Criminology for Social Work

192 Pages·1995·18.488 MB·English

by  David Smith (auth.)

PRACTICAL
SOCIAL WORK
Series Editor: Jo Campling
BAswj
1
Editorial Advisory Board:
Robert Adams, Terry Bamford, Charles Barker, Lena Dominelli,
Malcolm Payne, Michael Preston-Shoot, Daphne Statham and Jane
Tuns till
Social work is at an important stage in its development. All professions
must be responsive to changing social and economic conditions if they
are to meet the needs of those they serve. This series focuses on sound
practice and the specific contributions which social workers can make to
the well-being of our society.
The British Association of Social Workers has always been conscious of
its role in setting guidelines for practice and in seeking to raise profes
sional standards. The conception of the Practical Social Work series
arose from a survey of BASW members to discover where they, the
practitioners in social work, felt there was the most need for new litera
ture. The response was overwhelming and enthusiastic, and the result is
a carefully planned, coherent series of books. The emphasis is firmly on
practice set in a theoretical framework. The books will inform, stimulate
and promote discussion, thus adding to the further development of skills
and high professional standards. All the authors are practitioners and
teachers of social work representing a wide variety of experience.
JOCAMPLING
A list ofp ublished titles in this series follows overleaf
PRACTICAL SOCIAL WORK
Self-Help, Social Work and Empowerment Women and Social Work
Robert Adams Jalna Hanmer and Daphne Statham
Social Work and Mental Handicap Youth Work
David Anderson Tony Jeffs and Mark Smith ( eds)
Beyond Casework Problems of Childhood and Adolescence
James G. Barber Michael Kerfoot and Alan Butler
Social Work with Addictions Communication in Social Work
James G. Barber Joyce Lishman
Citizen Involvement Working with Violence
Peter Beresford and Suzy Croft Carol Lupton and Terry Gillespie (e ds)
Practising Social Work lAw Social Work with Old People
Suzy Braye and Michael Preston-Shoot Mary Marshall
Social Workers at Risk Applied Psychology for Social Workers
Robert Brown, Stanley Bute and Peter Ford Paula Nicolson and Rowan Bayne
Social Workers and Mental Illness Crisis Intervention in Social Services
Alan Butler and Colin Pritchard Kieran O'Hagan
Social Work and Europe Social Work with Disabled People
Crescy Cannan, Lynn Berry and Karen Lyons Michael Oliver
Residential Work Care Management
Roger Clough Joan Orme and Bryan Glastonbury
Social Work and Child Abuse Social Care in the Community
David M. Cooper and David Ball Malcolm Payne
Management in Social Work Working in Teams
Veronica Coulshed Malcolm Payne
Social Work Practice Working with Young Offenders
Veronica Coulshed John Pitts
Social Work and l.Acal Politics Effective Groupwork
Paul Daniel and John Wheeler Michael Preston-Shoot
Sociology in Social Work Practice Effective Probation Practice
PeterR. Day Peter Raynor, David Smith and Maurice
Anti-Racist Social Work Vanstone
Lena Dominelli Social Work with the Dying and Bereaved
Working with Abused Children Carole R. Smith
Celia Doyle Child Care and the Courts
Applied Research for Bener Practice Carole R. Smith, Mary T. Lane and
Angela Everitt, Pauline Hardiker, Jane Littlewood Terry Walsh
and Audrey Mullender Criminology for Social Work
Student Supervision in Social Work David Smith
Kathy Ford and Alan Jones Social Work and Housing
Working with Rural Communities Gill Stewart and John Stewart
David Francis and Paul Henderson Focus on Families
Children, their Families and the lAw Christine Stones
Michael D.A. Freeman Anti-Discriminatory Practice
Family Work with Elderly People Neil Thompson
Alison Froggatt Dealing with Stress
Child Sexual Abuse Neil Thompson, Michael Murphy and Steve
Danya Glaser and Stephen Frosh Stradling
Computers in Social Work Working with Mental illness
Bryan Glastonbury Derek Tilbury
Working with Families Community Work
Gill Goren Barnes Alan Twelvetrees
Women, Management and Care Working with Offenders
Cordelia Grimwood and Ruth Popplestone Hilary Walker and Bill Beaumont (eds)
Criminology for Social Work
David Smith
~
MACMILLAN
© British Association of Social Workers 1995
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Companies and representatives
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ISBN 978-0-333-58751-5 ISBN 978-1-349-23901-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23901-6
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10987654321
04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 95
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In memory of my aunt, Isabel Martin, 1912-92
Contents
Preface X
Acknowledgements xii
1 The Uses of Criminology 1
Introduction
Three views of criminology and its uses 1
Criminology as a pseudo-science 2
