Capitalism, crime and punishment
By Sofie Buckland
To its bourgeois defenders the criminal justice system - courts, prisons, probation service - serves a number of purposes. First it is there to try and prevent crime. Prison incarceration, the longer the better for some, is meant to act as an example and a deterrent to other would-be criminals. Punishment is also meant to bring "justice" to the victims of crime. Or perhaps, as the tabloid headliner writers who call for the judicial murder of paedophiles would have it, punishment is also about exacting revenge. To others, more liberal in opinion perhaps, prison is a last resort, the final stop in a long line of measures aimed at preventing crime. But, for socialists, all of these explanations overlook a lot of the reality about why people commit crime, and the effectiveness and purpose of their punishment.
Over half the prison population of both genders have been found guilty of acquisitive crimes such as burglary or handling stolen goods. So economic factors - however you analyse these - are a crucial element of the picture. The fact is the vast majority of the prison population are working class men, with disproportionate representation of minority ethnic groups.
Violent offenders are thought to make up only a very small percentage of the current 75,000 prison population. Imprisoning people therefore has very little to do with guaranteeing the safety of society.
Nor does prison combat the root causes of crime - the incidence of which goes up year on year.
In fact there has been, in recent times, a lot of bourgeois ideological support for the notion that a certain class of people are programmed to be criminal, crime is inevitable and therefore there is little that can be done to tackle the roots of crime.
These arguments are racist and biologically determinist and have come from sociologists such as Charles Murray who wrote The Bell Curve back in 1994. His argument is that an "underclass" of mentally subnormal and pathologically criminal human beings exists. The average offender in prison comes from a working-class background because working-class people commit the most socially damaging crime, and further, this is due to genetic inferiority. Murray suggested, in an article for The Sunday Times, that Britain needs to reduce "incentives" for working class people to have children - such as child benefit. Otherwise this "underclass" will propagate their criminal genes and takie over Britain.
Even in the pages of less right-wing newspapers there has been consternation at the growing birth rate divide between the middle and working classes. The establishment may no longer look to "science" to provide the exact face size and shape of the "criminal" type, as in the Victorian era, but biological explanations for crime are still present under the guise of concern for social decline.
All of these explanations assume the concept of meritocracy. The poor stay poor because they haven't tried hard enough; criminal families have criminal children because they share genes. Poverty and deprivation have nothing to do with a poor environment, poor education and economic hardship. Of course, this is nonsense. A quick look at statistics on growing inequality and the steep decline in social mobility tells you this. A cursory knowledge of the vast differences in environmental experience between those brought up in middle class and working class areas tells you more.
Socialists should avoid falling into the trap of some Marxist sociologists who over-romanticise all crime as a blow against an unjust system. Working-class offenders often cause the most damage and fear of crime in working-class communities. On the other hand we oppose biologically determinist explanations of crime. If working class people commit more crime than the middle class, it has a lot to do with a relative lack of opportunity, alienation from social success, relative and absolute material deprivation.
But do working-class people really commit most crime? Though official crime statistics and prison population statistics suggest this is the case, these are better indicators of police procedure and priorities than of actual levels of crime committed. Everyone commits crime, from speeding to drug use, not wearing a seatbelt to fare-dodging, software piracy to copyright infringement. I doubt there is anyone reading this article who has not committed a crime of some sort in the last month.
Why don't crime statistics reflect the diversity of the population, instead of indicating the typical criminal as a young working-class male? Because the state can decide which crimes police ought to concentrate on, and which constitute the most serious offences. No prizes for guessing which comes with the higher penalty, putting the lives of those around you at risk by speeding... or shoplifting.
Street crime is consistently targeted by the police due to its high visibility. And the police "crack down" on their idea of a typical criminal (the working class, and often black, young man), leading to more arrests from this group, and a further reflection of them as the most criminal in statistics. It is a vicious circle of procedures following statistics following procedures.
So the evidence shows a criminal justice system biased against those at the bottom of the social heap.
