Concern on Criminology in the 1970s - Essay Example

Name: Instructor’s Name: Course: University: A concern with criminology’s own role in relation to the exercise of power in society led to alternative questions and concerns being asked during the 1970s Criminology, the study of crime and the society’s responses to it has been a topic of concern for sociologists and psychologists. Much of the theory on criminology is based on assumptions about human nature, social influences, and the causes of crime. In the 1970s, the whole subject of crime and related aspects underwent scrutiny by various social scientists and alternative approaches to crime and punishment were seeked. This paper pertains to the alternative questions raised during the 1970s about the role played out by criminology in exercising power in the society. Sociologists have baffled with the ever-elusive question ‘Are criminals born or made?’ To understand how criminology has exerted an influence in the power equations of the society, it is important to understand why criminology originated in the first place. It is a science that slowly evolved as an attempt to understand why criminals are made. Theories were slowly developed to find out why all people exposed to the same socio-cultural environment do not turn crime and violence. The issue of learned behaviour was an important research study area in the 1970s. An apt start would be to trace out the theories in criminology that has influenced public opinion about crime and the way society deals with crime in the centuries. Critical criminologists were mainly concerned with the reflexive aspects of theoretical criminology and have reasserted projects on the traditional criminology in the public domain; such projects have also been backed by government grants. Though many introverted projects arose after the publication in 1973 of ‘The New Criminology’, it didn’t stop the traditionalists from stopping their research on positivistic criminology (Hill, 2002). Theories of Criminology Out of more than thirteen criminology theories practiced that evolved right from 1876, and which directly or indirectly influence judiciaries and legislatures around the world, only three are considered mainstream (Coser, 2004). The first ever theory on criminology was related to biochemistry and attributed crime to various hereditary and biological reasons including vitamin deficiency and criminals were treated by isolation and medical applications. But the three mainstream theories include the strain, learning and control theories; the three have played an important role in how we look at criminals and justice systems across the world today. The Strain theory has associated itself with the ‘American dream’, which is all about getting the best of everything in life-education, money, standard of living and jobs, without actually taking the real life obstacles into consideration. The way out of crime, according to this theory, is to have more opportunities and lesser aspirations. Learning theory is much more individualistic and focuses on what is good and what is bad for particular groups or individuals. Control theories in criminology are all about social control.  Only those called containment or low-self control theories have to do with individual psychology.  Control theory has pretty much dominated the criminological landscape since 1969.  It focuses upon a person's relationships to their agents of socialization, such as parents, teachers, preachers, coaches, scout leaders, or police officers.  It studies how effective bonding with such authority figures translates into bonding with society, hence keeping people out of trouble with the law (Coser, 2004). The control theory is all about increasing the social bonds that a person has, thus diverting his energies into building his family and society and away from negative influences and tendencies. So, how can we define crime? Social scientists describe it as any act of violence or any deviation from the basic values and beliefs of society; which causes harm to its members. When the reasons and causes of crime is scientifically studied, it tends to have a strong influence on the way a society works. It is almost natural to combat violence with violence, and hence, crime with punishment. Many governments have exercised this control over the society in their attempts towards a crime-free society. Criminology has tried to explain the minds and psyche of criminals, but many people still see world as a clear division of black and white. Criminals and those deviants of society are more often than not seen as social outcasts and very naturally so, due to their violent nature and deviant behavior. Moral Values of the 1970s Drug addiction and alternate sexual preferences were two aspects that strongly influenced the criminology of the 1970s. While many viewed it as a crime to be sexually different and in many states, this was illegal, drug addiction was scientifically proved to numb senses and thus act as a motivation for crime. It was a period of overall social change. Free universities, cultural expression troupes, off campus movements and jazz music were the order of the day. This was the period of various important events in history, including the Vietman War, oil price hikes, and federal law enforcement policies in the United States, women’s movement and anti-prison movement. Human rights started gaining importance as each human’s right to life and the state’s right to end it was being questioned. It was during this time that progressive criminology was researched upon and new theories explored in the Berkeley School of Criminology. Progressive criminology spread itself across the nations in 1968 – in France during the French May, in Italy during its ‘Hot Autumn’, in the German cultural revolution, in the student movements, barricades in U.S and the assassination of Martin Luther King. (Shank, 1999). Exercise of power To understand criminal justice, it is necessary to understand crime.  Most policy-making in criminal justice is based on criminological theory, whether the people making those policies know it or not.  In fact, most of the failed policies (what doesn't work) in criminal justice are due to misinterpretation, partial implementation, or ignorance of criminological theory.  Much time and money could be saved if only policymakers had a thorough understanding of criminological theory (Coser, 2004).   