Social Control, Discipline and Regulation - Assignment Example

Social Control, Discipline and Regulation Social Control, Discipline and Regulation In the past several decades, crime control and prevention policy has gained significance in criminology. This is an aspect that has made crime, and especially the fear of it, a significant political subject. In the modern world, all interest in the prevention of crime has their focus on social relationships in efforts to manage incidents of crime. However, the social relations need not be familiar, personal or intimate. Managing crime is more direct, diffuse and private, and always incorporates the community into the process of criminal justice (Burns, 2006, p. 71). Divided into four parts, this paper will evaluate the concepts of crime and crime control; access Foucault’s contribution critically; analyse and assess the 1960’s anti-institutional consensus; and critically assess the alternative method of social control as proposed by Braithwaite. Evaluate critically the concepts of Crime and Crime Control Crime entails unlawful acts or omissions that are punishable by the laws of the concerned states in which the acts and omissions take place (Valier 2001, p. 425). The acts and omissions are not only harmful to specific individuals, but also the community and state as well. On the other hand, crime control involves the plans instituted to work towards removing criminal activities from the community. The emphasis of crime control is on the use of sanctions, seeking to deter the occurrence of crime by threatening harsher punishments such as the death penalty. Conservative measures of crime control include incarceration, boot camps and capital punishment. The concept of crime control puts emphasis on the protection of society and taking care of victims as the criminal justice system’s priority. However, a critical evaluation of crime control reveals that it condemns modern criminal justice systems and law enforcement (Clarke & Guerette, 2007, p. 230). This is because crime control focuses on the creation of comfortable environments at the expense of increasing legal consequences of crime, police manpower and efficient programs to care for victims. The model of crime control often conflicts with the legal system, with its proponents arguing that the legal system affects the way law enforcement perceives criminal justice, compromising its efficiency. As proposed by advocates of crime control, the police must be given more power and allow harsher punishments for perpetrators of crime, hence reducing the legal system’s power over criminal justice. This model may have had its effective era when stricter punishment meant less crime but, taking the United States as an example, the rate of incarceration has increased drastically from the early 1970s without any substantial reduction on the crime rate (Vanfraechem, 2010, p. 83). On the other hand, when examined from the perspective of justice, apprehending offenders based on assumptions made about the future or that the punishment meted to them will discourage like-minded and potential offenders from committing the crime is an injustice. The conflicting views extend to the argument that rehabilitating offenders is also unfair and unjust because only a selection of them will emerge eligible to and approachable by efforts and objectives of rehabilitation. Unlike crime control, the justice model advocates for crime consequences to be consistent implying that, for instance, all burglary convictions get the same sentence (Vanfraechem, 2010, p. 90). Assess critically the contribution of Foucault A prominent theory in sociological deliberations of crime and deviance has been social control, for almost the past century (Valier, 2001, p. 426). The most recent transformation of social control was in the wake of Foucault’s writings between 1979 and 1991, leading to renewed interests in governance and discipline apart from social control institutions such as prisons, courts and the police. A critical assessment of the contributions of Foucault cannot claim that they were instrumental, purposive or evolutionary; not even intentional. However, his contributions helped in identifying general trends taking place behind the scenes of the concerns of traditional criminal justice with crime control and punishment (Valier, 2001, p. 438). His contributions gave rise to recent developments such as such higher levels of incorporating civil remedies in crime control initiatives; more negotiation and mediation opportunities; and more input by victims. His key concerns were power, regulation, discipline, punishment and knowledge. His contribution puts emphasis on the connection between power and knowledge. He opines that knowledge, as a form of power, can also be used against individuals. Consequently, knowledge is a social construction intended to maintain the ruling class’ power. This contribution helps in understanding that discourses are formed from knowledge and the discourses, in turn, form the prevailing ideological thinking ways that govern peoples’ lives. Punishment, therefore, is a collection of disciplinary mechanisms (Burns 99). Here, discipline is a kind of power that may be assumed by specialised institutions such as penitentiaries that use it to reorganise or reinforce their internal power mechanisms. In this sense, Foucault’s contributions have been prominent in shaping how power is understood. This was more effective because it characteristically led away from the scrutiny of actors draw on power as a coercion tool. More significantly, his contributions have shifted focus from the discreet structures that the actors maneuver, to the concept of power being everywhere (Clarke & Guerette 251). That was the best way to put it across that power is disseminated and personified in knowledge and discourse. Foucault’s approach is unique in the way it radically departs from preceding modes of visualising power as is not easily integrated with them. This is because in his approach, power is not concentrated but, rather, diffused. Rather than being possessed, purely coercive and deployed by agents, power is embodied, discursive and constitutes agents. Analyse and assess the Anti-institutional Consensus of the 1960s In this context, institution is used in reference to any source of arbitrating activity between humans, implying that all public and private establishments and organisations are institutions due to their regulation of human behaviour aspects as third parties. This means that they are not subjected to cultural negotiation while playing their arbitrating roles (Burns, 2006, p. 69). Proponents of the consensus opined that psychiatric treatments were ultimately more injurious than beneficial to patients. They viewed psychiatry as a coercive tool of oppression that involved unequal power relationships between