Further evidence of that "injustice" comes from the rising amount of women in prison. Recent years have seen the prison population of women rise by 170% (the figure is 50% for men), despite the amount and seriousness of women's crime barely increasing. Women often bear the brunt of economic hardship. The two most common "female" crimes are shoplifting and handling stolen goods.
The real sign that prevention of crime is being ignored in favour of locking people up? The consequences for the children of these women. Women prisoners are much more likely to be the sole carer for children than men; and prison often results in the loss of a house and children being taken into care. Why are alternative methods of punishment, and dare we say rehabilitation, not found, so that children can stay with their mothers and in their own homes? Very few women prisoners pose a risk to society. And this injustice (to children) leads directly to crime: 25% of offenders were in care as children.
But, as I have explained, the criminal justice system is not about helping families and communities out of the cycle of crime. It is about extracting the maximum amount of suffering from those whose crimes happen to be the sort the state has decided are most punishment-worthy.
Both male and female offenders who would previously have been given community sentences are, under New Labour, being imprisoned; sentences are getting longer. There has been no corresponding evidence that incidence or seriousness of crime is growing. Rising from 42,000 to 75,000 between 1993 and 2005, Britain's rate of imprisonment outstrips Saudi Arabia, China and Myanmar (Burma). It is the highest rate in Western Europe.
Mass media focus on a few serious crimes, creating the impression of Britain in decline, with a rising tide of "yobs" and "hoodies" ready to happy-slap anyone who gets in their way. Politicians pander to the Daily Mail to win votes, acting "tough on crime" by competing to come up with the harshest punishments for those already excluded from mainstream society. Prison is now backed up by a raft of measures intended to tackle anti-social behaviour - which the Government intends to extend under its third term so-called "respect" agenda. People who break the terms of an anti-social behaviour order (which can be applied without due process) can end up in prison.
But the crackdown approach isn't working. Rates of re-offending are extremely high - an estimated 90% of shoplifters re-offend within two years of release. Most people do not go into prison as hardened criminals needing to be either contained or cured; they go into prison as people who have a great deal of stress, disappointment and difficulty in their lives - such as homelessness, unemployment, and, most importantly of all, a history of drug abuse. Prison often has the effect of exacerbating rather than relieving these issues.
The drug issue is particularly pertinent. It is estimated that 50% of acquisitive crime is carried out to fund drug habits. There are over 100,000 "problematic" users in the UK. The main victims of what is a epidemic are youth. Young people who live in the most ghettoised and run-down parts of Britain's, who have little hope of getting better than a very low paid job, who see image of other people "making it" and make money, somewhere else in their town, somewhere else in Britain, anywhere, but where they are.
Overcrowded prison systems are not providing anything like adequate rehab services for users, and many prisoners leave the system with worse habits than they came in with. The prison environment of random drug testing leads to heroin use, as it out of the body's system in around 72 hours, whereas cannabis can remain in the body for up to 28 days. Sending ex-offenders back to the streets with drug habits that cost hundreds of pounds a week to feed is not an effective strategy to reduce crime.
Prison doesn't work and time and again successive governments have been forced to face up to this. The proposed alternatives by this government look little better. Last year, Home Office minister Hazel Blears called for the wearing of American-style orange jumpsuits by young offenders on community service, the idea being that the highly visible and easily identifiable outfit would shame them out of committing further crimes. ASBOs as I have said are not going to be a replacement for prison. They are also not a good replacement for the more expensive social solutions to "anti-social behaviour" in young people, such as better facilities for kids and parents.
These policies are not an alternative to the idea that punishment, rather than improving lives, is the goal of the criminal justice system. Shaming young offenders doesn't reintegrate them into communities, or reduce unemployment or drug use. Slapping ASBOs on cheeky kids doesn't teach them "respect", it further alienates them from mainstream society. Neither of these schemes act as a deterrent to serious crime, when the crimes most commonly ending in imprisonment are committed not by rational economic agents trying to boost their personal wealth, who can be stopped when the costs outweigh the rewards, but by desperate drug addicts.
