Key perspectives and debates in criminology (CR2013)
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Royal Holloway University Of London
Close to 9k words, this 23-page document covers terms one and two of the CR2013 modules. Topics include exploring the criminological imagination, administrative criminology, critical criminology, southern criminology, prison abolitionism, cultural criminology, green criminology, drug markets, EWT, ...
Key perspectives and debates in criminology (CR2013)
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CR2013: KEY PERSPECTIVES AND DEBATES IN CRIMINOLOGY
TOPIC A01 (KNOWLEDGE)
- The significance of Criminological Theory: attempts to define, explain, understand, and analyse. It challenges and redefine dominant ‘common sense’
assumptions of what crime is, who perpetuates it and how we should respond it.
EXPLORING THE - Textbookification of criminological theory tells only a narrow story of the study of crime and punishment.
CRIMINOLOGICAL
IMAGINATION - Two competing versions of Criminology:
= Positivism: abstracted empiricism (data), orthodox (favours govt agenda of crime), analytical individualism (focus on individual characteristics rather
than situating them in social context) & minimal theory (very little theory used).
= Sociology of Deviance: field work. Ethnography and qualitative work (less concerned w/ objectives/numbers, more concerned with ppl’s experiences.)
Interdisciplinary work (drawing on philosophy, history, psychology, law, etc.) Concerned with structure and social conditions. Engaged with theory-
making.
- The Sociological Imagination: a way of ‘interpreting the world’ and ‘approaching social problems’ (Mills, 1959). To understand social problems like
crime, Mills asks us to look at three dimensions of life: biography (the personal), history (the historical) and structure (the social). Need to interpret social
problems within wider context of individual lives and social realties in which they occur.
- The Criminological Imagination: See the world from other ppl’s perspectives and develop empathy to those we consider most reprehensible and
imaginatively think about crime/crime control.
, - An establishment’s approach to crime. Harnessed by government and policy makers. Also known as ‘Market-led’ criminology (Walters, 2003).
= Focuses on reducing crime and statistics. Approaches crime without investigating the causes of crime.
ADMINISTRATIVE = Thinks of the situational and temporal factors that lead to offending rather than thinking of the social structures & individual factors.
CRIMINOLOGY
→ RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY (Ronald Clarke & Derek Cornish)
= Potential offenders constantly weigh up the costs & benefits of committing crime.
= Circumstances under which an individual decides to commit crime is explored, so the opportunities & temptations available to the offender can be
reduced.
= This theory doesn’t take into consideration crime driven by anger, impulsivity and irrational factors.
-- The distinction between RCT & RAT is that RCT focuses on a broader societal analysis of crime events. RAT focuses on particular crime events as
situational and deconstructs the crime into all the situational factors that led to it.
→ ROUTINE ACTIVITY THEORY (Marcus Felson & Lawrence Cohen)
= Focuses on the situations that crime occur. Concentration on ‘crime events’ and their sources within ‘routine activity’. An individual commits crime
based on opportunities and a rational assesment of risks and rewards.
= Felson is interested in the situations that influences our crime involvement.
= RAT triangle: 3 important aspects to consider, the offender, the place & the victim. Felson states that the criminal activity only takes place when a likely
offender and a suitable target come together in a particular place and time. There is no capable guardian to prevent this interaction.
= Critiques: Ignores broader social, economic, and cultural factors in shaping criminal motivations. Lack of attention paid to white collar crime.
, - Critical Criminology explores crime and justice from alternative perspectives and examines the function of the CJS as a tool of the government to
maintain power relations.
CRITICAL
CRIMINOLOGY Marxist approach to crime
= Capitalism shapes social institutions, social identities & social action: Criminal law is made by the ruling classes, and it maintains their power and
7 key stage framework to protects their interests. Criminal law functions as an instrument of the state which exploits the working class.
understand crime
= Capitalism creates class conflict and contradiction: which makes it difficult for lower classes to resist and challenge the system of crime control due to
their lack of resources within society.
= Crime is a response to capitalism and its contradictions: It is a rational response to the material circumstances people find themselves in. As
deprivation rises, so does crime. Crime can be seen as resistance to these conditions.
= Crime is functional to capitalism: Astronomical level of profit is secured from prison work. Crime promotes capital accumulation by capitalists, eg.
privatisation.
The New Criminology
= Critical criminology is inspired by young sociologists interested in labelling and actively questioning how deviance is defined and reproduced.
= Questions criminology and ‘whose side are we on?’ Should we support govt agendas or be critical towards them and focus on independency.
= 1968 – National Deviance Conference: focused on state as an apparatus of social control, importance of the economy and class relations, struggles
and inequalities between classes and highlighted the significance of agency & structure.
= New (Critical) criminologists rallied against the concrete objectives of law enforcement and the criminal justice system and instead they challenged
ideas of crimes of the powerless and wanted to focus on the crimes of the powerful. Moving the attention away from street level criminality.
- The New Criminology- Taylor, Walton & Young (1973).
= Two aspects of thinking that inspired the thinking: interactionism & Marxist analysis
Interactionism
- Interested in the labelling processes: what happens after the label of criminal has been applied (change in self-conception & emergence of second deviance).
- Moral entrepreneurship: people who works to maintain and enforce norms and rules in society.
- Concerns with power and relations.
- But it doesn’t examine how labelling processes are structurally determined, doesn’t consider that social control is determined by late capitalism.
- Interactionism on its own was not enough so was combined with the Marxist analysis: underlying political economy of crime, structural origins of power, etc.
- Evaluating the ‘New’ Criminology: Hirst (1975) argued that it strays too far from Marxist traditions, Rock (1988) argued that it ‘romanticised’ crime &
deviance. Feminists argued that there is no discussion of patriarchy, and this omitted women from crime and crime inflicted on women (eg. rape).
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