Legality and the Lindsey Oil Refinery Dispute

There seems to be a trend in recent disputes of law-breaking. Of course the thing that has been highlighted in the media is that much of the action taken by workers in these dispute has been illegal. For example, Rob Williams sealing himself into his office after being sacked was technically trespassing, as was the occupations by the sacked Visteon workers. At Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR) and other construction sites, the wildcat strikes are of course illegal under the anti-union laws.

Yet in most instances they have been proceeded by illegality on the part of management. The sacking of Rob Williams was illegal, all the proper procedures were simply ignored in their rush to get rid of a militant trade unionist. At Lindsey Oil Refinery the disputes have been over management breaking agreements with the trade unions (not sure whether thats technically illegal - but the principle is the same.

I think the recent disputes demonstrate the class bias within the law where it favours company management over the workers - anything illegal the management does they are able to cost out and work out whether its cheaper to break the law than to face militant resistance. Fortunately, where workers are in position to take action they can overcome some of this bias and acheive a form of justice for themselves as the case of Rob Williams shows.

I'm sure someone can probably do a better job with these thoughts!

Anyways, a few quick plugs:

Latest Socialist Party LOR leaflet http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/latest/7466
New blog based in Wrexham http://wrexhamsocialist.blogspot.com/

Principles of a Marxist Approach to Criminology – Third Draft

Hi, after a year or so here is the third draft of my ideas of what the main principles of a Marxist criminology. Thanks to everyone who has commented on these ideas already. I think I've got them pretty much sorted now and I think my aim after hopefully reading lots of interesting comments from my readers on these will be to write it up into some sort of manifesto. (If you want to see the previous draft please click the first tag at the bottom).
Like around Christmas I'm going to be away for about a week or so, so you'll have to make do with some of the posts below for that period.

1) A Marxist approach to Criminology is not a separate theory of crime. Rather it is the use of Marxist ideas to study the phenomena studied by criminologists as part of an integrated study of society as a whole. Such an approach should draw on already existing Marxist concepts such as the State, Alienation etc.

2) Crime and criminal justice system should be understood in a criminal historical materialist context, we should look at their development to their present conditions. Allied to this would be an understanding that the economic context of a situation would have an impact on what types of crime are prevalent and how these will be responded to.

3) A marxist approach is moreover a class approach and sees crime to an extent as an expression of the conflict between classes in society. This is important in several important ways. Firstly, the ruling class in any each will have more power to define what is crime and to manage responses to crime in their interest. Due to this, crime will affect different classes differently as will the responses to crime.

4) As in the discipline of Criminology, a Marxist approach to Criminology would not just limit itself to studying crime as it is defined at the current moment. It would seek to take a definition of crime which is aligned with the interests of the working class and other oppressed layers in society.

5) A marxist approach is also an internationalist approach. However, crime and laws differ from country to country. Crime needs to be understood on various levels, from the local, to the regional, the national and the international.

6) As well as studying crime in ‘normal’ capitalist society, we should also seek to study what happened to crime and criminal justice during revolutionary periods and also in states that have claimed to be socialist.

7) We should seek to review how the workers movement has addressed the question in the past, as well as various intellectuals who have tried to put across arguments from a similar perspective (ie. Foucault, Jock Young etc.) and build upon these bases. We also need to keep abreast of ‘bourgeois’ criminologists and evaluate their ideas too.

8) As Marx says in his theses on Feuerbach, "Philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world, point is to change it". We should analyse crime and the criminal justice system from the point of the working class. We should put forward ideas of how a socialist/communist society would attempt to solve these problems, and fight for these to be adopted in the here and now.

9) We should seek to encourage debate and discussion between Marxists (and others) on issues related to criminology.

Bob Fine on Law and Class – Part 1

This piece looks at the first section of the chapter by the same name in Capitalism and the Rule of Law a book consisting of a selection of papers from the January 1979 joint conference between the National Deviancy Conference and the Conference of Socialist Economics. By the way, I’ll be away for about a week so this post and the one below are to keep you going for some time.

Fine starts his paper by looking at E.P. Thompson’s critique of some left groups, castigating them for dismissing anything to do with the state could potentially be positive. However, Fine isn’t interested in them, rather the assumptions that underlie Thompson’s stance. He argues that

“For the basis of Thompson’s critique consists in an unflinching belief in the democratic character of the legal side of state power. He writes that law seems to him to be ‘an unqualified human good’, in that it ‘imposes effective inhibitions upon power’ and defends the citizen ‘from power’s all-intrusive claims’. No problem is raised over the form of bourgeois law itself, the only issue concerns the struggle against the intrusion of ‘class-bound procedures’ into the legal mechanism”(pg.30)

He goes on to argue that Thompson is stating that bourgeois law will form a basis for working-class power to develop from. To Thompson’s position he contrasts that of Engels, who argued that under communism law would disappear and that capitalist democracy, with bourgeois law and everything, complements the domination of capital. After quoting from Engels he says,

“The issue which these passages from Engels raise is that the bourgeois form of law is contradictory. Between two polar positions, between its dismissal as a mask and its elevation as an unqualified good, we need to understand the way in which law acts as a form of domination, the social basis upon which this form of power emerges and sustains itself, and thence the contradictory functions which it performs both for the rulers and the ruled, capital and labour.”(pg.31)

Fine, then discusses why he feels the form of law is of significance at that time. One is the question of law under Stalinism, and the second is the attacks on civil liberties and increases in police powers occurring at that time in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. He goes on to state:

“It is in this context, when the imperatives of capital accumulation and the class struggle have put into question the viability of the ‘rule of law’, and when we witness a movement toward the substitution of bureaucratic-police rule for social-democratic forms of power, centred around legality and parliamentary representation, that the issue of forms of bourgeois domination has emerged again with particular sharpness… it becomes imperative to differentiate between the forms of power through which the domination of capital is left mediated and secured… this emphasis on form poses its own dangers: that of neglecting the class content behind the forms of law; and of neglecting the significance of the erosion of legality for the imposition of new conditions of exploitation and accumulation.”(pg.32)

He then suggests that quite an apt place to draw from on these issues is Trotsky’s analysis of the rise to power of fascism in Germany and the transition to Bonapartism and then fascism and differences between these forms. He goes on to say

“…the significance of the form of law could not be separated from its content: namely, the class relations which constituted the foundation of the legal form; and the transformation of these class relations hidden behind the move first to ‘Bonapartism’, which relegated legality and parliamentarism to shadows of their former selves, and then to fascism which substituted for them brute force and police terror. The strength of Trotsky’s analysis was precisely to probe the links between these distinct forms of state power and the class relations which provide their substance. Trotsky, in the course of his extended critique both of those who identified social democracy with either Bonapartism or fascism, and of those who defended the spirit of the constitution as it elevated the bureaucracy above society, constantly searches for the class basis of these historical development.”(pg32-3)

After quoting an article of Trotsky’s (Fascism, Stalinism and the United Front) to further elaborate his point, Fine concludes his section with the following words.

“For Trotsky, the defence of the form of law could not be isolated from its content. Bourgeois law was not an absolute elevated above the conditions of civil society which gave it birth; but the expression of capital mediated by the independent organization of the working class. It was for this reason that it had to be defended against attack from the right and against indifference from the left as the political form necessary for the exercise of ‘proletarian democracy’ and for the transition to socialism.”(pg.33)

I have to say, I think Fine’s general point is really good. However, I think, although he states he isn’t making any ‘mechanical parallels’, it’s a little too much to exaggerate the attacks to civil liberties and increasing of police powers during the 70s and 80s to the coming to power of fascism in Germany, but the points regarding form and content which Fine makes through this I think are spot on. There is another point I want to take Fine upon which is the last sentence of the last paragraph I quoted. Whilst capitalist democracy is the most favourable political form for workers under capitalism, it is not ‘necessary’.

Comments on ‘Praxis Made Perfect’ by David Downes in Understanding Deviance

This piece under discussion, written in 1978, was an attempt at a critique of the Critical Criminology of Ian Taylor, Paul Walton and Jock Young as defined in their books The New Criminology and Critical Criminology. Given that they had described their criminology as Marxist and these texts were some of the most important of works emanating from the National Deviancy Symposium, it is well worth a look at this critique.
Downes’ central argument is that they (Taylor, Walton and Young) criticise capitalist society but fail to discuss what the alternative is, just naming it socialism and leaving it at that. Furthermore, Downes is quite right when he says that they don’t analyse crime in the Stalinist countries (he calls them socialist). Indeed I think we should agree with Downes on these two points that these are two things that a Marxist criminology should address.
But Downes’ own ideas are not ones we should adopt. He makes several fundamental errors in his critique, which I will now try and highlight – some are more than likely due to the ‘new left’ circles which Critical Criminology moved in counterpoising the earlier ‘humanistic’ Marx with the later Marx, and other such muddles.
Firstly after firstly correctly saying, of critical criminology “…the entire intellectual construction rests on the postulates that capitalist society is essentially criminogenic,” he goes on to add “…and that only by the total repudiation of the ethic of possessive individualism on which it rests can ‘true’ equality and ‘socialist diversity’ – the prerequisites for a ‘crime-free’ society – be attained” (pg 5-6) No, capitalist society rests on a particular stage of economic development, not individualism – and again it is a higher economic development that is the prerequisite for drastically reducing crime.
Later on he attacks, a rather loose phrase of Young’s about the working class having control over policing in their communities – and says that it means only members of one class should be able to police that class – leading to a caste type policing system where only the rich will get properly policed (because , of course, workers can’t do anything for themselves). Of course, Young’s depiction is rather vague, but it would cover the democratic control over local policing which socialists should argue for.
Although this isn’t it, a Marxist critique of the history, work and development of the National Deviancy Symposium would be incredibly useful for the development of a Marxist approach to criminology.

