Crime, Punishment and Inequality

Dr Carlie Goldsmith

Aims of the workshop Introduce you to academic debates on social

inequality. Examine rates of income and wealth

inequality in Britain and comparatively. Examine evidence that shows how the size of

the gaps in income affects social life, and in particular the prevalence of social problems.

Explore why this issue is of interest to people who write and research on issues of crime and justice.

What is inequality?

‘disparities between individuals, groups and nations in access to resources, opportunities, assets and income’ (Ridge and Wright 2008 p4)

Income is only one form of inequality….there are many others…….

National Equality Panel 201096% of all employees earn less than 46,500 PA. Gap between bottom and top earners is very

large – e.g care worker £12,500 PA, CEO of bank upwards of £1.2 million PA (exc. Bonuses and other payments in kind e.g shares)

Wealth inequality larger than income inequality: richest 10% own 100x more wealth than poorest 10%

Median wealth for routine occupations £72,000, higher managerial £450,000

3.7 3.94.3 4.6 4.8

5.2 5.3 5.6 5.6 5.6 5.76.1 6.2

6.7 6.8 6.87.2

8.5

9.7

4.0

8.0

7.0

3.4

Income gapsHow many times richer are the richest fifth than the poorest fifth?

Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level www.equalitytrust.org.uk

Inequality...How much richer are the richest 20% in each country than the poorest 20%?

Who cares?

New developments in inequalityThe implications of those for the futureThe impact of inequality on society and quality of social relationsAre we happy to let income and wealth gaps grow bigger? What are the future consequences of this? Concentration of power and influecne.

The Spirit LevelProfessor Richard Wilkinson, Epidemiologist and Professor Kate Pickett, Epidemiologist, University of York

Interest in public health and the wider social determinants of health in rich societies.

Extensive record of academic publication on the impact of inequality on health and health outcomes.

The Methodology Secondary analysis of existing quantitative data sets. Such as? United Nations Human Development Report,

World Bank data, World Health Organisation, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation etc. etc.

Statistical analysis of the prevalence of factors that impact on health.

Statistical analysis of the prevalence of a range of other social problems/harms.

Combined with levels of income inequality within a society. Measurement used: 20.20 ratio

50 States of the United States and 23 industrialised nations

Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level

Index of: • Life expectancy• Math & Literacy

• Infant mortality• Homicides• Imprisonment• Teenage births • Trust• Obesity• Mental illness

– incl. drug & alcohol addiction

• Social mobility

www.equalitytrust.org.uk

Health and social problems are worse in more unequal countries

Ind

ex o

f h

ealt

h a

nd

so

cial

pro

ble

ms

Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level www.equalitytrust.org.uk

People in more unequal countries trust each other less

Social Harms

More dominance and subordination, superiority and

inferiority, snobbery and downward discrimination,

hierarchical and authoritarian values.

Greater income inequality

Increased social distances between income groups, less sense of common identityMore ‘them’ and ‘us’

Increased status competition, shift into more anti-social

values, emphasis on self interest and material success,

carelessness of others welfare, aggressive exploitation of society

for individual gain.

Others as rivals: poorer quality of social relations

1. Functionalist model: SI is essential part of society as long as recruitment is based on merit and rewards are fairly distributed. Meritocracy.

CONSERVATIVE CORPRATIST STATES e.g. Germany, France, Italy, Spain.

2. Libertarian model: social change a product of individual hard work, effort and motivation. Idleness is bad for society. Rewards are not based on notions of desert but freedom.

NEOLIBERAL STATES e.g. USA, UK, Australia, NZ, South Africa.

3. Egalitarian model: SIs not a reflection of effort but accumulated disadvantages. Equality should be goal of society and political efforts directed at achieving this.

SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC STATES e.g. Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland.

See Cavadino and Dignan (2006)

Question Why might criminologists be interested in

this?

The new punitiveness and the rise in inequality• Change in popular attitudes and

understandings of crime and the criminal justice system.

• Individuals have become more punitive and more likely to support ‘harsh’ criminal justice policies – particularly in countries where inequality has risen significantly.

• Crime a political issue.• Politicians and policy makers

more likely to respond to popular opinion about crime issues and seek to gain electoral advantage by ‘being tough’.

• This is distinctly different from the consensus on crime that existed between 1945-1979 (Loader, 2001)

Exclusion and Stigmatisation Social distance and

territorial stigmatisation (Wacquant, 1999)

Hyper mobility, immobility and territoriality (Kintrea, 2009)

Respect, disrespect and hierarchy

Social control of excluded populations. Not excluded from cultural norms of contemporary society, but opportunity to gain these. Consumption

Purpose and Scope of the CJS What is the purpose of punishment? Deter, rehabilitate, restore, punish, incapacitate (Ashworth, 2005)

What does this have to do with inequality?

US Incarceration Rates 1925-2006(per 100,000)

Mass imprisonmentGarland (2001 p1) defines mass imprisonment:

‘...a rate of imprisonment...that is markedly above the historical or comparative norm for societies of this type.....[imprisonment] ceases to be the incarceration of individual offenders and becomes the systematic imprisonment of whole groups of the population’.

Prison used as a mechanism to control economically redundant populations

Incapacitation and not punishment or rehabilitation.

Characteristics of the prison population: education, employment, mental health issues.

Prison regime: architecture of the penal estate, availability of rehabilitation programmes, use of segregation, engagement between the staff and prisoners.

Who owns punishment? Public bodies or private companies?

Scope of the CJS Not just interested in detecting and punishing

criminal acts. Pre-crime and anti-social behaviour managementIntolerance New Labour Crime and Disorder Act 1998Developed a range of enforcement tools and

tactics to manage….Problem youth, problem parents, problem

families, ‘broken society’?

But if it is broke, who broke it?

Treatment of offenders and former offenders OtheringRehabilitation Reintegration

Or Exclusion Control Ongoing punishment

Risk of being a victim of violent crime 2008/09

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

All Adults

Mixed Ethnicity

Single People

Unemployed

Full-Time Student

Visit nightclub more than once in lastmonth

Men aged 16-24

% Victims once or more

Series1

Source: Home Office. 2009. Crimes in England and Wales 2008-2009. London: HO

‘When people are made to feel worthless then there are more fights, more brawls, more scuffles, more bottles smashed and more knives brandished and more young men die. The lives of young men have polarised and this inequality has curtailed opportunities; hopelessness appears to have bred fear, violence and murder’ (Dorling et al,2005)

Follow Up Thomas Piketty slides http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/fr/lectures and lecture on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zytqTSh3oGwLoic Wacquant website http://loicwacquant.net/The new penology Feeley and Simon (1992) articlehttp://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1717&context=facpubs&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.co.uk%2Fscholar%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dfeeley%2Band%2Bsimon%26btnG%3D%26as_sdt%3D1%252C5%26as_sdtp%3D#search=%22feeley%20simon%22Downes and Hansen – the welfare state and punishment: a

comparative perspective http://cls.ioe.ac.uk/library-media%5Cdocuments%5CWelfare%20and%20Punishment%20in%20Comparative%20Context.pdf