Contemporary Criminology and Criminal Justice Theory: Evaluating Justice Systems in Capitalist Societies PDF
Preview Contemporary Criminology and Criminal Justice Theory: Evaluating Justice Systems in Capitalist Societies
Contemporary Criminology and Criminal Justice Theory Alsobythesameauthor: WALKTHEWALKANDTALKTHETALK:AnEthnographyofaDrugAbuseTreatment Facility. Contemporary Criminology and Criminal Justice Theory Evaluating Justice Systems in Capitalist Societies Geoffrey R. Skoll CONTEMPORARYCRIMINOLOGYANDCRIMINALJUSTICETHEORY Copyright©GeoffreyR.Skoll,2009. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-61598-4 Allrightsreserved. Firstpublishedin2009byPALGRAVEMACMILLAN®inthe UnitedStates-adivisionofSt.Martin’sPressLLC,175FifthAvenue, NewYork,NY10010. WherethisbookisdistributedintheUK,Europeandtherestof theworld,thisisbyPalgraveMacmillan,adivisionofMacmillan PublishersLimited,registeredinEngland,companynumber785998, ofHoundmills,Basingstoke,HampshireRG216XS. PalgraveMacmillanistheglobalacademicimprintoftheabove companiesandhascompaniesandrepresentativesthroughouttheworld. Palgrave®andMacmillan®areregisteredtrademarksintheUnited States,theUnitedKingdom,Europeandothercountries. ISBN 978-1-349-37961-3 ISBN 978-0-230-10111-1 (eBook) DOI. 10.1057/9780230101111 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Skoll,GeoffreyR.,1948– Contemporarycriminologyandcriminaljusticetheory:evaluatingjustice systemsincapitalistsocieties/GeoffreyR.Skoll. p. cm Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN 978-1-349-37961-3 1. Criminaljustice,Administrationof. 2. Criminology. I. Title. HV7419.S592009 364—dc22 2009006413 DesignbyIntegraSoftwareServices Firstedition:September2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 DedicatedtoJennyPeshutwhomakesallthingspossible This page intentionally left blank Contents 1 Introduction:TheoriesofJusticeinLateCapitalism 1 2 HistoryofCriminalJusticeTheory 25 3 TheNatureofTheory 39 4 TheNatureofLaw,Order,Crime,andCriminalJustice 57 5 “Liberation”CriminalJustice:CriticalandRadical Theories 79 6 TheRuleofLawandtheRulingClass 99 7 RootsofReaction 117 8 TheoriesinOtherPlaces:EuropeansandOthers 139 9 FrameworksforNewTheories:ChaosandWorldSystems 157 10 AnIconicTheoryofCriminalJustice 175 Bibliography 195 Index 227 1 Introduction Theories of Justice in Late Capitalism This study casts a critical eye on criminal justice through a sociologi- cal lens. It focuses primarily on the United States but also on other capitalist countries. Two terminological problems arise. First, sociology should be understood in the broadest sense. It does not refer just to the academicdisciplinebuttoaviewpointonhumansandtheirworksincol- lectiveaction.Thetermcriminaljusticealsohastwousages.Onepointsto thepoliciesandpracticesofcriminaljusticeinstitutions,theothertothe study of those institutions by the academic discipline of criminal justice. Unfortunately,thissecondconfusionofusageremainslesseasilyclarified, sothereaderwillhavetorelyoncontext. For Socrates in Plato’s Republic, justice was harmony. In the NichomacheanEthics,Aristotlecharacterizeditasmoderation—thegolden mean. Questions of justice under late capitalism take many forms and includeawideswathofsocialphenomenaandinstitutions.Asliceofthe swathcoversjusticerelatingtoseverenormativeviolations—thatis,crime, hencecriminaljustice. Four aspects of criminal justice interact reciprocally and sometimes dialectically: crime, criminality, criminalization, and policy and practice. Studies of crime include its ontology, prevalence, incidence, and varia- tion.Whocommitscrimes,when,how,andwhyarethequestionsrelevant to criminality. Examinations of criminalization ask how a society comes to designate something as criminal, whether that something is a per- son, a thing, or a behavior. Policy studies analyze those organizations, usually governmental, that administer criminal law—cops, courts, and corrections. Since the foremost task of theory is to tackle explanation, theories about criminal justice should explain one or more of its four aspects. 2 CONTEMPORARYCRIMINOLOGYANDCRIMINALJUSTICETHEORY The more useful theories explain all four aspects along with how those aspectsaffecteachother.Toooftencrimetheorypredominates.Thiskind ofcrimetheorymakesunwarrantedandunquestionedassumptions,espe- cially about the definitions of crime, how institutions shape crime, and how policies create a criminal class. By way of illustration, most theoriz- ing by criminologists and scholars of criminal justice offers accounts of streetcrime—robbery,rape,murder,theft,andsoforth.Few,ifany,theo- riestreatwarcrimes,terrorism,andcrimesofhighfinanceinthesameway. Askcriminologiststoexplain,say,burglary,andtheycanturntoahostof theoretical essays. Ask them to explain burglary in the same way as they mightexplainthegargantuanbankingfraudsleadingtotheworldfinan- cialcrisisof2008,andtheywouldfindthemselvesataloss.Thenaddthe crimeofaggressivewarsuchastheU.S.invasionofIraq,andtheywould probablylookaskance,perhapsthinkingtheyhadmisheardthequestion. The criminologists’ perplexity arises from the domination of crime the- orybyaverynarrowunderstandingofcrimeandlittleappreciationofthe dynamic,interactive,anddialecticalrelationshipsamongcrime,criminal- ity, criminalization, and policy. The narrow focus arises from the role of criminaljusticepracticesunderlatecapitalism,whichhaveshapedifnot completelydeterminedtheoriesofcriminaljustice. TheoryinCriminalJustice In 2006 Peter Kraska decried the lack of criminal justice theory in the flagship journal of the Academy of Criminal Justice Studies, the main academic society for the field of criminal justice in the United States: “Criminal justice/criminology does not have a recognized and readily accessibletheoreticalinfrastructureaboutthecriminaljusticesystemand crime control...” (168). Twenty-two years earlier, in the inaugural issue of the same journal, Frank P. Williams III (1984) said much the same in his“DemiseoftheCriminologicalImagination,”althoughheconfinedhis criticismtothedecadeofthe1970s.Seemingly,aburgeoningbevyofaca- demics in the field failed to generate usable theories in almost a quarter century.AccordingtoWilliams,onecouldnotblamealackofgoodstarts. HecitedimportantworkbyRichardQuinney(1970a,1970b),GraemeR. Newman(1978),HaroldE.Pepinsky(1976),JackP.Gibbs(1975),David O.Friedrichs(1979),StevenSpitzer(1975),AustinT.Turk(1976),Michel Foucault(1979),andDonaldBlack(1976)(Williams1984:92).Usingthe list illustratively instead of exhaustively, Williams opined that potentially seminaltheoreticaladvancesoccurredinconflict,labeling,andsocialcon- troltheoreticalframeworks,butthatnoneledtocontinueddevelopment.
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