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Chapter 8 Critical and Feminist Theories

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At the heart of the theories in this chapter is social stratification by class and power, the most “politicized” of all criminological theories. Sanyika Shakur, aka Kody Scott, came to embrace this critical and politicized view of society as he grew older and converted to Afrocentric Islam. Shakur was very much a member of the class Karl Marx called the lumpenproletariat, which is the very bottom of the class hierarchy. Many critical theorists would view Shakur’s criminality as justifiable rebellion against class and racial exploitation. Shakur wanted all the material rewards of American capitalism, but he perceived that the only way he could get them was through crime. Shakur was a total egoist, but many Marxists would excuse this as a trait nourished by capitalism, which they consider the “root cause” of crime. From his earliest days, he was on the fringes of a society he plainly disdained. He referred to whites as “Americans” to emphasize his distance from them and referred to black cops as “Negroes” to distinguish them from the “New African Man.” He called himself a “student of revolutionary science” and advocated a separate black nation in America.

Conflict concepts dominated Shakur’s life as he battled the Bloods and other Crip “sets” with interests at odds with his set. It is easy to imagine his violent acts as the outlet of a desperate man struggling against feelings of class and race inferiority. Perhaps he was able to achieve a sense of power only when he held the fate of another human in his hands. His fragile narcissism often exploded into violent fury whenever he felt himself being “dissed.” How much of Shakur’s behavior and the behavior of youth gangs in general is explained by the concepts of critical theories? Is violent conflict a justifiable response to class and race inequality in a democratic society, or are there more productive ways to resolve social issues?

Learning Objectives ❖ Understand the underlying assumptions of critical theories ❖ Note the difference between the way modern Marxists perceive crime and criminals versus the way Karl Marx himself did ❖ Be aware of the many ways that Marxist and conflict theorists view concepts such as crime, class, and conflict ❖ Describe how women’s liberation has been linked to female crime ❖ Know reasons why females differ from males so much in their risk for criminal behavior ❖ Explain the policy recommendations of critical and feminist theories

The Conflict Perspective of Society Although all sociological theories of crime contain elements of social conflict, consensus theories tend to judge alternative normative systems from the point of view of mainstream values, and they do not call for major restructuring of society. Theories presented in this chapter do just that and concentrate on power relationships as explanatory variables to the exclusion of almost everything else. They view criminal behavior, the law, and the penalties imposed for breaking the law as originating in the deep inequalities of power and resources in society. For conflict theorists, the law is not a neutral system of dispute settlement designed to protect everyone but rather the tool of the privileged who criminalize acts contrary to their interests.

Critical criminology: An umbrella term for a variety of theories united only by the assumption that conflict and power relations between various classes of people best characterize the nature of society.

Class struggle: Marxist concept stating that all history is the history of class struggles.

Bourgeoisie: In Marxism, the owners of the means of production.

Proletariat: The working class in Marxist theory.

Critical criminology is an umbrella term for a variety of theories united only by the assumption that conflict and power relations between various classes of people best characterize the nature of society. Adherents of these diverse theories are not of one mind; they quarrel among themselves, and they coin new names for their theories such as conflict, radical, critical, new criminology, radical human rights criminology, Marxist, neo-Marxist, and left realists. It is fair to say that there is far more agreement among them about what they are against (the status quo) than what they are for (Hill & Robertson, 2003). These theories differ in subtle philosophical and theoretical ways within the general framework of the conflict model of society.

You don’t have to be a radical or even a liberal to acknowledge that great inequalities of wealth and power exist in every society and that the wealthy classes have the upper hand in all things. History is full of examples; Plutarch wrote of the conflicts generated by disparity in wealth in Athens in 594 BC (Durrant & Durrant, 1968), and U.S. President John Adams (1778/1971) wrote that American society during the late 18th century was divided into “a small group of rich men and a great mass of poor engaged in a constant class struggle” (p. 221).

Karl Marx and Revolution Karl Marx is the father of critical criminology. The core of Marxism is the concept of class struggle: “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another” (Marx & Engels, 1948, p. 9). The oppressors during Marx’s time were the owners of the means of production (the bourgeoisie), and the oppressed were the workers (the proletariat). The bourgeoisie strive to keep the cost of labor at a minimum, and the proletariat strive to sell its labor at the highest possible price. These opposing goals are the major source of conflict in a capitalist society. The bourgeoisie enjoy the upper hand because capitalist societies have large armies of unemployed workers anxious to secure work at any price, thus driving down the cost of labor. According to Marx, these economic and social arrangements—the material conditions of people’s lives—determine what they will know, believe, and value and how they will behave.

Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels (1948) were disdainful of criminals, describing them in terms that would make a New York cop proud: “The dangerous class, the social scum, that rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society” (p. 22). These folks (described by Marx and Engels in a way that reminds us of the anelpis of cultural criminology) are from a third class in society—the lumpenproletariat (the “rag” proletariat). These folks would play no decisive role in the expected revolution. For Marx and Engels (1965), crime was simply the product of unjust and alienating social conditions—“the struggle of the isolated individual against the prevailing conditions” (p. 367). This became known as the primitive rebellion hypothesis, one of the best modern statements of which is Bohm’s (2001): “Crime in capitalist societies is often a rational response to the circumstances in which people find themselves” (p. 115).

Lumpenproletariat:Lumpenproletariat: The lowest (“criminal class”) class in Marxist theory.

Primitive rebellion hypothesis: Marxist idea that crime is simply the product of people rebelling against unjust and alienating social conditions.

Alienation: A condition that describes the estrangement or distancing of individuals from something, such as another person or from society in general.

Social sentiments: Willem Bonger’s proposition that individuals vary in their risk for crime because they vary in the innate social sentiments of altruism and egoism.

Another concept central to critical criminology is alienation (Smith & Bohm, 2008). Alienation describes the distancing of individuals from something. For Marx, most individuals in capitalist societies were alienated from work (which they believed should be creative and enjoyable), which led to alienation from themselves and from others. Work is central to Marx’s thought because he believed that while nonhuman animals instinctively act on the environment as given to satisfy their immediate needs, humans distinguish themselves from animals by consciously creating their environment instead of just submitting to it. Alienation is the result of this discord between one’s species being and one’s behavior (e.g., mindlessly noncreative work as opposed to creative work). Marx thought wage labor dehumanized humans by taking from them their creative advantage over other animals—robbing them of the species being (in effect, their human nature) and reducing them to the level of animals.

When individuals become alienated from themselves, they become alienated from others and from their society in general. Alienated individuals may then treat others as mere objects to be exploited and victimized as they themselves are supposedly exploited and victimized by the capitalist system. Since the great majority of wage workers do not experience their work as creative activity, they are all dehumanized ritualists (to borrow from Merton’s modes of adaptation). If we accept this notion, perhaps one can view criminals as heroic rebels struggling to rehumanize themselves, as some modern Marxist criminologists have done.

Willem Bonger: The First Marxist Criminologist Dutch criminologist Willem Bonger’s Criminality and Economic Conditions (1905/1969) is the first work devoted to a Marxist analysis of crime. For Bonger, the roots of crime lay in the exploitive and alienating conditions of capitalism, although some individuals are at greater risk for crime than others because people vary in their “innate social sentiments”—altruism (an active concern for the well-being of others) and its opposite, egoism (a concern only for one’s own selfish interests). Bonger believed that capitalism generates egoism and blunts altruism because it relies on competition for valuable resources, setting person against person and group against group, leaving the losers to their miserable fates. Thus all individuals in capitalist societies are infected by egoism, and thus all are prone to crime—the poor out of economic necessity, the rich and middle class from pure greed. Poverty was a major cause of crime for Bonger, particularly its effects on family structure (broken homes) and poor parental supervision of children. Because of his emphasis on family structure and what he saw as the moral deficits of the poor, Bonger has been criticized by other Marxists, but he firmly believed that only by transforming society from capitalism to socialism would it be possible to regain the altruistic sentiment and reduce crime.

