Topic 13 - Class & Crime

• Merseyside & Islington Crime Surveys

  • lower class were more likely to be victims
  • poor communities were more likely to be repeat victims
  • had more traumatic experiences - couldn't afford protection
  • reported less crime due to hostile police-community relationships
• Youth Detention centres and prison statistics

  • 11% ran away from home as a child and were homeless or in care
  • 1/2 male, 1/3 female were excluded from school
  • 41% witnessed domestic violence as a child
  • 74% were in the poorest 20% of the population
• Reiner

  • 74% of prison population was unemployed or employed in the lowest occupational levels prior to their conviction
• Houchin

  • 60% of prisoners in Glasgow came from the most deprived council estates
• Omolade

  • 43% of prisoners had no educational qualifications
  • Only 6% had a degree
  • 36% were unemployed
  • 60% were claiming benefits
• Prison Reform Working Group 2002

  • 67% were unemployed - compared to 5% of main population
  • 32% were homeless - compared to 0.9% of main population
  • 27% had been in care - compared to 2% of main population
• Merton (Functionalist)

  • Solution to strain could be innovation - working class are more likely to be blocked so innovate in high numbers
• A.Cohen (functionalist)

  • Crime and deviance is a way of the working class gaining status
• Clarke (right realist)

  • If the benefit outweighs the cost, crime is a more likely outcome
  • Working class have 'less to lose'
• Hirschi

  • people with less commitments (like the unemployed) are more likely to commit crime as they have little to lose
• CCCS

  • Youth subcultural styles should be interpreted as a challenge to class inequality in capitalism
• Hebdige (neo-marxist)

  • Punks deliberately shocked society by re-using ordinary objects like bin bags and safety pins.
• Bennett criticises Hebdige for his assumption that punk was an expression of the working class - he suggests that most punks were middle-class art students.
• Scraton

  • Subcultural crime is a form of resistance against historic oppression, like slavery and colonialism.
• Gordon

  • Selective law enforcement - prosecutions against the working class are frequent but are rare for the ruling class
  • The occasional prosecution of the ruling class perpetuates the fiction that the legal system is equal.
  • Criminals that are caught are deemed 'social failures' and blamed, rather than the institution of capitalism.
• Durkheim criticises Gordon for assuming that crime benefits capitalism. Functionalists argue that law reflects value consensus.
• Cicourel (interactionist)

  • Justice is negotiable and depends on the police's idea of a 'typical delinquent'
  • Most people convicted had fathers who were manual workers
  • When arrested, middle-class children were less likely to be charged if their background did not fit the image of a typical delinquent, the parents presented themselves as nice, respectable people.
• Marxists criticise Cicourel for the failure to identify where this stereotype of 'typical delinquent' comes from. Gordon argues that control the ruling class has over agents of social control allows them to target the working-class. Hall et al argues that black men are scapegoated to distract from the problems of capitalism.
• Snider

  • Everyone commits the same amount of crime but the police target street crime and ignore white collar or corporate crime.