Contemporary Sociological Explanations of Crime and Deviance I
Lecture 9: Contemporary Sociological Explanations of Crime and Deviance I: A “Critical” Perspective on Social Control Theory Control, Control, and More Control
Reiss’s delinquency as failure of personal and social controls
Ivan Nye’s direct control, indirect control, and internalized control
Reckless’ containment theory
Hirschi’s social bond theory
Thornberry’s interactional theory
Gottfredson and Hirschi’s low-self-control theory
Sampson and Laub’s life course theory
Why Michel Foucault Is Important
One of most frequently cited thinkers in contemporary criminology and sociology
Influenced Stanley Cohen, Nils Christie, and David Garland
Generated “culture of control” genre
Social Context
Influenced by Hegel and Nietzsche
Became member of Communist Party
Quit Community Party and became a psychologist
Initial writings on insanity or “madness”
Madness and Civilization CRIMINOLOGY 300W
1
In Middle Ages and Renaissance, madness not recognized as illness
No psychologists, psychiatrists, or ‘insane asylums”
Only institutions were leprosariums
Houses of Confinement
1656-1794 witnessed first big incarceration movement…creation of enormous “houses of confinement”
Cross between prisons and workhouses
Incarcerated vagabonds, the idle poor, the criminals, and the insane
Modern Methods for Madness
Routine activities
Internalization of moral values
Code of conduct
Punishment
Birth of the Clinic
Humans as subjects and objects of knowledge
Development of classificatory schemes
Body as location of disease
The Order of Things
Archaeology of the human sciences
Uncover rules of organization that structure though
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
2
Epistemes … the totality of relations that come together and give rise to epistemological beliefs
The “Modern” Episteme
The “Modern Episteme” (Dating from 19th century) has moved from biological models (e.g., Lombroso and the Positive School) to economic/conflict models (e.g., Marxist thought and conflict criminology) to linguistic models
Linguistic models refer to recent efforts at uncovering hidden meaning and the clarification of signifying systems (e.g., symbolic interactionism, semiotics, hermeneutics)
Foucault’s Archaeology
Talked extensively about the archeology of knowledge in his earlier works
Which statements have survived?
Which statements have disappeared?
Which statement shave been repressed or censured?
Which statements have been recognized as valid and true?
Foucault’s Genealogy Related to David Garland’s “The Culture of Control.”
Replaced archaeology in his later works
Historical analysis
Investigate the beginning of ideas
How ideas come to appear self-evident
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
3
Fast Forward
Foucault then jumps eighty years ahead, to the new, enlightened rules for young prisoners in Paris, which were ostensibly more humane, and largely concerned with the reformative/rehabilitative aspects of the penal system
Called for prayer, work, schooling (e.g., reading, writing, and arithmetic), recreation, more work, more praying, with a little bit of time off in between for eating and sleeping
Foucault describes the intervening eighty years as a time when “the entire economy of punishment was redistributed”; goes from penal torture to humanitarian reforms to penal incarceration
Discipline and Punish Body and Soul
“The gentle way of punishment…” focus changes from body to soul (transformation from torture and death penalty to incarceration, understanding heart and soul)
More emphasis on treatment, knowledge; judgment passed on instincts, anomalies, infirmities, maladjustments, effects of environment and heredity – i.e, attenuating circumstances – and the knowledge about the criminal from medical/jurisprudence perspective
Power and Knowledge
Knowledge and power part of dialectic pair
Body as an object of knowledge
Body as target of power
Power produces knowledge; knowledge produces power
Punishment as way of exercising power
How is power appropriated?
How is power used in forms of domination?
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
4
How does power create mechanisms to gain knowledge?
Panopticism
Like machine or apparatus; economical and efficient
Unlike dark dungeon – full lighting, maximum, visibility
Dialectic of water and watched
Panopticism and Power
Foucault felt the Panopticon (or modern day prison) functioned like a laboratory – produced knowledge, aided in observation of effects of experimentation, training, new punishments, new medicines, etc.
