Control, punishment and victims

Editor's Notes

• #3: . The drugs trade; green crimes; immigrant smuggling; arms trafficking; international terrorism. More examples on page 127. 2. Late modern society, which is threatened by risks that are human-made and have never been faced before, such as global warming and nuclear accidents. 3. An organisation dependent on global connections, but that still has a local network. 4. You can see clearly what is or is not a crime. 5. Many harmful actions are not in fact against the law, or may be against the law in one country but not in another. 6. The study of environmental harm and of harm caused by the powerful (e.g. states, big business). 7. An anthropocentric view is a human-centred view that assumes humans have the right to dominate the environment; an ecocentric view sees humans and their environment as interdependent, so that environmental harm hurts humans also. 8. Primary green crimes are crimes that directly involve harm to the environment (e.g. destroying the rainforest); secondary green crimes are crimes that result from the flouting of rules designed to prevent environmental harm (e.g. breaking laws against dumping toxic waste). 9. Illegal or deviant activities perpetrated by, or with the complicity of, state agencies. 10. Ways that are used by delinquents and by the state to justify their crimes, e.g. denial of victim, of injury or of responsibility.
• #6: pre-emptive – ANTICIPATE, PREVENT
• #8: Male Gaze: A form of social control where male pupils and teachers look girls up and down as sexual objects and make judgements about their appearance A form of surveillance through which dominant heterosexual masculinity is reinforced and femininity devalued Way of proving masculinity to friends along with telling stories of sexual conquests. Boys who don't do this run the risk of being labelled gay
• #9: The strategy is based on the 'Broken Windows ' theory - first developed by two American sociologists, George Kelling and James Wilson, in 1983. There is a link between disorder and crime - a view shared by Labour politicians. The thesis goes: visible signs of decay - litter, broken windows, graffiti, abandoned housing - signals public disinterest . Fear of crime is greatest in these neighbourhoods, which prompts 'respectable' community members to leave . This undermines the community's ability to maintain order and decline follows. Reasoning that it is easier to prevent a neighbourhood's slide into crime than trying to rescue it, the theory demands that even minor misdemeanours must be pursued with the same vigour as serious crimes.
• #10: Slide 6: Wilson and Kelling in an area where 'read out the bullet points'.
• #11: Slide 7: This is where Wilson and Kelling's broken window thesis comes in. So when even a minor crime like a broken window goes un-punished people start to 'read out the bullet points.'
• #12: Slide 8: Etzioni suggest that in the past poor communities policed themselves, and that now in some communities this has broken down which has led to a criminal underclass taking over. And to solve this is to create a greater sense of social integration and responsibility by setting for example a neighbourhood watch scheme.
• #13: The results This approach has found great success in NY. A ‘ Clean Car Program’ was instituted on the subway in which trains with graffiti on them were taken away immediately. As a result graffiti was largely removed from the subway. Criticisms of zero tolerance: There are negative consequences of aggressive policing with accusations of heavy-handedness by police There are other reasons for falling crime in New York. Fewer take violence-inducing crack cocaine while many of those responsible for committing crimes in the 1980s are now in prison Crime has also fallen in areas without zero tolerance policing The long-term effects are unknown. It works well in densely populated areas with high policing levels and large amounts of petty crime. But where the population is dispersed or the crime rate is low, it may have little effect. And in areas of high racial tension, the policy might leave locals feeling victimised. In Freakonomics, the author noticed the sharp decline in NY crime happened suddenly, 18-20 years after abortion was legalised. So – crime hadn’t been reduced: the criminals themselves had.
• #14: Perry pre-school project Research conducted in 1962 by David Weikart in Michigan. The project provided high-quality pre-school education to three- and four-year-old African-American children living in poverty and assessed to be at high risk of school failure.  These students were given extra sessions on decision making and problem solving . Parents implemented the programme at home. The results By age 40 they had significantly fewer lifetime arrests for violent crime, property crime and drugs, while more had graduated from high school and were in employment. For every dollar spent on the programme, $17 were saved on welfare, prison and other costs.
• #15: Perry pre-school project Research conducted in 1962 by David Weikart in Michigan. The project provided high-quality pre-school education to three- and four-year-old African-American children living in poverty and assessed to be at high risk of school failure.  These students were given extra sessions on decision making and problem solving . Parents implemented the programme at home. The results By age 40 they had significantly fewer lifetime arrests for violent crime, property crime and drugs, while more had graduated from high school and were in employment. For every dollar spent on the programme, $17 were saved on welfare, prison and other costs.