What Can Be Done About Corporate Crime?

This piece looks at some of the conclusions drawn by Steven Box on how corporate crime can be tackled in his book Crime, Power and Mystificaion.

As we have commented before, Box points out during this book that corporate crime (that is crimes committed in the interests of corporations) is a much bigger problem than ‘street’ crime. Now fundamentally, corporate crime revolves around securing profit and advantage for businesses within a capitalist system - Box, however, won’t go as far as saying that socialising the means of production and distribution would solve this. And that is true – mere nationalisation within a capitalist framework may derive some advantages, but it’s only when the whole capitalist framework is removed and production revolves around needs that preventing harms will become a real priority.

Box does not concur with this last paragraph, however. In common with other left realists (which is where I believe his analysis fits), he does not see a socialist revolution, or even a capitalist major nationalisations occurring soon, saying “there is no reason to believe that we will see the lights going down on capitalism in our lifetime.”(pg.63) Despite criticising piecemeal reforms, it becomes the only way to do anything about crime, he says “Maybe liberal reformism is something to be contemplated today, even by those waiting patiently for the revolution tomorrow.”(pg.64)

Box points out two things that he thinks will do something about corporate crime. Firstly there is informing more people about corporate crime – Box points to investigative journalism and TV documentaries that have helped promote this, but he sees this as a way of putting more pressure onto the state to prosecute such crimes. The second way is by convincing the state to prosecute more crimes by demonstration of how damaging corporate crimes may be. One can feed into the latter with successful prosecutions being publicised and raising awareness. However, I think there is a big flaw with this – the fact that to publicise these things effectively you need some kind of platform – and I doubt that the capitalist media will severely criticise its own system (I have written previously of how corporate crime is presented as ‘a few bad eggs’. Plus, corporations already have massive leverage over government bodies that exist (and that Box criticises as being ineffective) so if any new body was created, or even if the police were used, are they any likely to be any more effective?

One thing I also dislike within Box’s suggestions is that ‘the right to trial by jury’ could be abandoned in corporate crime cases and replaced by judges versed in the legal complexities of the area. This effectively gives the public no say in the matter, and the whole issue is left to be decided by people who come from a similar background to the offenders. Under the current system this would be just another way for these corporate criminals to get away with their crimes in the vast majority of cases.

One thing that Box does note is that even where corporate officials are sentenced to prison, which I believe is a sentence that corporate manslaughter campaigners want to see for that crime, is that on release they are promoted by that corporation to a much higher salaried post, but in a less responsible/public post. So even an effective punishment being handed out to some corporate officials probably won’t deter others.

Box discusses how deterrent punishment could work on the organisational form of the corporation itself. Commenting on the paltry level of fines handed out to corporations, he suggests raising them drastically may be a solution, however, he also notes that it would be problematic if the fine bankrupted a corporation innocent employees, consumers and their dependents would suffer. But even more likely, whatever the size of the fine, any cutbacks would be foistered onto these people rather than the boardroom and the big shareholders.
Another deterrent he suggests is to nationalise companies for a specific period, with the length depending on severity of crimes and the time need to rehabilitate the company. This he suggests would incapacitate such organisations. However, generally nationalisations occur when an industry is in trouble, rather than benefiting from such problems. However, I would suggest that the only government prepared to nationalise a company on this basis, would be a socialist one that would nationalise companies permanently anyway.
Another suggestion he makes is having a sort of corporate probation, where a company spends time being monitored by a group of accountants, lawyers, engineers, mechanics etc. selected with regard to the work inside those companies. Such ‘probation officers’ could monitor the company and if it fails to make progress, or ignores them, could send them back to court for re-sentencing. But then surely this exists to a sense at the moment in factory and workplace inspectors, and any similar scheme would be similarly underfunded.
He also suggests that they could do a form of community service (by building new public facilities), or pay compensation. Both these suggestions would again suffer the problems related to fines.

I actually find it rather surprising that Box attempts to take elements from the criminal justice system and apply them to corporate crime, given he knows that these methods don’t work in general with regard to ‘normal’ crime, why does he think they will work with regard to corporate crime?

One other point that Box makes is the transnational status of the biggest corporations, which are the worst corporate criminals, means that corporate crime cannot be tackled within just one country. And because nation-states are in essence competing against each other to offer conditions that are useful to such corporations, again this problem cannot be fully tackled under capitalism, as Box notes, any methods that do challenge corporate crime, will likely lead to the export of corporate crime.

What is the solution? Ultimately, I think a socialist world where production is democratically controlled by those who produce and use products is necessary and would guard against corporate crimes (as they would be the victims of such acts anyway). In the meantime, I think a strong, combative trade-union and socialist movement worldwide which can fight against the harms caused by corporate crime and inform its own members and others about such problems will help limit such problems whilst building a movement which will hopefully rid the world of corporate crimes forever.

What is Corporate Crime?

I know I haven't posted too much about crime and criminology recently, so here's a something I've been working on to make up for it. This piece is commentary on the second chapter of Steven Box’s Power, Crime and Mystification, which is on this subject.

So what is corporate crime. Box discusses three general types of crimes involving corporations. Firstly there are crimes which are committed against corporations – things such as embezzlement of company funds, theft from the workplace etc. I think this fits much better within talking about white-collar crimes which can include other organisations. The second type is crimes that are committed for corporations – things such as price-fixing, tax fraud etc. The third is corporations that are set up purely to commit crimes – for example a fake company that purchases goods without paying for them. To my mind however, this third group can be split into two which are both forms of the previous two categories. Box concentrates on the second group which he sees as true corporate crime.

Box unfortunately limits himself to dealing with acts that are currently illegal – but as anyone who has studied criminology knows just because something is illegal doesn’t mean it’s harmful and just because is legal doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful either. Box’s reason for limiting himself to this is to make sure he can still appeal to those with liberal sensibilities – a poor excuse really – given as we shall see that corporate crimes are endemic within the capitalist system that such liberals support.

Box presents figure for deaths from 1973-79 showing that workplace related deaths (about 1600 per year) accounted for almost four times as many deaths per year as homicides (about 440 per year). And this is by the conservative estimates of the Health and Safety Executive. Furthermore when this is adjusted for the population that are potentially at risk of these deaths (the workplace population is less than the total population) then the ratio of workplace related deaths to homicides become a shocking 7:1. And this is only workplace related corporate killings, what about improperly tested drugs, industrial pollution etc.

Additionally in the same period there was an average per year of 330,000 non-fatal accidents at work, with an annual average of 14,000 people being diagnosed as suffering from an occupationally induced disease. Added together they average 3 times more than the average for indictable crimes during that period. And again, these figures are based on official data and ignores things that will affect consumers. According to figures Box quotes in the USA 20 million out of 250 million a year are seriously injured by consumer products.

As Box goes on to note “Given the relative invisibility of these crimes, even to those victimized, the fact that they are infrequently reported to or detected by relevant authorities, the absence of any centralized data-collecting agency, and the inconsistent publication of those that are collected, it is impossible to quantify with any accuracy just how serious corporate crime is in economic terms. Furthermore, the figures involved are so astronomic as to be literally incomprehensible.” (pg. 31)

The fact remains that corporate crime is widespread and does far more damage than ‘street crime’. Box is correct, however, when he argues that this doesn’t mean we should ignore ‘street crime’, rather corporate crime ought to be studied almost at least as much as this currently is. However, I would contend that it is less in the interests of capitalism to put the focus of the public and research onto this area than ‘street crime’ (this is not to say that they don’t want it studied – too much corporate crime gets noticed and the system will take some of this blame as well as the company/individual responsible).

Definitions of Criminality – Some Thoughts from Steven Box

At the moment I’m currently reading Power, Crime and Mystification by Steven Box. It’s a book all to do with State and Corporate crimes, and has so far been an interesting read. What I wish to comment here is on something I’ve reflected upon in my Draft Principles of a Marxist Criminology, which he considers in the first chapter of the book.