Modern Marxist Criminology Contrary to Marx, modern Marxist criminologists tend to excuse criminals. William Chambliss (1976) views some criminal behavior to be “no more than the ‘rightful’ behavior of persons exploited by the extant economic relationships” (p. 6), and Ian Taylor (1999) sees the convict as “an additional victim of the routine operations of a capitalist system—a victim, that is of ‘processes of reproduction’ of social and racial inequality” (p. 151). David Greenberg (1981) even elevated Marx’s despised criminals to the status of revolutionary leaders: “Criminals, rather than the working class, might be the vanguard of the revolution” (p. 28). Marxist criminologists view the class struggle as the only source of all crime, accuse other criminologists of being parties to class oppression, and view “real” crime as violations of human rights such as racism, sexism, imperialism, and capitalism. Tony Platt even wrote that “it is not too far-fetched to characterize many criminologists as domestic war criminals” (in Siegel, 1986, p. 276).

During the 1980s, Marxists calling themselves left realists began to acknowledge predatory street crime as a real source of concern among the working class, whose members are the primary victims of it. Left realists understood that they have to translate their concern for the poor into practical realistic social policies. This theoretical shift signals a move away from the former singular emphasis on the political economy to embrace the interrelatedness of the offender, the victim, the community, and the state in the causes of crime. It also signals a return to a more orthodox Marxist view of criminals as people whose activities are against the interests of the working and ruling classes. Although unashamedly socialist in orientation, left realists have been criticized by more traditional Marxists who see their advocacy of solutions to the crime problem within the context of capitalism as a sellout (Bohm, 2001).

Left realists: Group of Marxist criminologists who want to work within the system to make things better for the working classes.

Minority power groups: Groups whose interests are sufficiently on the margins of mainstream society so that just about all their activities are criminalized.

Conflict Theory: Max Weber and Power and Conflict In common with Marx, Max Weber (1864–1920) saw societal relationships as best characterized by conflict. They differed on three key points,

however. First, while Marx saw cultural ideas as molded by its economic system, Weber saw a culture’s economic system molded by its ideas. Second, while Marx emphasized economic conflict between only two social classes, Weber saw conflict arising from multiple sources, with economic conflict often subordinate to other conflicts. Third, Marx envisioned the end of conflict with the destruction of capitalism, while Weber contended that capitalism will always exist regardless of the social, economic, or political nature of society and that it was functional because of its role in bringing disputes into the open for public debate.

Even though individuals and groups enjoying great wealth, prestige, and power have the resources necessary to impose their values on others with fewer resources, Weber viewed the various class divisions in society as normal, inevitable, and acceptable, as do many contemporary conflict theorists (Curran & Renzetti, 2001). As opposed to Marx’s concentration on two great classes (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat) based only on economic interests, Weber focused of three types of social groups that form and dissolve as their interests change—class, party, and status. A class group shares only common economic interests, and party refers to political groups. Status groups are the only truly social groups because members hold common values, live common lifestyles, and share a sense of belonging. For Weber the law is a resource by which the powerful are able to impose their will on others by criminalizing acts contrary to their class interests. Because of this, wrote Weber, “Criminality exists in all societies and is the result of the political struggle among different groups attempting to promote or enhance their life chances” (in Bartollas, 2005, p. 179).

George Vold produced a version of conflict theory that moved conflict away from an emphasis on value and normative conflicts (as in the Chicago ecological tradition) to include conflicts of interest. Vold saw social life as a continual struggle to maintain or improve the interests of one’s own group—workers against management, race against race, ecologists against land developers, and the young against adult authority— with new interest groups continually forming and disbanding as conflicts arise and are resolved. Conflicts between youth gangs and adult authorities were of particular concern to Vold, who saw gangs in conflict with the values and interests of just about every other interest group, including those of other gangs (e.g., as in the Crips vs. the Bloods). Gangs are examples of minority power groups or groups whose interests are sufficiently on the margins of mainstream society such that just about all their activities are criminalized. Minority power groups are excellent examples of Weber’s (1978) status groups in which status depends almost solely on adherence to a particular lifestyle: “Status honour is normally expressed by the fact that above all else a specific style of life is expected from all those who wish to belong to the circle” (p. 1028, emphasis in original). Vold’s theory concentrates entirely on the clash of individuals loyally upholding their differing group interests and is not concerned with crimes unrelated to group conflict.

Like Weber, Vold viewed conflict as normal and socially desirable. Conflict is a way of ensuring social change and, in the long run, a way of ensuring social stability. A society that stifles conflict in the name of order stagnates and has no mechanisms for change short of revolution. Since social change is inevitable, it is preferable that it occur peacefully and incrementally (evolutionary) rather than violently (revolutionary). Even 19th-century archconservative British philosopher Edmund Burke saw that conflict is functional in this regard, writing that “a state without the means of some change is without means of its conservation” (in Walsh & Hemmens, 2000, p. 214).

Conflict criminology differs from Marxist criminology in that it concentrates on the processes of value conflict and lawmaking rather than on the social structural elements underlying those things. It is also relatively silent about how the powerful got to be powerful and makes no value judgments about crime (is it the activities of “social scum” or of “revolutionaries”?). Conflict theorists simply analyze the power relationships underlying the act of criminalization.

Because Marxist and conflict theories are frequently confused with one another, Table 8.1 summarizes the differences between them on key concepts.

Other Critical Criminologies Other critical theories/perspectives that deserve brief mentioning are peacemaking criminology, convict criminology, and green criminology. They focus on different concerns from one another, but they all share a radical view of society and the criminal justice system as it exists and want to change things.

Peacemaking Criminology Perhaps because of the implosion of socialist societies around the world, Lilly, Cullen, and Ball (2011) see many strands of conflict theory “metamorph[izing] in the form of peacemaking criminology” (p. 193). Peacemaking criminology is a fairly recent addition to the growing number of theories in criminology and has drawn a number of former Marxists into its fold. It is situated squarely in the postmodernist tradition (a tradition that rejects the notion that the scientific view is better than any other view and disparages the claim that any method of understanding can be objective). Peacemaking criminologists reject the “modernist” view aimed at understanding, explaining, predicting, and controlling crime and appeal for a diversity of views in which none is disparaged and all are legitimized. They reject the notion that the scientific view is any better than any other view and that we can ever “know” something objectively. For them, “criminology’s search for causes of crime is bankrupt because even the question is framed by androcentric, sexist, classist, and racist definitions of crime, criminality, and cause” (Pollock, 1999, p. 146). In its peacemaking endeavors, it relies heavily on “appreciative relativism,” a position that holds all points of view, including those of criminals, as relative and worthy of appreciation. It is a compassionate and spiritual criminology that has much of its

philosophical roots in humanistic religion.

Peacemaking criminology: Theory based on the postmodernist tradition that rejects the notion that the scientific view is better than any other view and believes that any method of understanding can be objective.

Restorative justice: A system of mediation and conflict resolution oriented toward justice by repairing the harm caused by the crime using a face-to-face confrontation between victim and perpetrator.

Peacemaking criminology’s basic philosophy is similar to the 1960s hippie adage “Make love, not war” without the sexual overtones. It shudders at the current “war on crime” metaphor and wants to substitute “peace on crime.” The idea of making peace on crime is perhaps best captured by Kay Harris (1991) in writing that we “need to reject the idea that those who cause injury or harm to others should suffer severance of the common bonds of respect and concern that binds members of a community. We should relinquish the notion that it is acceptable to try to ‘get rid of’ another person whether through execution, banishment, or caging away people about whom we do not care” (p. 93). While recognizing that many criminals should be incarcerated, peacemaking criminologists aver that an overemphasis on punishing criminals escalates violence. Richard Quinney has called the American criminal justice system the moral equivalent of war and notes that war naturally invites resistance by those it is waged against. He further adds that when society resists criminal victimization, it “must be in compassion and love, not in terms of the violence that is being resisted” (in Vold, Bernard, & Snipes, 1998, p. 274).