Power reduced to its ideal form; machine-like, efficient, economical, all-seeing
Gave power to those who were watching over those who were being watched
Satisfies power’s need for knowledge’ watcher can know about the individual’s behaviour at all times
The Culture of Control The Carceral Archipelago
Foucault’s notion of the “carceral archipelago” expanded upon in Stanley Cohen 1985 Visions of Social Control
Started with the great incarcerations of the nineteenth century – thieves being sent to prison, lunatics into asylums, conscripts into barracks, workers into factories, children into school
Followed by the decarceration or destructuring movement; around the 1960s, when society’s values were being questioned, anything associated with the government or ‘the sate’ was regarded with suspicion
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
5
Penal institutions came to be viewed as inherently bad, as inhumane, and anything with the term “community” attached to it as “good”
The Ever-Widening Net
Carceral archipelago resulted form growth of a whole series of “community” institutions and organizations designed to “treat” rather than punish
Rather than decreasing the number of individuals being subjected to social control, actually led to the growth and expansion of community-based social control agencies
Reams of new “experts,” all staking out a little bit of social control territory for themselves
Number of prisons and prisoners didn’t really decrease; in many cases, they’ve actually gone up
New agencies and organizations set up to deal with variety of minor deviants, predeviants, and pre-pre-deviants
Could send more of these individuals to community setting where they weren’t actually in the criminal justice system and supposedly weren’t hurt, stigmatized or labeled
Crime Control As Industry
Title of (2000) book by Nils Christie
Warns against growth of the crime control industry in Western societies
Inequitable distribution of wealth, inequitable access to gainful employment lead to crime
Wants limits on the expansion of the crime control industry and increase in imprisonment
The Great Incarcerators
Number of Russian prisoners doubled since 1989; rate of 685 per 100,000 inhabitants
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
6
Portugal, UK, and Spain are leaders in Western Europe; 145, 125, and 110 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants
Greece, Ireland, Scandinavian countries have much lower rates; Iceland at the bottom with 40 per 100,000
Keeping Up With the Americans
Imprisonment rates of 709 per 100,000 inhabitants
6.2% of the US population presently under control of the penal law system (including probation and parole)
American criminology rules the world; American standards and solutions copied abroad
In the UK, imprisonment rate has gone from below 30 per 100,000 before WWI to 90 in 1993 and 125 in 2000
How to Get Rich Quick
$65 billion market created by 3,400 local jails and 100,000 employees
$75 billion spent on private security services and crime protection devices
Employs 4% of American population
The Scandinavian Experience
Imprisonment rate in Norway remained stable over the past 130 years, although crime rate fluctuated quite widely
In Finland, imprisonment rates coming down steadily, like other Scandinavian countries
Garland’s Triple Header
Punishment and Welfare
Punishment and Modern Society
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
7
The Culture of Control
The New Crime Control Complex
Contemporary crime control arrangements shaped by two underlying social forces – the distinctive social disorganization of late modernity, and the free market, socially conservative politics that came to dominate the USA and UK in the 1980s
We now have a “new culture of crime control,” a new crime complex, caused partly by manner in which corporations, communities, citizens and governments have learned to adapt to high crime rates
Genealogy Revisited
Garland proposes genealogical account (inspired by Foucault) to examine social and historical processes that gave rise to present methods of controlling crime and dispensing justice
Trends over last three decades contrary to what was anticipated and predicted; sudden and startling reversal of the settled historical pattern
Total transformation of social and economic life in the second half of the 20th century
Penal Welfarism
Patterns, organizations, and assumptions that originated in classical liberalism
Became more correctionalist; modern ideas of rehabilitation, treatment programs, probation, parole, and juvenile courts
Crime was problem to be death with by specialist state institutions
Prisons should be avoided wherever possible – juvenile courts, parole, treatment, and specialist institutions were better alternatives
Professional Specialists
Psychiatrists and criminologists occupied central position
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
8
“No treatment without diagnosis”
“No penal sanction without expert advice”
Fighting for Control
Social reform and affluence would reduce crime
State was responsible for care, punishment, and control of offenders
State was an agent of reform, of care, and of welfare
Social workers abounded with goal of reducing poverty and saving unwashed hordes
Criminologists managed to keep their gingers on the purse strings
Little money found its way into social programs to educe poverty and other sources of crime
Why Penal Welfarism Got Itself Demised
Publications in the early 1970s criticized the penal system – especially hose aspects which legitimized punishment in hidden form of “treatment”
Assault also came form within the system itself
New wave of sociological theories of crime; regarded crime as product of power relations, not social deprivation
Influenced by civil rights movement; harsh treatment of protestors
1971 riots at Attica
Movies like A Clockwork Orange and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Critics calling for repeal of indeterminate sentencing, less reliance on early release and more predictable sentencing guidelines
Ultraconservatives calling for tougher penalties to act as real disincentives to criminals
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
9
The Moral Backlash
Increasing focus on authority, hierarchy, law and order, family values, sexual morality, etc.
