police.’

Crime trends UK

Two – https://www.police.uk/

This is a good starting point for exploring crime statistics. You can click on an interactive map which will show you how much crime there is in your area. NB this map shows you only police recorded crime, and there are many, many crimes which are not recorded, for various reasons.

Crime in Kent

Three – http://www.ukcrimestats.com/ –

This site describes itself as ‘the leading crime and property data’ website – scroll down for a nice colour coded analysis of crime trends for a number of different crime categories. Reported month by month (2 month data lag). I think the table below is CSEW data

What I particularly like about this web site is that it provides data tables by police force – Here’s a link to data for the Surrey Police (Local link, I teach in Surrey, where my measly teacher salary makes me feel poor because of the sickening and unjustified wealth in the local area.) The data below is Police Recorded Crime data.

Crime in England and Wales

When looking at statistics on crime, make sure you know whether the stats come from Police Recorded Crime or the Crime Survey of England and Wales (a victim survey) – the two figures will be different, and the difference between them will be different depending on the type of crime – for example the stats for vehicle theft are quite similar (because of insurance claims requiring a police report) but domestic violence figures are very different from these two sources because most offences do not get reported to the police, but many more (but not all) get reported to the CSEW researchers.

Related Posts

Official Statistics in Sociology

Crime Statistics Revision Video

Sociological Perspectives on Crime and Deviance

A brief overview of some sociological perspectives on crime and deviance – from Functionalism through to Right Realism. 

TheorySummary
FunctionalismArgue that societies need a limited amount of crime, because crime is inevitable (society of saints argument) and that crime performs three positive functions: regulation, integration and change. Also see Durkheim’s work on suicide.
Social Control TheoryThe cause of deviance is the breakdown or weakening of informal agencies of social control such as the family and community. Criminal activity occurs when the individual’s attachment to society is weakened. According to Hirschi there are four types of social bond
Merton’s Strain TheoryCrime and deviance occur in times of anomie when there is a ‘strain’ between society’s socially approved ‘success goals’ and the opportunities available to achieve these goals. Crime occurs when individuals still want to achieve the success goals of society but abandon the socially approved means of obtaining those goals.
Subcultural TheoryExplains deviance in terms of the subculture of certain social groups. Deviance is the result of individuals suffering ‘status frustration’ and conforming to the values and norms of a subculture which rewards them for being deviant. Focuses on crimes of the working class.
Traditional MarxismExplain crime in terms of Capitalism and the class structure – The Ruling classes make the law to benefit them, the law protects private property. Ruling and Middle class crime is more harmful than working class crime but ruling classes are less likely to get caught and punished for crime. Selective law enforcement performs ideological functions. WCs commit crime due to the ‘dog eat dog’ values of capitalist system – selfishness, materialism.
InteractionismFocus on how crime is socially constructed, on how certain acts become defined as criminal or deviant, and how certain people are more likely to be defined as deviant than others. Labelling Theory and Moral Panic Theory are key ideas within Interactionism.
Neo-MarxismFuses Traditional Marxist and Interactionism. Crime is an outgrowth of capitalism, but moral panics over the relatively minor crimes of marginalised groups make the public side with the ruling class against the marginalised, maintaining social order. Believe that criminology should focus on highlighting the injustices of the Capitalist System in order to change society.
Left RealismConcerned with working class crime, believe that we should work with the system in order to improve the lives of the victims of crime, who are mainly working class. Marginalisation, relative deprivation and subcultures are the main causes of crime and we should aim to tackle crime on multiple fronts – more community (less militaristic) policing and tackling poverty and marginalisation within communities are solutions.
Right RealismRight Realism is more concerned with practical solutions to crime. Relatively simple theories such as rational choice and Broken Windows theory explain crime and Zero Tolerance Policing and Situational Crime Prevention are the solutions

Assess the Contribution of Post/ Late Modern Perspectives to our Understanding of Crime and Deviance (30)

An essay plan on Post/ Late Modern perspectives on crime and deviance covering the relationship between consumerism and crime (Robert Reiner), The Vertigo of Late Modernity (Jock Young), the consequences of globalisation for crime, and the rise of cyber crime, all followed by some evaluations and a conclusion. 

Brief intro outlining the key ideas of Post/ Late Modernism

  • Postmodern society is different to modern society – It is more consumerist, and individuals have more freedom of choice than ever before.
  • Late Modernists argue that crime has changed in some fundamental ways in the age of postmodernity

Point One – Consumer society is a high crime society (Robert Reiner)

  • Crime started to rise in the 1950s with the birth of consumerism
  • 80% of crime is property crime, suggesting a link between the increase in materialism and the rise of crime
  • Rapid crime increase became especially pronounced with the neoliberal policies of Thatcher

Point Two – The ‘Vertigo of Late Modernity’ (uncertainty) explains crime and deviance today (Jock Young)

  • Postmodern life is insecure – neither jobs nor relationships are for life. These instabilities create a constant state of ‘anomie’ or meaninglessness.
  • Thus people no longer find security in their jobs/ relationships, and they thus look for thrills at weekends to give their life meaning – risk taking behaviour is the norm (‘edgework’) and much crime is an outcome of this.
  • Winlow’s study of night-time violence supports this, as does Katz’s work on ‘Edgework’.

Point Three – Globalisation has resulted in many new types of crime

  • Postmodern culture is global – there are many new flows of money, goods, technologies and ideas which open up new opportunities for crime.
  • Some of the most significant types of global crime are drug-crime, people trafficking, cybercrime and the global terrorist threat.
  • One thing fuelling this is global inequality (demand and supply).
  • One major consequence is the increase awareness of ‘risk consciousness’ and the increase in fear, especially because of the perceived terrorist threat.

Point Four – New Technologies open up new opportunities for crime, especially cyber-crime

  • Cybercrime is one of the fastest growth areas of crime and this is global in nature.
  • Fraud is one type of crime – such as the Nigerian Romance Scam.
  • Cyber-stalking and harassment also seems to be more common than face to face crimes of this nature.
  • Governments are also under threat from ‘cyber attacks’ from foreign powers.

Overall Evaluations

Positive Negative
+ Society and the nature of crime do seem to have changed in recent years, so it’s worth revisiting the ‘underlying causes’

+ Better than Marxism and Feminism as these theories look at crime more generally, rather than just focussing on issues of power.

 – On closer inspection there doesn’t seem to be much new in many late-modern theories of crime – much of it just seems to be Strain Theory updated.

– These theories may be too general to be useful to anyone. If there are multiple causes of crime, which are complex and global, we have no clue what to do to control crime?!?

Conclusion – How useful are post (late) modern theories in helping us understand crime and deviance

On the plus side it is clear that the nature of crime has changed with the onset of a global, hyper-connected postmodern society.

However, we might not need a completely new batch of theories to understand these changes. Marxists, for example, would say that we can understand much global crime, and even much ‘local crime’ because of the increase in economic inequalities which are part of globalisation.

Related Posts 

Modernity, Post-Modernity, and Late-Modernity