Ch.5 - Chriss, Social Control

1
Chapter 5

• Legal Control

2
Criminal Justice System

• Three major subsystems
• Police detain suspects and make arrests
• Courts ascertain guilt of criminal suspects
• Corrections punishes those convicted of crimes
• History of Criminal Justice
• From informal self-help to legal control
• Early informal surveillance system
• Frankpledge
• Hue and cry
• Tithings paid to jailers and sheriffs
• System of informal control began breaking down in
  1600s

3
Common Law

• US system influenced by British legal system
• No one is above the law
• Precedent (stare decisis)
• Defendants tried by juries (except bench trials)
• Great emphasis placed on the spoken word
• Adversarial system of justice
• Judge acts as referee guided by procedural law

4
Classical School of Criminology

• Part of Enlightenment movement
• Emphasized reason and experience while
  denigrating mysticism, superstition, and theology
• Mid-1700s in Europe
• Cesare Beccaria (1738 1794)
• Italian lawyer and early penal reformist
• On Crimes and Punishment, 1764
• Punishment should be made more rational

5
Classical School of Criminology

• Cesare Beccaria (1738 1794)
• Death penalty should be abolished
• Rather than severity, certainty of punishment
  should be emphasized
• Jeremy Bentham (1748 1832)
• British economist, philosopher, and jurist
• Basic forces are pleasure and pain (hedonic
  calculus)
• Law is to be judged by its utility
  (utilitarianism greatest good for greatest
  number of people)
• Leads eventually to goal of rehabilitation
• Developed idea of the Panopticon

6
Classical School of Criminology

• John Howard (1726 1790)
• English philanthropist and penal reformer
• State of Prisons in England, 1777
• Led to Penitentiary Act of 1779
• Improved sanitary conditions
• Improved quality of prison food
• Abolish fee system
• Emphasis on reform and abstinence
• Classification and segregation of prisoners
• Religious instruction

7
Agents of Formal Control - Police

• Sir Robert Peel (1788 1850)
• A Tory politician who innovated the new police
• Metropolitan Police Act, 1829
• First full-time, paid police force (London)
• Known as bobbies
• Quasi-military organizational structure
• Officers would wear uniforms and identification
  badge (copper)
• Expected to walk a beat
• No handguns but truncheons

8
American Police Three Eras

• Political Spoils (1830s to 1920s)
• Police in back pocket of city hall
• Mayor handpicked personnel
• Ward bosses used police in virtually any way they
  saw fit
• Close contact between police and citizens
• Corruption and patronage abuses
• Calls for reform of municipal policing began in
  1920s

9
American Police Three Eras

• Reform and Early Professionalization (1920s
  through 1960s)
• Cut close ties between citizens and police
• Get politics out of policing (autonomy)
• Heightened bureaucratic control of police
  (internal accountability)
• Greater specialization crime control
• Less emphasis on foot patrol

10
American Police Three Eras

• Community-Oriented Policing (1970s to present)
• Social tumult of 1960s prompted far-reaching
  changes in operation of municipal law enforcement
• Police need to change to keep up with changing
  urban demographics
• Increase education and training of police
  recruits
• Repair strained relations between police and
  citizens (customer satisfaction model)

11
Dark Side of Legal Control

• COP and Fear of Crime
• How useful is community oriented policing?
• Police have to legitimate services in era of
  reduced budgets and declining crime rates
• Customer satisfaction model (citizen input)
• Police monitor all aspects of community and
  sentiments, including quality of life

12
Dark Side of Legal Control

• Net-Widening
• Policies that unwittingly bring more persons into
  the criminal justice system
• Problem of intermediate or alternative sanctions
• Piling on of lower-level sanctions
• Leads to technical violations of probation

13
Dark Side of Legal Control

• Death Penalty and Racism
• Does race affect the likelihood of the state
  seeking the death penalty in homicide cases?
• Race of victims more important than race of
  offenders
• Among all cases
• Blacks who murdered whites (35)
• Whites who murdered whites (22)
• Whites who murdered blacks (14)
• Blacks who murdered blacks (6)

14
Dark Side of Legal Control

• Foucault and the Carceral Society
• Total institutions are not necessarily more
  humane, they are just punishing or performing
  their custodial functions more effectively
• Field of power at the disposal of custodians
• Polyvalence of the Panopticon
• Governmentality everyday citizens mimicking the
  actions of government functionaries (many watch
  the many)