ATS1423 Chap.1 Law, Politics and the Meaning of Crime
Law, Politics and the Meaning of Crime
Law, Politics and the Meaning of Crime lays the foundation for the whole unit. It asks what gives a state the authority to punish at all, tracing the idea through the social contract, the early written codes that turned private revenge into controlled vengeance, and the classical school of Beccaria and Bentham.
It then shows how hard it is to define crime: Sellin's conduct norms, Wilkins's continuum, Sutherland's case for white-collar crime and Hagan's pyramid each draw the line differently. The required reading by Bernard, Paoline and Pare adds the system view that later weeks build on, in which agencies process cases and push them backward or forward depending on capacity and blame.
The first tutorial turns these ideas into a budget exercise in which groups act as a newly elected Victorian government, a reminder that police, courts and prisons compete for funding with every other department.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The social contract and the state's claim to punish
- 02
Legal punishment as controlled vengeance
- 03
Beccaria's certainty, swiftness and proportional severity
- 04
Bentham's utility principle and written criminal codes
- 05
Merton's five adaptations to strain and society's responses
- 06
Sellin, Wilkins and Sutherland on what counts as crime
- 07
Hagan's pyramid: consensus crimes to social diversions
- 08
General systems theory and backward pressure between agencies
Worked example · free
Classify an act on Hagan's pyramid
- 1Recall the three dimensions: agreement about the norm, severity of the social response and the evaluation of harm.
- 1Score littering on each: low agreement about what to do, a mild response, and harm judged slight by most people.
- 1Match the scores to a tier. Acts that are slightly feared with little consensus about the response are social deviations, the acts the lecture says we want to deter.
- 1Note that the boundaries are porous: a campaign that made people fear environmental damage could move the act upward over time.
Key terms
- Social contract
- The idea, associated with Hobbes and Rousseau, that people give up some rights, including retaliation and punishment, to a collective authority in exchange for order and protection.
- Controlled vengeance
- The shift in which the state takes over the task of punishing wrongdoers from the people who were wronged, first visible in early written codes.
- Conduct norms
- Sellin's term for the standards of behaviour held by social and political groups, which are often unwritten and vary between and within societies.
- Consensus crimes
- In Hagan's pyramid, the most harmful and most feared acts, such as murder and robbery, about which the public broadly agrees and wants to punish.
- Backward pressure
- In Bernard and colleagues' account, the pressure a later stage with less capacity puts on earlier stages to close more cases instead of passing them on.
- Classical school
- The eighteenth-century approach associated with Beccaria and Bentham that grounded punishment in reason, proportion and public safety rather than vengeance.
- White-collar crime
- Sutherland's term for socially injurious and legally punishable conduct by businesses and professionals, often handled in civil rather than criminal courts.
Law, Politics and the Meaning of Crime FAQ
Why does a criminology unit start with the social contract?
Because every later topic depends on the state's claim to punish. The lecture traces that claim from people surrendering their right to retaliate, through early codes of controlled vengeance, to Beccaria's argument that punishment must protect public safety rather than avenge.
What is the difference between consensus crimes and conflict crimes?
Consensus crimes such as murder are feared by most people who agree they should be punished. Conflict crimes such as theft or drug use are also feared, but people disagree about the right response, so the lecture describes them as acts we want to prevent.
Is criminal justice really a system?
Bernard, Paoline and Pare argue that it is, in the sense of general systems theory, but an unusual one. Agencies process cases rather than people, each stage has less capacity than the last, and workers face pressure to close cases while avoiding blame if they reopen.
What did Sutherland add to the definition of crime?
He argued that white-collar conduct which is socially injurious and legally punishable should count as crime even when businesses are dealt with in civil courts, widening criminology beyond the offences of poor and powerless people.
What are Merton's five adaptations to strain?
Conformity accepts both cultural goals and legitimate means; innovation keeps the goals but uses illegitimate means; ritualism follows the means while abandoning the goals; retreatism rejects both; and rebellion replaces both with new goals and means. The lecture links innovation to the criminal justice system.
Assessment move
Build a one-page timeline from the social contract to Bentham, then a second page that compares the four definitions of crime side by side. Practise placing new examples on Hagan's pyramid out loud, naming the three dimensions each time.
Read the Bernard reading for its argument rather than its detail: you need to explain cases versus people, declining capacity and backward pressure, because later weeks use those ideas to explain police and court behaviour.
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