Unemployed workers, welfare mothers, immigrants, offenders, and drug users led to social decay
Consumer Capitalism At Work
Capital accumulation; the unceasing drive for new markets, enhanced profits, and competitive advantage
Shopping malls, electronic gadgetry, labor-saving appliances, built-in obsolescence, credit card or payment plans
Working class able to buy homes and automobiles, contemplate luxury vacations, live the American Dream
The New Middle Class
Recently enriched working and middle class voters started to change their allegiances
Right wing parties and politicians came to power
Appealed to the socially conservative, “hard-working,” primarily white, middle class voters
A Shift in Thinking
Anomie and labeling theories lost their appeal; control theories now the dominant themes
Individuals seen as self-serving, anti-social, and inclined towards criminal conduct without restraints in place
Adaptations to Crime
Commercialization and privatization of the system
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
10
Greater priority to consequences of crime, rather than its cause
Recognize that the community is the solution to the crime control problem
The New, Improved Prison
Protection of the public
Incapacitation and restraint of offenders
Decreasing emphasis on social work, probation and parole
New eight on control and risk management functions
“Prison works”
“Zero-tolerance”
“Three strikes and you’re out”
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
11
Reiss’s delinquency as failure of personal and social controls
Ivan Nye’s direct control, indirect control, and internalized control
Reckless’ containment theory
Hirschi’s social bond theory
Thornberry’s interactional theory
Gottfredson and Hirschi’s low-self-control theory
Sampson and Laub’s life course theory
Why Michel Foucault Is Important
One of most frequently cited thinkers in contemporary criminology and sociology
Influenced Stanley Cohen, Nils Christie, and David Garland
Generated “culture of control” genre
Social Context
Influenced by Hegel and Nietzsche
Became member of Communist Party
Quit Community Party and became a psychologist
Initial writings on insanity or “madness”
Madness and Civilization CRIMINOLOGY 300W
1
In Middle Ages and Renaissance, madness not recognized as illness
No psychologists, psychiatrists, or ‘insane asylums”
Only institutions were leprosariums
Houses of Confinement
1656-1794 witnessed first big incarceration movement…creation of enormous “houses of confinement”
Cross between prisons and workhouses
Incarcerated vagabonds, the idle poor, the criminals, and the insane
Modern Methods for Madness
Routine activities
Internalization of moral values
Code of conduct
Punishment
Birth of the Clinic
Humans as subjects and objects of knowledge
Development of classificatory schemes
Body as location of disease
The Order of Things
Archaeology of the human sciences
Uncover rules of organization that structure though
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
2
Epistemes … the totality of relations that come together and give rise to epistemological beliefs
The “Modern” Episteme
The “Modern Episteme” (Dating from 19th century) has moved from biological models (e.g., Lombroso and the Positive School) to economic/conflict models (e.g., Marxist thought and conflict criminology) to linguistic models
Linguistic models refer to recent efforts at uncovering hidden meaning and the clarification of signifying systems (e.g., symbolic interactionism, semiotics, hermeneutics)
Foucault’s Archaeology
Talked extensively about the archeology of knowledge in his earlier works
Which statements have survived?
