Schmall crim today8e_ppt_ch9

Criminology Today
An Integrated Introduction
CHAPTER
Criminology Today: An Integrated Introduction, 8e
Frank Schmalleger
Copyright © 2017 by Pearson Education, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Social Conflict
Theories
9

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Law and Social Order Perspectives
• Various events in the 20th century
conspired to change laws and create
new kinds of criminal activity.
• Understanding the interplay between
law and social order is critical to any
study of social change and theories of
criminology that emphasize the role of
social conflict as it underlies criminality.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
The Consensus Perspective
• Most members of society agree about
what is right and wrong and work
toward a shared vision of the greater
good.
continued on next slide

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
The Consensus Perspective
• Key principles
 Most members of society believe in the
existence of core values.
 Laws reflect a shared will.
 Everyone is equal under the law.
 Law violators represent a unique
subgroup with distinguishing features.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
The Pluralist Perspective
• Society consists of distinct social groups.
• Each group has its own values, beliefs and
interests.
• A general agreement exists re: usefulness
of laws as a mechanism for dispute
resolution.
• The legal system is value neutral.
• Legal institutions represent the best
interests of society.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
The Conflict Perspective
• Conflict is a fundamental aspect of
social life; can never be fully resolved.
• Karl Marx
 Capitalist society has two social classes.
• Bourgeoisie, the "Haves"
• Proletariat, the "Have nots"
 Struggle between classes is inevitable.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Key Elements of the Conflict
Perspective
• Society is made up of diverse social
groups.
• Each group holds to differing definitions
of right and wrong.
• Conflict between groups is unavoidable.
• The fundamental nature of group
conflict centers on the exercise of
political power.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Key Elements of the Conflict
Perspective
• Law is a tool of power and furthers the
interests of those powerful enough to
make it.
• Those in power are inevitably
interested in maintaining their power.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Key Conflict Thinkers
• George Vold
 Crime is a product of political conflict
between groups.
• Ralf Dahrendorf
 Power and authority lead to conflict,
which leads to change.
• Austin Turk
 Crime is the natural consequence of
intergroup struggles.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Radical Criminology
• The causes of crime rooted in social
conditions that empower the wealthy
and politically organized and
disenfranchise the less fortunate
• Outgrowth of 3 historical circumstances
 Writings of 19th century social utopians
 Rise of conflict theory in social sciences
 Radicalization of American academia in
1960s and 1970s

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Chambliss and Seidman
• Life conditions affect values and norms.
• Complex societies are composed of
disparate and conflicting sets of norms.
• The probability of a group having its
norms embodied in law is related to its
political and economic position.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Chambliss and Seidman
• The higher a group's political or
economic position, the greater the
probability that its views will be
reflected in laws.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Richard Quinney
• Almost all crimes committed by the
lower classes are necessary for the
survival of individual members.
• Crime inevitable under capitalist
conditions
• The solution is the development of a
socialist society.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Radical Criminology
• Structural Marxism
 Capitalism is a self-maintaining system
in which the law and the justice system
work to perpetuate the existing system
of power relationships.
• Instrumental Marxism
 The criminal law and the justice system
are tools that the powerful use to
control the poor and to keep them
disenfranchised.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Critical Criminology
• Radical criminology
 Way of critiquing social relationships
that lead to crime
• Critical criminology
 Issues a proactive call for radical
change in social conditions leading to
crime

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Radical-Critical Criminology and
Policy Issues
• Focus on promoting gradual transition
to socialism
• Middle-range policy alternatives
emphasize a justice system that is
more fair and closer to the radical ideal.
• Emphasis on creating economic equality
or employment opportunities to combat
crime

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Figure 9–2 Conflict Criminology’s Midrange Approaches to Crime Reduction

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Critique of Radical-Critical
Criminology
• Emphasizes methods of social change
at expense of well-developed theory
• Fails to recognize the fair degree of
consensus about the nature of crime
• Confuses issues of personal politics
with social reality
• Does not appreciate the varied
problems contributing to crime

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Critique of Radical-Critical
Criminology
• Does not explain low crime rates in
some capitalist countries
• Does not address the problems of
communist countries with poor records
of human rights
• May resemble a religion more than a
science

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Left Realist Criminology
• Faults radical-critical criminologists for
romanticizing street crime and
criminals
• Shifts focus to assessment of crime and
the needs of victims
• Radical ideas must be translated into
realistic social policies.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Critique of Left-Realist Criminology
• More an ideological emphasis than a
theory
• Rarely offers new testable propositions
or hypotheses
• Crime control approaches focus on
needs of victimized.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Feminist Criminology
• Redirects criminologists' thinking to
include gender awareness
• Feminism is a way of seeing the world.
 Views gender in terms of power
relationships
 Consequences of sexism and unequal
gender-based power distribution have
affected fundamental aspects of social
roles and personal experiences.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Strands of Feminist Thought
• Liberal feminism
 Gender role socialization is the primary
source of women's oppression.
 Eliminating traditional divisions of labor
and power between the sexes will
eliminate inequality and promote social
harmony.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
• Radical feminism
 Patriarchy causes women's oppression.
 Eliminating male domination should
reduce crime rates for women and male
violence against women.
• Marxist feminism
 Oppression of women is caused by their
subordinate working-class status in
capitalist societies.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
• Social feminism
 Gender oppression is a consequence of
the interaction between the economic
structure of society and gender-based
roles.
• Postmodern feminism
 Questions social construction of
concepts like justice and crime