Why are some behaviours criminalised and others not? This has been a fairly central question in criminology. Box discusses some of the ideas why this is so. He first picks up on the view that criminal law is a tool of the ruling class and thus flowing from that – what is criminalised are ‘…problem populations perceived by the powerful to be potentially or actually threatening the existing distribution of power, wealth and privilege.’(pg.7)

But as Box notes, this isn’t the whole story – as I have previously commentated it is not the case that ‘…all criminal laws directly express the interests of one particular group, such as the ruling class. Clearly some legislation reflects temporary victories of one interest or allied interest groups over others, and none of these may be identical or coincide with the interests of the ruling class’, however, Box also argues that ‘…these victories are short lived. Powerful groups have ways and means of clawing back the spoils of tactical defeats.’(pg.8)

Box also notes that in a sense many laws are ‘in all our interests’ as nobody wants to be a victim of serious crime. However, Box notes this is not the whole picture. Taking murder – he points out that this basically is avoidable killings. However, there are many other types of avoidable killing – such as unsafe working conditions etc. As Box notes ‘We are encouraged to see murder as a particular act involving a very limited range of stereotypical actors, instruments, situations, and motives. Other types of avoidable killing are either defined as a less serious crime than murder, or as matters more appropriate for administrative or civil proceedings…’(pg.9) As Box goes on to note, the people who commit legally defined murder are usually poorer and less powerful than those who commit mere avoidable killings.

He goes onto show how this relates to theft, sexual crimes, assault and terrorism and concludes ‘Thus criminal laws against murder, rape, robbery, and assault do protect us all, but they do not protect us equally.’(pg.11) I’m inclined to agree with Box, in the conclusions he draws as a consequence of this operation of the criminal law, which are

1) Less privileged people are more likely to be arrested and punished
2) The illusion is created that those people are also the most dangerous in society
3) It helps disguise the fact that the powerful create the conditions for the offending of the powerless
4) It makes the criminal justice system look like a neutral arbiter –above everything.
5) Makes people dependent on the criminal justice system and hence the state for protection, even though this body is likely to make the problems worse

The only thing I don’t like is the looseness of the terms powerful, powerless and privileged, but the general thrust of this I think is in line with things I have commented on previously.

Carnival of Socialism #20

Hi all, Welcome to Carnival of Socialsim 20 - focussing on crime, criminal justice and socialism. Just like Power to the People with the previous carnival attempt to open people's eyes to internationalism and liberation, I'm intending on doing a similar thing with this topic, however, some of these posts are a little old, but i include them becuase I think they're quite good.

So let's begin

Crime is a relatively under discussed subject on the left - Indeed it's even seen as a weakness, but that shouldn't be so - given the high levels of crime in many places around the world (especially advanced capitalist countries) and the expensive measures used in the attempt to combat this (ie. prison) - this really shouldn't be the case. In this Carnival, we'll look at various aspects of crime from how socialists should approach crime, to criticising capitalist methods of tackling crime to crime in the third world.

Socialists and Crime

For those who haven't been on this blog before one of my pet projects has been coming up with some principles for a Marxist Approach to Criminology. This got quite a good response, and even got a post in response on Law and Disorder. I've recently revisited the issue and plan to do so again. But it's worth thinking about.
Jack Ray also discussed the left and crime in this post and what attitude we should take towards petty crime.


The Police

Obviously an issue that got talked about a lot in the last few months was the police going on strike. Karl Marx Strasse posted with a view from Germany on the situation. Ten Percent has been reporting on the taser trial in the North Wales Police force.

Prisons

I've had a series of posts on the prison crisis in Britain, the latest being Prisons: Lumbering into Further Crisis.
A while ago, AVPS posted reviewing a Loius Theroux programme on prisons that opened some interesting debates on prisons in the US. Whilst JimJay at The Daily (maybe) posted this recently on foreign prisoners.
The issue of women and young people in prisons and deaths in prisons have been taken up admirably by Louise at Socialist Unity, one of her most recent postings been on restraint of young prisoners. However, I'd urge you to check out the previous articles (of which there are many) in the archive of that blog.
Also, Honorary Proletarian has been posting irregularly for a while now on the detention of immigrants.

Discrimination

There is a heavy race bias in many criminal justice systems. Rise, Resist Revolt took this up in January this year in relation to blacks in the USA. Stroppyblog features a repost of Peter Tatchell's comments on George Galloway's slanders on an Iranian asylum seeker which reveals interesting stuff about gay right and Iran.
There's also a post on aboriginal rights at The Red Wombat Hole.

Human Rights

There's also the question of human rights in general. A crime can be to some extent defined as something that violates those rights. A week or so ago I mused on this problem - The Question of Human Rights. One of the conclusions was that capitalism can't guarantee these rights, a point that Power to the People takes up in relation to South Africa.
Ian's Red Log had a recent post on workplace safety.
I've been debating where to put this piece by JimJay on ASBO's but i think it fits in with these articles the best, as they basically circumvent existing criminal justice.

International Justice and Law

I've recently posted on Truth Commissions and International Justice, but to spell out what these crimes are in practice, take a look at landsker's post on the my lai massacre.
There's also a short post on Argentine crimes against humanity under the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance from the Left News Network, whilst Rebellion Sucks! reports on Venezuela's victory in the courts, Socialist Unity also had another repost on this too.
Finally for this section, a while back Politics in Pieces blogged on the resurgance of whaling (through getting round the law by claiming that it is for research purposes).

Terrorism

A while ago now, Renegade Eye posted on individual terrorism in Nigeria. I also recently posted on how criminologists view terrorism.
From Socialist Unity Blog, Andy Newman recently posted on a meeting about Defending Civil Liberties, whilst Louise has been taking a deeper look into the upcoming counter-terrorism bill. Law and Disorder also had a not too recent post on detention and terrorism.
And on a much weirder note, take a look at what The Nation of Duncan received in the post.

Drink, Drugs and Roads

A while ago I posted on the question of alcoholism, importantly as binge drinking is in the press a hell of a lot here. Further Left Forum has also posted recently on the Use of the Coca Leaf in Bolvia Whilst Andy Newman posted on road safety and the amount of fatal accidents that occur on the roads. JimJay also had a post about a suprising sentence for a drinking and driving offence.

Crime and Revolution

Unfortunately, I seem to be the only person who I can find that's blogged about crime during the russian revolution. It's a shame, but it's something I'd love to see someone else take up (or in relation to any other working class revolution).

Well, that took longer than I thought it would to put together. I apologise for the fact that some blogs (including my own) have been up many times, but unfortunately (at least from my perspective) these issues aren't taken up enough. Hopefully this carnival will do something about that.

Review – Counter-Colonial Criminology by Biko Agozino (2003)

Please note, I have previously commented on a journal article by Agozino. That article forms the basis to the introduction to this book. I feel I should also thank the blog A Very Public Sociologist for helping me come to terms a bit better with theorists like Baudrillard etc. which Agozino discusses and meant I probably understood what he was getting at better. Also, tomorrow the Carnival of Socialism will be hosted here.

Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason is an interesting book. For me it has it’s upsides and it’s downsides, and I’ll discuss the latter first as long as you can overcome these the book has an awful lot of interesting ideas within it.

There are two main problems with the book. The first is common to many academic books – an incessant use of jargon and convoluted terms which attempt to portray things in a value-free manner but end up confusing the reader and winding you up a lot. The second is in a review of the history criminology after almost every single theorist he points out that they ignored the experience of the colonial masses – but why do this after every theorist and not just at the end of the chapter pointing out what this missing element would have provided. Both these things are annoying as Agozino’s writing style is pretty good, but these points make some of the chapters a little difficult to get through.

However, leaving that aside Agozino presents some really interesting ideas. The only problems I have here with Agozino in this realm is his somewhat uncritical treatment of the Scraton/Hall school of critical criminology in comparison to left realism – both for myself had weaknesses. Also his understanding of Marxism could do with improving – although he applies Marx’s ideas of primitive accumulation quite well, nowhere does he mention Trotsky and in particular his theory of Combined and Uneven development which I think would be of fundamental use in this subject.

I suppose I’ve been quite critical so far, but only because those points would have improved what is a very interesting work. One interesting idea that Agozino suggests is how accurate is the metaphor of lesbian rape for colonial plunder – after all countries are referred to in the female usually and plunder is often referred to as rape, could things be drawn from feminist theorising in this respect. Another point he makes is the relevance of literature to criminology – particularly in respect of state crime in Africa given that criminology is especially under-developed there – and how this can reflect popular feelings towards crime. Whilst not seeing these as objective measures of crime like some researchers, he does see them as useful indicators and particularly useful for making analogies.

Another idea that Agozino raises is the necessity of not only looking at the punishment of offenders, but also at how innocent people may be punished through the criminal justice system. He devotes a chapter to criticising the death penalty and the number of people sentenced to death in the US who are later proved that either the sentence was unjustified or completely innocent in many cases (between them they make up 60%+).

There are more insightful things in this book too, but that would drag this review out far too long (although I may possibly come back to it at some point). This is a book that is worth reading so long as you can put up with the things I’ve criticised.

Principles of Marxist Criminology - A Progress Report

In the run-up to my hosting of the Carnival of Socialism this Friday, I thought it would be worth looking over the last draft of my Principles of Marxist Criminology and seeing how well I'm covering those principles with posts and whether I need to be thinking about more (as well as updating it in the near future - thanks for the repsonse - especially the post on Law and Disorder about it - very helpful stuff). To see the seocnd draft- go here http://leftwingcriminologist.blogspot.com/2008/02/principles-of-marxist-approach-to.html.