doctors and patients and highly subjective processes of diagnosis that left too much allowance for interpretations and opinions. The anti-institutional consensus originated from the objection to what was considered dangerous treatment including over-prescription of sedatives such as valium, as well as lobotomy and electroconvulsive therapy. These arguments can be supported by democratic psychiatry in challenging legal and medical justifications of controlling the mentally ill in segregation. According to David Cooper, a South African psychiatrist and Marxist revolutionary working in Britain, the political perspective of psychoanalysis and its patients needed to be challenged radically because it was synonymous to apartheid. This argument was supported by other psychiatrists who asserted that psychosis and schizophrenia were understandable diseases that resulted from injuring the inner self or a transformative phase that involved attempts to deal with a sick society. An analysis of their arguments suggests that they were rightfully against using psychiatry to compulsorily treat or detain what was viewed simply as a deviance from moral conduct or societal norms. Libertarians involved in the consensus institutionalisation undermined the moral responsibility and personal rights. It is agreeable that the role and power of psychiatry in the society must be stigmatising, as was often the case when total institutions were used to confine persons deemed to be insane (Burns, 2006, p. 93). Their arguments that society should consider some deviant actions as mental illness and label them as such can be seen to take a positive direction when they suggest that certain expectations should be placed on such deviant individual. What follows is that over time, they will change their behaviour unconsciously to fulfil the expectations without being stigmatised. Assess critically Braithwaites alternative method of social control Restorative justice involves encounters between victims and offenders, and various organisations have been known to emphasise the participation of the involved parties rather than the authorities. It not only serves as an alternative to trials in criminal proceedings, but is applicable to currently incarcerated offenders. It assists in rehabilitating prisoners and their eventual integration into their former societies. Braithwaite was critical of conservative measures of crime control because of their inefficient results. He opined that the administration of justice had to be reconsidered by seeking insight into informal measures of resolving a broad spectrum of conflict. He asserted that alternative social control approaches were more humane and effective in reducing crime and realising social justice, potentially alleviating the pain caused by crime and symptoms of social inequality which are structured. This leads to the concept of restorative justice, an approach focusing on the offenders’ and victims’ needs as well as the community involved rather than satisfying conceptual legalities or punishing offenders. Restorative justice considers the afflicted; what their needs are; whose obligations they are; what the causes are; whose stake it is in the situation; and the appropriate process to be involved. The significance of this approach is that apart from victims taking active roles in the process, offenders are also encouraged to own up their actions through community service returning stolen property of apologising. The approach, founded on the theory that crime is an offence against individuals and not the state, strives to help offenders in a bid to avoid recurrence of crime. With its objective of fostering dialogue between the offending and inflicted parties, restorative justice exhibits the highest offender accountability and victim satisfaction rates (Gaventa, 2003, p. 109). Therefore, Braithwaite’s alternative method is largely practical because it presents an opportunity to all parties affected by an injustice to convey their grievances and deliberate on how the harm can be repaired. This is in contrast to the punitive measures proposed by crime control, because Braithwaite believes that justice must serve a healing purpose since crime hurts. What follows is that dialogue between offenders and victims is the core of the process. Further, his reintegrative shaming theory represents an elaboration of a perception of crime control which recommends that the shift to restitutive law is a significant resource in managing crime. However, critics have opined that restorative justice, whose acceptance is founded more on humanistic sentiments and not the effectiveness of the restorative justice itself, culminates into the erosion of legal rights (Gaventa, 2003, p. 126) It has the capacity to trivialise crime and especially those involving the violence of men against women as it does not restore the offenders and victims but rather, fails to prevent recidivism. Restorative justice can be seen to lack legitimacy and grants police more power, thereby extending the already existing power imbalances. Opponents of restorative justice also view it as an incomplete model resolve the elementary, structural disparities that make some individuals more likely to offend than others, as professionals are not always included in the restorative conversations (Pecora 2002, p. 357). Then, some judicial systems do not recognise other restitution agreements other than monetary ones. For example, the offender and victim may agree that the victim would be paid £100 by the offender and also work on his farm for five days; in this case, only the £100 restitution would be recognised by the court. Further, restorative justice also fails to entirely address juvenile matters. Most jurisdictions put a limit on the amount juveniles can be made to pay, apart from labour laws also limiting the personal services that they can perform. This is further compounded by the fact that the parents of juveniles must approve the service tasks (Gaventa, 2003, p. 127). References Burns, Tom. Psychiatry: A very short introduction. London: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print. Clarke, R. & Guerette, R. “Risky facilities: Crime concentration in homogeneous sets of establishments and facilities.” Crime Prevention Studies, 21.3 (2007): 225-264. Print. Gaventa, John. Power after Lukes: A Review of the Literature, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2003. Print. Pecora, V. P. “The Culture of Surveillance.” Qualitative Sociology, 25.3 (2002): 345-358. Print. Valier, C. “Criminal Detection and the Weight of the Past: Critical Notes on Foucault, Subjectivity and Preventative Control.” Theoretical Criminology, 5.4 (2001): 425-443. Print. Vanfraechem, I. Restorative Justice Realities. Empirical Research in a European context. Leuven, Belgium: Eleven International Publishing, 2010. Print. Read More