CRIMINOLOGY: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Also by Ezzat A. F attah

FROM CRIME POLICY TO VICTIM POLICY

THE PLIGHT OF CRIME VICTIMS IN MODERN SOCIETY

TOWARDS A CRITICAL VICTIMOLOGY

UNDERSTANDING CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION

Criminology: Past, Present and Future A Critical Overview

Ezzat A. Fattah School of Criminology Simon Fraser University British Columbia Canada

Foreword by Paul Rock

First published in Great Britain 1997 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

First published in the United States of America 1997 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference.Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fattah, Ezzat A., 1929-Criminology: past, present, and future: a critical overview I Ezzat A. Fattah ; foreword by Paul Rock. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. Criminology. 2. Crime. I. Title. HV6025.F36 1997 364-dc21

© Ezzat A. Fattah 1997 Foreword © Paul Rock 1997

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ISBN 978-0-333-68310-1 ISBN 978-1-349-25838-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-25838-3

ISBN 978-0-312-17399-9

ISBN 978-0-312-17399-9

To JENNY, my life partner and best friend

Contents Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Crime: Fact and Fiction, Rhetoric and Reality Why study crime? The rhetoric of crime Is crime increasing? Rising crime rates: myth or reality? The fascination of crime The sensationalization and dramatization of crime The glamorization of crime The politicization of crime The commercialization of crime

Part I Unresolved Conceptual and Metbodologicallssues

1 The Thorny Issue of DerIDing Crime What is crime? Legal definitions Political definitions Sociological defmitions Psychiatric and psychological definitions What conduct ought to be crirninalized?

2 The Relativity of Crime in Time and Space The criminal law: a retrospective look Is crime qualitatively different from tort? Is crime unique? Is victimization by crime more harmful than other

victimizations? The relativity of crime The elasticity of terrorism The cultural relativity of victimization The relative nature of abuse and neglect The concept of evolutive crimes

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1

3 3 5 8

11 12 13 19 20 23

27

29 29 31 34 35 36 37

44 44 45 46

52 53 57 59 61 63

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3 Criminology's Traditional and Persistent Bias The bias dermed Crimes by governments Crimes of the powerful Powerful criminals and criminals in power

4 The Formidable Challenge of Measuring Crime Sources of data on crime

Part n Criminals and Victims, Criminology and Victimology

5 The Criminal: Conventional and Uneonventional Views Who is the criminal? Differing views of the criminal

6 The Victim: Beyond Popular Stereotypes Why study the victim? Who are the victims of crime? Some victim types

7 Criminology and Victimology A hybrid science called criminology A promising discipline called victimology

Part m Criminology Past, Present and Future

Criminology past: The historical evolution of criminological thought

67 67 69 78 91

95 96

121

123 123 132

143 143 149 156

167 167 180

189

8 Early Speculative Explorations 192 Pre-Criminological thinking 192 Philosophical ruminations on crime, criminals and

criminal justice 193 Schools of early criminological thought: The Classical

and the Neo-Classical Schools 201

9 Empirical Investigations and Naturalistic Explanations '1AY1 Crime as a product of natural causes: ecological approaches 207 Schools of criminological thought: The Cartographic School 208 Crime as a product of individual pathology: Medical and

psychiatric approaches 213 Schools of criminological thought: The Italian Positivist School 214

Contents ix

10 Sociological, Sociocultural and Economic Explanations 231 Crime as a product of social and economic conditions 231 Schools of criminological thought: Sociological and ecnomical

approaches 231 Crime as a product of predispositions and environment 242 Schools of criminological thought: The School of

Lyon and the Austrian School 243

Criminology present: Unsuccessful endeavours, unfulfilled potential and promising trends 247

11 Recent Theoretical Developments 248 The eternal quest for the elusive causes of crime 248 Recent theoretical developments in criminology 258 Paradigm shifts in criminology 263 Some promising trends in criminological research 272

Criminology future: What does the future hold for criminology? 283

12 The Future of Criminology and the Criminology of the Future 284 The future of criminology 284 Criminology of the future 294

