NEW Criminology AND Crime AND Devience PDF

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LECTURE NOTES ON NEW CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIME...

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NEW CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIME AND DEVIENCE Crime is a symbolic resistance against the powerful  The oppressed do not always have to challenge the powerful in an ‘obvious way’ 

They can challenge the authority and ideology of the powerful through symbolic gestures e.g. crime

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These are acts which carry a particular message/embedded with meaning (although sometimes implicit/hidden)

This type of movement led to the birth of the New Criminology a Neo Marxist approach to crime 

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Sociologists should be critical of the capitalist order because this system of exploitation socially constructs crime – the w/c are made to look more criminal because the capitalist ruling class and their laws criminalise them. Sociologists should reject the capitalist definition of crime and try to uncover the crimes of the rich and powerful. Capitalism needs to find a scapegoat so that the ruling classes can reassert their hegemony and divert people’s attention from wider structural problems such as inequality. The criminal is viewed as a person that is angry at the system and is deliberately struggling for change. Crime is a meaningful and conscious choice with political motives

Stuart Hall (1978) examines the ‘moral panic’ that developed over the crime of mugging in the 1970s. He wanted to show how mugging could be explained using the fully social theory of Taylor et al Hall argued that the ‘moral panic’ around Afro Caribbean muggings developed because capitalism was in crisis – economically through unemployment, the state hegemony (authority) was being challenged through strikes. The ‘black mugger’ was used as a scapegoat by the state to distract attention away from the real problems and allow the state to regain control of a British public that had been losing faith in the government. The media labelled black men as muggers enabling the state to divide the working class along ethnic lines. Afro Caribbeans who did turn to crime did so because of unemployment or out of frustration at their exploitation. Paul Gilroy (1982) argues Afro Caribbean men are no more criminal than whites but they are labelled by the police and courts and treated unfairly. When black young men do break the law, it is best seen as a political act – fighting back against racist white society and continuing the battle that started after the slave trade. Due to high unemployment rates in the 1980s it became convenient for the authorities to focus on the myth of black crime rather than their failure to ensure full employment. 

Weaknesses:

Left realists argue that this approach romanticises working class criminals – can you explain this?  In reality most crime in intra class crime i.e. working class criminal preying on working class victims. How does this challenge capitalism?  Burke (2005) argues that this approach is too general to explain crime and too idealistic to tackle crime  Feminist accuse this approach of being genderblind (we will explore this argument in topic 2) Strengths:  Similarly to traditional Marxism this approach draws attention to the link between inequality and crime  This approach has been applied by Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy and so carries some empirical validity  This approach has laid the foundation for other radical approach that seek to establish a more just society e.g. feminist theories on crime and left realism 

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