Clinard and Quinney's Criminal Behavior Systems

A Revised Edition

A. Javier Treviño

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429676185
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

An important classic, familiar to virtually all criminologists, Clinard and Quinney's Criminal Behavior Systems: A Revised Edition begins with a discussion of the construction of types of crime and then formulates and utilizes a useful typology of criminal behavior systems. It classifies crime into seven categories, among them: violent personal crime, occasional property crime, public order crime, occupational crime, corporate crime, organized crime, and political crime. They examine the criminal career of the offender in each category, public and legal attitudes toward these individuals, support systems they may have, attitudes of the offenders, and other features. The discussion of each category of crime is thorough and enlightening, and takes the reader far in understanding the huge problem of crime and establishing intelligent definitions to study it.

The new edition looks at the criminal landscape of the twenty-first century, capturing both the numerous advancements in theory and research in the field of criminology, as well as many societal changes that have taken place in law, mass media, the economy, culture, and the political system that directly affect the book's coverage of various types of crimes. A global perspective broadens the book's relevance to include a variety of different societies. Crimes newly examined in this edition include identity theft, domestic violence, arson, hate crimes, cybercrime, campus sexual assault, police brutality, Ponzi schemes, human trafficking, and terrorism. Finally, alternatives to conventional criminal justice are considered, including such approaches as peacemaking, restorative justice, private justice, problem solving, harm reduction, naming and shaming, and internal and external controls.

Like its predecessors, Clinard and Quinney's Criminal Behavior Systems: A Revised Edition will be essential to criminologists formulating their own theories and research on criminal behavior as well as to students in criminology and sociology courses on how to view and study crime.

1

A TYPOLOGY OF CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR SYSTEMS

We all try to give meaning to our existence. Our common goal is to make the world understandable and familiar, thus rendering it amenable to order, prediction, and control. A principal way we achieve understanding is by generalizing beyond the singular, the unique, and the particular. Whether we are participants or observers of the social scene, we understand largely by searching for recurrent and uniform patterns. Thus, it is through abstraction that we are able to comprehend the world of concrete experience.

All phenomena are unique in time and space. Nothing ever recurs exactly as before. But in order to reduce the complexity of our experiences, we tend to compartmentalize the infinite variety of life. We construct images or concepts in our attempt to “know” the world around us. These constructs are a reduction of our intricate and manifold experiences, a reduction that treats occurrences as if they were similar, recurrent, and general. Events are placed into categories. Phenomena thus become comparable, and comparison is the beginning of scientific and philosophical reflection.

Thus, as with all human endeavors, the systematic study of behavior is based on an ordering of the diversified world of discrete phenomena. This is accomplished in the sciences by the development of classifications, where concrete occurrences are ordered and compared by categorizing single observations into typologies. As abstractions, these constructed types deviate from the concrete in that they combine and accentuate attributes relevant to a particular analysis. A constructed type consists of characteristics with empirical referents that serve as a basis for comparison of empirical cases.¹

Typologies have been used for centuries in the study of physical and human phenomena. For example, as early as the third century BCE, Aristotle in his Politics proposed a typology of political systems. Another important typology was created by the Swedish botanist Linnaeus in the eighteenth century when he developed the modern scientific classification of plants and animals. But it was Max Weber who, early in the twentieth century, made explicit the procedure of typology for use in the social sciences with his proposal of the “ideal type.” An analytical construct, the ideal type is created by combining diverse phenomena and accentuating their essential characteristics.² One of Weber’s most famous ideal types is his four-fold classification of social actions, or meaningful human behaviors, that are determined by rationality, values, emotions, or habits.³

The use of typologies is common today, not only in botany, but in zoology, geography, geology, and other physical sciences. In the area of human behavior, the social scientist attempts to derive types, whether they be types of social organizations, types of occupations, or types of deviants. The use of types in ordering the diversities of observed phenomena has been instrumental in the development of the social sciences.

Types not only reduce phenomena to more systematic observation, but they also assist in the formulation of interrelated concepts and serve as guides for research. The construction of types may lead to a theoretical formulation. The constructed type, as John C. McKinney notes, functions as an analytic element in a more comprehensive theory and also orients empirical research to that theory:

On the one hand, the type is related to a conceptual scheme and hence is implicated in a theoretical context more broadly conceived than any problem under immediate consideration. On the other hand, it serves as the unit for comparison and probability statement of empirical occurrence.⁴

Thus, the construction of types from a broad range of concrete social phenomena is a necessary stage in the development of specific theories. This process involves theorizing at what Robert K. Merton has called the “middle-range”—intermediate between a comprehensive theory of crime and empirical studies of concrete social phenomena.⁵ Middle-range theorizing involves developing specialized theories on various types of crime: a theory of personal violent crime, a theory of occupational crime, a theory of political crime, and so on. Middle-range theorizing from typologies also offers the possibility of formulating a comprehensive theory for the explanation of all the phenomena under observation. Conversely, a typology can be derived from a comprehensive theory of a specified phenomenon. There is, indeed, an interdependence between theory construction and constructed typology. While types may emerge from theory, they also are instrumental in the reformulation and expansion of theory. Typology and its relation to theory construction are essential to the further development of comprehensive theory.

Typologies in Criminology

A diverse and wide range of behaviors is included in the category of crime. The one characteristic that all criminal behaviors have in common is that they have been defined as such by some recognized political authority. Much of the work of criminology is concerned with crime in general. However, because crime refers to a limitless variety of behaviors, criminologists also study particular types of crime. Thus, criminologists consider the identification, classification, and description of types of criminal behavior as defined by politically organized society.