The high prison population is not a short-lived trend. Some have predicted that as schemes aimed at reducing social inequality and deprivation begin to have an effect the prison population will fall. But how serious is the government at reducing social inequality? Tax credits and other measures have been aimed a reducing the poverty of some working-class families. Some absolute poverty may have been alieveated. On the other hand inequality of wealth in society and relative poverty have grown under New Labour. All the evidence is that it is relative poverty that is key to the kind of social deprivation that leads to crime.
If Labour is serious about alternatives to prison, why is it building so many new prisons? Alternative methods of rehabilitation or rehabilitation at all are not high on the government's agenda. And it is a prison system that is becoming increasingly privatised. It is an overcrowded system which leads to increased mental illness and self-harm amongst prisoners.
Companies such as GSL, who run the Leeds Altcourse Prison, are profiting from a literally captive cheap labour source. In prisons there are no unions, no holidays, no minimum wage rates, no sick pay. Is it too much to say that this hugely exploitable workforce is an incentive behind the fixation on prison as "rehabilitation", instead of alternatives that might actually cut crime?
Is there a more explicitly capitalist motive hiding behind cutting prison education budgets, and claiming that compelling prisoners to work "empowers" them?
When Rye Hill prisoners can be paid as little as £5 per week and the company in charge, Summit Media, receive up to £50,000 for two weeks work, it is difficultto argue we do not have a prison-industrial complex, similar to that of the USA. Prison is no longer just a method of social control but a way of corralling a surplus population that will contribute little as consumers, but will help to create a profit.
Seen in light of this information, the media outcries make sense; fear is a great selling point for public support of incarceration. Most social services cut against the logic of capitalism; education, healthcare and social support in deprived areas do not generate profits. These services are crumbling whilst money is spent on prisons and policing. Repressing the working class and profiting from their enforced prison labour is far more efficient in capitalist terms than preventing social problems with better public services.
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One or two Minor Points
I agree with almost everything in the above article, and I think it should be read in conjunction with previous articles on what to do about anti-social behaviou etc. In fact it might be useful to collate all the various aspects of this debate into a coherent policy and strategy that could be argued for in the form of an action plan, and resolutions to unions, tenants associations, politcal organisations etc.
I have though just a couple of very minor points to raise. Firstly, the argument is raised that current policy does not work, that it does not deal with udnerlying causes and therefore people re-offend etc., children taken into care tend to themslves end up as offenders and so on. This is true, I think, but I don't think that the suggested reasons for this a) that the bourgeois state is more interested in crimes against property (theft, burgalry etc.) than crimes against the person (killing someone by speeding), or the later one, that capitalism benefits from effectivley slave labour in privately run prisons, are adequate - in respect of the last I think its actually wrong.
If we accept that current methods do not work then the reason these methods are adopted or continue to be employed by the state cannot be explained by the fact that the state is more concerned about property than people, or that it reflects its priorities in other ways. I have no doubt that both these assertions are correct - the state is more concerned about crimes against property than against the person (depending who the person is), and current policing and criminal justice systems reflect the priorities of the bourgeois state. But the state then has every incentive for trying to ensure that policing and the criminal justice system is effective in achieving its end of protecting private property.
It makes no sense therefore for the state to perpetuate systems which do not work to protect private property, and that in fact exacerbate the problem, by hardening criminals, exacerbating drug problems, send children into care and thereby increase the potential of them becoming a future generation of criminals threatening property. We have to look elsewhere for the reason that the state perpetuates systems which do not achieve its desired goals.
