Sociology and the Stereotype of the Criminal

Dennis Chapman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136422287
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences.
This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press.
Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1968 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

SOCIOLOGY AS A SCIENCE AND THE STUDY OF CRIME

Sociology is a science. It arises from the recognition of order in society. The discipline describes this order and its antecedents, and from these predicts the future course of human behaviour. A definition as austere as this is not readily acceptable to the layman or even to many social scientists because, first, it asserts that human behaviour is predictable and thus conflicts with ideas of free-will, and, second, it implies that all social processes are of interest to the sociologist and that he does not necessarily accept the popular valuations of different social processes that divide them into good, to be encouraged, and bad, to be discouraged.

Functional analysis in sociology describes the imperatives for the survival of a given social system and in particular examines the great variety of functional alternatives that have arisen with the increase of production over the needs of subsistence. This process has accompanied what was the central interest of classical sociology, the transformation of social relationships from status to contract, from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft, or from primary to secondary group relationships. The climax of this development in interest has been the concept of anomie and the associated concept of alienation in sociology and corresponding concepts in psycho-analytic social psychology. The process has been one in which relationships between one person and another give way to relationships between one person and groups, these groups becoming larger and more remote and nameless. The change is a continuous reduction in the element of identification with the ‘other’ in the relationship and a corresponding and increasing interest in the material products of the relationship.

This formulation derives from the concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity of Durkheim, the transformation of relationships from persons to positions, the concept of bureaucracy in Weber, the Generalized Other of G. H. Mead and the concept of stereotypes employed in social psychology (Mead, 1934). Relationships become a technique for the manipulation of symbols, the success of which manipulation produces advantage in status, power, or material. The criminal is discussed in his role as scapegoat; what remains to be explored is the relevance of role theory to the criminal's acceptance of and adaptation to the role of scapegoat.

Human society is characterized by rationality, that is, ends can be expressed symbolically and means can be appraised in terms of effort, and economical choices made; from past experience rules can be stated. Thus, over a wide range of behaviours, the best means for ends which command general acceptance are known and inculcated. Likewise, rules have been established that depend not on primary rationality, but simply on the basis that any rule that makes for predictability of behaviour increases the efficiency of society (even though there may be other rules that might be more economical). It is customary to describe such mechanisms as folkways and mores. Complex societies have, however, hierarchical social systems, with differential distributions of status, power, reward, and property, and, in that there is a high correlation between the possession of any one of these attributes and the rest, both customary and statute law tend to control behaviour in the interests of the groups with high scores on these variables. Social control is, however, not simply exercised through administrative and punitive organizations, but is supported by elaborate symbolic systems which are learned and become cues to behaviour. The control of the apparatus for the diffusion of the symbolic system is distributed in much the same way as status, power, reward, and property. In popular language this is described as the ‘Establishment’.

The importance of this argument depends on the observation that actions need not be directed to ends but may arise from stimuli which may be symbolic, or may arise from conditioning (may be fetishistic), or may result from the reification or personification of concepts. This corresponds to the concept of the displaced goal in social psychology.

The range of social control is large and complex, from inhibitions acquired in infancy before speech and rational thought — the conscience or superego — through ethics taught as a technique of social adjustment or as a part of divine revelation, to the control of law. Parents are the agents through which many of the mechanisms operate, and those elements of the ideology that can be implanted before rational thought is developed become a permanent addition to a continuously implanted ideology in successive generations.

In a society divided into groups with and without power, the legal system and the ideology function together to maintain the existing social structure. At the same time, the diffusion of the ideology, even among sociologists, makes a scientific appraisal of the situation difficult. Some inkling of this situation has, however, been possible when looking at other societies; thus we find the popular concept of the ‘slave mentality’ applied to the ‘victims’ of the ideologies of other social systems. It is therefore not surprising that ‘crime’ and ‘delinquency’ greatly preoccupy social scientists and that they generally accept the thesis that crime is bad, that society could function without crime, and that crime is a special category of behaviour with special discoverable causes. It is further believed that if these causes were known, crime would be prevented. There are many other associated theses, such as those concerned with the distinguishing characteristics of criminals or the modifications of the treatment of criminals that would transform them into non-criminals.

THE THESIS

The thesis of this study is broadly to argue the negative of all the foregoing. The thesis is, however, elaborate and must be presented in many parts.

1. That any behaviour that has a disapproved form also has objectively identical forms that are neutral or approved.

2. That if a behaviour is seen as goal-seeking, then the choice of the form of behaviour between objectively identical forms — approved, neutral, or disapproved — may depend on chance, knowledge, learning, or training.