1) Marxist Theory Applied to Crime

So far I've posted on the relevance of marxist ideas around Alienation and then a further post relating this to Alcoholism. I've also posted on the Marxist theory of the State too regarding the comments of Marx and Engels on the Paris Commune. However - areas that I've thought of some far include talking about relative deprivation and discussing more on the state (ie. Lenin, Bob Fine).

2) Development of Criminal Justice and Relation to Economy

So far I haven't done all that much here apart from a review of a book on the Emergence of Prisons and a piece on Political Economy and Prisons. I could do some stuff on probation perhaps and also policing too.

3) Class Approach to Crime

Haven't really covered anything here at all - I don't think - perhaps the article on Human Rights fits here

4) Internationalism

This has experienced a sort of boom recently - partly becuase of an upcoming essay. There's been posts on Imperialism and International Criminal Justice.

5) How Crime Affects of Layers of the Population other than the Working Class

I haven't really covered this at all. Perhaps becuase this point is really a restatement of point 3? I'm meaning to do a post on domestic violence at some point

6) Crime in Revolutionary Periods

I've done three posts in this area, one on the Russian Revolution, one on just before the collapse of Stalinist Russia and one on Dual Power in Russia and Portugal. I'm also looking into doing something on Cuba - and there always the series on Venezuela which will have a new post in the next month or so.

7) Role of the State - see 1 where i discussed this

8) Examining Previous Contributions to this Area

I've reviewed several books now on Left Realism and Critical Criminology - the latest was a look at an interductory chapter by Jock Young

9) How To Change Criminal Justice for the Better

I think the pieces I've written on the criminal justice system fit in here - the latest is Prisons: Lumbering Into Further Crisis

I've also done posts on corporate crime, criminal justice workers unions too. I'd also like to do some stuff on environmental crime too. Then there's the question of where do human rights and civil liberties fit - and what about my posts on Wales and Criminal Justice? Also - as was mentioned by the Law and Disorder blog - where does the sociology of law fit in to this. These are questions I'd like help with an will attempt to address in the next draft.

Review - Getting Away With Murder

This piece is a review from Socialism Today 47, I re-post it here as I only just came across it and think that it is well worth a look at.

Corporate Crime
By Gary Slapper and Steve Tombs, Longman, 1999, £17-99
Reviewed by Chris Moore

CORPORATE CRIME is aimed primarily at students of criminology. It rightly criticises academia for largely ignoring this subject, especially in Britain.

The book gives shocking examples to illustrate how rare it is for corporations to be successfully prosecuted for crimes which often have devastating effects on employees and the general public. Its style, however, is academic, contrasting different theories and research. For readers not involved in criminal law it is, unfortunately, heavy going.

The authors accept that business interests are the driving force of capitalism and that putting profit first encourages corporate crime. But whilst criticising the effects of capitalism, Slapper and Tombs simultaneously defend it: 'Business organisations are legitimate organisations. They perform useful and socially necessary functions'.

In 1949 Edwin Sutherland developed the concept of 'white-collar crime', stating that some white-collar offenders avoid prosecution because of the class bias of the courts. This challenged the stereotype of working-class criminals turning to crime because of pathological criminal tendencies. Sutherland realised that power relations in society affected what people perceived to be criminal, and he pointed out that employers have more power to manipulate legislation than working-class people. For instance, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in the US, introduced to control cartels, was used mainly against trade unions. Slapper and Tombs seem broadly sympathetic to Sutherland's views but offer no solutions which could alter this power imbalance.


Pat O'Malley, an academic who describes himself as a Marxist, argues that criminology is based on the assumption that crime is a violation of the rights of the community and that the state acts on behalf of that community. He says that this is not so and that, therefore, health-endangering pollution and dangerous working conditions, etc, are not necessarily defined as illegal. Although Slapper and Tombs accept this, they put forward what they call 'radical solutions'. However, what effect can 'radical solutions' have on a criminal justice system which is run in the interests of the dominant capitalist class?

They do not recognise that the criminal justice system always tries to protect the interests of big business - unless events outside their control force the judiciary to make compromises. Even then, as soon as the pressure is relaxed, the system will attempt to backtrack. In 1972 five dockers involved in strike action were jailed. A mass movement developed to defend the 'Pentonville Five', as they became known, and a general strike was threatened. Under this pressure they were released - the government and legal system contriving a legal get-out clause.

The authors also show how difficult it is to successfully prosecute companies. The capitalists try to portray corporate crime as being the fault of individual wrongdoers. But companies' structures and policies, such as high profit targets, often pressurise individuals to break the law.

Between 1965 and 1995, 20,000 people were killed in accidents at work or disasters, yet only five cases of corporate manslaughter have been brought. In Britain, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) recorded 376 deaths at work from 1994-95. This is a huge underestimate. It excludes deaths due to faulty gas supplies, fishing and merchant shipping accidents, and all driving employment fatalities including those involving coach and bus drivers, as well as deaths from long-term disease, asbestos exposure and occupationally-caused lung cancer. If these are included the figure is 3,018. As a comparison, murder, infanticide and manslaughter accounted for 834 deaths in England, Scotland and Wales over the same period of time.


It is no exaggeration to talk of the slaughter of British workers. According to the HSE, between 1981-83, 73% of 1,186 deaths investigated were the responsibility of management. Despite the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, less than 40% of workplace-accident deaths led to prosecution. Clearly, the law protects companies: the pursuit of profit is more important than the lives of workers and the general public.

There is no official measurement of the cost of corporate crime in Britain. The amount of money involved in 48 cases investigated by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in 1994 was five times the total for all burglaries. The Securities and Investments Board estimated that 1.4 million public-sector workers were advised to cash-in their contribution pension schemes and transfer over to private schemes on the basis of false and misleading information. By 1997 less than 10% of these cases had been resolved. Researchers, Pontell and Calavita, estimated the cost to the US economy of savings-and-loans crimes in 1993 at $1.5 trillion.

Corporate crime is downplayed by the media. It is portrayed in terms of personalities, obscured with the use of terms like, 'scandal', 'accident' or 'a few bad apples'. This implies that they are isolated events which cannot be prevented.

Successful convictions are rare. In the inquiry into last year's Paddington rail disaster, all the witnesses, including rail managers, are immune from prosecution. With the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry disaster, in which 192 people died, it was only pressure from the campaign which forced eight summonses for manslaughter against the company, including two against directors and two against captains. However, the charges against the directors were eventually dismissed and the other cases dropped.


Enforcement of economic crime, as opposed to social regulation (health and safety, etc), tends to be more rigorous - too many Nick Leasons (the broker involved in the Barings share-dealing case) are bad for business. Of course, the capitalist system creates these people in the first place.

The weakest part of the book is the section dealing with solutions. Slapper and Tombs talk of trying to organise business activity differently. The way business operates is, however, a direct reflection of a system based on individual ownership and profit-making. No reforms are permanent. Fines are only effective if corporations believe they will be caught and prosecuted, and even then the price is often paid by workers through redundancies, etc. The authors worry about the effect of fines on shareholders. Corporate probation, introduced in the US in 1987, compels the prosecuted company to carry out specific tasks. But again few offenders are caught. The idea that corporate rehabilitation can force changes in company policy ignores the economic pressures on corporations to break the law in pursuit of profits. Adverse publicity and jailing directors are also put forward. But when one director is jailed, another takes over: nothing has changed fundamentally.

This book is a damning indictment of capitalism. But its approach is too academic. It recognises that the move to the neo-liberal policies of cuts and privatisation has affected the whole environment towards corporate crime. Cuts in public funding for education, for instance, mean a greater reliance on money from business which, in turn, discourages research into corporate crime. At the same time, the business 'values' of individualism and competition encourage criminal activity. Slapper and Tombs see that the interests of the capitalist class are reflected in the criminal justice system and the academic world, which is why there is a relative indifference to corporate crime. However, their solutions revolve around how corporations could be better regulated or prosecuted.

The authors refer to and recognise the importance of the Marxist class analysis based on who owns society's means of production. Unfortunately, they see workers as passive victims rather than as a force able to determine their own future and transform society.

Jock Young and the Decline of Critical Criminology

This piece takes a look at the chapter ‘The failure of criminology: the need for radical realism’ by Jock Young from the 1988 publication Confronting Ctime edited by Young and Roger Matthews.

Young’s opening to this chapter serves as a good introduction to this piece (actually this is the second paragraph). ‘If there has been a measure of the lack of success of radical criminology it has been its failure to rescue mainstream criminology from the conceptual mess in which it has increasingly found itself. It is my contention that the core of this problem revolves around the causes of crime and that this aetiological crisis emerged most blatantly in the 1960s, engendering a period of intense creative development within the discipline including the emergence of radical criminology. However, by the eighties the Thermidor set in and a silent counter-revolution occurred within the mainstream with the emergence of what I will term the new administrative criminology involving a retreat from any discussion of causality…’ (pg4).