The other reason given that an icnreased prison population provides a large slave labour population that can be exploited by private prison companies, I think is just wrong. Keeping people in prison is a major cost for the capitalist state. This cost exists whether the prisons are run by the state directly or farmed out to private companies. It is true that the private companies running prisons, once they have been paid by the state for this task have every reason to want to exploit the labour-power now udner their control. But, fortunately, things have not got so bad that these private companies have the power to arrest and convict people in order to swell this labour force. The fact that the state still sends a lot of people to gaol cannot be explained by the private profit of these companies therefore. In fact, from the state's point of view the fewere people in gaol, and the less it has to pay out to keep peoplein gaol the better. Even given the extremely low pay this labour receives it is very unlikely that it is profitable to use it, given the costs of keeping someone in gaol. As Marx pointed out capitalism did away with slave labour for the simple reason that wage labour is far more efficient, productive and profitable.
"Most social services cut against the logic of capitalism; education, healthcare and social support in deprived areas do not generate profits. These services are crumbling whilst money is spent on prisons and policing. Repressing the working class and profiting from their enforced prison labour is far more efficient in capitalist terms than preventing social problems with better public services."
Again I think that this is wrong. Modern capitalism needs a fit, well educated, and motivated workforce. That is why it introduced statised healthcare and education in order to ensure it was provided at the least cost to individual employers. It is why there is pressure from large firms in the US now for a form of National Health Service. It is true that all these things constitute what Marx termed the Faux Frais of production, things which contribute no added value of themselves, but are necessary costs, but in the same category come things such as advertising, marketing and other selling costs.
Where that breaks down is where the demand for labour (or at least skilled labour) is low, where an adequate supply of labour is available without incurring these costs. The increased deskilling of labour that has occurred since the 1980's with the introduction of more sophisticated robotic production, not to mention the offshoring of skilled manufacturing work created a trend in that direction - for example the ending of apprenticeships, closure of Training Boards etc., but I think we are fortunately still a long way from the complete abandonment of the need for a fit, educated workforce that can be repalced by slave labour incarcerated in private prisons solely for that purpose.
In short I doubt that the last sentence is true. My guess is that a well educated, healthy working class, with good levels of social support that is employed in value adding production particularly high value adding production, is a far more rational and profitable course for capitalism to take, than a badly educated, unhealthy and demoralised workforce a sizeable minority of which is led into periodic criminal activity causing the state to incur unneccessary costs of policing and imprisonment etc. Certainly, that seems to be the experience of Nordic countries such as Norway in particular.
I would suggest that the problem is more simply the long standing failure of British capitalism to be able to take a long term view, and to always be focussed on short term solutions, even when those solutions work out more costly in the longer term. I raise that not as a helpful suggestion to British capitalism, but as an explanation of its actions.
Arthur Bough
Ideology
I think ideology may be an important factor influencing government policy. The government can only formulate policy and take action which fits in with neo-liberal/neo-conservative ideology, particularly in relation to ideas of personal responsibility and the atomised interpretation of society. 'Solutions' that resonate with these ideas will always dominate despite mountains of evidence that society will not really benefit from them. On the other hand, ideas from the left, the sort of ideas that look at society as a whole and lead to policies that really address the causes of crime such as deprivation will be resisted, rejected and ridiculed.
There is good reason for this. In my opinion the government cannot take actions that would produce evidence that would undermine its principle ideas. These ideas are precious because it is upon these that the whole house of cards is built. If the ideas are disproved or discredited then all that stems from them is undermined.
I think that is partly true
I think that is partly true, but only partly. For example, however much we might criticise Blair for his neo-liberal agenda, the fact is that many of the things his government has done can hardly be described as neo-liberal - for example the introduction of a minimum wage (however inadequate), the provision of large amounts of funding directed towards child poverty, massive sums spent on the NHS, and Education.
Those are not actions of a neo-liberal, they are the actions of a government that sees the need to create a highly skilled workfoce employed in high value added industries as the only ones on which countries like Britian can compete with low wage developing economies. What is neo-liberal in Blair's approach is the belief that this high tech capitalist economy is the solution to the problem (which it isn't), and that in order to produce this high tech, high value added economy it is necessary to give free reign to the market, and to maintain the current weakness of the labour movement in order both not to frighten off potential businesses, and to create the framework in which those businesses can make the kind of large profits required to get entrepreneurs to take the risks involved in new innovative enterprises.