The above statement shows a clear insight into how criminology theory has seeped into the legal systems around the world and how it has influenced the way society looks at crime, law and justice. Until the 1960s and 1970s, criminology focused on a critical approach to criminal behavior and in turn, the judiciary in many countries employed correctional methods like imprisonment and punishment to keep crime rates in check. Slowly, a shift in approach set in, as none of the existing theories could fully and comprehensively explain the motivation behind crime and why people turn criminal. The control theory was developed during this period, providing a breather for many human rights activists and sociologists. This theory looked at a very different approach to controlling crime in the society; it focused on training people to become law abiding citizens, by bonding them through social obligations like family, education etc. There are many different approaches to the control theory, but all of them have consensus on the fact that personal bonding creates an internal control in the minds of human beings and in their behavior and it will check the motivation for crime. Crime, according to this view, can be a resultant of insufficient emotional attachment and commitment to others in the society. Though there are still many supporters for increasing punishment as a way of combating crime and there are many countries in the world that practice this method of justice, it is not very often that crime is really countered with fear of punishment. For example, in many of the Middle East countries, an eye for an eye is literally practiced as a judicial system, but the crime rates in these countries have only been on the rise. Politicians use punishment as a means to stop crime. It also is a way of reinforcing authority and social norms. They increase punishments for offences, thus resulting in more people spending time in jail for longer periods of time (Livingston, 1996). Livingston sees this as a probable reason why there was an increase in prison population in the 1970s. Walter C Reckless suggested a method of combating crime as part of the control theory and called it the containment theory. Reckless held that through a combination of internal containment and sources of social containment can prevent people from deviating from societal beliefs and practices. A discussion of the bases of power in prison, data from a survey of guards in five prisons are examined to determine the extent to which each power base is viewed as a resource to gain prisoner compliance (Hepburn, 1985). This is a really shocking, but realistic example of the power play that is exercised by those who have control over prisons and justice systems and how they view crime. The 1970s showed a powerful movement against this approach to criminology; anti-establishment criminology and radical criminology was the order of the day for social scientists and behavioral experts. Unlike the classical and positivist criminology theories that centered around state liberalism, the new theories were radical and based on critiquing of the state and the political aspect of crime and crime control. Radical criminology emerged as a strong moral reaction to the way crime and criminals were treated in the state-controlled crime control systems. Criminological theories normally focus on the reasons and causes of crime, known as etiology, but sometimes also deal with police and lawyers and other people who implement the justice system in a country (Coser, 2004). The main concern of radical or liberal criminologists was the central approach taken to crime, instead of an individualistic approach that applied correctional methods on a need to need basis. Anti-racist criminology developed during this period and this triggered a series of protests against equality of opportunity and an end to discrimination against African Americans and other immigrants. Such theories strongly influenced the judicial system in the United States of America and gave opportunity for a strict exercise of power on African Americans in the country. Critical and Marxist criminologists sought to develop and install what they termed a "fully social" criminology in which the forms of lawmaking, law breaking and law enforcement - rather than only one or the other of these - were to be brought together in the unity of the social (eg Taylor et al 1976). The direction of what was undoubtedly the most dynamic area of criminological theory appeared to accept the social so comprehensively and completely that the only way forward involved the extension and intensification of the social (O’Malley, 1996). In today's postmodern and multicultural worlds of criminology and criminal justice characterized by post-structuralism, post-Marxism, post-affirmative action, and post-feminism, criminologists from a variety of schools of thought, including but not limited to critical, constitutive, positivist, and integrative, have come to appreciate, in different and in related ways, the numerous limitations of simple or "non-integrative" theories (Barak, 2002). Criminology has slowly developed into an integrative approach, taking in the broader perspectives of the traditional theories and also the individualistic perspectives of the radical and critical theories. This approach was a way of countering the exercise of power by the arms of the law and the state. References 1. Coser, Lewis. (2004) Crime Theories: The function of theory is to provide puzzles for research. Retrieved December 4, 2006 from http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/111/111lect03.htm 2. Sutherland, Edwin. (1947). Principles of Criminology, 4th ed. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. 3. Shank, Gregory. (1999). Looking back: Radical Criminology and Social Movements. Retrieved December 4, 2006 from http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/shankcrimin.html 4. Hepburn, John. (1985) The Exercise of Power in Coercive Organizations: A Study of Prison Guards. Criminology, Volume 23, Issue 1, Page 145 5. O’Malley, Pat (1996). Criminology and the New Liberalism Retrieved December 4, 2006 from http://criminology.utoronto.ca/edwardslect/omalley.htm 6. Hill, Richard (2002). Facing Change: New Directions for Critical Criminology in the Early New Millennium? Retrieved December 4, 2006 from http://wcr.sonoma.edu/v3n2/hil.html 7. Akers, Ronald L. (1994). A Social Learning Theory of Crime. 8. Akers, Ronald L. (1998). Social Learning and Social Structure: A General Theory of Crime and Deviance Read More