Socialists on the Criminal Justice System – Karl Marx

The third article in my series examining the writings of various famous socialists on the criminal justice system. This article looks at Marx’s letter to the New York Tribune published in the Feb 17-18, 1953 issue and available at the Marxist Internet Archive (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/02/18.htm). Thanks to Rob from the Law and Disorder blog for pointing this article out to me and some of what I write is drawn from some of the comments he has made on this article. This letter by Marx is one that touches a fair few subjects, but I intend on limiting my remarks to the crime and criminal justice system related parts of it.

Marx starts the letter by quoting an observation in the Times that there seems to be a pattern of after hangings of either murders or suicides by hanging and suggests that this is due to the ‘powerful effect’ that a hanging a notorious criminal has on ‘a morbid and unmatured mind’. As Marx notes the purpose of the Times article is to exhalt capital punishment as good for society in getting rid of bad elements altogether.

This moves Marx on to other justifications for punishment – saying there are two main ones, either “…as a means either of ameliorating or of intimidating” Yet as Marx points out statistics clearly show that “…since Cain the world has neither been intimidated nor ameliorated by punishment. Quite the contrary.”

However, Marx notes that Hegel has a particular way of viewing punishment as the right of the criminal. Indeed he quotes from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

“Punishment is the right of the criminal. It is an act of his own will. The violation of right has been proclaimed by the criminal as his own right. His crime is the negation of right. Punishment is the negation of this negation, and consequently an affirmation of right, solicited and forced upon the criminal by himself”

As Marx notes this makes the criminal purely a creature of free-will (which is exactly how the legal system treats them) and he points out “Is it not a delusion to substitute for the individual with his real motives, with multifarious social circumstances pressing upon him, the abstraction of “free-will” — one among the many qualities of man for man himself!” As Marx says, although an individual’s choice may play a role, there are other factors particularly social and economic ones.

Marx rejects all the definitions given above. As he goes on to state “Plainly speaking, and dispensing with all paraphrases, punishment is nothing but a means of society to defend itself against the infraction of its vital conditions, whatever may be their character.” This is perhaps one of the best sentences in the letter, encapsulating a basic feature of the Marxist characterisation of the state – that it’s main purpose is defend society as it exists, whether that means directly repressing threats to capitalism or less direct threats such as trying to contain crime affecting all layers of the population.

Marx then discusses some of the statistics by Quetelet to demonstrate that crime rates are relatively stable over time and thus punishment itself is not doing anything to reduce them and then states another key idea in Marxist criminology “…is there not a necessity for deeply reflecting upon an alteration of the system that breeds these crimes, instead of glorifying the hangman who executes a lot of criminals to make room only for the supply of new ones?”

Only by attacking the root causes of crime will we have the possibility of ridding society of it, and for Marxists this cannot be done under a system that is a breeding ground for crime like Capitalism.

On Arbitrary Laws and Punishments

Please note, this post was written about two weeks ago but I forgot to publish it then.

Today the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph have reported that the Department of Transport are planning on fining people £70 for parking too far way from the kerb. That was the specific piece of information that got me thinking once more about the raft of penalties, punishments and new laws that have been passed by the current New Labour government. Indeed the current government has made over 1000 new offences in its period of office. Generally the net effect has been to criminalise things that weren’t criminal or weren’t recorded as criminal in the past as well as increasing the penalty for offences.

It is not, however, that something does not need to be done about the problems they aim to tackle. It is a question of what strategy will lead to the eventual reduction and, hopefully, elimination of such actions. A good example is of littering, I doubt there is anyone in favour of littering, yet it happens all the time. So to tackle this we have powers for £75 on the spot fines going up to a possible £2500 fine if taken to magistrates court (by the way this is from sections 87 and 88 of the 1990 Environmental Protection Act – so it’s not just New Labour who are guilty of passing such laws) Indeed, we now have spot fines for an array of things including littering, anti-social behaviour (a very vague category!), shop lifting, begging, swearing and probably plenty of other stuff to boot.

The amount of stupid things that these get given for is outrageous. There are stories of things like a goth been fined £80 for saying that a weapons detecting machine was a “piece of shit that wouldn’t stop anything”. Did you also know that under the 1824 Vagrancy Act beggars can be fined a £1000 (and how are they supposed to pay that?). Indeed, there is a compilation of the ten most ridiculous fines of all time here http://www.10sitestosee.com/the-10-most-ridiculous-fines-of-all-time/ .

And obviously this hasn’t done all that much about it crime, despite claims that crime as measured by official figures is down (for a debunking of Home Office crime figures see http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/never-mind-drugs-stats-dont-work-either.html, it is also worth nothing that how much crime is up or down depends on which year you use as a baseline). Indeed, its worth noting that crime was rising according to most of these figures whilst these were operative too and even if they had some impact other factors will play an influence. (ie. we could just be in a ‘natural’ low crime patch).

The other part of this is not just increasing what you can be punished for, but increasing the punishments themselves. Such measures as indeterminate sentences, mandatory minimum sentences and three strikes and you’re out policies create this alongside simply encourage sentencers to be more harsh. Average sentence length is increasing and has been for a while.

Of course the argument goes that the current level of sentencing isn’t having an effect so it needs to be increased. But then that’s because the police simply don’t catch the majority of offenders, the deterrent effect of sentencing is minimal. But if people call for more police it is worth pointing out that the police only manage to solve a tiny proportion of crime at the moment and to punish every single offence would require more police than is financially feasible ever! (and that’s assuming that they would remain at the same level of effectiveness and a whole load of other factors)

Okay so I’ve outlined what I think is problematic. What is the general trend of these things then? Well in my opinion it is one towards arbitraryness and bureaucratism where it produces easily digested ‘tough’ policies for media consumption. It is a much neater headline saying “Prison for all knife carriers” than a more nuanced approach. Furthermore it is completely undemocratic in my mind. It is our criminal justice system, shouldn’t we have a say rather than the back and forth banter between the government and media that seems to create these policies.

I’ve posted before about the fact that so much power over our criminal justice system which affects us on a very local basis is concentrated so high up in the state structures (ie. with the Home Secretary)