Bibliography 306 Subject Index 329 Name Index 336

Foreword Not all countries sustain a robust criminology. One supposes that there must be a rudimentary connection between the extent and character of a nation's criminology, on the one hand, and its wealth, traditions of independent inquiry, and public and political anxieties about risk, on the other. Barbara Wootton put one part of the matter succinctly. Social problems, she said, are what governments are prepared to spend money on. Criminology is success­fully practised in only a few places, and it is to be found in one prosperous, crime-ridden and university-rich country above all, the United States of America. Criminology is almost wholly an American discipline conceived for an American audience and focused on American problems, and that has its benefits and its costs. The most impressive American criminology is very impressive indeed, and it has moulded how people throughout the world have tried to make sense of crime and its problems. Merton's anomie theory, the University of Chicago sociology department's early work on social ecology and the subcultures of the city, and Lemert's and Becker's anti­theory of labelling have been great motors of thought. Yet all the world is not America; neither are all criminologists American; and what works in America may not work elsewhere.

It is one of the chief strengths of this book that it has been written by a Canadian criminologist with an unusually broad and eclectic understanding of the development of crime and criminology in Europe, Britain, Canada, the United States and elsewhere. Having graduated in law from the University of Cairo, Ezzat Fattah studied the social sciences which underpin criminology at the University of Vienna; he then took further degrees in criminology at the University of Montreal. He has subsequently taught criminology in the University of Montreal and Simon Fraser University. His career is a mirror of the range of his learning: this book is important not least because Fattah is cosmopolitan enough to be able to stand at a distance from many of the domain assumptions of an Americanized criminology. Part of the substance of the book's critical overview stems precisely from his capacity to give comparative perspective, depth and context to argument. It is no small thing to be able to write authoritatively about converging trends in the politics of crime in different countries, to bring the arguments of British feminists to bear on larger debates about crime and gender, or to unravel continuities in criminological positivism over three centuries.

A second, and equally important, strength is Fattah's own personal in­tellectual history as a man who has worked both as a criminologist and as a victimologist. Victimology remains a fledgling discipline struggling to come into its own; it has much to say, and, having been introduced to it at an early

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stage in Austria, Fattah has played a significant role in nursing its progress. Fattah is an insider, one who understands the promise and limitations of victimology, and he is well-placed to marry what are all too often kept apart, the study of crimes and criminals and the study of victims. With hindsight, it is remarkable that those two enterprises should ever have been severed, and Ezzat Fattah is to be praised for tying them together so profitably in this book.

The third strength, a consequence, perhaps, of the other two, is Fattah's blend of a thoroughgoing scepticism with a humanistic morality. Crime is not accepted blithely as wrongdoing simply because legislators say it is so. To the contrary. Fattah was a critic of Egyptian political institutions under Nasser. He has worked actively for Amnesty International, and this book bears the imprint of those politics. It is a scholarly grand tour that otTers a schematic, accessible and broad foundation for understanding the rudiments of a discipline. What it does not do is conceal intellectual difficulties and contradictions. It does not argue dogmatically and evangelically. Rather, it encourages an informed questioning of lay and professional ideas about crime, and that surely must be the only appropriate and responsible stance for an introductory textbook to take.

PAUL ROCK

Professor of Social Institutions London School of Economics

Preface

Every year dozens of books are published in the field of criminology. Some truly believe that there are too many criminology books on the market. So is there really a need for yet another book that examines the historical evolu­tion of the discipline, its present state and its possible future orientations? I dare to answer with a definite YES to this question. Most criminology books are quite similar to one another in that they devote a substantial part of their content to a review of causal explanations of crime. The same theories offering biological, psychological and sociological explanations are repeated over and over again, often with exactly the same criticisms that were made of the theories when they were first formulated. These identical reviews usually end with the same conclusion: that no theory, or a combination thereof, succeeds in adequately explaining crime. The constant repetition of the theories despite their proven inadequacies reflects criminology's long-stand­ing obsession with the etiology of crime. There is an obvious and pressing need therefore to critically scrutinize the conceptual issues and theoretical premises underlying causal research in criminology and, if they are found wanting, to offer an alternative approach to the study of crime.

