Vol. 9 No. 6 (June 1999) pp. 259-262.
Politics, Crime Control and Culture by Stuart A. Scheingold (editor). 1997. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Co. 580 Pages.
Reviewed by Paul E. Parker, Social Science Division, Truman State University.
This volume seeks to expand the criminology research and policy debate that editor Scheingold claims is Manichean, or dualistic. We can see this both within and across the major approaches to the central research area of criminologists, the causes and consequences of crime. The major approaches are, crudely, liberal/left and conservative/right. Dominating most of public policy discussion in America in the past 25 years have been the conservative views in James Q. Wilson’s 1975 Thinking About Crime, in which the social are threatened by the antisocial. In research circles -- the arguments have not really had a flag carrier in partisan politics, at least in the US -- the counter is the left/Marxist argument that holds there are those who (seek to) dominate and those who resist.
The arguments of both the right and the left have their limits, and Scheingold has been at the forefront trying to carve out a third approach, a more intellectually complete and empirically accurate approach, (pluralistic) conflict theory. Conflict theory was central to his The Politics of Law and Order (1984) (which can usefully be read as responding to Wilson) and, more recently, The Politics of Street CriME (1991). Running through these works and the present volume is the perspective that "there is a sharp distinction between successful [efficacious] policy and successful politics." (xxii).
But the dualistic views persist. In this edited volume, Scheingold continues to proffer his thesis, and now he has marshaled a supporting cast. This volume in The International Library of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Penology series reproduces 20 journal articles published over the past decade. The "primary purpose of this collection is to demonstrate that there are thorny, important and contested questions concerning crime and punishment that have tended to fall between the cracks of mainstream criminology." (xxii-xxiii). While the targeted audience is criminologists, it is clear that the volume has appeal to scholars interested in law and policy more generally.
Despite being part of an extensive international series published in England, the studies are largely by Americans, in American-dominated journals; there is diversity in selection, as 15 journals are represented (three each are reprinted from Social Justice and Crime and Delinquency, and two are reproduced from the Law and Society Review). The diversity is useful for seeing how different questions are asked, as well as challenging, as the reader must grapple with different research conventions that count for answers to those questions. The articles were published between 1989 and 1997, with eight published in 1994. In a quite useful maneuver, the series reproduces the articles’ original pagination and header (along with the text’s pagination; it may sound confusing, but it works very well; citations below are to the edited text’s 544 pages of text). A helpful name index and editor’s introduction bring the book to 580 pages.
The articles can be read for issue area (several are on the death penalty, several on race), but Scheingold has organized the articles into three broader, conceptual sections: "Politics, Policy and Punishment," "Public Opinion and Punishment," and "The Cultural Construction of Crime and Punishment." The seven articles in part I compellingly paint a picture of policy divorced from facts: "At the heart of the problem are data that reveal little or no correlation between punitive policy making and crime rates" (xii). Instead, the arguments more nearly portray politicians as serving their electoral and bureaucratic needs. For instance, Melossi argues that "rates of punishment vary with power elites’ perception of, and responses to, critical periods, without respect to changing official crime rates" (45), while the Schwendingers analyze the "criminogenic right wing polices of the Reagan-Bush era" (ch. 2). Tonry (ch 1) goes a step further in arguing that not only did the Reagan-Bush War on Drugs fail to eliminate drugs, while having a disproportionately harsh impact on racial minorities, but that both outcomes were foreseeable (16). In chapter 7, Michael King performs a similar analysis of Thatcher’s England, again arguing that "crime control is constructed in ways which promote and sustain the political objects of governments." (155)
By and large, these articles fit into the dualistic camp, being left-wing critiques of right-wing policies. In contrast to these broad sociological analyses, two other essays offer more nuanced case studies on the adoption of specific criminal code measures. Castellano and McGarrell develop a conflict model that links the structural foundations of a political system (economics; race; culture) with "public knowledge" about crime, and specific "triggering events" in order to explain the adoption of two punitive policies in New York state. And based on interviews with numerous participants shaping policy, Scheingold, Olson, and Pershing conclude that Washington State’s Victim Advocacy Law "was rooted in, and dependent on, an overheated and fear-ridden political climate" (124) as opposed to reflecting ostensible republican criminological goals of offender detection, shame, and reintegration. These two studies offer more promise for development of theory, but also make us aware of the inconvenient fact that there is a lot of work to be done to get to generalizable, predictive theories.
Six essays that present a complex view of public opinion and policy comprise Part II, "Public Opinion and Punishment." At a simple level, we are punitive, as research on "three strikes" legislation shows (Tyler and Boeckmann, ch 8). And not surprisingly, given the prominence of Wilson’s book, this punitiveness is associated more closely with one’s view of social (dis)order than with our concerns with crime. Supporting evidence is offered by Ellsworth and Cross in research on the death penalty. They note "Factual information (e.g., about deterrence and discrimination) is generally irrelevant to people’s attitudes, and they are aware that this is so." (209; emphasis added)
One of the virtues of the book is the complexity that emerges, challenging readers to think more deeply about criminology issues and how we study them. For instance, in chapter 10, Bowers, Vandiver and Dugan find that our attitudes toward the death penalty are better described as "acceptance" than "preference." Indeed, when given the choice between "death" and "life in prison without parole-restitution," in 7 of 8 states studied (including southern "death penalty states") wide majorities choose the latter. These authors offer two other findings that force us to think about what drives policy. First, they found greater support for the death penalty in the more criminally placid Nebraska than in New York. Secondly, legislators terribly misread citizen preferences, believing that we prefer death over other options offered. The conclusion: "public support for capital punishment is an illusion that has become a self-perpetuating political myth." (308). Or, as one is tempted to subtitle this book, "Facts, schmachts."