3. That apart from the factor of conviction there are no differences between criminals and non-criminals.

4. That criminal behaviour is general, but the incidence of conviction is controlled in part by chance and in part by social processes which divide society into the criminal and noncriminal classes, the former corresponding to, roughly, the poor and underprivileged.

5. That a ‘crime’ is a behaviour, defined in place and time, of a person, in some cases with another person (victim), with police, lawyers, magistrates, and/or judges and juries.¹ All these variables are causal in the scientific sense.

6. That all the foregoing operate to select individuals from a larger universe of individuals with identical behaviours, both objectively and symbolically cued, and that, therefore, no test of the familiar hypotheses about crime is possible unless the scientist selects his subjects independently of the social system.

7. That crime is a functional part of the social system. This part of the thesis has itself several parts. The first is that the designation of certain actions as permitted, tolerated, or condemned in different circumstances is arbitrary; the second is that there is a lack of correspondence between the ideology and behaviour; and the third is that there is differential treatment of different social groups for behaviours which are objectively identical, identical in that they transgress the same traditional mores, but different in their treatment at law. The designation and social isolation of a relatively small group of victims permit the guilt of others to be symbolically discharged; the identification of the criminal class and its social ostracism permit the reduction of social-class hostility by deflecting aggression that could otherwise be directed towards those with status, power, reward, and property. A special part of the ideology functions to prevent the designated criminal from escaping from his sacrificial role, and institutional record-keeping maintains his identity.

8. That, following this, there is a special problem of the immunity of certain members of society and certain groups. This arises mainly from the protective institutional environment in which they pass part, or all, of their lives, or in which they spend part of their time or engage in some of their activities.

9. That associated with this are covert social processes which extend whole or partial immunity to, or reduce the impact of, the legal system on members of certain social groups.

10. That associated with the general thesis is a separate problem — that of the legal system as a crime-creating institution. That is, once an institution is created it develops a dynamic of its own and becomes involved in the behaviour with which it is concerned as a participant and, in special circumstances, as an instigator. It may do this in response to social pressures, e.g. the demand that ‘criminals’ shall be caught and punished.

11. Finally, that the general preoccupation with contravention of the mores in symbolic culture — except, perhaps, some of the graphic arts — can be functionally related to the real situation expounded in items one to ten.

The exposition of this set of related theses presents difficulties. To test many of them would require great expenditure of time and treasure, nor can many of them be verified from such data as are available from administrative sources, because the theses question the very basis of the administrative process. Published work in the field of criminology is of some assistance, but most of it accepts as a basis the results of the administrative, legal, and social systems which identify the criminal and again cannot be used to criticize these systems. In consequence, this study will present tentative arguments based on fragmentary and anecdotal data not crucial in themselves but persuasive enough, it is hoped, to compel consideration of the argument.

It is recognized that, while one or more cases chosen fortuitously may suggest hypotheses, they cannot establish theories. On the other hand, it is important to appreciate that a general theory must account for all the instances that are found.

THE FALLACY OF RATIONALITY

Much of the evidence that will be discussed arises from the application of naïve or mechanical concepts of rationality to the problems of social control; the assumptions, for example, that if there are criminals they must differ in discoverable ways from non-criminals or that if punishment fails in its aims then penal reform is justified. Some sociologists do not study the changes in the penal system as a social process that is part of the larger social process, but as an evolutionary tendency towards enlightenment that is to be encouraged. Sociologists are thereby involved in reform movements, often devoting a major part of their texts to propounding preventive or remedial policies, or even in participating in the parliamentary process of lawmaking and in the administration of justice; in all this the fallacy of rationality is displayed. In this, sociology appears to be less effective than anthropology, which has successfully studied the processes of social control using functional analysis and appears to be able to avoid the ‘rational’ fallacy. Merton illustrates the issue thus: ‘some conception like that of latent function has very often, almost invariably, been employed by social scientists observing a standardized practice designed to achieve an objective which one knows from accredited physical science cannot be thus achieved. This would plainly be the ca...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Stereotype of the Criminal and the Strategy of Social Investigation
• 3 Social Class and the Differential Distribution of Immunity
• 4 The Actions of the Police and the Courts as Causal in Relation to Crime
• 5 The Role of the Victim in Crime
• 6 Behaviour and Approval
• 7 The Prison, and the Criminal as Scapegoat
• 8 The Stereotype of the Criminal and Sociology
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index