In the late sixties, Hood and Sparks (1970:11) criticized the 'cavalier approach to the problem of understanding the basic data of criminality that has so often led criminologists astray'. They were surprised that a great deal of effort in criminology is expended on the critical analysis of a theory before someone remembers to check whether the behaviour the theory is explaining actually exists! Hood and Sparks offered sound, though largely unheeded, advice to criminologists. They maintained that it is necessary to study thoroughly the phenomenon of crime before embarking on its expla­nations. This simple, but basic, advice, made more than a quarter of a century ago, has had a profound impact on my thinking about crime and the way I taught introductory criminology at both the university and college levels. Hood and Sparks' advice is the reason why the first part of this book is entirely devoted to a discussion of conceptual and methodological issues such as the defmition of crime, the relativity of crime, the measurement of crime, and so forth.

So in what way does this book differ from other criminology texts and what distinct features, if any, does it have? Even a quick glance at the table of contents would show that this book is different from others. First, the book challenges popular views on crime, criminals and victims and exposes the concerted efforts by various interests in society to exploit the crime issue and the public's fear of crime. Second, the book also challenges many of the accepted 'truths' in criminology and questions some of the basic premises

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that underlie most positivist explanations of criminal behaviour. More im­portant is the book's attempt to make a strong case against the continuing, but futile, search for the causes of crime. The book also argues against the separation of victimology from criminology, a separation dictated by an artificial dichotomy between victims and victimizers. It calls for a holistic and dynamic approach where the offender, the victim and the situation constitute a trinity of a comprehensive explanation.

The book examines recent theoretical developments in criminology and the changing views of crime. It outlines recent paradigm shifts, such as the shift from determinism to rational choice, from idealism to realism, and from male-centred criminology to feminist criminology. It also highlights some encouraging trends in criminological research, in particular the current at­tempts to understand conformity and desistance from crime, the growing interest in understanding and explaining crime by analyzing its motives and it extols the recent shift from dispositional theories to situational theories.

Providing a critical overview of any discipline requires a huge amount of reading and research, a great deal of reflection and contemplation over many, many years. It would not be an exaggeration to say that certain parts of this book were written, revised, rewritten, and revised again up to a dozen times.

Offering a synthesis of research carried out over more than a century in different parts of the globe is a tedious and thankless endeavour. The enormity of the task means that the job can never be perfect or complete. The fmal product can never satisfy all those who read the book. This is particularly the case when the book's main objective is to challenge the dominant views of the discipline's mainstream. In fact, criminology books inevitably leave the reader with a sense of frustration because many of the fundamental questions in criminology remain without answers and many of the basic problems remain without solution. After all, criminologists, as Nils Christie once pointed out, are problem-raisers not problem-solvers. I have tried, on the basis of my life-long experience studying and teaching crimino­logy, to summarize and articulate what I believe are the major problems that criminology has had to deal with since its emergence as a scientific discipline in the second part of the 19th century and the avenues it has to pursue in the 21st century. I leave it to the reader to judge the extent to which this goal has been attained.

Ezzat A. Fattah Vancouver

Acknowledgements

Parts of Chapters 6 and 7 of this book are based on Ezzat A. Fattah's book Understanding Criminal Victimization (1991), copyright Prentice Hall Canada Inc., and reproduced by kind permission of the publisher.

Quotations from R. Matthews and J. Young, Confronting Crime (1986) are reproduced by kind permission of Sage Publications, London. Quotations from Thomas Graber, Everybody Does It (1994), are reproduced by kind permission of University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Quotations from Ezzat Fattah, Understanding Criminal Victimization (1991), are reproduced by kind permission of Prentice Hall Canada. Quotations from Norval Morris and Gordon Hawkins, The Honest Politician's Guide to Crime Control (1969), are reproduced by kind permission of University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. Quotations from Alex Comfort, Deliquency and Authority (1970), are reproduced by kind permission of David Higham Associates, London. Quotations from David Matza, Delinquency and Drift (1964), are reproduced by kind permission of the Macmillan Publishing Company, New York. Quotations from Steven Box, Power, Crime and Mystification (1983), are reproduced by kind permission of Tavistock Publications.

Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders, but if any have inadvertently been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

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