This is the final part of a two-part series of articles. The first part was published on 28 February issue of The Daily Morning
Crime and conflict-related perspective
German thinker Karl Marx believed that the ruling class kept the other classes in a disadvantaged position and that the proletariat was always being exploited by the bourgeoisie. According to the Marxist view, social injustice and the uneven distribution of wealth give rise to crime and criminogenic conditions. Marx’s article on Capital Punishment published in the New York Daily Tribune in 1853 comments on the genesis of crime in society following economic causes.
Although the basic Marxist premise is that crime is a socio-economic phenomenon, the Soviet Union experienced deadly waves of crime from the 1917 October (Socialist) Revolution. Some of the violent acts were committed by various political factions like Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera’s group. The Soviet authorities believed that the elimination of private property in the means of production, the eradication of the exploitation of one person by another, and the resolution of social antagonisms led to the disappearance of the basic social roots of crime in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Despite their belief, crimes were prevailing in the Soviet Union, and like in Western societies, serial murders emerged under the socialist system (The serial murderer Andrei Chikatilo or the Red Ripper of Rostov had killed over 50 children and females). The strict censorship limited the publishing of comprehensive crime statistics in the Soviet Union.
Interactionism and crime
The sociological theoretical perspective of interactionism explains that crime emerges as a result of human interaction. Crime is a form of social interaction consisting of actions and reactions. Interactionism elucidates crime and how criminals act within society.
According to interactionism, everyone has different attitudes, values, cultures, and beliefs, and so do criminals. The interactionist Herbert Blumer in his 1933 publication ‘Movies, Delinquency, and Crime’ explains the media’s influence on criminal behaviour. The criminals, as Blumer views, are unable to establish empathy. He further says that in phenomenology (one of the subdivisions of symbolic interactionism), empathy plays a greater role. Empathy refers to the experience of another human body as another. While people often identify others with their physical bodies, this type of phenomenology requires that we focus on the subjectivity of the other, as well as our intersubjective engagement with them.
The non-empathic factor was apparent in many crimes. For example, people who committed crimes against humanity (Austrian-German politician Adolf Hitler, Cambodian politician Pol Pot, etc.) lacked empathy. The psychological profile of the serial murderer Charles Sobhraj alias Bikini Killer indicates that he had no violent impulses. Sobhraj had excellent communication skills and his social interaction was tightly connected with a process of communication. Sobhraj allegedly committed at least 12 murders including of a Canadian tourist. The psychological profile also indicates a lack of empathy.
Feminist perspectives and crime
According to the feminist perspective, male domination in society (patriarchy) and gender inequality cause an enormous disadvantage to females. The feminists argue that often, females become the victims of crime rather than the perpetrators. Females are subjected to crimes like rape, abuse, exploitation, etc., around the globe. As they point out on most occasions, female perpetrators of crime have no control over their situation and they are forced to commit these anti-social acts following the social injustices created by the male dominated society.
The Indian feminists give a solid example of Phoolan Devi or the Bandit Queen of India and how she became a criminal. Devi was forced to marry an elderly man at the age of 11 and she underwent mistreatment by her husband and his relatives. Following unbearable domestic abuse, she ran away from her husband. When she came back to her village, the son of the village headman tried to molest her. Although she was the victim, Devi was publicly humiliated by high-caste villagers and she was banished from her native village. When she returned to her village after a few months, the Police unjustly arrested her and a group of Policemen raped Devi. These mental and physical traumas led her to form a bandit group and she unleashed deadly violence committing murder and robberies in rural India.
The American society was shocked by the crimes committed by a female named Aileen Wuornos. Wuornos was born in 1956 in Michigan. Her father was a habitual child molester and felon and was imprisoned for rape and attempted murder and committed suicide while in prison. Soon after his death, Wuornos’s mother left her. She was raised by her grandparents who had no constant income. Wuornos had a tormented childhood and she entered the society as a misfit. At the age of 15, Wuornos ran away and became a petty criminal and a prostitute. While working as a sex worker, many times she was brutally raped and she sustained physical injuries. In later years, Wuornos killed seven males by shooting her victims multiple times and dumping their bodies in remote locations. Wuornos was arrested for murder and faced a trial. She was executed in Florida in 2002 by a lethal injection.
The stories of Devi of Indian society and Wuornos of North American society evidently show the validity of the arguments presented by feminists on crime.
The Canadian sociologist Dorothy E. Smith in her Standpoint theory suggests that the predominant culture in which all groups exist is not experienced in the same way by all persons or groups. The marginalised groups who live in the predominant culture must learn to be bicultural or to pass in the dominant culture to survive, even though, as V.P. DeFrancisco and C.H. Palczewski’s “Communicating gender diversity: A critical approach” observes, that perspective is not their own.
Postmodern perspective on crime
According to the postmodern perspective, social changes give rise to crime and there is no single theory to explain the genesis of crime. Postmodernists view that all truth is relative. Under these circumstances, individuals have lost faith in universal belief systems or ‘grand narratives’. Contemporary culture is characterised by the problematisation of objective truth.
Modern society is exemplified by consumerism and the influence of the media. To explain crime and criminal behaviour, postmodernists use critical theory, which is a social theory, oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole.
According to “Forgiveness and crimes against humanity: A dialogue between German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt and Algerian-French philosopher Jacques Derrida” by C. Perrone-Moisés, per Arendt, males are not capable of forgiving what they cannot punish, nor of punishing the unforgivable. On the other hand, per Perrone- Moisés, Derrida states that we can maintain a legal accusation even when we forgive, or inversely, we are able not to judge but we can forgive.
French philosopher Michel Foucault, in his alluring book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, examines the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the massive changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age. Several centuries ago, criminals were punished in public to discourage committing crimes. According to Foucault, the public spectacle of torture was a theatrical forum that served several intended and unintended purposes for society. Based on Foucault’s argument, reflecting the violence of the original crime onto the convict’s body for all to see remained as the main purpose.
In the modernist approach, crime is a multifactorial phenomenon and some postmodernists try to explain crime and criminal behaviour via the Chaos theory based on the common notion that murders and rapes are the manifestations of crime, but that in reality, they are the consequences of other social occurrences. The Chaos theory holds that it is virtually impossible to predict the outcome of any social phenomenon because social events are susceptible to change. In the postmodern condition, life is in fragments and people experience everyday life as an open space of moral, political, and personal dilemmas.
Conclusion
The concept of crime can vary from society to society. Sociological aspects of crime can be divided into broad categories in relation to social determinants. From the sociological perspective, crime and criminal behaviour are viewed from defiant standpoints. According to the functionalist perspective, society is interlinked with various systems and crimes make society dysfunctional. The conflict theorists believe that social exploitation and the unequal distribution of wealth trigger criminality in society. The sociological theoretical perspective of interactionism explains that crime emerges as a result of human interaction. The feminists argue that often females become victims of crime rather than perpetrators. The postmodern perspective explains that social changes give rise to crime and that there is no single theory to explain the genesis of crime.
(The writer is a medical doctor, an author, and an associate professor)
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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.