In place of imprisoning offenders, peacemaking criminologists advocate restorative justice, which is basically a system of mediation and conflict resolution. Restorative justice is primarily oriented toward repairing the harm caused by crime and typically involves face-to-face confrontations between victim and perpetrator to arrive at a mutually agreeable solution to “restore” the situation to what it was before the crime (Champion, 2005). Restorative justice has been applauded because it humanizes justice by bringing victim and offender together to try to correct the wrong done, usually in the form of written apologies and payment of restitution. Although developed for juveniles and primarily confined to them, restorative justice has also been applied to nonviolent adult offenders in a number of countries as well as the United States. The belief behind restorative justice is that, to the extent that both victim and victimizer come to see that justice is attained when a violation of one person by another is made right by the violator, the violator will have taken a step toward reformation and the community will be a safer place in which to live.

Convict Criminology Convict criminology is the work of a small cadre of professors who have done time in prison. This group of criminologists is highly partisan and activist and makes no claims of value neutrality. Their agenda is much like that of other critical criminologists who study prisons. They decry America’s mass incarceration and agitate for improved prison conditions. Their claim to uniqueness is that having served time in prison gives them a better perspective on crime, prisons, and prison conditions than criminologists who study those things from their offices. This is much the same argument that ex-police officers and probation/parole officers who are criminologists engage: “I’ve been there, done that, and so I know more about policing/corrections than those who haven’t.” Personal experience can certainly sensitize and illuminate, but it can also bias and distort (we say this as ex-practitioners ourselves, Walsh in law enforcement and corrections and Jorgensen as a crime scene analyst).

Convict criminology is not a theory in the formal sense of containing a series of propositions from which hypotheses can be deduced and empirically tested. It is best described as an insider perspective on incarceration that has an agenda. Convict criminologists recognize this, and Stephen Richards (2013) has tried to develop a formal theory. However, the propositions he offers as possible hypotheses already have well- known answers such as “the longer people are imprisoned, the more likely they are to return,” and “the higher level of security inmates are assigned to in prison, the more likely they are to return.” Both of these propositions are accounted for by the seriousness and frequency of prior offending rather than the length of imprisonment or security level. The primary method of study of convict criminologists is ethnography, which is a method used by anthropologists to study “alien” cultures. That is, they interview prisoners and ex-prisoners with the idea of understanding the prison experience “from the horse’s mouth.” Convict criminologists’ seemingly sole concern is prisons and the prison experience; they are not at all concerned with why people commit crime or how to prevent it, which is the subject matter of criminology. Perhaps convict criminologists are better described as prison scholars/activists rather than criminologists.

Green Criminology Green criminology is an extension of radical criminology that concerns itself with the study of and crimes and other harms against the environment such as global warming, pollution, and deforestation and against nonhuman animals such as cruelty, illegal poaching, and the destruction of natural habitats. It also studies environmental law and policy, the study of corporate crimes against the environment such as illegal dumping of waste, and environmental justice (Lynch, 2016; Potter, 2010). It is thus much like the study of white-collar crime but with a special emphasis on crimes against the ecosystem (an ecosystem is an interrelated and interdependent community of living things [e.g., animals, plants] and nonliving things [e.g., soil, bodies of water] working together to sustain a habitable planet). It is more of a social movement than a theory because, in common with convict criminology, Lynch and Stretsky (2003) note that “a green theoretical perspective is more of a guideline than a set of axioms or rules [and lacks] rigid theoretical structure” (p. 231). Yet there could be few topics more important than environmental justice, and working toward that aim transcends criminology.

True to its roots in Marxism and radical feminism, both capitalism and patriarchy are seen as the roots of “green” crime. Lynch and Stretsky (2003) write, “The red–green movement relates economic oppression to environmental degradation. In this way, capitalism exploits working

class labor and environments” (p. 224). And ecofeminist Barbara Epstein (1993) writes, “Patriarchy must be replaced with egalitarian forms of social organization in which men and women have equal power, and by a vision of social ecology wherein the natural environment is treated with respect insofar as it should be sustained rather than manipulated and destroyed” (p. 145). A “green” crime is defined by Lynch and Stretsky (2003) thusly: “From an environmental justice (EJ) perspective a green crime is an act that (1) may or may not violate existing rules and environmental regulations; (2) has identifiable environmental damage outcomes; and (3) originated in human action” (p. 227). As with other radical perspectives, its preferred method of research is case studies of particular events rather than attempting to uncover generalized principles (except for placing all blame at the feet of capitalism and/or patriarchy) such as the BP (British Petroleum) oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the most costly manmade disaster in American history (Walsh & Hemmens, 2011).

Photo 8.1 The friendly presence of police at a large ethnic festival demonstrates the peacekeeping approach to crime prevention.

Cecil Greek

Evaluation of Critical Theories It is often said that Marxist theory has very little that is unique to add to criminology theory: “When Marxist theorists offer explanations of crime that go beyond simply attributing the causes of all crime to capitalism, they rely on concepts taken from the same ‘traditional’ criminological theories of which they have been so critical” (Akers, 1994, p. 167). Like cultural/anarchic criminologists, with whom they share their anticapitalist views, Marxists tend to ignore empirical studies, preferring historical, descriptive, and illustrative research. The tendency to romanticize criminals as revolutionaries has long been a major criticism of Marxist criminologists, although because of the influence of left realists they are less likely to do this today.

Can Marxists claim support for their argument that capitalism causes crime and socialism “cures” it? It may be true that capitalist countries in general have higher crime rates than socialist countries, but the question is whether the Marxist interpretation is correct. Lower crime rates in socialist societies may have more to do with repressive law enforcement than with any altruistic qualities supposedly intrinsic to socialism.

Marxist criminology also seems to assume that the conditions prevailing during Marx’s time still exist today in advanced capitalist societies. People from all over the world have risked life and limb to get into capitalist countries because those countries are where human rights are most respected and human needs are most readily accessible. Left realism realizes this and is more the reform-minded “practical” wing of Marxism than a theory of crime that has anything special to offer criminology. Indeed, “working within the system” has produced numerous changes in American society that used to be considered socialist such as those mentioned under the policy implications of institutional anomie theory in Chapter 6.

Conflict theory is challenging and refreshing because its efforts to identify power relationships in society have applications that go beyond criminology. But there are problems with it as a theory of criminal behavior. It has even been said that “conflict theory does not attempt to explain crime; it simply identifies social conflict as a basic fact of life and a source of discriminatory treatment” (Adler, Mueller, & Laufer, 2001, p. 223). Thus, and despite their differences, both Marxist and conflict criminologists draw a fairly straight line between capitalism and conflict, respectively, and criminal behavior. With the exception of Bonger and his social sentiments, theorists from these two camps rarely attempt to examine specific mechanisms that may intervene between their favored concept and crime.

According to Ronald Akers (1997), peacemaking criminologists “take the extreme position that denies crime as such really exists. Crime exists only because it is a ‘discursive production,’ that is, a product not only of the interaction of offenders, control agents, criminologists, or other people, but also simply by their talking about it…. This implies that there is no such thing as crime as an objective behavioral reality to be explained.” He goes on to ask, “Does this mean that criminal behavior would not exist if we did not talk about it?” (pp. 176–177). This may be somewhat overstated, but one does often get the impression from reading peacemaking literature that crime is simply an invention. A similar approach is that of using arbitrary mala prohibita crimes to make a point about all crimes. For instance, Chambliss correctly argued that the vagrancy laws in 12th-century England following the Black Death plague, which devastated the labor force and deprived landowners of cheap labor, were passed to curtail the mobility of laborers for the benefit of the ruling classes (the landowners). Having done this, he employed the classic “bait and switch” tactic by claiming that “what is true of the vagrancy laws is also true of the criminal law in general” (in Nettler, 1984, p. 197).