Young’s chapter is on the emergence of critical/radical criminology and administrative criminology. Both emerged as groups of ideas within criminology as a result of the collapse of support for positivism. How they emerged is significantly different though, with critical/radical criminology emanating from subcultural and other theories taken from US sociologists and worked up by those around the National Deviancy Conference (NDC). Indeed the story of the National Deviancy Conference could possibly have lessons for those interested in left unity, but that is for another post – the main point for this posting is that it eventually split of into many different groups. One of these was the ‘left realists’ which Young belonged to. Young counterposed himself and his co-thinkers to the ‘left-idealists’ who these are you never really know – but from my reading I take them to be thinkers influenced by the SWP (some of whose members were part of the NDC) and the communist party (which was influenced at this time by the cultural theorists around Stuart Hall).

Administrative criminology, on the other hand, emerged from within the criminological establishment. Two of it’s most prominent theorists were James Q Wilson in the US and Ron Clarke in the UK Home Office. Although as Young notes there were many differences between people who can be classified in this group of thinkers, their main thrust was towards a dropping of the search for the causes of crime (traditionally associated with positivism) and towards situational crime prevention (installation of locks, alarms etc.). Indeed as one of my lecturers has pointed out they were the middle part of the What Works – Nothing Works – Something Works cycle of criminology – this is to do with the role theory plays within trying to do something about crime.

As Young notes later on in the chapter – although outwardly very different “A convergence between left idealism and the new administrative criminology emerged. Bith thought that investigation was fruitless, both agreed that rehabilitation was impossible, both thought that crime control through implementation of programmes of economic and social justice would not succeed, both focussed on the reactions of the state, both were uninterested in past theory, both attempted to explain the effectiveness of crime control without explaining crime and both believed it was possible to generalise in a way which profoundly ignored the specificity of circumstances.”(pg.27)

Moreover, left ‘idealist’ criminology tended to create a functionalist theory that was top-down and explained everything in relation to capitalism’s need to preserve itself. As Young notes, “Central to a Marxist perspective is that capitalism creates the conditions and possibilities for it’s own demise: that is that functional equilibrium is not achieved. It is the assumption that the values and institutions of capitalism obviously aid its equilibrium which is a key weakness of left functionalism.”(pg.18)

So what about Young, self-styled as a left realist? For him, “Realism must navigate between these two poles, it must not succumb to hysteria or relapse into a critical denial of the severity of crime as a problem. It must be fiercely sceptical of official statistics and control institutions without taking the posture of blanket rejection of all figures or, indeed, the very possibility of reform.”(pg.23)

All very good, but for me the place realism found between the poles was the wrong one – they opted for the ‘so-called centre ground’, despite this I think left realist criminology attempted quite a number of useful things – not least local victimisation surveys. Indeed, if ‘left-idealism’ was attached to the ultra-left, and administrative criminology to the bourgeoisie, then rather than being attached to the genuine revolutionary elements, left realism was attached to the ‘soft left’ and the labour bureaucracy.

Imperialism and Criminology

This piece is a look at an article entitled Imperialism, Crime and Criminology: Towards the decolonialisation of criminology by Biko Agozino which appeared in the journal Crime, Law and Social Change.

Why do I like this paper? Because I suppose it addresses a big gap in criminological theory, the question of colonialism – the subjugation of more than half the world to a few imperialist powers and the huge state crimes committed in doing so.

Agozino starts by paraphrasing Lenin on imperialism and commenting on how criminology has by ignoring the crimes of imperialism served it very well. He then comments on a paper by Stan Cohen on attempts to take Western crime control ideas and import them into the third world – noting that criminologists in general either ignore third world countries or look at them in a very primitive manner.

He then goes on to note that in trying to understand crime and violence in Africa, it is essential to understand the conditions created by imperialism in these countries. He critiques the justification of imperialism as bringing enlightenment and development to the colonial world. Additionally he also tries to argue that even Marx argued that imperialism was necessary for countries to develop in an article published in the New York Times ‘The British Rule in India’. However, for myself Marx wasn’t justifying imperialism – rather noting that the imposition of British rule would speed up the likelihood of social revolution in India, a social revolution that would have happened eventually anyway.

He also notes that criminology has hardly developed at all in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and where it has it has only been in terms of western repressive models taught to security services. He also talks about one of the effects of developing criminology in these countries will be in arguing for reparations for the victims of the slave trade, apartheid, the Australian ‘stolen generations’ etc. However, for me, reparations are not likely to a meaningful level under capitalism and it doesn’t solve the ongoing financial imperialism that subjects the third world to the present day.

I particularly like his conclusion though, ‘The major limitation of this paper is that most of the claims in it have not been empirically investigated due to the limitation of funding available at the time of writing. Hopefully, research like this will be more generously funded and more empirically tested in the future. However, it is inexcusable to wait for generous funding before attempting to write something like this.’(pg.356) I heartily agree.

Crime in the Soviet Union

This piece is a look at W. E. Butler’s article of the same title in the Spring 1992 British Journal of Criminology.

Discussing crime and the Soviet Union is quite a difficult proposition. Why? Because crime stats which are often the guide for discussing crime in many countries, and in the Soviet Union these were not available for many years. Butler, who has written the article under discussion is from his tone clearly no Marxist, and to that extent is ignorant of the difference between the first few years of the Russian Revolution and it’s development thereafter. Even so, he does comment that in the early years “it is certainly the case that data on the incidence of reported crime, criminal convictions, and sentencing policies were reported and discussed in the press and cumulated in annual statistical yearbooks”(pg.146). However, “from the early 1930s the reporting of this type of ‘negative phenomena’ was prohibited on grounds of official secrecy”(pg.146). He mainly puts this down to “the obvious ideological inconsistency between the declared achievement of socialism by Soviet society and the continued pervasiveness of criminality.”(p146). Obviously, decreeing socialism like Stalin did has nothing in common with real marxism and won’t make crime disappear. But Butler treats this as part of the development of communism rather than spotting the absolute break with marxism that Stalin’s coming to power represented.
One final point on this. Butler also says “Crime by definition was expected to die out, to disappear, under socialism and communism” (pg.146); this isn’t true. Marxists have always said that crime would be near negligible in a genuine communistic society – Lenin even discussed how crime would be dealth with to an extent in his State and Revolution.

The main piece of Butler’s analysis is of crime rates in the last few years of the Soviet Union (from 1987-89). He comments that “The year 1989 was by all accounts a deplorable one… registered crimes had increased by 31.8 per cent over 1988…”(pg.148) He also a bit later discusses the main decrease being in what he terms ‘economic crimes’, suggesting that this is because “the constituent elements of those offences were not consistent with the market economy ethos”.(pg.148) I would argue it is because the are all too consistent with the market that they simply stopped being investigated.

In the data on crimes, Russia and Ukraine within the USSR accounted for usually between 75 and 85 per cent of all crime. Somewhat surprisingly “Only 1-2 per cent of crimes in the USSR are classified as narcotics related.”(pg.154), however as if to make up for this “About one-third of all criminals acted in a state of intoxication…”(pg.155)
However, interestingly for us, he concludes the article with the following comment “Preliminary data released for 1990 showed a still rising crime rate: 2,786,605 crimes were committed, a 13.2 per cent increase over 1989.”(pg.159)

This is only a brief overview of the contents of this article which includes some more fascinating statistical data on crime rates in the various constituent parts of the USSR as well as who committed the crimes as well as some more commentary. Hopefully, I will be able to look again at Russia and the USSR in the near future. In particular interest to myself is both the transition from (well from semi-feudalism really!) and back to capitalism in that country. I would appreciate comments on this piece a lot, as I don't get many chances to talk about these issues.

Devolution and Justice - a report on a lecture

Yesterday evening I went to hear a public lecture by a Mr Justice Evans on Devolution and Justice at Bangor University. Yes, the man is a senior judge, and their were lots of high officials in the audience including the chief probation officer for wales, assistant police commissioner for north wales, lawyers, politicians and even the High Sheriff of Gwynedd (bet you didn't know we had one of them still!). And myself, sat there in a bright red Socialist Student tee-shirt - in amongst a load of people dressed in tuxedos and suits i felt a little underdressed, but I thought some of the issues raised were worth listening to.

The whole lecture was driven from the point of view of the potential for the assembley to create new laws in Wales, and the potential need for a Wales jurisdiction in response to this with Wales specific legal institutions (Scotland and Northern Ireland already do by the way). He described the moves to form a Wales only legal circuit (before, particularly in the North, had been lnked with Cheshire) and the benefits accrued (in terms of more jobs in Wales - but more importantly from my point of view access to legal services in the Welsh language - important in North Wales where many people are first language Welsh speakers).

He then further went on to talk about the need to expand this to create a welsh high court and court of appeal, as well as making legal services available in Wales. Again (and I can't help feeling this was pandering to Welsh local political interests) the potential job creation was stressed and the language factor also. He discussed this in a gradual way, of having the existing England and Wales court sitting in Cardiff several times a year so that Welsh cases can be heard in Wales, as it would take time for Wales to acquire the expertise to do this on it's own. In fact he liked in to Canadian provinces, and Swiss cantons having their own jurisdictions.

I've written about prisons in Wales before (see A New Prison For North Wales?), and for me this was the most interesting part of the lecture. In Wales there are five prisons (one private), none north of the M4 corridor, and there are no prisons for females. This creates enormous problems, particuarly for those in North Wales who may be held in remand in an English prison and travel up to 8 hours to court hearings. Also they are not permitted to speak Welsh in English prisons, and as I have mentioned given that it is many people's first language in this part of the world. This creates big social problems, it is also a burden on detainees families who struggle to be able to visit those in these situations.