Criminology as a neglected source of wisdom 4
Criminology as an influence on policy 5
Criminology in practice 7
Criminology, policy and practice: making connections 8
Problems of implementation 10
Why bother with criminology anyway? 13
The limits of the criminal justice system 20
The rationale of the book 24
The structure of the book 26
2 Using Traditional Criminology 29
Introduction 29
What do we know about crime and criminals? 30
Strain theories 31
Criticisms of strain theory 35
Control theories 36
Criticisms of control theory 39
Cultural deviance theories 41
Criticisms of cultural deviance theories 44
Using strain theories: the individual, the family and beyond 46
Using control theories: finding reasons for not offending 49
Using cultural deviance theories: handle with care 52
Conclusion 54
vii
viii Contents
3 The Uses of Psychology 56
Introduction 56
Psychology versus sociology 57
Psychoanalysis and crime 59
Who becomes delinquent? The Cambridge longitudinal study 60
Crime and family relationships 64
Learning theory and the reasoning criminal 65
Mentally disordered offenders 69
Sex offenders 72
Conclusion 73
4 The Labelling Perspective and the Criminal Justice System 75
Introduction 75
The origins and influence of labelling theory 76
The appeal of labelling theory: criminology in despair 79
Labelling in criminal justice practice 82
The limits of labelling theory 84
Labelling theory, social work and the state 86
Conclusion 90
5 Community and Crime 92
Introduction 92
The experience of crime and victimisation 94
The complexity of community 96
Situational crime prevention 100
Social crime prevention 101
The multi-agency approach 104
Crime prevention as a social work activity 106
Taking crime prevention seriously 109
Conclusion 111
6 The Contribution of Feminist Criminology 113
Introduction 113
Female offenders 114
Women and girls in the criminal justice system 117
Women in custody 120
Implications for practice 121
Women and girls as victims 123
Domestic violence 124
Contents ix
Child sexual abuse 127
Femininity, masculinity and crime 129
Conclusion 131
7 Black People, Crime and Social Control 133
Introduction 133
Black people as offenders 135
The racialisation of crime 138
Racial discrimination in the criminal justice system 140
Black people as victims: racism and racial attacks 145
Conclusions: what can social workers do? 147
8 Summary and Conclusions 151
Introduction 151
The story so far 152
Where do we go from here? 156
Reintegrative shaming in practice 158
Feminist ethics and criminal justice 160
References 162
Index 179
Preface
I am very conscious of what this book leaves out. This is not just a
matter of its relative or complete neglect of some work in mainstream
criminology which some readers might expect to see treated at greater
length; I am reasonably confident that my major omissions are the result
of choices, not of ignorance, and it is for readers to judge whether the
choices were the right ones. A more important limitation is that this
book resembles most criminological writing in its almost total lack of
attention to white-collar and corporate crime. The justifications are that
crime of this type constitutes a tiny minority of the offences for which
people are sentenced by criminal courts, and that offenders of this type
form an even smaller proportion of the caseloads of probation officers
and social workers. But it is as well to remember, in thinking about
criminological theory, that the rich, the successful and the apparently
well-adjusted commit offences as well as the poor whose offending
criminology is generally intended to explain; that their crimes do harm,
to individuals as well as to national economies; and that on the rare
occasions when they are convicted in criminal courts, they are
sentenced according to different criteria from those usually applied.
For most of its length, then, this book takes as given the present scope
and operation of the criminal law, because the present and future social
work practitioners who are its main envisaged readership have little
choice but to take them as given. In the final chapter, however, it ven
tures beyond the conventional boundaries of textbooks and suggests
what kind of changes in the criminal justice system social workers
might want to support. The suggestions draw in part on John Braith
waite's theory of reintegrative shaming, which derived from his work on
the regulation of white-collar and corporate crime as well as from dis
satisfaction with conventional criminology; and in part on feminist work
in psychology and philosophy which I think contains messages for crim
inology which have been too little heeded. Carol Smart (1990, p. 84)
wrote that 'It might be that criminology needs feminism more than the
converse'; this seems certain, and while I try to defend the discipline of
criminology in this book I also sympathise with the impatience many
X