Lanier and Henry (1998) point out that “postmodernism has been sharply criticized by mainstream criminologists … as (1) difficult to understand, not the least because of its language; (2) nihilistic and relativistic, having no standards to judge anything as good or bad; and (3) impractical and even dangerous to disempowered groups” (p. 285). Peacemaking criminology urges us to make peace on crime, but what does this actually mean? As a number of commentators have pointed out, “being nice” is not enough to stop others from hurting us. It is undoubtedly true that the reduction of human suffering and achieving a truly just world would reduce crime, as advocates of this position contend, but advocates offer us no notion of how this can be achieved beyond counseling that we should appreciate criminals’ points of view and not be so punitive.

Convict criminology has been scathingly criticized by Lilly, Cullen, and Ball (2015). They assert that the writings of convict criminologists have rarely been placed in major criminology journals, that their writing is “below the standard that would survive a rigorous peer review,” and what they write “relies heavily on metaphorical/emotional language rather than traditional positivist or scientific language” and is “plagued by broad generalizations and bombast” (p. 244). Frank Cullen notes that convict criminologists avoid examining crime causation because career criminals tend to have low self-control and a low IQ, and he asks, “Now what convict criminologist is going to say people are in prison because they have low self-control and lower IQ scores?” (in St. John, 2003). However, there is value in its ethnographic data on the prison experience from the convict’s point of view.

It is difficult to criticize green criminology with its emphasis on protecting the ecosystem. One problem with it is that it appears to be simply applying a radical “green” perspective to the kinds of harms studied by scholars in other disciplines. Another problem is its reduction of all green crime to the twin evils of capitalism and patriarchy. This may be true of radical leftist orthodoxy, but it is overly simplistic and ignores the many nuances of environmental protection that scholars in other areas point out, especially economic nuances. As Walsh and Hemmens (2011) put it, “When the economy is buoyant, unemployment is low, and energy prices are low, everyone sympathizes with the greens, but when the opposite situations obtain, environmental concerns tend to be sacrificed to the needs of the economy” (p. 190).

Policy and Prevention: Implications of Critical Theories The policy implications of Marxist theory are straightforward—substitute socialism for capitalism and crime will be reduced. This position was straightforwardly expressed by Quinney (1974): “Only with the collapse of capitalist society and the creation of a new society, based on socialist principles, will there be a solution to the crime problem” (p. 16). Most Marxists today realize that this is unrealistic, a fact underlined for them by the collapse of socialist states across Eastern Europe. They also realize that emphasis on a single cause of crime (the class struggle in a capitalist society) and romanticizing criminals is equally unrealistic. Rather than throw out their entire ideological agenda, left realists now temper their views while still maintaining their critical stance toward the “system.” Policy recommendations made by left realists have many things in common with those made by ecological, anomie, and routine activities theorists. Community activities, neighborhood watches, community policing, dispute resolution centers, and target hardening are among the policies suggested.

Because crime is viewed as the result of conflict between interest groups with power and wealth differences, and since conflict theorists view conflict and the existence of social classes as normal, it is difficult to recommend policies specifically derived from conflict theory. We might

logically conclude from this view of class and conflict that if these things are normal and perhaps beneficial, so is crime in some sense. If we want to reduce crime, we should equalize the distribution of power, wealth, and status, thus reducing the ability of any one group to dictate what is criminalized. Generally speaking, conflict theorists favor programs such as minimum wage laws, sharply progressive taxation, a government-controlled comprehensive health care system, paid maternal leave, and a national policy of family support as a way of reducing crime (Currie, 1989).

Feminist Criminology

Concepts and Concerns of Feminist Criminology Feminist criminology sits firmly in the critical/conflict camp of criminology. Feminists see women as oppressed both by gender inequality (their social position in a sexist culture) and by class inequality (their economic position in a capitalist society). Just as there is a wide variety of views within critical criminology as a whole, there is a wide variety of feminist positions on crime and other things. Some feminists view the answer to women’s oppression as the overthrow of the two-headed monster, capitalism and patriarchy, while others simply seek reform. In the meantime, they all want to interpret female crime from a feminist perspective.

The core concept of most feminist theorizing is patriarchy. Patriarchy literally means “rule of the father” and is used to describe any social system that is male dominated at all levels from the family to the highest reaches of government and is supported by the belief of male superiority. A patriarchal society is one in which “masculine” traits such as competitiveness, aggressiveness, autonomy, and individualism are valued, and “feminine” traits such as intimacy, connection, cooperation, and nurturance, while appreciated, are downplayed (Grana, 2002). Sociologist Joan Huber (2008) views the origins of patriarchy in the different reproductive roles of the sexes, with our ancestral mothers caught in a continuous cycle of gestation and lactation that has barred women from public life, first by virtue of their reproductive role and later by customs and laws that justified their exclusion. Huber maintains that to understand gender differences in almost any behavior, we must understand their evolutionary logic.

Patriarchy: Any social system that is male dominated at all levels from the family to the highest reaches of government and supported by the belief of male superiority.

Feminist criminologists wrestle with two major concerns, the first being “Do traditional male-centered theories of crime apply to women?” This is known as the generalizability problem. The generalizability problem has been defined as “the quest to find theories that account equally for male and female offending” (Irwin & Chesney-Lind, 2008, p. 839). Many feminist criminologists have concluded that male- centered theories have limited applicability to females because they focus on male frustration in their efforts to obtain success goals (e.g., status, resources) and ignore female relationship goals (e.g., marriage, family) (Leonard, 1995). Although Broidy and Agnew’s (1997) discussion of gender differences in the experiencing of negative emotions in Chapter 6 is an effort to generate a general theory, some feminist scholars believe that no feminist-specific general theory is possible and that they must be content to focus on crime-specific “mini-theories” (Daly & Chesney-Lind, 2002). An example is Meda Chesney-Lind’s (1995) “criminalizing girls’ survival” mini-theory in which she describes a sequence of events related to efforts of parents and social control agents to closely supervise girls and notes that girls are more likely than boys to be reported for status offenses. She also notes that girls are more likely to be sexually abused than boys, that their assailants are more likely to be family members, and that a likely response is for girls to run away from home. When girls run away from such homes, they are returned by paternalistic juvenile authorities who feel it is their duty to “protect” them, which reinforces the girls’ feeling of “nobody cares” and strengthens their resolve not to get caught again. When a girl is on the streets, she has to do something to survive: steal money, food, or clothing; use and sell drugs; and/or engage in prostitution, which may then become lifetime patterns of behavior. Chesney-Lind’s point is that girls’ victimization and their response to it are shaped by their status in a patriarchal society where males dominate the family and define their daughters as property. Thus, patriarchy combines with paternalism to force girls to live “lives of escaped convicts.”

Photo 8.2 Girls who run away from home often find themselves on the streets, where they are preyed on and often forced into prostitution, shoplifting, and drug trafficking.

© iStockphoto.com/ozgurdonmaz

Generalizability problem: An issue in feminist criminology asking if traditional theories based on male offender samples apply to women offenders.

Others wonder why a special feminist theory is needed since most offenders tend to be found in the same places as their male counterparts, that is, among single-parent families located in poor socially disorganized neighborhoods. Male and female crime rates increase or decrease together across different nations and communities, indicating that females are responsive to the same environmental conditions as males (Campbell, 2009). This was recognized more than three-quarters of a century ago in Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck’s (1934) Five Hundred Delinquent Women. So demographically, at least, theories that address these factors generalize to females.

