Sociology 2306: Outline--Week 8
I. Review of Conflict Theory in its several varieties.
Criminal justice system reflects social class but many other inequalities as well.... think about the early 20th century in the U.S.
A. Social class.... a very self-confident and conspicuous upper class facing a rapidly growing industrial working class.... laws relating to strikes, workers' rights, and unions (some criminal, some civil)
B. Gender: Chesney-Lind: the rise of the juvenile court system and its assumptions about girls and status crimes (especially running away and "sexual promiscuity")
C. Race... role of the criminal justice system in supporting Jim Crow system of unequal rights for African-Americans... e.g. the famous 1890s Supreme Court Decision accepting "separate but equal" for black Americans... the all-white juries that exonerated people who'd participated in lynchings and other racial brutality
D. Ethnicity and religion... Gusfield, "Symbolic Crusade." Prohibition as the result of a Nativist movement that was anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant
II. Race and Crime through the Conflict Theory lens
A. Michael Tonry: Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America (1994)
1. Why did the rate of black imprisonment, which was already disproportionately high, rise so quickly after 1980? Tonry overhead
2. What was the role of the War on Drugs?
| State Prisons | Federal Prisons | |
| 1980 | 5.7% | 25% |
| 1992 | 21% | 58% |
C. How successful has the War on Drugs been in reducing drug use?
James Q. Wilson: "Significant reductions in drug abuse will only come from reducing the demand for those drugs... I know of no serious law-enforcement official who disagrees with this conclusion. Typically, police officials tell interviewers they are fighting either a losing war, or at best, a holding action."
B. Hagan: Crime and Disrepute (1994)
Overall goal: show the "criminal costs of social inequality" by comparing the early 20th century and the contemporary period
1. Public order crimes in the early 20th century... gambling, prostitution, drugs and above all, Prohibition
a. Mala en se vs mala prohibita..."victimless?"
b. The rise of Ethnic vice industries and Deviance Service Centers... especially during Prohibition in the 1920s, organized crime on a large scale
c. Ethnic succession and upward mobility: Irish, Jews, Italians, Poles
d. Dramatic rise in violent crime peaking in about 1930... murder rate then just about what it was in 1980 and again in 1990
2. Parallel process with today's minorities: major market for illegal drugs in the 1960s, eventually met by the War on Drugs and rapid growth of gangs and violence
a.Differences from situation of earlier minority groups
1). Much greater and more sustained segregation, especially for Afro-Americans. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid
2). More concentrated poverty and joblessness. William Julius Wilson.
3) Economic changes: capitalist world economy and deindustrialization
b. Overhead: comparison with South Africa under apartheid
c. Supporting research cited in Hagan
1. Ethnographies
a. Mercer, Getting Paid
b. Anderson, Streetwise
c. Padilla, The Gang as an Ethnic Enterprise
d. Moore, Going Down to the Barrio
e. Hagedorn, People and Folks2. Quantitative studies : National Longitudinal Youth Survey, 1976-1989, ages 11-30.
Violent crime a. By age 29,Black/white male differential of 4/1.
b. For employed men, no significant difference by race.
D. Societal costs
1. Criminal justice system costs
2. Policing abuses...eg., recent scandal in Philadelphia, current scandal in LA
3. Police/minority relations
4. Impact within minority communities... see NIJ overhead, percent of U.S. males ever likely to go to prison