Race reenters the text in chapters 12 and 13. In one of the few articles using statistical tests, Cohn, Barkan and Halteman draw upon General Social Survey to demonstrate that while blacks and whites share in common a dissatisfaction with the harshness of the courts ("punitiveness"), the underlying reasons vary. Purportedly, for blacks this feeling is associated with a fear of crime, while for whites the greater correlate is prejudice. My qualification is due to the concern that the concept "prejudiced" is operationalized more for statistical convenience than theoretical soundness (344-45). The general point – that apparent consensus can usefully be probed further -- is still a valuable contribution: researchers who want policy to more carefully reflect reality had best understand reality.
In chapter 13, Sasson selects and interprets excerpts from "peer group" discussions among African Americans to illustrate and analyze conspiracy theories holding that (white) elites are at best indifferent in failing to address high crime in African American communities, and at worst malignant in intending these conditions. Sasson theorizes that conspiracy theories are attractive because the dualistic conceptions of crime that dominate our culture do not account for their experiences: to accept the conservative view, blacks must be more antisocial or criminal, and to accept the liberal view of blocked opportunities, the American dream of opportunity and hard work is a chimera. Further, "in contrast to the liberal and conservative accounts that dominate the public discourse, (conspiracy theories) resonate fully with African-American popular wisdom concerning the persistence of racism in the United States." (365) The careful reader will recall the racial divide over the guilt or innocence of O.J. Simpson.
Part III of the text is "The Cultural Construction of Crime and Punishment." The seven essays in this section address how the "knowledge" of crime is created, reproduced, and employed. For instance, Barak (ch 14) claims that "the crimes that dominate public consciousness and policy debates are not common crimes, but the rarest ones," (375) and that media coverage of sex crimes portraying a woman as either the virginal victim or the deserving vamp "reproduce relations of gender inequality." (379). Other studies demonstrate that while the culture created and reproduced in the press is undeniably mainstream, there are events that can help to broaden the voices in the conversation (Stone, ch 15), or to provide journalists opportunities to raise views challenging conventional wisdom (Lawrence, ch. 16). For the reformer the problem is that these opportunities are, by definition, episodic.
As a counter, Ericson argues that "The mass media ... are more diverse, pervasive, and influential than the ‘effects; and ‘dominant ideology’ research approaches" suggest, and so they are, he claims, "more open and plural than most researchers have allowed" (454). That conclusion seems more likely to be a slap at "most researchers" than strong defense of the press." Those who feel that the media are large commercial enterprises which must compete for advertising dollars might be less sanguine about their being "appreciably open terrain for struggles for justice." (454).
Chancer and Donovan (Ch 19) return us to a discussion of punitiveness. Is our punitiveness sadomasochistic as they argue? Beats me, but it doesn’t seem we need to agree in order for us to embrace their argument that conservatives will dominate criminal policy discussion so long as they are able to tap into pervasive feelings of punitiveness, which are cultivated by a larger sense of disorder and political economic upheaval, while leftists try to reason with people. Think Willie Horton. The irrationality of policy is reinforced in two works that explore the gaps between "common knowledge" and reality. In chapter 11, Farrington debunks the straw man notion that prisons are, or can be, a "total institution." Similarly, in chapter 20 Simon argues that rather than being a progressive and modern form of penology, prison boot camps owe their popularity to being largely punitive and cost saving measures. Separating this conclusion from the views I hear in the local bar are the supporting references to Dylan, Kubrick, and (Marlin) Fitzwater, part of the ‘look how much I know’ tone that seems requisite for the legal profession to establish via footnote.
Finally, the payoff essay is the global theory presented by Savelsberg, in an essay entitled "Knowledge, Domination, and Criminal Punishment." He challenges dominant theories of criminology and compares US and German experience with crime and incarceration rates to try to develop generalizable hypotheses that link punishment to mediating variables such as institutions and public opinion. So, for instance, we would expect America to be more punitive, given our
democratically influential public (via polls and elections), compared with Germany’s more top-down party-based politics and administrative penology. While one can certainly find areas of soft-underbelly to probe in this ambitious piece, its ambitiousness contributes to its payoff. The comparison across cultures via which hypotheses are derived should be an inspiration to those who take up Scheingold’s "invitation to join in a neglected interdisciplinary inquiry situated at the convergence of crime, culture, and policy."(xxiii)
This takes us back to the book’s goal of raising contested questions. It succeeds both in raising them, and in offering some models for how one might usefully approach the field. Short of Savelsberg’s broad theorizing, there is still plenty of room for the hard work of gathering evidence to adjudge different theories (Scheingold, et al.), or to probe behind common wisdom (Bowers, et al.). And then the challenge is how to tell truth to power so that it may be heard.
REFERENCES
Scheingold, Stuart. 1984. The Politics of Law and Order. New York: Longman.
Scheingold, Stuart. 1991. The Politics of Street Crime. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Wilson, James Q. 1975. Thinking About Crime. New York: Basic Books.