Gender ratio problem: An issue in feminist criminology asking why always and everywhere females commit far less crime than males.

Masculinization hypothesis: Freda Adler’s idea that as females increasingly adopt male roles they will increasingly masculinize their attitudes and behavior and become as crime-prone as men.

Emancipation hypothesis: Rita Simon’s view that increased participation in the workforce affords women greater opportunities to commit job-related crime without undergoing “masculinization.”

Individual-level correlates of male offending such as low self-control, low IQ, and attention deficit with hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are also correlated with female offending (Moffitt, Caspi, Rutter, & Silva, 2001), and again this is something the Gluecks pointed out in 1934. As Bennett, Farrington, and Huesmann (2005) put it, “Males and females are not raised apart and exposed to an entirely different set of developmental conditions” (p. 280). Males and females may be affected to different degrees by the same risk factors, but criminogenic risk factors are still risk factors for both genders (Steffensmeier & Haynie, 2000). Given this evidence, Daly and Chesney-Lind (2002) ask, “Why do similar processes produce a distinctive, gender-based [male] structure to crime and delinquency?” (p. 270). Daly and Chesney-Lind’s question leads us to the gender ratio problem.

The gender ratio problem is this: “What explains the universal fact that women are far less likely than men to involve themselves in criminal activity?” (Daly & Chesney-Lind, 2002, pp. 269–270). Eileen Leonard (1995) contends that the fact of huge gender differences in criminal behavior is not in dispute by feminists or anyone else: “Women have had lower rates of crime in all nations, in all communities within nations, for all age groups, for all periods in recorded history, and for practically all crimes” (p. 55, emphasis in original). Why this is so has been called the “single most important fact that criminology theories must be able to explain” (Bernard, Snipes, & Gerould, 2010, p. 299). Figure 8.1 shows percentages of males and females arrested for the eight Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) index crimes in 2014 (FBI, 2015). There are about nine males for every one female arrested for murder and robbery, but there are fewer than two males for every one female arrested for larceny–theft. The more violent the offense, the more males dominate in its commission.

Figure 8.1 Percentages of Male and Female Arrests for FBI Part I Crimes in 2014

Source: FBI, 2015

Women’s Liberation and Crime Two early attempts to answer the gender ratio problem question were Freda Adler’s (1975) masculinization hypothesis and Rita Simon’s (1975) emancipation hypothesis, both of which looked at the effect of the women’s liberation movement on female offending. Adler’s (1975) point was that the adoption of male roles would result in female attitudes and behavior becoming “masculinized” and eventually crime rates matching those of males: “In the same way that women are demanding equal opportunity in fields of legitimate endeavor, a similar number of determined women are forcing their way into the world of major crimes” (p. 13). She went on to opine that “increasing numbers of women are using guns, knives, and wits to establish themselves as full human beings, as capable of violent aggression as any man” (p. 15). Adler’s view was not well received by many feminists, who did not share her opinion of how women might establish their humanity and who saw it as providing ammunition for those who opposed women’s liberation (“We don’t want our women committing crimes or becoming masculinized!”).

Simon’s (1975) emancipation hypothesis claimed that increased participation in the workforce afforded women greater opportunities to commit job-related crimes such as “fraud, embezzlement, larceny and forgery” (p. 2) and denied Adler’s notion that to engage in crime women would have to become more masculine. Women are quite capable of committing crimes when the opportunity presents itself without first undergoing masculinization. Simon believed that while women’s emancipation would generate an increase in nonviolent crime, it would simultaneously reduce women’s violent crime by reducing the frustrations she believed women had when stuck in traditional housewife roles. Neither hypothesis proved useful in explaining the gender crime ratio because male/female arrest rates have not varied by more than 5 percentage points over the past 40 years (Campbell, 2009).

Another interpretation linking women’s liberation to female crime is the economic marginalization hypothesis. This perspective argues that both Adler and Simon neglected to pay sufficient attention to patriarchy and the extent to which males control female labor and sexuality. Research has suggested that much of female crime is related to economic need and that women’s poverty and crime rates have risen together (Hunnicutt & Broidy, 2004). According to this hypothesis, both the increasing crime and poverty rates are indirectly related to the women’s liberation movement. Specifically, the women’s liberation movement has generated efforts by women to free themselves from the power of men, but by doing so women have freed men from their traditional roles as providers. The decline in male respect for women has led to a large increase in out-of-wedlock births and divorce. These things have led to female-headed households and the “feminization of poverty,” which motivates women to engage in economically related crimes such as prostitution, drug sales, and shoplifting (Reckdenwald & Parker, 2008).

Economic marginalization hypothesis: Argues that much of female crime is related to economic need.

Power-control theory: A feminist theory that views gender differences in criminal and delinquent behavior to be a function of power differentials in the family.

Power-Control Theory Despite doubts that a general feminist theory of criminal behavior is possible, there have been some attempts to formulate one, including John Hagan’s power-control theory. Power-control theory views gender differences in antisocial behavior as a function of power differentials in the family and states that these arise from the positions these spouses occupy in the workforce. Where fathers are the sole breadwinners and mothers are housewives and/or have menial jobs, a patriarchal family structure results, especially if the father is in a position of authority at work. The patriarchal family is one in which the workplace experiences are reproduced and is said to be “unbalanced” in favor of the father. Patriarchal families are viewed as granting greater freedom to boys to prepare them for traditional male roles while daughters are socialized to be feminine, conforming, and domesticated.

Theory in Action: Revolutionary Marxism, Gender Fluidity, and Patty Hearst On the evening on February 4, 1974, a 19-year-old college student named Patricia (Patty) Hearst and her fiancé, Steven Weed, were enjoying a quiet evening at home in Berkeley, California, when a group of armed men and women burst into their apartment, beat up Weed, threw Patty in the trunk of a car, and drove off. Hearst’s kidnapping stunned the nation and made front-page national news for months.

Her kidnappers were a radical leftist group of anti-American and anticapitalist terrorists who called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). The SLA was led by a prison escapee named Donald DeFreeze, who liked to be called by his “war name”—General Field Marshal Cinque. The stated goal of the SLA was to incite a guerrilla war against the U.S. government and destroy the “capitalist state.” The SLA ranks included blacks and whites of both sexes from various walks of life united by their extremist views and fanned by the anti-Vietnam War sentiment rife at the time. Hearst was from an extremely wealthy and powerful family; her grandfather was newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, the epitome of everything the SLA hated. Shortly after her disappearance, the SLA began releasing audiotapes demanding millions of dollars in food donations and the release of their imprisoned members in exchange for her release. During this time, the SLA apparently began abusing and brainwashing Patty, hoping to turn this “capitalist” heiress into a poster child for the revolution. It seemed to have worked because the SLA began releasing statements by Patty indicating that she had renounced her former life and embraced the group’s revolutionary agenda, taking the revolutionary name “Tania.” The famous picture of her posed in front of the SLA banner wielding an automatic rifle shown in Photo 8.3 was taken at the time of her “conversion.”

Ten weeks after her abduction, Patty was captured on surveillance cameras taking part in the armed robbery of a San Francisco bank. A few weeks after the robbery, six members of the SLA, including DeFreeze, died in a fire following a massive shootout with the police in Los Angeles. Patty was not present at the house, and she and her surviving captors (or “comrades”—depending on which version of her story one believes) disappeared. The FBI captured her in San Francisco on September 18, 1975, and charged her with bank robbery and other crimes. She was defended by famous attorney F. Lee Bailey, who claimed Patty had been tortured, raped, and brainwashed into becoming a part of the SLA, but the jury found her guilty, and she was sentenced to 7 years in prison. President Carter commuted her sentence after she had served 2 years, and she was later pardoned by President Clinton.