What do socialists say about this. Obviously, we stand for equality and the right of self-determination for nations. That said we do not trust the capitalists (Welsh or not) and their representatives in the State system. Whilst a Welsh jurisdiction may see more localised justice, it will not deliver democraticly accessible justice, or see the eventual withering away of the state and the law that we would wish.
But what do you think?

Review – The State of the Police, Phil Scraton (1985)

This book, comes from the ‘left idealist’ school of critical criminology. (The term left idealist isn’t of their own choosing, but one Jock Young applied to them and which I use for the purpose of differentiation). This approach, around Joe Sim, Phil Scraton, Paul Gilroy and others, argued quite fervently against the realist turn taken by the left realists of Jock Young, Richard Kinsey and John Lea. The book in fact is to an extent a reply to John Lea and Jock Young’s ‘What Is To Be Done About: Law and Order?’
I find parts of the book quite good. Indeed Scraton gives a good history of the police, in particular signling out where they have been used against the struggles of the working class and also attempting to show how (in)effective attempts to subject the police to democratic control had been, particularly in Merseyside and London. He also comments on the use of the police during the 1984-5 Miner’s Strike and the lack of accountability here too.
However, missing from this history, is the struggles of the police themselves. Indeed, the 1918 police strike gets a couple of lines mention in passing. The book as a whole tends to treat police officers as one reactionary mass, which is a dangerous and inaccurate way of looking at the police force.
The other problem that I have with this book is it’s conclusion. After discussing attempts to institute democratic control, it also attempts a critique of the left realist position towards this which doesn’t really go very far at all. However, the ‘left idealists’ then go quite far in the opposite direction, and reject democratic accountability (as being unobtainable rather then unwanted) and instead argue for monitoring of the police as the only form of accountability possible (such groups as Inquest stem from their work). To me, although Inquest and other groups have produced interesting information, pulling back from the struggle to actually do anything to improve the lives of working people is a cardinal sin. Moreover, although the book is as I have mentioned in some respects very informative, it is based on an incorrect perception of the police and thus draws incorrect conclusions.

Marx and Engels on Crime, the State and the Paris Commune

Since I wrote this about a week ago, I actually have read a piece by Bob Fine which does talk about some of these issues - and I will comment on this at a later date. None the less the issues in this piece are still well worth discussion.

There have been several groups of criminologists who have purported to be Marxist Criminologists, many of whom have looked to Marx’s economic works, in particular Capital in search of the causes of crime. Some have even looked to some of Marx’s journalistic works. Hence why I find it strange that none (to my knowledge) have looked at Marx’s writings on the Paris Commune, in particular his work The Civil War in France.
It is in relation to this event that Marx and Engels made their one major alteration to the Communist Manifesto, which is, as Marx puts it in The Civil War in France, that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and use it for it’s own purposes”. It’s relevance to the state, and thus to the criminal justice system makes it worth our attention. Moreover, the comments relating to the judiciary and the police in particular are of interest.
We shall start our examination, by first looking at Engels 1891 Introduction to the work. He briefly comments how the power of the state has come about, saying “Society had created its own organs to look after its common interests, originally through simple division of labour. But these organs, at whose head is the state power, had in the course of time, in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves from the servants of society into the masters of society”.
A few paragraphs later, he discussed how the workers involved in the Commune dealt with this, saying “Against this transformation of the state and the organs of the state from servants of society into masters of society – an inevitable transformation in all previous states – the Commune made use of two infallible means. In the first place it filled all posts – administrative, judicial and educational – by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the same electors. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers… In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up…”
This is what Marxists mean by “…shattering of the former state power and its replacement by a new and truly democratic one…” This is extremely relevant in terms of how we see a new society emerging from the ashes of the old, what Engels is describing is a thoroughgoing democratisation of the state.
In Chapter 3 Marx describes the creation of the commune, saying “The Commune was formed of municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time. Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible and at all times revocable agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the Administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen’s wages.”
He goes on to say “The judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham independence which had but served to mask their abject subserviency to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken, and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revocable.”
What is the point I am trying to make by quoting at length from Marx and Engels on these matters? It is that they key transformation that the state must undergo to be of use to the working class is a thoroughgoing democratisation. The act of an effective of such democratisation (which will of course the replacement by election of those antagonist to the interests of the majority) would be to create an entirely different state and criminal justice system; this is how we “smash” the bourgeoisie state.

Principles of a Marxist Approach to Criminology (Second Draft)

I will be away this weekend at the Socialist Party Wales Conference in Swansea, so my next post won't probably be until Monday.

Okay, thanks for responses on the previous post, it’s been quite helpful. Below I’ve tried to reformulate the various principles and I’ve also added some that I missed off before. Hopefully you should be able to see I’ve tried to tackle some of these to a great or lesser extent over the past year or so.

1) There should be no seperate marxist theory of crime, rather marxist theory is applied to it. For example we would explain the aetiology (cause) of crime through ideas such as alienation, relative deprivation or as the normal workings of the capitalist system rather than any special causal mechanism.

2) Crime and criminal justice system should be understood in a criminal historical materialist context, we should look at their development to their present conditions. Allied to this would be an understanding that the economic context of a situation would have an impact on what types of crime are prevalent and how these will be responded to.

3) A marxist approach is moreover a class approach and sees crime to an extent as an expression of the conflict between classes in society. This is important in several important ways. Firstly, the ruling class in any each will have more power to define what is crime and to manage responses to crime in their interest. Secondly, crime disprortionately affects the working class, and they are disproportionately punished for this.

4) A marxist approach is also an internationalist approach. We should understand crime ot just in one country, but across the increasingly globalised world.

5) We should attempt to understand the effect of crime and the operation of the criminal justice system, not just on the working class, but on the rest of the oppressed layers in society.

6) As well as studying crime in ‘normal’ capitalist society, we should also seek to study what happened to crime and criminal justice during revolutionary periods and also in states that have claimed to be socialist.

7) The role of the state, which the criminal justice system is part of needs to be examined thoroughly. It’s contradictory aims of upholding the rule of capitalism but also in having to legitimate itself through doing something about crime needs to be explored.

8) We should seek to review how the workers movement has addressed the question in the past, as well as various intellectuals who have tried to put across arguments from a similar perspective (ie. Foucault, Jock Young etc.)

9) As Marx says in his theses on Feuerbach, "Philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world, point is to change it". We should analyse crime and the criminal justice system from the point of the working class. We should put forward ideas of how a socialist/communist society would aim to solve these problems, and fight for these to be adopted.

Political Economy & Penal Policy: A Comparative Approach

As I have stated before, as a Marxist, I believe crime and the operation of the criminal justice system depend upon to a large extent upon the economical development of society. Certain crimes are impossible under certain economic situations (ie theft (from a shop) and communism) and certain modes of dealing with crime fit better under certain economic systems (imagine cognitive therapy under a slave based or feudal society).
James Dignan and Michael Cavadino are some of the leading penal theorists in the United Kingdom. They have published the key text for courses on the penal system (now in it’s fourth edition I believe) as well as recent material on their own comparative approach to penal systems both in a book and recently in an article in the Winter 07/08 Criminal Justice Matters.
The recent material is what I will focus on, a study of penal practices in 12 different countries. The research has led them to devise a four-fold typology of regime types from these twelve. The first is Neo-Liberal countries, free-market orientated with a minimal welfare state, extreme income differentials and limited social rights. The USA is seen to be the archetypal examples, but in this category falls England and Wales, Australia, New Zealand as well as South Africa.
The second group is what they term Conservative Corporatist countries which are status related but have a much more generous welfare state than neo-liberal countries. Income differentials are pronounced, but not as extreme as neo-liberalism. Germany is seen as the archetypal example of this category, but France, Italy and the Netherlands are also covered by this category.
The third group they describe as Social Democratic Corporatism which have a generous welfare state, minimal income differentials and fairly unconditional social rights. Sweden is the archetype for this group but they also include Finland too.
The fourth and final group is termed Oriental Corporatism which is based on a bureaucratic, private sector ‘welfare corporatism’ with limited income differentials. However there is a distinct hierarchy and a ‘sense of duty’ to those higher up. The archetype (and indeed only country in this group) is Japan.
Their argument is that the group type affects the penal policy in operation in each of the countries. This is backed up by evidence that imprisonment rate varies by these types, thus they present the figures I give below (from the Walmsley, 2007 World Prison Population List)

Country & Prison Population (per 100,000)

USA – 736
South Africa – 335
New Zealand -186
England & Wales – 148
Netherlands – 128
Australia – 126
Italy – 104
Germany – 95
France – 85
Sweden – 82
Finland – 75
Japan – 62

As you can see these figures roughly descend from neo-liberal countries, to conservative corporatist, to social democratic corporatist and finally oriental corporatist.
Cavadino and Dignan argue that this correlation is due to cultural attitudes towards offenders embodied in the political economy of each country. They see this as helping to reinforce certain cultural attitudes towards offending.
I’d argue several things are wrong with this thesis. Firstly, the number of countries covered is very small, this is not a typology that will cover all countries. India, Russia, Brazil and China are all quite large countries and not covered at all by this study. Also there are wide disparities between in particular the neo-liberal countries but also within other groups. Thirdly this argument only takes into account the use of imprisonment, what about non-custodial penalties etc. Finally, I’d argue that although there may be a cultural element involved, neo-liberal countries would tend to have a larger criminal justice system anyway so penal responses are likely to be greater in these countries regardless of cultural differences.

