The Nature of Crime - Essay Example

? The Nature of Crime The Nature of Crime Crime is something that is determined by society. Society chooses which behaviors are allowed and which ones are not, placing expectations on citizens to fulfill their roles without violating those actions which are considered a crime. Sometimes, law is unjust and then crime is defined by authority but not supported by society. An example of how crime is not supported by society can be seen in Antigone as the law of the king denies her the right to bury her brother. The king is beseeched to change his decree, but the result is still tragic as Antigone has defied him once more by taking her own life so that he would not be able to execute her. In The Trial, by Franz Kafka, the defendant, K, is put through an ordeal that has no meaning attached to it because his crime is not revealed to him. The nature of crime is in the knowledge of it, but often the concept of crime is divorced from society through an inability for the people within a society to connect to it. Crime can be defined, then, as the acts of individuals that are against the desires of the authority and elite of society. The nature of crime is controversial. According to Henry and Lanier (2001), when asked about the nature of crime one of the burning questions is whether or not a crime is a crime if the law that designates it a crime is repealed. There was a time when racially motivated actions, domestic abuse, and white collar crimes were not designated as crime through law. Did this mean that they were not crimes? If it was legal to beat one’s wife, was it criminal to do so? By defining crime through strictly law structured contexts, then anything not defined as illegal is not a crime. The definition of crime is then seen as something that defies a law. Crime can be defined by looking at the context of an action as well. If a woman steals bread to feed her children, has she committed a crime? By the nature of the law, she has committed a crime. In relationship to society’s beliefs on the needs of children, it may be claimed that she was fighting for survival or that she has denied the crime of hunger in favor of an act that supported survival. That she committed a crime is diminished by the greater need that her children have for food. Few, however, would define theft of food as anything other than a crime. Taking resources that belong to someone else is considered theft, even when one party has abundance and the other is in need. Defining crime is important because, as Henry and Lanier (2001) write, “policy decisions concerning social control are made based on a particular definition of crime” (p. 1). An example can be seen through defining what is considered to be a right within a society. In American society there are no rights to food, shelter, or health care. In other societies there are a number of rights afforded to human beings through various structures that entitle them to those rights. If someone were denied health care in the United Kingdom where healthcare is socialized it might be considered a crime under the right circumstances. In the United States, if a doctor refuses to see a patient who cannot pay it is simply considered good business. Crime, then, is defined by the social priorities of a society as they address their beliefs and needs in relationship to how they structure their law. There are a number of approaches through which law is addressed. The first is through the consensus view of crime. This view suggests that crime is defined by what all members of a society designate as criminal. Victimless crimes, such as drug abuse, are defined as crime because the belief systems in society have determined that such an act deserves attention by the courts and is criminal. Society chooses to address the actions of people that are believed to be harmful, even when harm is individual. The conflict view sees society of a number of groups that are in conflict with one another. In this case “Criminal laws…are viewed as acts created to protect the haves from the have-nots” (Seigel, 2012, p. 13). Political power empowers the haves with the ability to influence the law, where the have-nots have little power with which to assert the needs that they have upon society. Conflict views on crime puts the laws that violate human rights, that are prejudicial, or that support industry over humanity are explained by the power struggle between the upper classes and the lower classes as criminality is defined by those laws that support the continuation of the upper class powers. The interactionist view is based upon the sociological concept of symbolic interactionism and suggests that people act according to their perspective on reality, they observe the actions of others, and that “they reevaluate and interpret their own behavior according to the meaning and symbols they have learned from others” (Siegel, 2012, p. 14). The basis of this theory is that people act according to their acclimation into society, thus defining behaviors according to how they have been taught to define those behaviors. Using drugs is an act that every school child has been taught is against the law, but the abuse of drugs was not always a regulated activity. Addiction in the Old West, as an example, was a part of the legends of that time period as opium dens and snuff boxes full of cocaine were widely used. Although the effects of drug addiction were understood, the legality of choosing to defile one’s own body was not under consideration until the early 20th century (Agnew, 2010). Looking at the discussion of crime in the play Antigone shows that this question has been on the minds of people in society for most of human existence. Antigone commits a crime that is in defiance of a decree by her king. She is under the authority of this king because her brothers who were at war with one another over the throne were both killed during the battle, neither brother being able to take the throne. As Antigone hears the decree that one brother will be buried as a hero and the other left out to be eaten by the carrion, her loyalty to family drives her to defy this decree that is supported as law by the authority of kingship. The difference between law and what Antigone chooses to do is the difference between decreed law and natural law. Antigone believes that it is a crime to not honor her brother with a decent burial that will allow him into the afterlife. McCoskey and Zakin (2009) discuss the gender differences in relationship to the idea of public versus private spheres of social existence. They write that “natural law refers both to laws that are generated from supposed natural differences between the sexes, and to the private sphere as opposed to the public” (McCoskey & Zakin, 2009, p. 160). In this description of the law that Antigone follows in contrast to the public law is that the emotional context of private law is exampled by Antigone and comes into conflict with the public decreed law. In this sense, it is the emotional capacity of the female example in literature that represents the concept of natural law. The understanding of natural law is based on the innate understanding of what is right and what is wrong. This means that criminality has two sides. What is innately natural to the idea of violations against human existence is criminal. What is determined as unacceptable in society is criminal. This is the contrast between stealing food to feed one’s children being innately right, while not being socially acceptable. In the case of Antigone, she has chosen to