Was Patty a victim, a survivor, or a willing convert to a radical left-wing ideology that turned her into a criminal? She certainly did embrace the SLA ideology; on her arrest, she offered reporters a defiant clenched-fist salute and told the booking officer at the jail that her occupation was “urban guerilla.” The issue is how free a “free choice” can be after brainwashing, and she was only 19 at the time of her kidnapping. She would later say that she joined the SLA because she was afraid of the group and that she ran from the FBI because she was afraid of that agency also.

Photo 8.3 This poster issued by the Symbionese Liberation Army shows Patricia Hearst, as “Tania,” holding a machine gun.

Bettmann/Getty Images

Many left-wingers believed she was a rational person who defied her bourgeois class expectations, shed her false consciousness, and logically arrived at the “right” political ideology after being exposed to it. Since capitalism is evil, it did not bother them that Patty had violated it by robbing banks and planting bombs. For their part, feminists loved how Patty demonstrated the fluidity of gender by transforming herself from a “respectable” debutant engaged to be married into a gangster’s moll. She may have been Adler’s model (see above) for her statement that “increasing numbers of women are using guns, knives, and wits to establish themselves as full human beings, as capable of violent aggression as any man.”

Whatever the case may be, the Patty Hearst story starkly illustrates the theories in this chapter. Her story unfolded at a time when many Americans were embracing the ideas put forward by any system of thought critical of American society and at a time when feminist theory was new and refreshing. Her story also illustrates the most potent and important social, economic, and political divide of the 20th century, between those who believe in a free market system (capitalism) and those who prefer a government-run command economy (socialism).

Discussion Questions

1. Check out the Patty Hearst story online through any Internet search engine or in the sources listed after the Discussion Questions. Do you think she was a spoiled rich girl out for kicks who freely joined the SLA, or did she do what she had to in order to survive?

2. Patty subsequently married and has two grown children. What, if anything, does that say to you about Patty’s “transformation” into a gangster? 3. Look up the phrase Stockholm syndrome and explain how that may apply to Patty.

Sources: Scott, 2012; Webster, 1990

The egalitarian family develops in the absence of large differences between the work roles of parents and where the responsibility for child rearing is shared. Power relations in such families are said to be “balanced,” and parents socialize male and female children similarly. Similarity of treatment will lead to sons and daughters developing similar traits, attitudes, and behaviors, which implies that girls from such families will increase their delinquent involvement. Hagan (1989) claims that while there will be large gender differences in delinquency among children from patriarchal families, egalitarian families will show smaller gender differences. According to Siegel (1992), it is not only middle-class girls who will increase their offending: “Power-control theory, then, implies that middle-class youth of both sexes will have higher crime rates than their lower-class peers” (p. 270).

Structured Action Theory: “Doing Gender” Central to James Messerschmidt’s structured action theory is the concept of hegemonic masculinity, the cultural ideal of masculinity that men are expected to live up to. Hegemonic masculinity is “defined through work in the paid-labor market, the subordination of women, heterosexism, and the driven uncontrollable sexuality of men” (Messerschmidt, 1993, p. 82). Although it is about living up to masculine ideals

and distancing the masculine self from femininity, hegemonic masculinity is also a way to maintain patriarchy (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).

Structured action theory: A feminist theory formulated by James Messerschmidt that focuses on how individuals “do gender.”

Hegemonic masculinity: Concept in structured action theory positing the cultural ideal of masculinity men are expected to live up to; i.e., “work in the paid-labor market, the subordination of women, heterosexism, and the driven uncontrollable sexuality of men.”

For Messerschmidt, gender is something males and females demonstrate and accomplish rather than something they automatically are by virtue of biological sex. Doing gender is an ongoing dynamic process by which males express their masculinity to audiences of both sexes to be socially validated. This expression can take many forms according to culture and social context, which jointly inform males of the appropriate norms of masculine behavior. To project a positive masculine image to the world, a man must learn the relevant cultural definitions of masculinity. Traditional middle-class ways of doing masculinity (proving one’s manhood) include being successful in a career, having and providing for a family, being a good protector, and projecting an aura of quiet dominance as well as physical and mental strength. When males cannot or will not strive to accomplish legitimate modes of doing gender, they develop alternative modes to accomplish the same result such as engaging in crime (Merton’s innovation mode of adaptation). In low-income cultures this often involves violent confrontations over status issues because taking matters into one’s own hands is seen as the only way to obtain “juice” (masculine status) on the street. Violent and criminal behavior can thus be used as a resource for accomplishing masculinity—for “doing gender.”

Messerschmidt also theorizes about “doing femininity” among gang girls and women engaging in “bad girl femininity.” Although violence is defined culturally as masculine behavior, Messerschmidt (2002) asserts that if females engage in it, they are “not attempting increasingly to be masculine, but, rather, were engaging in physical violence authentically as girls and as a legitimate aspect of their femininity” (p. 465). Gang females do not consider themselves as masculine, then, but rather consider themselves as “bad.” Gang girls are emphatic about their feminine identity and are “very fussy over gender display (clothes, hair, makeup) and, thus, for the most part display themselves as feminine in ‘culturally approved’ ways” (p. 464).

Messerschmidt wants to show that because gender is fluid and context specific, there is no incompatibility between “acting bad” and femininity. Girls and women fight to defend friends, the “hood,” and “their men” from the poaching efforts of other females. He also wants to emphasize that the construction of a “bad ass” image is not a concern for gang females as it is for gang males and that it is very much subordinate to constructing a feminine image. When females fight, they are contextually “doing masculinity” just as males contextually “do femininity” when “comforting and nurturing a fellow gang member” (Messerschmidt, 2002, p. 473).

Both Hagan’s and Messerschmidt’s theories place sole reliance on socialization and gender roles to explain differences in male–female offending. Others attempt to explain it by saying that the sexes differ in exposure to delinquent peers, that males are more influenced by peers than females, and that females have greater inhibitory morality than males (Mears, Ploeger, & Warr, 1998). Cullen and Agnew (2011) aver that statements such as these amount to nothing more than saying boys will be boys and girls will be girls because they beg the questions of why males are more exposed to and more influenced by delinquent peers than females and why females have a stronger sense of morality than males. A standard answer to these questions is that girls are more closely supervised than boys, but controlling for supervision level results in the same gender gap in offending (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990), and a meta-analysis of 172 studies found a nonsignificant tendency for girls to be less strictly supervised than boys (Lytton & Romney, 1991).

Explanations From Evolutionary Biology and Neurobiology Bernard and colleagues (2010) note that feminists such as Joan Huber and Anne Campbell have “argued that the natural reproductive differences between the sexes [ultimately] underlie male–female differences” (p. 290). These feminists note with Dianna Fishbein (1992) that “cross cultural studies do not support the prominent role of structural and cultural influences of gender-specific crime rates as the type and extent of male versus female crime remains consistent across cultures” (p. 100). The basic argument is that because the size of the gender gap varies across time and space and yet still remains constantly wide at all times and in all places, biological factors must play a major part (Bennett et al., 2005; Campbell, 2009). If only social factors accounted for gender differences, there should be a set of cultural conditions under which crime rates would be equal for both sexes (or even higher for females), but no such conditions have ever been found (Bernard et al., 2010). Feminists who include biological thinking in their theories assert that sex differences in dominance and aggression are seen in all human cultures from the earliest days of life and are observed in all primate and most mammalian species, and no one would evoke socialization to explain sex differences in these instances (Campbell, 2006; Hopcroft, 2009).