Utopia or Reality? Can we create the Perfect Criminal Justice System?

This was an essay I had to submit for my course on the criminal justice system, I post it here because it raises several things I discussed in my post Draft Prinicples of a Marxist Criminology and should be of interest to all readers ps. there's more after the references

Is there such a thing as a perfect criminal justice system and, moreover, what would such a criminal justice system look like? In this essay we will examine these questions. We shall first discuss what a criminal justice system is, before contemplating what the aim and purpose of a criminal justice system is. We will then discuss if and how these systems may be perfected, before discussing the implications of this on individual branches of the criminal justice system and concluding the essay.
The first question that we are presented with is that of definition, what is a criminal justice system? The Sage Dictionary of Criminology (2001:66) defines Criminal Justice as “The process through which the state responds to behaviour that it deems unacceptable. Criminal justice is delivered through a series of stages: charge, prosecution, trial; sentence; appeal; punishment. These processes and the agencies which carry them out are referred to collectively as the criminal justice system”. Cavadino & Dignan (2002:1) note that the criminal justice system consist of the “police, prosecution authorities and courts” in addition to the penal system “the system that exists to punish and otherwise deal with people that have (usually) been convicted of a criminal offence” (most importantly the prison and probation services).
The entry in the Sage Dictionary of Criminology later states “… crime control, or crime reduction, is obviously the overall aim of criminal justice…” (2001:67). But this answer does not yet solve our question; instead we must ask what would the aim and purpose be of a perfect criminal justice system? Given as we have seen crime control and crime reduction are the aims of a criminal justice system, then a perfect criminal justice system would reduce crime to non-existence. However, such an aim is quite contradictory; if such an aim was achieved there would be no need for a criminal justice system to exist any more as there would be no further criminal offending. Here we have our answer, the perfect criminal justice exists when it has served its purpose, when it is no longer necessary and thus no longer exists.
If we consider Lenin’s (1987) notion with regards to the state as a whole withering away when it is of no further use, then the idea of a criminal justice system ceasing to exist when crime is no longer occurring is very similar. In discussing democracy in the state Lenin (1987:339) says “… the more complete it is the more quickly it will become unnecessary…”, we could similarly say the more complete and effective a criminal justice system is in reducing crime (by lowering recidivism for example), the less need there is for it.
One may ask how relevant it is to be talking about the state in relation to the criminal justice system. As Taaffe et al. (1983:25-6) point out that “In the last analysis – as Marx, Engels and Lenin pointed out - the state consists of armed bodies of men and their material appendages ie. prisons etc.” Are not these the main constituents of the criminal justice system – the police and prisons – alongside the judiciary?
It would also be wrong to consider Lenin’s argument on the withering away of the state without noting that there is another criminological tendency which posits the lack of or severe reduction of a criminal justice system. Abolitionism to some would seem a not too dissimilar approach to the one just outlined above. Indeed, in an article outlining the relationship of abolitionism to crime control, Willem de Haan talks of “popular or socialist forms of penality” (de Haan, 1991:214), and the abolition “of the repressive capitalist system part by part or step by step” (de Haan, 1991:213).
However, abolitionism, according to de Haan, (1991:203) “is based on the moral conviction that social life should not and, in fact, cannot be regulated effectively by criminal law and that, therefore, the role of the criminal justice system should be drastically reduced while other ways of dealing with problematic situations, behaviours and events are being developed and put into practice.” Unlike the Marxism of Lenin, its starting point is not class struggle that necessitates the abolition of capitalist relations of production, but moral conviction instead. Whereas the eventual ‘withering away’ of the state and criminal justice system is only possible in a post-capitalist situation for Lenin, Abolitionists want the criminal justice system gone without any pre-conditions.
This difference then leads on to differences of a more practical nature. As de Haan (1991:207) goes on to state “…the criminal justice system is part of the crime problem rather than its solution… Therefore there is no point in trying to make the criminal justice system more effective or more just.” And later “Instead of the panacea which the criminal justice system pretends to provide for problems of crime control, abolitionism seeks to remedy social problems… Abolitionism assumes that social problems or conflicts are unavoidable as they are inherent to social life…” (de Haan, 1991:211) In contrast, as Taaffe et al. (1983:14) point out “It would be absurd for socialists in present day society to stand aside and declare that we cannot support the police in taking action to prevent crime and arrest criminals.” However, Marxists would agree that social problems need remedying too, and it is to this that we now turn.
As Jock Young (1981) discusses, aetiology, or the causes of crime is a pivotal issue in criminology and in how one deals with crime. This is influential, because as he exposes “If, for instance, we view crime as a voluntary act of the individual, we would tend towards a policy of punishing him or her, whereas, if she/he is seen as acting under the compulsion of individual or social forces, the treatment of the criminal might seem to be inappropriate.” (Young, 1981:252)
Indeed, Lenin (1987:340) suggests that with the removal of “the fundamental social cause of excesses”, which he holds to be “the exploitation of the masses, their want and their poverty”, “excesses will inevitably begin to “wither away”… with their withering away, the state (or in our case the criminal justice system) will also wither away”.
From this passage we can see that Lenin suggests two main causes of crime (or excesses); ‘want and poverty’ (deprivation/relative deprivation) as well as ‘exploitation of the masses’ (alienation). These factors are not new, indeed, Lenin being a Marxist drew these concepts from Marx, who exposed them several times in his works, most accessibly in Wage, Labour and Capital (Marx, 1996).
Marx’s theory of alienation can be summed up nicely in the sentences “… the exercise of labour power, labour is the worker’s own life activity, the manifestation of his own life. And this life activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus his life activity is for him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labour as a part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life.” (Marx, 1996:25) Sell (2006:28) adds to this by commenting “Instead of making life easier, the increase in automation has reduced ever more jobs to mind-numbing repetition and boredom”.
Marx’s explanation of relative deprivation is similarly summed up well by his words “A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilisation, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls.” (Marx, 1996:39) He concludes, “Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.” (Marx, 1996:39)
But how does this relate to crime? Sell (2006:30) argues that “The result [of increases in alienation and relative deprivation] has been an increase in street crime and robbery, almost all of it carried out against people who are also living in poverty. There is an increase in drug addiction… The reasons for drug use are wide and varied. Nonetheless, the increase in drug addiction and dependency, both legal and illegal, is primarily the result of a more alienated society.”
She goes on to illustrate this, pointing out “…the experience of the ex-mining villages around the country… the closure of the pits have left previously strong communities suffering the ravages of unemployment, poverty and drug addiction.” (Sell, 2006:30)
Young (1991:154) correctly states that based on this “To reduce crime we must reduce relative deprivation by ensuring meaningful work is provided at fair wages, by providing decent housing in which people are proud to live in, by ensuring that leisure facilities are available on a universal basis…”
However, as Taylor (1981:79) recognises “A welfare state which works on the principle that woman is naturally dependent on man and also currently depends on the expulsion of large numbers of youths into worklessness is not meeting the real needs of women and young people to be self-generating members of the human species.” The problem being that attempting to solve the problem of relative deprivation via a redistributive welfare state doesn’t solve the problem of alienation. It, as Taylor (1981) later notes adds because this is carried out by a layer of professionals which he argues act in lieu of people, rather than under their control.
Engels (1971:32) similarly discusses how “Society had created its own organs to look after its common interests, originally through simple division of labour. But these organs, at whose head is the state power, had in the course of time, in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves from the servants of society into the masters of society.”
To overcome alienation, it is necessary to overcome the fact that most people have no control over a large portion of their life, whether in the workplace, or outside it. Taylor (1981:101) argues that a “thoroughgoing democratisation” is necessary for these interests to be met. What would this look like you may ask?
Engels (1971:33) commenting on the Paris Commune suggests that “In the first place it filled all posts – administrative, judicial and educational – by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the same electors. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers… In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up…”
As Johnstone (2000) points out there are critics who would suggest that such a manner of operation of society as a whole, and the criminal justice system in particular, could not operate. Johnstone (2000:165) goes on to explain “even if it were concluded that today there is widespread and increasing support for a less tolerant and more punitive penal policy, it would not follow that increased public participation in the making of penal policy would automatically result in a harsher penal system.”
He continues “With regard to penal policy, the suggestion that people should be excluded from its making because they do not have the necessary qualities – such as knowledge, active interest and restraint – is easily countered. Through participation in making penal policy, people will develop these qualities. To the extent that they lack such qualities, this is due precisely to the over-centralization and over-professionalization of governance in general and penal policy making in particular. As decisions about the use of the social power to punish are historically removed from ordinary people and placed in the hands of a small elite, people lose the attributes required to make those decisions well. The only way they can recover these qualities is by having these decisions returned to them.” (Johnstone, 2000:158)
And tying this back in with the ideas developed so far, Lenin (1987:339) comments “…the diffusion of democracy among such an overwhelming majority of the population [means] that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear”, by special machine Lenin means the state (or for our purposes the criminal justice system). Of course such a thing will not happen overnight, as Lenin (1987:334) notes “there can be no question of defining the exact moment of the future withering away – the more so since it must obviously be a rather lengthy process”. Greater and greater participation can only come with time being freed from other areas; in particular the working day must be gradually shortened to allow for “removing the antithesis between mental and physical labor” (Lenin, 1987:344). Additionally, other institutions outside the criminal justice system would also be used to help in this process, most notably the media and the education system would be inherently useful to help people become more informed about crime and the criminal justice system.
As mentioned above, informed journalism could play a role in this. Wacquant (2007:39) gives us an example of how this may look “A rational public debate on crime would differentiate between offences and rigorously measure their incidence and effects. It would eschew the short-term perspective and emotional cast of daily journalism to make a clear cut differentiation between blips and groundswells, incidental variations from year-to-year and long-term trends. It would not confuse the rising fear of crime, intolerance of crime, or concern over crime with an increase in law-breaking itself.”
However, as Feilzer & Young (2006) demonstrate, such journalism cannot be limited to just one columnist in one newspaper. It must become a standard for newspapers and other media to place crimes in their social context, and to be written in a manner that explains the processes behind the topic being reported on. A basic grasp of the workings of the criminal justice system taught to all school pupils would also assist in this manner.
Now that we have a brief outline of what is necessary to achieve such a state of the criminal justice system, it is perhaps worth looking at what the first steps towards this may be in each of it’s branches. Although the comments here are focussed on the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales, the general thrust should be applicable to a greater or lesser extent in other countries too.
Policing is perhaps the most visible part of the criminal justice system. For our purposes it is perhaps useful to look in particular at the disputes in the early 1980’s to do with the accountability of the police. This centred around several issues, from the 1980 Police Authorities (Powers) Bill proposed by Jack Straw MP, the inner city riots of 1980 and 1981 (particularly in Toxteth and Brixton) and conflicts over the role of police authorities, and later the deployment of the police during the 1984-5 miner’s strike (Scraton, 1985).
The link between all these issues was the attempt to subordinate the priorities of local policing to the wishes of the local populace. Kinsey et al. (1986) argue that police are dependent upon the local community for information to help them apprehend offenders and that the pursuance of policy contrary to the wishes of the community (such as operations like Swamp 81 which provoked the 1981 Brixton riots) merely serve to alienate the community further from the police, and thus reducing this flow of information. As they note “People have little incentive to participate in a process over which they have little control” (Kinsey et al., 1986:133) Instead they advocate increasing the powers of police authorities and giving them the responsibility to encourage debate over crime and conducting local crime surveys. This could however be extend to even more local democratic bodies for certain areas or long lasting cases or series of crimes.
Prisons have been said to have been in an almost perpetual state of crisis recently (Cavadino & Dignan, 2003), the most important of which is crisis of resources. This has manifested itself recently with a record prison populations leading to massive overcrowding across the 139 prisons in England and Wales (Dalton, 2007a).
Overcrowding has led to a poor standard of accommodation, which Cavadino and Dignan (2002:189) suggest is ‘a byword for squalor’ with lack of access to adequate toilet facilities, lack of time outside cells and cell sharing. Similary a record 91 self-inflicted deaths in prison was recorded in 1999 (Cullen and Minchin, 2000) and Morgan (2002) notes that about a quarter of all prisons are Victorian buildings, most of these older prisons are local prisons which suffer the most overcrowding. As Dalton (2007b) notes at present the strategy is to release some prisoners early and attempt to build the way out of the problem, creating 9,500 extra places by 2014, but estimates suggest that cells will run out then too.
Fundamentally, a change in policy is necessary here. Cavadino & Dignan (2002) suggest that the judiciary is the ‘crux of the [penal] crisis’ and suggest a list of reforms including empowering bodies to create enforceable guidelines for sentencing to make it more consistent, in addition to other measures to encourage the judiciary to be more lenient. However, why leave the same people running the system if they have been too punitive, and why stick to sentences given out by them if they too are too punitive. As Dalton (2007b) argues, the judiciary should be elected and democratically elected tribunals should review existing sentences.
Overcrowded prisons also don’t help reduce crime either. As government figures show six out of every ten released from prison end up back inside within two years, this cannot be improved by a situation which has seen prisoners being locked up for longer in their cells, rather than tackling some prisoner’s underlying problems such as illiteracy or innumeracy. As Dalton (2007b) points out, a reduction in the prison population would free up resources which could be used towards the rehabilitation of those it is still deemed necessary to detain.
In conclusion, the perfect criminal justice system is both possible and impossible in that on reaching its stated aim it will have fulfilled its purpose and fall into disuse. In the opinion of the author of these words most other approaches tend to keep crime down to manageable levels rather than rid us of it. This solves no-ones problems; people still get victimised, offenders get stigmatised for life and the public foots the millions and billions necessary to make the system work.
This essay has thus taken a distinctly Marxist position, drawing in particular on Lenin’s notion of the withering away of the state. We have discussed what this position would put forward as the reasons for crime and how this influences how the criminal justice system should operate to help alleviate these problems. We have then discussed how to implement these ideas within several branches of the criminal justice system. From this we have shown that perfecting the criminal justice system to the point where it is no longer needed, will take a long time and will generally consist of increasing democratisation. Wider changes in society will also be needed to supplement these processes. Crime breeds inequality, so it seems only apt that achieving real equality is the solution to this problem.