Categories of crime and criminal behavior that are homogenous with respect to a specific explanation have been delineated by criminologists. Considering the wide range of phenomena subsumed under the concept of crime, a theory may be formulated after specific types of crime have been identified. The reciprocal relationship between typology and theory construction is clear: theoretical assumptions are necessary for the formulation of types, and a typology forces the reformulation of theory.

Criminologists have constructed and used many different typologies of crime and criminals. The most common typologies have been the legalistic, the individualistic, and the social.

Legalistic Typologies

The oldest forms of classification are based on the legal definition of the criminal offense. Perhaps the most commonly used legalistic classification is in terms of the seriousness of the offense, as indicated by the kind of punishment provided for the behavior. The most serious offenses, like murder, kidnapping, and arson, are called felonies and are usually punishable by confinement in a state prison for more than 1 year (or by capital punishment in those states that permit it). Less serious offenses, like shoplifting, trespassing, and vandalism, are called misdemeanors and are normally punishable by fines or by confinement in a county jail for up to 1 year. Another legalistic typology of crime, found in the Model Penal Code drafted by the American Law Institute, determines the level of culpability based on the defendant’s mental state during the commission of the crime. Thus, crime may be committed purposefully, knowingly, recklessly, and negligently.

As classifications of crime, these typologies are not very useful because they are ambiguous and inconsistent. For example, in 2017 possession of any amount of marijuana was a felony in Arizona, possession of 1 ounce was a misdemeanor in Massachusetts, and possession of 1 to 2 ounces carried no penalty in Colorado. As for the Model Penal Code’s legal classifications, a few states have adopted most of its provisions while other states have adopted only some of them. Consequently, the form of punishment prescribed for given offenses differs from time to time and from state to state.

It is common also to identify the criminal in terms of a legal category. “Crimes against the person” include such illegal acts as murder, assault, and rape; “crimes against property” include burglary, larceny, forgery, and motor vehicle theft; and “crimes against public order” consist of such behavior as prostitution, gambling, drug violations, and driving under the influence. Thus, criminals may be given labels such as “murderer,” “rapist,” “burglar,” “thief,” or “prostitute.” This method of classifying offenders suffers from a variety of disadvantages. For example: (1) it says nothing about the person and the circumstances associated with the offense, nor does it consider the social context of the criminal act, (2) it creates a false impression of specialization by implying that criminals confine themselves to the kind of crime for which they happen to be arrested or convicted, (3) in order to secure easy convictions, it is a common practice to allow offenders to receive a reduced sentence, and in these cases the final legal status of the original criminal action will bear little resemblance to the actual behavior, (4) because the legal definition of a criminal act varies according to time and place, the legal classification of crime presents problems for comparative analysis, and (5) the use of legal categories in a classification assumes that offenders with a certain legal label are all of the same type or are products of a similar process.

There have been several attempts to overcome some of the problems of legalistic classifications of crime, while still utilizing the legal categories. Although the categories of crime defined in criminal law may not be appropriate for sociological purposes, they may nevertheless be used in forming types of crime. One possibility is that types may be defined within specific legal categories. For example, burglars, depending upon their mode of operation, could be divided into housebreakers, smash and grab burglars, professional burglars, and amateur burglars. Another possibility is that related legal categories may be combined. For example, the FBI in its National Incident Based Reporting System distinguishes between Group A and Group B offenses based on their severity, frequency, and prevalence as well as on the likelihood and importance of reporting these crimes by law enforcement. Group A incorporates aggravated assault, bribery, counterfeiting, human trafficking, sex offenses, and weapons law violations. Group B integrates writing bad checks, disorderly conduct, liquor law violations, and trespassing.

Criminologists who favor the strategy of defining types according to legal categories claim that doing so is desirable because official data concerning criminal histories appear in terms of legal nomenclature, and because the criminal code contains specific operational definitions of criminal behavior. However, as practical as these procedures of using various legal classifications appear, they have largely resulted in numerous unrelated categories of crime lacking a common conceptual frame of reference. They have not generated comprehensive theories.

An important problem with the construction of legal typologies of crime concerns the controversy over what behaviors and what persons should be regarded as criminal.⁶ At what stage of the criminal defining process should persons and behaviors be deemed to be criminal? Is it at the stage of official detection, at the stage of arrest, at the stage of official adjudication, or at the stage of official disposition? Or, to state the extreme, should a typology of crime include persons and behaviors irrespective of official legal action? Indeed, criminologists have long argued that the discipline should go beyond the legal definition of crime to include those actions that cause social harm to the general public. For example, as long ago as 1944, the American criminologist, Edwin H. Sutherland maintained that such actions as antitrust violations, false advertising, and infringements of patents, copyrights, and trademarks—what he called “white-collar crimes”—though not in strict violation of criminal law, should nonetheless be considered crimes because they are socially injurious to business competitors and to consumers.⁷

Even if the criterion of official legal action is dro...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword by Richard Quinney
• Preface
• 1 A Typology of Criminal Behavior Systems
• 2 Violent Personal Crime
• 3 Occasional Property Crime
• 4 Public Order Crime
• 5 Occupational Crime
• 6 Corporate Crime
• 7 Organized Crime
• 8 Political Crime
• Index