• #17: 1. Ron Clarke ( 1992) argues for a pre-emptive approach which looks at reducing opportunities for crime. He looks at target hardening and zero tolerance policing. Underlies the rational choice theory/ 2. SCP works to an extent in reducing certain kinds of crime, however with most measures there is likely to be displacement Over focuses on opportunistic petty street crime & ignores white collar, corporate and state crime (costly & harmful) Assumes criminals make rational calculations, this is unlikely in many crimes of violence and drug/alcohol fuelled crimes Ignores root of crime e.g. poverty or poor socialisation. Making it difficult to develop long term strategies for crime reduction CCTV operators focus disproportionately on young males. Feminists suggest CCTV is an extension of male gaze and is part of the problem not a solution 3. Wilson & Kelling argue that ‘broken windows’ (signs of disorder e.g. graffiti, begging, littering, vandalism) that are not dealt with send out a signal that no-one cares, encouraging a spiral of decline. An absence of formal social control (police) and informal control (community) means members of the community feel powerless and intimidated 4. environmental improvement strateg y- repair any broken window immediately, tow abandoned cars without delay Zero tolerance policing- instead of reacting to crime, police must pro actively tackle even the slightest sign of disorder even if not criminal. Halting neighbourhood crime and preventing serious crime taking root 5. Social policies e.g. equal pay acts,
• #25: Age and Victimisation · In 2002 there were 10.9 million people of pensionable age in the UK in over 7 million households. · In 1999 it is estimated that there were 2,040,000 (British Crime Survey) crimes against older people or households headed by older people. (500,000 incidents of vandalism, 214,000 of burglary, 444,000 vehicle related theft, and 132,000 incidents of violence. · Repeat victimisation amongst older victims was 29% for vandalism, 8% for burglary, 20% for vehicle theft, and 14% for violent crime. · The estimated annual number of cases of distraction burglary against older people has been estimated as between 300,000 and 400,000. If it is 365,000, this represents 1000 incidents each day of the year. · 43% of over British 60s feel very or a bit unsafe walking alone after dark
• #28: Hierarchy of victimisation- powerless are most likely to be victimised yet least likely to have this acknowledged by the state
• #32: 1. Target-hardening refers to security measures such as locks, alarms etc, designed to make crime more difficult. Displacement refers to the way in which target hardening may result in crime being deflected onto different targets/victims. 2. They ignore white-collar and corporate crime. Many criminals act under the influence of drugs or alcohol, so do not make rational decisions. They ignore underlying causes of crime such as poverty or poor socialisation. 3. The police must be proactive in dealing with the smallest signs of disorder, so that more serious crime will not develop.
• #37: Interdependence is a relation between its members such that each is mutually dependent on the others. This concept differs from a simple dependence relation, which implies that one member of the relationship can function or survive apart from the other(s). In an interdependent relationship, participants may be emotionally, economically, ecologically and/or morally reliant on and responsible to each other. An interdependent relationship can arise between two or more cooperative autonomous participants (e.g. - co-op ). Some people advocate freedom or independence as the ultimate good; others do the same with devotion to one's family , community , or society . Interdependence can be a common ground between these aspirations. Restitutive- to restore thins to how they were before the offence (restore society’s equilibrium)
• #38: Devised by the French philosopher Louis Althusser, (1971) this concept refers to those agencies of the State whose primary function is to secure the cooperation and compliance of the subordinate class to rule by the dominant class. Often referred to as ISAs, ideological state apparatuses include: Religious institutions such as the Church Educational institutions The family Political parties The media
• #39: The Repressive State Apparatuses (or RSA s, as Althusser refers to them in his essay) are those systems and structures in a society that control the relations of production through mainly repressive, physical means. Althusser claims that these structures are necessary (in conjuction with Ideological State Apparatuses, or ISAs) to maintain the reproduction of the relations of production, or in other words, to keep the labourers labouring for the State and the bourgeois society. The RSAs include the following: government (including administration at all levels), police, courts, prisons, the military, etc. They argue that harsh punishments are part of the Repressive State Apparatuses (RSA) which keep the working class in their place
• #43: Prisoners cells are visible to the guards but the guards are not visible to the prisoners. Not knowing if they are being watched means the prisoners must constantly behave as if they are. Surveillance turns into self surveillance: control becomes invisible, ‘inside’ the prisoner
• #45: Transcarceration means when somebody enters prison or youth offending they are more than likely to re-enter it again at some point be it with social services or mental health institutions.
• #47: 4. Retributive justice involves revenge by society and harsh punishment; restitutive justice attempts to restore things to the way they were before the crime, e.g. through paying compensation. 5. Because imprisonment reflects the capitalist mode of production, e.g. paying for one’s crime by ‘doing time’ in a society where ‘time is money’; prison reflects the strict discipline of capitalist factory production. 6. Control via surveillance which is internalised by the individual and becomes self-surveillance. 7. The way in which a person may move from one institution to another during their lifetime, such as children’s care home, prison and mental institution. 8. It ignores structural factors such as patriarchy; it often seems to blame the victim; it does not account for situations where the victims are not aware of the crimes committed against them; it ignores harms done to victims which are not against the law.