I think the same is true with Crime. I think Blair probably does want to reduce crime and anti social behaviour, and would like to do it in the most cost efficient manner. He wants to do it because I think he does believe that it is a good thing in itself, he may be a bastard but I doubt he is the kind of bastard who wants ordinary people to suffer as a result of crime and anti social behaviour just for the hell of it. But I think he wants to reduce it for the reasons I gave above - it represents a large and unneccessary cost to capitalism. Some of the things that have been introduced such as community policing, the introduction of neighbourhood wardens etc. certainly suggest that, and I think we should welcome the proposal to give local communities more control over the way their neighbourhoods are policed.
But you are right in this the limitations of Blair's ideology - not just neo-liberal ideology, but even reformist social-democratic ideology, limits the extent to which these measures can be taken. For example, both I and Janine have pointed to the advantage of local communities policing themselves. Such a proposla could not be accepted by Blair or by most members of the Labour Party because they are inextricably tied to the idea that such things are the preserve of the forces of the bourgeois state. Even if they were to go along with this kind of idea, it would have to be in a compleetely neutered form - for example, any self-policing would have to be under the control of the police, people would have to be trained by the police like Special Constables etc.
The idea that people could organise themselves democratically and provide their own policing that directly met their needs would be unnacceptable for the simple reason that such independent, democratic working class action and organisation directly undermines not just the bourgeois state, establishing an alternative working class power, but it also undermines the whole raison d'etre of the need for representative reformist politicians, and at the same time it gives a model for workers to control other aspects of their lives, such as their workplace.
Arthur Bough
I'm not arguing with you beca
I'm not arguing with you because your final two paragraphs brilliantly illustrated what I was tring to say. However, I believe Blair's ideology is consistant with neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism in respect to to concept of individual responsibility and the atomised view of society. Of course there are areas where his ideology is inconsistant with pure neo-liberalism and is more closely related to social democratic values. The New Labour ideology is informed by Giddens' 'Third Way' esentially a hybrid of social democracy and neo-classical liberalism. One last point regarding the minimum wage, it has, arguably, been set at the level that actually benefits large capital who see it as some protection from the threat of competition on labour costs from smaller rivals. Furthermore, it has done little to reduce the numbers of 'working poor' although I doubt you were under any illusions regarding this.
I Think You Are Right
I think you are right. I think Blair is trapped between what he would like to do, and what can be done within the framework of his ideology. I don't know I agree entirely in relation to the minimum wage. I doubt on this level that the way Blair and New labour's poltics works that they conscioulsy sit down and devise policies that are designed to assist Big Capital in some kind of conspiratorial way. Rather I think they are led to such polices automatically by the way they think. If your vision is a society driven by high tech, high value added production with a highly educated, and therefore relatively highly paid workforce then a Minimum Wage makes sense. It works to the benefit of those industries that are high value added producers, and can pay higher wages.
The problem is there are not enough of those type of industries, and I doubt there ever could be. What then happens, and the same is true in the US is that an increasing gap opens up between highly educated and skilled workers in these limited number of occupations, which can compete on a global level, and the rest who are left in manufacturing jobs which cannot compete with low wage economies, or service sector jobs. Blair's Education, Education, Education policy and his desire to have 50% of the population go to University I think probably is driven by a desire that everyone should be better educated and be able to then have access to these higher paid jobs, but the effect will actually be if it was to be achieved to increase the supply of people for those jobs, and result in a fall in wages at those higher levels. In the US Alan Greenspan has on several occasions openly stated that that is what the US should do in order to reduce the gap between the incomes of the highly paid and ordinary workers (of course he doesn't mean the really highly paid, the CEO's of corporations, or the people who pay themselves huge amounts in dividends for doing nothing).
Arthur Bough