Violence

A Guide for the Caring Professions

R. Glynn Owens, J. Barrie Ashcroft

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317206880
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

First published in 1985, this book is designed to help professionals in caring professions understand and deal with the problem of violent behaviour. It explains how theoretical ideas may be translated into practical strategies for the reduction or elimination of violence. It also highlights the issues and problems involved in the evaluation of intervention strategies aimed at dealing with aggressive behaviour.

Although the book is based firmly on scientific research, the emphasis is on the practical problem of dealing with violence. As such it will be of interest to those studying social care and social work, but also those whose professional duties bring them face to face with violent behaviour.

Acknowledgements

Many people have contributed directly or`- indirectly to the preparation of this book. Our particular thanks must go to Gerry Meenz and Dave Tully, formerly of Moss Side and Park Lane Hospitals, whose development of training courses on problems of violence provided much of the structure and purpose of the book and whose comments on early manuscripts were of great value. Our thanks also go to Di Brennand who so admirably typed the manuscript, Tim Hardwick who waited so patiently for it, and lastly to our patients, who taught us what to include in it.

1 The Historical Context

DOI: 10.4324/9781315617084-1

If one thing is certain about human interaction, it is that violence between individuals and between groups of individuals is not new. Archaeological evidence shows that ever since the dawn of human history, human beings were dealing lethal blows to each other. Human remains attest to the fact that primitive people dealt death to their fellow human beings in as individually violent a way as their modern counterparts.

Moving from prehistory to the early days of recorded history, it becomes apparent that violence was an accepted part of the everyday life of the Roman citizen. Apart from the violence of incessant wars and subjugation of conquered peoples, we are told, by Pliny the younger, of the violence exhibited by the crowds of supporters at chariot races in the Circus Maximus. Fighting poured onto the streets of Rome and Constantinople and gangs of “fans” were able to “control” areas of the cities, in much the same ways as groups of football supporters hold on to territories on the terraces. The Roman games themselves evolved from sporting competition to scenes of ritualised killing varying in content from battles between armies of gladiators to orgies of torture and murder for the “entertainment” of the citizenry.

The recorded history of Britain and Europe in general is littered with examples of, in many cases, extreme violence, which on the face of it, at least, appeared to have no economic or political purpose. It has been argued that the codes of chivalry which evolved during the Middle Ages helped to bring the inherent violence of the relatively primitive European society under some sort of control. It was only when the sheer weight of numbers or when political or economic aims were overriding that the constraints of chivalry were broken, and even here there is evidence that, at least among the higher strata of medieval society, military violence was influenced by chivalrous ritual. Ritual combat changed little throughout the Middle Ages, and even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was fairly commonplace for participants to be killed. We are told that in France between 1589 and 1608, no less than eight thousand people were killed in sword fighting.

Violence as a means of settling disputes between individuals goes back well into antiquity. British history is in many ways the history of government, andthe history of English criminal, and to some extent civil, law is the story of the attempt by government to control the violence between individuals in cases of dispute. It is important to remember that the active and compelling part that the law plays in social relations today has not always been the case. Nowadays, the law is often enforced irrespective of the submission of the individual to its jurisdiction. If a “crime” is committed, the law is normally set in motion whether the injured party wishes it or not. This has certainly not always been so. In Anglo-Saxon England, for example, an injury done was primarily the affair of injured parties and their families. It was for them to avenge the wrong on the wrongdoer and the wrongdoer’s family, and to prosecute a “blood feud” against them until the wrong was corrected by retaliation.

In quite early times, however, we find the leaders of society attempting to place restrictions on violence in the form of “blood feuds”, by inducing the wrongdoer to offer compensation for the wrong done, and the injured party to accept this compensation. Tariffs of compensation (Bot) were promulgated, which attempted to redress the injury in terms of the extent of the wrong and the status of the sufferer. Moreover these compensations were not limited to disputes over property, but may in themselves be compensations for violent attacks. Thus we may see in the laws of King Alfred:“If the big toe be cut off let twenty shillings be paid to him as bot. If it be the second toe, fifteen shillings, if the middlemost toe, nine shillings. If the fourth toe, six shillings…” Nevertheless, the initiative of prosecuting and the power to compromise were still with the injured party; moreover if compensation was refused, the law had no means to enforce its payment. It was also the case that, even at this time, there were many offences for which compensation could not completely atone, but which also entailed a fine (Wite) payable to the king. What is more, and this is of some importance, there were crimes which were considered “botless” and which were punishable by death or mutilation and entailed a forfeiture of the offender^Ts property to the king. The later Anglo-Saxon kings extended these “botless” offences, possibly for financial reasons, and hence in the laws of Canute it is laid down that the rights which the king enjoyed over all citizens of Wessex were: “Breach of the King’s Peace, house-breaking, ambush, the receiving of outlaws and neglect of the summons to the army”.