Research Snippet: Female Employment in a Macho World Employment within the criminal justice system is highly skewed toward males. This is especially true within policing. Women make up nearly half of the workforce but only a small portion of criminal justice system employees. Again, this is especially true for law enforcement. Yu (2015) examined both qualitative and quantitative data from 168 women in federal law enforcement to discover possible reasons for this vocational disparity. The study found a few common barriers experienced by women who work in law enforcement. The most common barrier discovered was pervasive negative attitudes toward women by male co-workers. Policing is a male-dominated and hyper-masculine institution. Femininity is typically shunned, and female officers are coaxed to adopt a more macho persona. Another common barrier was the lack of high-ranking female role models. Policing is dominated by men; however, more and more women are joining police departments nationwide. The female presence in law enforcement has been increasing sharply over that past few decades, and research suggests that women can make good cops.

Yu, H. H. (2015). An examination of women in federal law enforcement: An exploratory analysis of the challenges they face in the work environment. Feminist Criminology, 10, 259–278.

Neuroscientists have long known that chemistry organizes the brain in male or female directions while we are still in our mothers’ wombs (Amateau & McCarthy, 2004), and it does so in such a way that males become more vulnerable to the various traits associated with antisocial behavior (Ellis, 2003). Doreen Kimura (1992) tells us that males and females come into this world with “differently wired brains,” and these differences “make it almost impossible to evaluate the effects of experience independent of physiological predisposition” (p. 119). Sarah Bennett and her colleagues (2005) agree and explain the pathways from sex-differentiated brain organization to antisocial behavior:

Males and females vary on a number of perceptual and cognitive information-processing domains that are difficult to ascribe to sex- role socialization…. The human brain is either masculinized or feminized structurally and chemically before birth. Genetics and the biological environment in utero [in the womb] provide the foundation of gender differences in early brain morphology, physiology, chemistry, and nervous system development. It would be surprising if these differences did not contribute to gender differences in cognitive abilities, temperament, and ultimately normal or antisocial behavior. (p. 273)

According to many theorists, the major explanation for gender difference in crime is differences in fear and empathy (females higher on both), traits underlain by testosterone and oxytocin (the “cuddle chemical”). Males have significantly more testosterone, and females have significantly more oxytocin (Hermans, Putman, & van Honk, 2006). Higher testosterone equals less fear, and higher oxytocin equals greater empathy (Campbell, 2008; MacDonald & MacDonald, 2010). Shelly Taylor (2006), among others, has shown how these hormones work against each other and that their levels are ultimately linked to sex-differentiated evolutionary selection for nurturing behavior. No one claims these substances are major risk (testosterone) or protective (oxytocin) factors for or against committing criminal acts, only that they are major factors underlying gender differences in the propensity to commit such acts.

Anne Campbell’s Staying-Alive Hypothesis Why do “differently wired brains” and different hormone levels between the sexes exist in the first place? No such differences arise without an evolutionary reason behind them. Biologists note that sex differences in aggression and dominance seeking are related to parental investment (time and resources devoted to parental care), not biological sex per se. It is parental investment that provokes evolutionary pressures for the selection of the mechanisms that underlie these behaviors. In some bird and fish species, males contribute greater parental investment (e.g., incubating the eggs, feeding the young) and females take more risks, are more promiscuous and aggressive in courtship, have higher testosterone levels, and engage in violent competition for mates (Barash & Lipton, 2001). In these species, sex-related characteristics are the opposite of those found in species where females assume all or most of the burden of parenting (the vast majority of species).

Campbell (1999), who describes herself as a liberal evolutionary feminist, has attempted to account for the gender ratio problem using the logic of evolutionary theory in her staying-alive hypothesis. Her work has been characterized as “perhaps the best attempt to account for gender differences in criminality” (Roach & Pease, 2013, p. 66). Campbell’s hypothesis is based on the traits of nurturing and fear coupled with male status concerns. Campbell argues that because the obligatory parental investment of females is greater than that of males, and because of the infant’s greater dependence on the mother, a mother’s presence is more critical to offspring survival than a father’s presence. She notes that offspring survival is more critical to female reproductive success (the passing of one’s genes to subsequent generations—the ultimate “goal” of all life forms) than to male reproductive success. Because of the limits placed on female reproductive success by long periods of gestation and lactation, females have more investment tied up in children they already have than males, whose reproductive success is limited only by access

to willing females. You are reminded that men and women are adapted to seek sexual pleasure, not reproductive success per se. Reproduction was simply a more common outcome of sexual activity during precontraceptive times.

Critical Thinking Critical and feminist theories of crime typically are not given a seat at the table of mainstream criminology. Instead, these theories hang around the periphery of criminological theorizing. They are invoked here and there, but much more attention is given to other theories discussed in this textbook. Recall the discussion in Chapter 1 on how to think about theory and what makes a theory good. Are critical and feminist theories of crime good theories? Do they meet the criteria of a good theory? Are they falsifiable? Are the theoretical constructs in these theories measurable? Should critical and feminist theories be given a seat at the table of mainstream criminology, or do they deserve their spot on the sidelines? Justify your response.

Staying-alive hypothesis: Campbell’s thesis that staying alive is more crucial to a mother’s reproductive success than to a father’s and that greater fear in females is a result.

Campbell argues that because offspring survival is so enormously important to females’ reproductive success, females have evolved a propensity to avoid engaging in behaviors that pose survival risks. The practice of keeping nursing children in close proximity in ancestral environments posed an elevated risk of injuring the children as well as the mothers if the mothers placed themselves in risky situations. Thus it became adaptive for females to experience many different situations as fearful. There are no sex differences in fearfulness unless a situation contains a significant risk of physical injury, and it is this fear that accounts for the greater tendency of females to avoid or remove themselves from potentially violent situations and to employ low-risk strategies in competition and dispute resolution relative to males. Average differences in fear levels are strong and consistently found cross-culturally regardless of how fear is measured (Brebner, 2003; Campbell, 2009). Females do engage in competition with one another for resources and mates, of course, but it is rarely violent competition. Most of it is decidedly low-key, low-risk, and chronic as opposed to high-key, high-risk, and acute male competition.

Campbell’s theory also focuses on gender differences in status striving. Campbell shows that when females engage in crime, they almost always do so for instrumental reasons and their crimes rarely involve risk of physical injury. There is no evidence, for instance, that female robbers crave the additional payoffs of dominance that male robbers do or seek reputations as “hard-asses.” Campbell (1999) notes that while women do aggress and steal, “they rarely do both at the same time because the equation of resources and status reflects a particularly masculine logic” (p. 210).

Evaluation of Feminist Theories In common with critical theorists, feminist theorists have generally been content to focus on descriptive studies or on crime-specific “mini- theories,” such as Chesney-Lind’s “Criminalizing girls’ survival,” that have worked well to explain female-specific offending.

Although Hagan’s and Messerschmidt’s theories offer some interesting insights regarding family dynamics and how gender is perceived in different social contexts, they have not moved the discipline forward. Messerschmidt’s theory seems to be a rehash of the old subcultural theories in which “doing gender” is substituted for male status striving stressed by subculturists such as Albert Cohen during the 1950s.

The assertion in Hagan’s power-control theory that middle-class children will have higher rates of antisocial behavior than low-income children is contrary to all that we know about the relationship between social class and crime, especially serious crime (Walsh, 2011). However, Hagan (1989) admits that his theory best addresses minor misbehaviors such as smoking, drinking, and fighting, which leaves unaddressed the serious violent crimes that most strongly differentiate male and female offending. It is thus difficult not to agree with feminists who argue that qualitative studies of specific crimes are the best way to study female crime, although of course this does not address the gender ratio problem.

