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 o ID: 228979
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Slide1
Crime, Punishment and Inequality
Dr Carlie Goldsmith Slide2
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. Slide3
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…….Slide4
National Equality Panel 2010
96% 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 £450,000Slide5
Income gaps
How 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%?Slide6
Who cares?
New developments in inequality
The implications of those for the future
The impact of inequality on society and
quality of social relations
Are we happy to let income and wealth gaps
grow bigger? What are the future consequences
of this?
Concentration of power and
influecne. Slide7
The Spirit Level
Professor
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. Slide8
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 Slide9
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
Index of health and social problemsSlide10
Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level
www.equalitytrust.org.uk
People in more unequal countries
trust each other lessSlide11Slide12Slide13
Social HarmsSlide14
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 identity
More ‘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 Slide15
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) Slide16
Question
Why might criminologists be interested in this? Slide17
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)Slide18
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 Slide19
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? Slide20Slide21
US Incarceration Rates 1925-2006
(per 100,000)Slide22
Mass imprisonment
Garland (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’. Slide23
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? Slide24
Scope of the CJS
Not just interested in detecting and punishing criminal acts.
Pre-crime and anti-social
behaviour
management
Intolerance
New Labour Crime and Disorder Act 1998
Developed 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? Slide25
Treatment of offenders and former offenders
Othering
Rehabilitation
Reintegration
Or
Exclusion
Control
Ongoing punishmentSlide26
Source: Home Office. 2009.
Crimes in England and Wales 2008-2009.
London: HOSlide27
‘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) Slide28
Follow Up
Thomas
Piketty
slides
http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/fr/lectures
and lecture on
Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zytqTSh3oGw
Loic 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