Which statements have disappeared?
Which statement shave been repressed or censured?
Which statements have been recognized as valid and true?
Foucault’s Genealogy Related to David Garland’s “The Culture of Control.”
Replaced archaeology in his later works
Historical analysis
Investigate the beginning of ideas
How ideas come to appear self-evident
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
3
Fast Forward
Foucault then jumps eighty years ahead, to the new, enlightened rules for young prisoners in Paris, which were ostensibly more humane, and largely concerned with the reformative/rehabilitative aspects of the penal system
Called for prayer, work, schooling (e.g., reading, writing, and arithmetic), recreation, more work, more praying, with a little bit of time off in between for eating and sleeping
Foucault describes the intervening eighty years as a time when “the entire economy of punishment was redistributed”; goes from penal torture to humanitarian reforms to penal incarceration
Discipline and Punish Body and Soul
“The gentle way of punishment…” focus changes from body to soul (transformation from torture and death penalty to incarceration, understanding heart and soul)
More emphasis on treatment, knowledge; judgment passed on instincts, anomalies, infirmities, maladjustments, effects of environment and heredity – i.e, attenuating circumstances – and the knowledge about the criminal from medical/jurisprudence perspective
Power and Knowledge
Knowledge and power part of dialectic pair
Body as an object of knowledge
Body as target of power
Power produces knowledge; knowledge produces power
Punishment as way of exercising power
How is power appropriated?
How is power used in forms of domination?
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
4
How does power create mechanisms to gain knowledge?
Panopticism
Like machine or apparatus; economical and efficient
Unlike dark dungeon – full lighting, maximum, visibility
Dialectic of water and watched
Panopticism and Power
Foucault felt the Panopticon (or modern day prison) functioned like a laboratory – produced knowledge, aided in observation of effects of experimentation, training, new punishments, new medicines, etc.
Power reduced to its ideal form; machine-like, efficient, economical, all-seeing
Gave power to those who were watching over those who were being watched
Satisfies power’s need for knowledge’ watcher can know about the individual’s behaviour at all times
The Culture of Control The Carceral Archipelago
Foucault’s notion of the “carceral archipelago” expanded upon in Stanley Cohen 1985 Visions of Social Control
Started with the great incarcerations of the nineteenth century – thieves being sent to prison, lunatics into asylums, conscripts into barracks, workers into factories, children into school
Followed by the decarceration or destructuring movement; around the 1960s, when society’s values were being questioned, anything associated with the government or ‘the sate’ was regarded with suspicion
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
5
Penal institutions came to be viewed as inherently bad, as inhumane, and anything with the term “community” attached to it as “good”
The Ever-Widening Net
Carceral archipelago resulted form growth of a whole series of “community” institutions and organizations designed to “treat” rather than punish
Rather than decreasing the number of individuals being subjected to social control, actually led to the growth and expansion of community-based social control agencies
Reams of new “experts,” all staking out a little bit of social control territory for themselves
Number of prisons and prisoners didn’t really decrease; in many cases, they’ve actually gone up
New agencies and organizations set up to deal with variety of minor deviants, predeviants, and pre-pre-deviants
Could send more of these individuals to community setting where they weren’t actually in the criminal justice system and supposedly weren’t hurt, stigmatized or labeled
Crime Control As Industry
Title of (2000) book by Nils Christie
Warns against growth of the crime control industry in Western societies
Inequitable distribution of wealth, inequitable access to gainful employment lead to crime
Wants limits on the expansion of the crime control industry and increase in imprisonment
The Great Incarcerators
Number of Russian prisoners doubled since 1989; rate of 685 per 100,000 inhabitants
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
6
Portugal, UK, and Spain are leaders in Western Europe; 145, 125, and 110 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants
Greece, Ireland, Scandinavian countries have much lower rates; Iceland at the bottom with 40 per 100,000
Keeping Up With the Americans
Imprisonment rates of 709 per 100,000 inhabitants
6.2% of the US population presently under control of the penal law system (including probation and parole)
American criminology rules the world; American standards and solutions copied abroad