Today, we consider that any illegal violence is a “breach of the peace”. However, the “King’s Peace” of Canute did not have this extended meaning. It only extended to all places some of the time and to some places all of the time. For example, it covered the King’s Household and his officers and the few great roads of England (the “King’s Highway”) at all times, and it applied to all places on the great festivals of the Church. However, there were many places and occasions in which an illegal act of violence did not break the “King’s Peace” although it may break a lesser man’s “peace”. Every freeman had a “peace” of his own, which if breached constituted an offence varying in seriousness proportionate to the importance of its owner.

The coming of the Normans to England saw the establishment of a strong central monarchy. The King and central government ("Curia Regis”) took over the administration of local justice by removing the local dignitaries from the administration of district justice and substituted the King’s appointee, the sheriff. Whilst procedures remained much the same as before, the warrior-like traditions of the Normans, deriving as they did from the Vikings, allowed for trial by battle. At first this may not have been imposed upon the Anglo-Saxons, but in time, with the disappearance of the distinction between the two groups, trial by battle became a universal mode of trial. This method took its place alongside trial by the ordeals of fire or water. At the same time, trial by jury was becoming more used and developed from the establishment of the principle that localities were responsible for the maintenance of the King’s Peace. The prime function of the jury was not to make judgement but to present and assess the evidence. A clearer distinction began to be made between “Pleas of the Crown”, which were wrongs peculiarly within the cognizance of the Crown, and other offences. However, even until the end of the reign of Henry I (1100–1135), there was no general broad principle that acts of violence were royal pleas and entailed forfeiture to the Crown. Nevertheless, by the reign of Richard 1(1189–1199), any act of violence, wherever and whenever committed, was a breach of the King’s Peace and was punishable by the King’s Judges. By the end of the twelfth century, all serious offences involving Breach of the Peace were heard in the royal courts. More serious offences placed “life and limb” in the King’s hands and were subject to prosecution by the King.

By this time we can begin to distinguish between two types of crime: felony and misdemeanour. Whilst it has never been the case that this distinction referred merely to the nature of the criminal act, it is, on the whole, true that felony was the more serious. The real distinction, however, lay in the consequences, and it is here that we see the imposition of judicial violence. Conviction for felony meant death by hanging and loss of lands and chattels, whereas conviction for misdemeanour meant fine or short imprisonment.

As trial by ordeal fell into disrepute, a person charged with felony had to consent to trial by jury. Often, this consent would not be forthcoming and the accused would be kept in prison until such consent was obtained. Gradually the reason for this rule disappeared, and imprisonment became more and more rigorous and developed into the use of torture (the “peine forte et dure”) designed to extract a submission to trial by jury. It was not until 1772 that a refusal to be tried by a jury in cases of felony was made equivalent to confession. Until then, if the accused died under torture whilst consent was being extracted for trial by jury, there was no conviction, and therefore land and chattels did not become forfeit. Trial by jury became therefore normal practice on indictment by suit of the King, although in private criminal appeals, the accused could in a normal case offer defence by battle. This procedure was not, however, open to women and indeed, if there was a violent presumption of guilt, the accused could be hanged immediately without trial.

In the thirteenth century, the initiative for criminal law passed to Parliament. In the next four centuries, Parliament was mainly responsible for the definition of new crimes and by the end of the eighteenth century, the list of felonies had grown from a dozen to over three hundred. It was no longer possible to say that felonies were the more serious crimes. What today would be regarded as the relatively trivial offences of, say, wounding a horse or making a false entry in a marriage register, or even activities which nowadays would not be seen as necessarily undesirable, such as consorting with gypsies, were equally felonies with murder and rape.

Loopholes in the law became common practice and devices to allow for the full vigour of capital punishment not to have to be applied for all felonies were widespread. By the fifteenth century, all people who could read could claim “benefit of clergy”, a device originally intended to ensure that ecclesiastics, after conviction in the civil courts, could be handed over to the Church for punishment. On the other hand, Parliament began to patch up these holes and by the beginning of the seventeenth century, statutes had been established which allowed for some of the so-called “clergyable” offences to be punished by imprisonment or deportation. Until well into the nineteenth century, the criminal law had become antiquated and barbarous. In 1814, for example, three boys, aged eight, nine and eleven, were sentenced to death for stealing a pair of shoes.

The great reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries generally worked to “humanise” the application of the criminal law. This, together with the influence of groups such as the Howard League for Penal Reform, has kept the debate concerning “Law and Order” in the political arena.

Modern media of communication have reflected (some would say produced) an increased public awareness of the application of law to the control of crime, particularly violent crime, and since the formation of a police force in the nineteenth century, the control of crime in our society has become a pervasive function of state.