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Proponents of Feminist
Criminology
• Freda Adler and Rita Simon
 Gender differences in crime rates due
primarily to socialization (not biology).
 As gender equality increased, criminal
behavior of men and women would
become more similar.
 Despite increased gender equality in the
past 30 years, this has not happened.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Criminology
• Carol Smart
 Sensitized criminologists to sexist
traditions in the field
 Men and women experience and
perceive the world differently.
• Women must have a voice in interpreting
women's behavior.
 Work led to recognition of women's
issues.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Criminology
• Kathleen Daly and Meda Chesney-Lind
 Concerned about existence of
androcentricity perspective in
criminology
 Gender differences suggest crime is not
normal.
 Traditional criminology ignores the
significance of the relative lack of
female criminality.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Elements of Feminist Thought
• Gender is a social, historical, and
cultural product.
• Gender and gender relations order
social life and social institutions in
fundamental ways.
• Gender relations and constructs of
masculinity and femininity are not
symmetrical.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Elements of Feminist Thought
• Systems of knowledge reflect men's
views of the natural and social world;
the production of knowledge is
gendered.
• Women should be at the center, not the
periphery, of intellectual inquiry.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Contributions of Feminist
Scholarship
• Focus on gender as a central organizing
principle of contemporary life
• Awareness of importance of power in
shaping social relationships
• Sensitivity to how social context shapes
relationships

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Contributions of Feminist
Scholarship
• Recognition that social reality must be
understood as a process
• Commitment to social change as a
crucial part of feminist scholarship and
practice

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Criminology
• John Hagan
 Power-control theory
 Power relations in society reflected at
home
 Family class structure shapes social
reproduction of gender relations.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Criminology
• Feminist thinkers call for increasing
controls over male violence toward
women, alternatives for abused
women, and protection of children.
• Question role of government, culture,
mass media in publicizing pornography,
prostitution, and rape
• Radical feminists suggest replacing
men with women in positions of power.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Critique of Feminist Criminology
• It may be a theory in formation.
• Does not explain why the gender gap in
crime still exists
• Feminist criminology is impossible
because it does not meet the strict
requirements of formal theory building.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Postmodern Criminology
• Applies understandings of social change
inherent in postmodern philosophy to
criminology theory and crime control
• Claim past approaches have failed to
assess the true causes of crime or offer
workable crime control solutions

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
• Constitutive criminology
 Stuart Henry and Dragan Milovanovic
 Crime, crime control are constructions
produced through social process.
 People shape and are shaped by their
society.
 Uses semiotics
• Study of signs and symbols

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Critique of Postmodern
Criminology
• Approaches are incoherent.
• Terminology is vaguely defined.
• Deconstructionism challenges
traditional theories but fails to offer
viable alternatives for crime control.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Peacemaking Criminology
• Citizens and social control agencies
need to work together to alleviate
social problems and reduce crime.
• Issue is not "how to stop crime" but
"how to make peace."
• Emphasizes rising above personal
dichotomies to end the political and
ideological divisiveness in society

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Figure 9–4 The Differences between Peacemaking and Traditional Punishment
Source: Schmalleger, Frank, Criminology. Printed and Electronically reproduced by permission of Pearson
Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Participatory and Restorative
Justice
• Achieve effective crime control through
a peace model based on cooperation,
not retribution
• Dispute resolution programs based on
participatory justice
• Emphasize remedies and restoration
rather than prison, punishment, victim
neglect

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Participatory and Restorative
Justice
• Restorative justice based on remedies
and restoration over prison,
punishment, victim neglect
• Modern social movement to reform
criminal justice system
• Healing over retribution
• Primary goal is restoration.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
The Balanced and Restorative
Justice (BARJ) Model
• Restorative justice model
• Community, victim, offender all receive
balanced attention, tangible benefits.
• Community conferencing
 Victim, offender, others meet with
impartial facilitator.
 Victim has access, stronger voice.
 Offender has input into methods of
restoration.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Figure 9–5 The Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ) Model
Source: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Balanced and Restorative Justice: Program
Summary (Washington, DC: OJJDP, no date), p. 1.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Critique of Peacemaking
Criminology
• Criticisms
 Is naive and utopian
 Fails to recognize the realities of crime
control and law enforcement
• Peacemaking criminology envisions
positive change on the social and
institutional level.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Moral Time
• Conflict caused by the movement of
social time
• Social time
 Movement in social space, changes in
the amount of intimacy, inequality,
diversity
• Static conditions cannot cause crime.
• General theory of conflict

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Convict Criminology
• Body of writings by convicted felons
and ex-inmates who have obtained
academic credentials or who are
associated with credentialed others
• Largely issues-based and personal
• Ethnographic methodology
• Provides recommendations for
improving the justice system

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Critique of Convict Criminology
• Critics suggest that having been in
prison distorts criminologist's view of
the field, rather than enhancing it.
• Argue that personal experience rarely
gives anyone the entire picture need to
understand a phenomenon
• Focusing on injustices of prison life may
keep one from appreciating the
reformative effects of punishment.

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
New Issues in Radical/Critical
Thought
• Some argue that radical/critical
criminology is largely irrelevant today.
• Still an evolving field
• Some key areas of concern
 Study of indigenous populations
 Corporatization of higher education

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Policy Implications of Social
Conflict Theories
• Bringing about social change and
redistributing wealth in society will
reduce crime rates.
• Radical–Marxists
 Replace existing capitalist system with a
socialist economic structure.
• Peacemaking criminology
 Use of conflict resolution

All Rights Reserved
Frank Schmalleger
Policy Implications of Social
Conflict Theories
• Left-realism and feminist criminology
offer a variety of solutions ranging from
reducing paternalism to recognizing the
consequences of crime to victims.

Schmall crim today8e_ppt_ch9

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Schmall crim today8e_ppt_ch9

Similar to Schmall crim today8e_ppt_ch9 (20)

More from Rappahannock Community College

More from Rappahannock Community College (17)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Schmall crim today8e_ppt_ch9

Editor's Notes