In the UK, imprisonment rate has gone from below 30 per 100,000 before WWI to 90 in 1993 and 125 in 2000
How to Get Rich Quick
$65 billion market created by 3,400 local jails and 100,000 employees
$75 billion spent on private security services and crime protection devices
Employs 4% of American population
The Scandinavian Experience
Imprisonment rate in Norway remained stable over the past 130 years, although crime rate fluctuated quite widely
In Finland, imprisonment rates coming down steadily, like other Scandinavian countries
Garland’s Triple Header
Punishment and Welfare
Punishment and Modern Society
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
7
The Culture of Control
The New Crime Control Complex
Contemporary crime control arrangements shaped by two underlying social forces – the distinctive social disorganization of late modernity, and the free market, socially conservative politics that came to dominate the USA and UK in the 1980s
We now have a “new culture of crime control,” a new crime complex, caused partly by manner in which corporations, communities, citizens and governments have learned to adapt to high crime rates
Genealogy Revisited
Garland proposes genealogical account (inspired by Foucault) to examine social and historical processes that gave rise to present methods of controlling crime and dispensing justice
Trends over last three decades contrary to what was anticipated and predicted; sudden and startling reversal of the settled historical pattern
Total transformation of social and economic life in the second half of the 20th century
Penal Welfarism
Patterns, organizations, and assumptions that originated in classical liberalism
Became more correctionalist; modern ideas of rehabilitation, treatment programs, probation, parole, and juvenile courts
Crime was problem to be death with by specialist state institutions
Prisons should be avoided wherever possible – juvenile courts, parole, treatment, and specialist institutions were better alternatives
Professional Specialists
Psychiatrists and criminologists occupied central position
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
8
“No treatment without diagnosis”
“No penal sanction without expert advice”
Fighting for Control
Social reform and affluence would reduce crime
State was responsible for care, punishment, and control of offenders
State was an agent of reform, of care, and of welfare
Social workers abounded with goal of reducing poverty and saving unwashed hordes
Criminologists managed to keep their gingers on the purse strings
Little money found its way into social programs to educe poverty and other sources of crime
Why Penal Welfarism Got Itself Demised
Publications in the early 1970s criticized the penal system – especially hose aspects which legitimized punishment in hidden form of “treatment”
Assault also came form within the system itself
New wave of sociological theories of crime; regarded crime as product of power relations, not social deprivation
Influenced by civil rights movement; harsh treatment of protestors
1971 riots at Attica
Movies like A Clockwork Orange and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Critics calling for repeal of indeterminate sentencing, less reliance on early release and more predictable sentencing guidelines
Ultraconservatives calling for tougher penalties to act as real disincentives to criminals
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
9
The Moral Backlash
Increasing focus on authority, hierarchy, law and order, family values, sexual morality, etc.
Unemployed workers, welfare mothers, immigrants, offenders, and drug users led to social decay
Consumer Capitalism At Work
Capital accumulation; the unceasing drive for new markets, enhanced profits, and competitive advantage
Shopping malls, electronic gadgetry, labor-saving appliances, built-in obsolescence, credit card or payment plans
Working class able to buy homes and automobiles, contemplate luxury vacations, live the American Dream
The New Middle Class
Recently enriched working and middle class voters started to change their allegiances
Right wing parties and politicians came to power
Appealed to the socially conservative, “hard-working,” primarily white, middle class voters
A Shift in Thinking
Anomie and labeling theories lost their appeal; control theories now the dominant themes
Individuals seen as self-serving, anti-social, and inclined towards criminal conduct without restraints in place
Adaptations to Crime
Commercialization and privatization of the system
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
10
Greater priority to consequences of crime, rather than its cause
Recognize that the community is the solution to the crime control problem
The New, Improved Prison
Protection of the public
Incapacitation and restraint of offenders
Decreasing emphasis on social work, probation and parole
New eight on control and risk management functions
“Prison works”
“Zero-tolerance”
“Three strikes and you’re out”
CRIMINOLOGY 300W
11
