The Dispersal Of Discipline

Justice can be a controversial subject when it comes to what people want to get out of it. Victims of offences want offenders to be penalised accordingly for their actions, though justice does not always work in their favour. For some people in society, justice can vary from having to pay significant fines to incarceration but how can we truly achieve justice as a community? Communities should come together to work out processes and orders to achieve the type of justice they want to see, focusing on long term outcomes instead of the short term. ‘Priority is given to the community, enhancing its responsibility for social control while building its capacity to achieve this and other outcomes relevant

The labelling theory shows how crime is socially constructed based on labels created by the powerful, which is important for our understanding of who commits a crime as they show how the powerless can be labelled as deviant whilst powerful groups are not. This undermines the

Labeling theory makes no attempt to understand why an individual initially engaged in primary deviance and committed a crime before they were labeled; this then limits the scope of the theory’s explanations and suggests the theory may not provide a better account for crime. Labeling theory emphasizes the negative effects of labeling, which gives the offender a victim status. Also, the same likelihood exists for developing a criminal career regardless of deviance being primary or secondary. Furthermore, labeling theorists are only interested in understanding the aftermath of an individual getting caught committing crime and society attaching a label to the offender. This differs from the view of social learning theory, which seeks to explain the first and subsequent criminal acts. Many critics also argue that the racial, social, and economic statuses of an individual create labels, as opposed to criminal acts; this theory then fails to acknowledge that those statuses may factor into the labeling process. As a result, the above suggests that labeling theory does not provide a good account for crime and appropriately has little empirical support. Moreover, in terms of policy implications, labeling theory implies a policy of radical non-intervention, where minor offenses

The concept of ‘crime’ is something that depends on time, place, and other influences. For this reason, researchers have been trying to get criminologists to rethink their definitions of ‘crime’ and consider the idea of ‘social harm’ which could help better explain the causes of human suffering and the definitions of ‘crime’ and ‘criminals’ and broaden the application of criminal justice. What this rethinking can do for criminologists broadly is give them a broader picture of human psychology as well as the range of harms that individuals, communities, or whole societies experience. In this context this can include crime in the sense of activities of individuals as well as government and institutions.

Ever since the beginning of time man has committed crimes. Crimes were described as acts which go against the social and moral norms of society and people. People have learned to deal with these crimes in many different ways. One of the most used forms of dealing with crime is punishing those who commit crimes. There are numerous ways in which people have punished those who commit crimes throughout history from making the criminal pay fines to banishing them from the community. However, in modern times, there are fewer acceptable forms of punishment that are used. For very unserious crimes, governments may simply make a criminal pay a small fine or do service for the community in some way. Offenders who

The legal definition of crime is “an act of violation of a criminal law for which a punishment is prescribed; the person committing it must have intended to do so and must have done so without legally acceptable defence or justification” (Walsh & Hemmens 2008:2). Alternatively, deviance is any social behaviour which departs from that regarded as ‘normal’ or socially acceptable within a society or social context (Jary & Jary 1991:160). The underlining focus of my essay is The Criminal Justice System in England and Wales which is a key public service consisting of various bodies and individuals including: the Police, Crown Prosecution Service, Her Majesty’s Court Service, National Offender Management Services (Probation and Prisons) and Youth Justice Board.

The purpose of this essay is to discuss whether a perspective of social harm is more advantageous and useful over that of crime. In order to explore these advantages, this essay will look at the aetiology of crime from a legal perspective; which is arguably very narrow and individualistic in nature. As well as from a perspective of social harm, which is possibly more progressive as it broadens an understanding of ‘crime’ over that of many other serious harms.