As previously noted, if forced to boil down the reasons for the universal sex difference in criminal behavior to their bare minimum, differences in empathy and fear would be the strongest candidates. Numerous studies show large differences in average levels of fear and empathy between males and females of all ages (reviewed in Walsh, 2011). Empathy and fear are the natural enemies of crime for obvious reasons:

Empathy is other-oriented and prevents one from committing acts injurious to others because one has an emotional and cognitive investment in the well-being of others. Fear is self-oriented and prevents one from committing acts injurious to others out of fear of the consequences to one’s self. Many other prosocial tendencies flow from these two basic foundations, such as a strong conscience, altruism, self-control, and agreeableness. (Walsh, 2011, p. 124)

Campbell’s staying-alive/high-fear hypothesis is about why females commit so little crime, not why some females commit it, but it does address the gender ratio problem. Because of its biological underpinnings, it might not be acceptable to many traditional feminists, but only 4 of the 27 commentators on her target article argued that strictly social theories better accounted for gender differences in crime. Campbell’s hypothesis must be augmented with cultural factors because we sometimes see females committing more serious crimes than males. For instance, African American females have had higher homicide rates than white males ever since the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) has existed (Barak, 1998). In 2007, the black female homicide rate was 6.2 per 100,000 and the white male rate was 5.4 per 100,000. This does not negate the basic gender ratio argument because within the African American community the gender ratio is much higher than it is in the white community. The black male homicide rate in 2007 was 39.7, which is 6.4 times the black female rate, while the white male rate (5.4) was only 2.8 times the white female rate of 1.9 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012).

Policy and Prevention: Implications of Feminist Theories The policy recommendations of feminist theory depend on which variety of feminism we examine. Marxists seem more concerned with defeating capitalism than patriarchy, socialists are more concerned with patriarchy but have no love for capitalism, radical feminists want to abolish gender, and liberal feminists are less radical reformers who want only to abolish patriarchy (Lanier & Henry, 2010). Liberal feminist reformers have been successful in moving women into what had formerly been “male” occupations, but how the policies of other forms of feminism (abolishing capitalism and gender) could be implemented and their desirability are open to highly contentious discussion. There are all sorts of other recommendations in between, the major one being the reform of our patriarchal society. Other recommendations include the more equal (less paternalistic) treatment of girls and boys by juvenile authorities, increased educational and occupational choices for women so that those in abusive relationships can leave them, and more day-care centers. Feminist theory suggests that gender sensitivity education in the schools and workplaces may lead men to abandon many of their embedded sexist ideas pertaining to the relationship between the sexes.

Feminist criminologists have impacted the criminal justice system more strongly than criminology. The efforts of feminists to fight gender stereotypes have moved women into previously all-male occupations such as police, probation/parole, and corrections officer positions and have placed more female judges on the bench and more female lawyers before the bar. This has led to a greater understanding of female victims and their plight. Feminist criminologists and other feminist activists have been at the forefront in fighting such previously quasi-“acceptable” practices as sexual harassment, stalking, date rape, and child pornography. It was feminists who long pushed for mandatory arrests for domestic violence and now have it, although this has led to an increase in female arrests as well as male arrests. Feminists also fought for other reforms such as removing the spousal exception to rape (up until the 1980s it was not legally possible for a man to rape his wife) and rape shield laws, protecting a rape victim’s sexual history from examination in a rape trial. Overall, feminist criminology has been quite successful in pushing for a more just, less patriarchal, and more sensitive criminal justice system.

Table 8.2 summarizes the key concepts of each of the theories presented in this chapter as well as their strengths and weaknesses.

Summary ❖ Critical criminology is a generic term encompassing many theoretical positions united by the common view that society is best characterized by conflict and power relations rather than by value consensus. ❖ Marxist criminologists follow the theoretical trail of Karl Marx, who posited the existence of two conflicting classes in society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. While some modern Marxists tend to romanticize criminals as heroic revolutionaries, Marx considered them “social scum” who preyed on the working class. Marx is credited with introducing the terms primitive rebellion and alienation into criminology’s vocabulary. ❖ Willem Bonger is credited with being the first Marxist criminologist. He was concerned with two opposite “social sentiments”: altruism and egoism. The sentiment of altruism is killed in a capitalist social system because such a system generates competition for wealth, status, and jobs. Thus capitalism produces egoism, which leads to criminal behavior on the part of both the poor and the rich. ❖ Marxists tend to view capitalism as the only cause of crime, and they insist that class and class values are generated by the material conditions of social life. Because only the material conditions of life really matter, the only way to make any serious impact on crime is to eliminate the capitalist mode of production and institute a Marxist social order. Left realists realize that such a radical transformation is highly unlikely during modern times, and although they maintain a critical stance toward the system, they work within it in an effort to influence social policy. ❖ Conflict theorists share some sentiments with Marxists but view conflict in pluralistic terms and as intrinsic to society, not something that can be eliminated. Crime is the result of the ability of powerful interest groups to criminalize the behavior of other less powerful interest groups when that behavior is contrary to their interests. ❖ Conflict criminological research tends to focus on the differential treatment by the criminal justice system of individuals who are members of less powerful groups such as minorities, women, and working-class whites. ❖ Peacemaking criminology is based on religious principles more than empirical science. It wants to make peace on crime, counsels us that we should appreciate the criminals’ point of view, and wants us to be less punitive. ❖ Feminist criminology focuses on trying to understand female offending from the feminist perspective, which contends that women are faced with special disabilities living in an oppressive sexist society. ❖ The two big issues in feminist criminology are the generalizability problem (do traditional theories of crime explain female offending as well as male offending?) and the gender ratio problem (what accounts for the huge gap in offending between males and females?). ❖ Early attempts to explain female crime from the feminist tradition emphasized the masculinization of female attitudes as they

increasingly adopted “male” roles or simply that as women moved into the workforce in greater numbers, they found greater opportunities to commit job-related crimes. Many feminists rejected both positions, pointing out that such theorizing provided ammunition for those who opposed the women’s movement and that, regardless of any increase in female offending, the male/female gap remains as wide as ever. ❖ John Hagan and James Messerschmidt have formulated theories of gender difference in antisocial behavior based on socialization and gender role theories. Other feminists maintain that we cannot understand gender differences in behavior without understanding the underlying biological differences between the sexes. ❖ The size and universality of the gender gap suggests to some that the most logical explanation for it must lie in some fundamental differences between the sexes rather than socialization such as neurological and hormonal differences. ❖ Anne Campbell’s staying-alive hypothesis attempts to explain the gender ratio problem in terms of differential evolutionary selection pressures between the sexes. Female survival was more crucial to their reproductive success than male survival was to their reproductive success. Natural selection exerted pressure for females to be more fearful of dangerous situations, whereas for males the seeking of dominance and status, which aided their reproductive success, often placed them in such situations.

Exercises and Discussion Questions 1. Do you think the “material conditions of life” largely determine what we will know, believe, and value and how we will behave? 2. Do you believe that social conflict is inevitable? In what ways is conflict a good thing? 3. Can inequality ever be eliminated? If we can do this, what price would we pay? 4. Do we really need a feminist criminology, or do the traditional theories suffice to explain both male and female criminality? 5. What advantages can we gain from natural science knowledge of sex differences in understanding the gender ratio problem? 6. Explain how ultimate-level explanations of gender differences in behavior, such as Campbell’s staying-alive hypothesis, are or are not

useful for criminologists.

Useful Websites Conflict theory. http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/soc/s00/soc111-01/IntroTheories/Conflict.html

Karl Marx. www.historyguide.org/intellect/marx.html

Peacemaking criminology. www.greggbarak.com/whats_new_2.html

Postmodern criminology. http://www.critcrim.org/redfeather

Chapter Terms Alienation 143

Bourgeoisie 142

Class struggle 142

Critical criminology 142

Economic marginalization hypothesis 152

Emancipation hypothesis 151

Gender ratio problem 151

Generalizability problem 150

Hegemonic masculinity 154

Left realists 144

Lumpenproletariat 143

Masculinization hypothesis 151

Minority power groups 144

Patriarchy 150

Peacemaking criminology 146

Power-control theory 152

Primitive rebellion hypothesis 143

Proletariat 142

Restorative justice 146

Social sentiments 143

Staying-alive hypothesis 156

Structured action theory 154

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