References

Cavadino, M. & Dignan, J. (2002) The Penal System, 3rd ed. London: SAGE
Cullen, C. & Minchin, M. (2000) The Prison Population in 1999, Home Office Research Findings No. 118, London: Home Office
de Haan, W. (1991) ‘Abolitionism and Crime Control: A Contradiction in Terms’ In: Stenson, K. & Cowell, D. eds. (1991) The Politics of Crime Control, London: SAGE
Dalton, I. (2007a) ‘Reid’s prison disaster’, The Socialist, 1st-7th February pg.5
Dalton, I. (2007b) ‘Overcrowded prisons, overworked staff’, The Socialist, 13th-19th September pg.4
Engels, F. (1971) ‘Introduction to the Civil War in France’ In: Marx, K. & Engels, F. On the Paris Commune, Moscow: Progress Publishers
Feilzer, M. & Young, R. (2006) ‘Crime Scene Oxford’: The impact of a factual newspaper column on readers of a local newspaper – Final Report to the Nuffield Foundation, Oxford: Centre for Criminology
Johnstone, G. (2000) ‘Penal Policy Making: Elitist, Populist or Participatory?’, Punishment & Society, 2(2): pp.161-180
Kinsey, R., Lea, J. & Young, J. (1986) Losing the Fight Against Crime, Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Lea, J. & Young, J. (1996) ‘Relative Deprivation’ In: Muncie, J., McLaughlin, E. & Langan, M. eds. Criminological Perspectives: A Readers, London: SAGE
Lenin, V. I. (1987) ‘The State and Revolution’, In: Christman, H. M. eds. Essential Works of Lenin: “What is to be done?” and Other Writings, Mineola: Dover
Marx, K. (1996) ‘Wage Labour and Capital’ In: Marx, K. Wage Labour and Capital & Wages, Price and Profit, London: Bookmarks
McLaughlin, E. & Muncie, J. eds. (2001) The Sage Dictionary of Criminology, London: SAGE
Morgan, R. (2002) ‘Imprisonment’ In: Maguire, M., Morgan, R. & Reiner, R.. Eds. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP
Scraton, P. (1985) The State of the Police, London: Pluto Press
Sell, H. (2006) Socialism in the 21st Century, 2nd ed. London: Socialist Publications
Taaffe, P., Grant, E. & Walsh, L. (1983) The State… A Warning to the Labour Movement, London: Militant
Taylor, I. (1981) Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism, London: Macmillan
Wacquant, L. (2007) ‘How to Escape the Law and Order Trap’, Criminal Justice Matters, 70 pp.39-40
Young, J. (1981) ‘Thinking seriously about crime: some models of criminology’ In: Fitzgerald, M., McLennan, G. & Pawson, J. eds. Crime & Society: Readings in History and Theory, London: Routledge
Young, J. (1991) ‘Left Realism and the Priorities of Crime Control’ In: Stenson, K. & Cowell, D. eds. (1991) The Politics of Crime Control, London: SAGE

Upcoming Posts

As you have seen i've posted on some of the things touched on in this post before (ie left realist criminology, media and crime, and crime and alienation) expect over the next few weeks/months/whenever i get around to it:-

A review of the State of the Police with some commentary on the 'left idealist' branch of critical criminology
A post on relative deprivation as a 'cause' of crime
A post on the criminal justice system and the paris commune
A post on The State and Revolution and the criminal justice system
A review of The State: A warning to the Labour Movement
A post on political economy and crime
A review(s) of Cavadino & Dignan's arguements about the penal system