honor what is innately right rather than bend to the law of Creon for whom she has lost respect. In the other end of the discussion, Kafka represents the lack of meaning to the legal system in his novel, The Trial. The main character, K is accused of a crime and taken for trial, but never given any reason for his status as criminal. It is never explained to him why he has been charged with a crime, what the crime is for which he has been charged, nor even under what authority he has been charged with the crime. This discussion is based upon the idea of the meaning of criminality. Since K does not understand what he has done wrong or why he is being put through a trial, the meaning of law becomes immaterial. Law is nothing when the actions of law do not provide for an understanding of what has been done against society to warrant being treated as a criminal. The ordeal that K goes through can be understood for its meaning in relationship to the oppression of the elite and inaccessible authority. As he has no knowledge of the authority that is charging him with his unknown crime, it represents the average individual’s inability to influence the nature of society as the gap between the elite and the average is wide and almost impossible to jump. Antigone breaches the law because she cannot support the whim of the elite, which is represented by the king. It is in the inability to communicate their reality that the distance between the elite and the average or common creates a gap in trying to define crime. It can be said in contemporary society that the United States is criminal for avoiding the realities of the human condition. People go without food, without shelter, and without healthcare, all concepts that some might consider basic human rights without which injustice and crime is committed. The belief system of profit supports the denial of basic human rights because of the costs associated with providing them. In this instance, manmade constructs of law outweigh natural law which would provide those three elements as rights. Because of the belief system that is supported by capitalism, the survival of people is lower down on the priority list from the right to property and resources in favor of profit. The point is that what would seem like natural law, the rights of human beings to access basic survival resources, is secondary to the belief system that supports laws against the rights to those resources. A man cannot go gather fruit in the field or shoot deer in the wood because those fields or those woods are owned by someone else. The resources of those areas belong to ‘owners’ and ownership is a basic belief system that constrains the system from supporting the individual’s rights to a variety of natural resources. In this example crime is defined by ownership and not by the natural law of human existence to gather what they need for survival. It is more complicated than this of course, but the basic idea remains understood. This can be extended even to innovation. Where innovation could have been given over to society for its betterment, it is instead coveted and ‘owned’ so that only those who can afford it can have access it. This is sensible where luxuries and conveniences are concerned, but does it make sense to have the technology for health when it is only accessible to those who can afford it? What would natural law define as appropriate in contrast to manmade law. Some would consider it a crime to see someone die because they cannot afford medical care. There are long discussions on the rights of a human being to medical care. It all comes back to ownership. Ownership of medical care means that it is sold to those who can afford to have it. The example of K is in the ability for society to silence those who would speak out against it through criminality. Felman (2002) writes that “his final fall to silence illustrates, in contrast to his hopes, at once the failure of civilization to redeem the silenced and the silency capacity of law itself it its potential (and in its totalitarian reality) as civilization’s most pernicious and most brutal tool of violence” (p. 18). Readers never have the answer as to what he was being silenced about, but they do have the information to understand that whatever it was that he did, it was based upon his defiance of an authority. In truth, the point is made more clearly about the criminality of silencing through the law by not revealing the offense. The law is arbitrary and often meaningless in the greater scheme of human existence, but the importance that is placed upon the semantics of law creates a false sense of superiority and authority within a society that is still subject to the natural laws of the human world. To define the meaning of the criminal, then, is to define the perspective from which it is viewed. From the perspective of the elite, law is the device to keep themselves in the position of the elite. From the perspective of the masses, it is a panacea in the form of an illusion for keeping a barrier between themselves and harm. From the perspective of those whose needs come in conflict with the law, criminality is a default position when survival overrides the position in society they would otherwise hold if their needs did not override their sense of civic responsibility to the greater society. Crime is a state of behavior through which the expression of need has become greater than the expression of conformity. The central meaning of the play Antigone is in the meaning of law. Law is what creates the conflict between what Antigone would do and what the law states as her limitations. The differences between the public and the private nature of law provide the context through which the crime is committed. In contrast, the story by Kafka in which K is accused of an unknown crime from an unknown authority, the fact that law has relatively no meaning is explored. The nature of crime is arbitrary and the meaning of authority is the central discussion upon which the concept of crime is established. In both cases, the authority through which criminal behavior is defined is the center to the discussion. The nature of crime is transformed into something that has meaning only when society decides it has meaning. Antigone shows that crime can be defined by the perspective of the individual. K shows that crime is only meaningful when it is given meaning. The nature of crime is defined by the need of the individual as they face the choices that lead to a decision. It is in that decision that behavior is judged by society. Although some acts are inherently criminal, for the most part, society determines what is considered social and what is anti-social. In the end, it is the elite that ultimately have the power to create that determination and have its benefits. References Agnew, J. (2010). Medicine in the Old West: A history, 1850-1900. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co., Publishers. Felman, S. (2002). The juridical unconscious: Trials and traumas in the twentieth century. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Henry, S., & Lanier, M. M. (2001). What is crime?: Controversies over the nature of crime and what to do about it. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. Kafka, F. (2006). The Trial. Middlesex: Echo Library. McCoskey, D. E., & Zakin, E. (2009). Bound by the city: Greek tragedy, sexual difference, and the formation of the polis. Albany: State University of New York Press. Siegel, L. J. (2012). Criminology. Belmont: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. Read More