It would be remiss not to consider the historical context of violent behaviour in society without considering that most extreme example of organized violence, warfare. If social history is to a large extent concerned with the development of of government and law, political history is very much concerned with war.

The development of the nation state in Europe after the Romans was dependent on the emergence of organizations devoted to the promulgation of warfare. The feudal system was as much to do with the raising of fighting forces as it was to do with economic organization. The defence of territory against warring “barbarians” allowed, for example, the Church to accept, or indeed even to encourage, the prosecution of war; the codes of chivalry to which we have already alluded, took on the virtues of godliness, on the one hand to control the excesses within Christendom, but also to legitimize it against the Infidel, on the other.

As a piece of human social activity, warfare has had, and continues to have, an enormous amount spoken and written about it. There is an accepted difference between violence emitted between individuals and small groups, such as “gang fights”, and wars, and this difference is as much to do with the scale and, certainly, in modern times, the all-pervasiveness of it, as it is to with national economic or ideological issues. As an example of the cause of human suffering, death and injury, warfare throughout history must be prime.

Warfare is normally studied in macro terms. We rarely analyse the significance of the behaviour of individual soldiers (though there are exceptions viz. Keegan, 1976), but refer to the effect of “armies” and “battles”. Individual violence is determined by the “state of war”. Indeed, it may be argued that as warfare has developed through history, the technology of armaments has decreased the level of individual violence. What is violent about pushing a button to trigger off a nuclear bomb? It is difficult to conceptualise the scale of warfare and to compare wars on the basis of simple numbers. Richardson suggested that a logarithmic scale to show the number of deaths occurring in any one war was the most appropriate method of making comparisons. By this method, D(number of deaths) is represented by M(magnitude of war) in the formula M=log 10 D. On this scale the Boer War had a magnitude of 4.4 (25,120), the American Civil War, a magnitude of 5.8 (631,000) and the Second World War, a magnitude of 7.8 (25,000,000). The total destruction of the world would have a magnitude of approximately 9.4, the Falklands War 2.5 and the number of murders in Britain in a year 1.2. Perhaps this should serve to remind us that in terms of scale, violence IN society is miniscule compared to violence BY society.

Practical Implications

We may see then that although, at first, it may be tempting to follow the remark attributed Henry Ford, that “history is bunk”, and therefore that historical evidence regarding violence would have no implications for our present-day problems, this is not necessarily the case.

Some feel that, contrary to the above opinion, a knowledge of a phenomenon’s historical context is essential to a full understanding. Certainly, it does seem possible to note certain practical implications of the information contained in the present chapter. Among these are the following:

1. It is necessary to be cautious about describing a form of violence as “new”. Violence is not a purely modern phenomenon, and even the types of violence we encounter today have remarkable parallels in history. This suggests that any attempt to understand, for example, the violence of the football “hooligan”, must also look for causes which would also have produced “chariot race hooligans” in Ancient Rome (always remembering, of course, that the parallels may be only superficial). The notion that we live in an age of “unprecedented violence” ignores periods of history which certainly seem to have been more violent than our own.
2. Just as the FORM of violence may not be a purely modern phenomenon, so the EXTENT of today’s violence is not necessarily without parallels. Violent crime rarely produces a death rate comparable to that reported as occurring due to duelling, in France, in the sixteenth century. We should be wary, therefore, of claiming that today is the most violent period of history, and again, should be cautious of attempts to attribute “rises” in violence to purely modern causes.
3. Violence should not be seen as something which occurs only illegally. Historically, violence has occurred, and still does occur, within the law. Not only has violence been a commonplace phenomenon amongst criminal activities historically, so it has been common in the judicial process. The use of legal torture, still occurring in some form in many “civilised” countries, provides an example which, though apparently antithetical to our modern notions of “freedom under the law” and “trial by our peers”, was a major method of implementing the judicial system. The English legal system has hardly had a history of being “soft” on offenders, but when its activities were very brutal to convicted offenders, there is no evidence that violent crime was ever eliminated.
4. In terms of scale, violence IN society cannot compete with the violence committed BY society in the form of warfare.

2 The Present Problem

DOI: 10.4324/9781315617084-2

As we have seen in Chapter One much of English law has been concerned with the control of violence, often by producing a violent response itself. Obviously a large part of the violence in our society is illegal, though by no means all. Some violence is explicitly legitimised and condoned, perhaps the most obvious being the physical punishment of children by adults. In addition, besides the strictly illegal and the strictly legal there exist a number of ‘grey areas’ where for example violence may be technically illegal but where a judicial response is either absent or subordinate to other societal responses; violence within the family, in particular, will often fall into such a category.

Nevertheless it seems appropriate to begin a consideration of violence in modern society by exa...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Table Of Contents
• Violence
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Index