Schmalleger describes the labeling theory or social reaction theory as one that sees persistent criminal behavior as a result of not, having the chances for normal conduct that follow the negative responses of society to those that have been labeled as criminals. There is an expectation of a continuous increase in crime that is a direct effect of the label that is attached. The result of negative labels creates limited chances that the behavior would change on behalf of the criminal, due in part to societies stigma placed upon them (Schmalleger, 2012, p. 186). Those theorists responsible for the labeling theory that are discussed in our readings during this weeks assignments are listed as Frank Tannenbaum, Edwin M. Lemert, Howard Becker, John Braithwaite and others. When discussion the concept labeling, one must understand some of the most early descriptions of societal reactions to deviance, this can be found in the 1938 works of Frank Tannenbaum who explained the term, tagging. Schmalleger defined tagging as the process whereby an individual is negatively defined by the agencies of justice. Within tagging Edwin M. Limert, used the terminology of primary and secondary deviance, primary being a deviant act that was undertaken to achieve some immediate issue and or problem that may have arisen in the person life and doesn’t intend for the criminal behavior to continue. Secondary deviance

From the 19th century to the 20th, crime control state agencies have become instilled with ‘penal welfarism’ and rehabilitation. However since then they’ve been dominated by risk management, incapacitation and retribution. In clarifying this change Garland; the formal organisations of crime control have a tendency to be responsive. Garland states “too often our attention focuses on the state’s institutions and neglects the informal social practices upon which state

This essay examines the Anti-social behaviour Orders, that were implemented in the United Kingdom, and disputes the fact that it socially excludes already ostracized and disadvantaged persons within society. This is due that it only removes the problem behaviours from particular environments and doesn’t address the cause of the offending. Firstly, this essay will address antisocial behaviour orders and the will give a brief overview of there implementation and there indented outcome. It will then go onto discuss crime preventions theories that where taken into consideration when designing theses orders, such as developmental crime prevention, primary prevention and differential association. The essay will then review the

Informal control can sometimes be more important than formal control. “Informal social control has been argued to be both more pervasive and more powerful in controlling crime than formal social control” (Warner, 2014, 422). From a young age people in the community are socialized to not commit crimes and as a result of committing crimes can be shunned by said community creating an undesirable effect. “Although social control is often a response to deviant behavior, it should not be equated with

In conclusion, punishment is essential in civilized society with prison being the punishment of choice. Prison suits the sensibilities of the upper classes as criminals are segregated from the rest of polite society. However, prison is changing with an emphasis on rehabilitation and reintegration into community after release. However, funding cuts to essential facilities for ex-offenders for example, half-way housing puts rehabilitation in jeopardy and may result in the offender re-offending, simply because they have nowhere else to go. Elias’s ideas undoubtedly have had a major influence in sociology as it has allowed macro and micro statistics to be studied and linked, providing valuable data for sociologists and criminologists to measure

There has been a decline in rehabilitative ideals of punishments following the Criminal Justice Act 1991 (CJA), and instead, Garland (2001) suggests how the ‘just deserts’ philosophy has become, what he argues to be a “generalised policy goal” (Garland, 2001, p.9). By this he means that instead of rehabilitating offenders, by focusing on a more populist form of policy-making, the punishments are deserved. This is further supported by Cavadino and Dignan (2002) who discuss how the idea of retributive punishments, particularly ‘just deserts’ have been “revived” in some way over the past few decades. Instead, shifting to more of a ‘law and order’ ideology discussed within the CJA 1991 whereby punishments such as incarceration are much more appealing and effective than more romantic forms of punishment (Cavadino

Unlike traditional approaches which assume that the causes of crime and deviance lie either within the biological or psychological characteristics of individual offenders or within their socio-economic circumstance, labelling argues that criminological analysis should begin with how people come to be defined as deviant and then examine the implications that such definitions hold for the future offending behaviour. Such argument is now widely associated with the work of Howard Becker (Becker, 1963) who famously claimed that behaviour only becomes deviant when it is labelled and treated as such and that labelling creatures and perpetuates ‘deviant careers’. Traces of such approach can be found throughout the nineteenth century. Henry Mayhew argued that overzealous policing was a significant factor in the creation of juvenile delinquency in the mid-nineteenth century. A theme as such are now widely repeated in the recurrent and popular claims that prisons are ‘colleges of crime’ and that when people are treated as criminal they are more likely to act in that

According to Howard Becker’s labeling theory, ‘deviance is not a quality of the act person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an “offender”.’ (Becker