INTRODUCTION:   The major purpose of this series of lectures is to provide the theoretical and empirical basis for good social policy in the effort to reduce to a minimum those acts, practices, processes, and institutions which harm the human enterprize. One will see the features of U.S. society which produce high crime rates. One will see that some societies have very low crime rates. One will learn that capitalism, racism and sexism promotes five kinds of crime.

One will find that some kinds of crime are ignored by police researchers, and professors while some kinds of crime are studied and policed intensively. One will learn that there are many parallel systems of justice: cruel and punitive ones for the crimes of the poor while systems of justice for the rich are mainly therapeutic and rehabilitative. One will learn that the criminal justice system does not work to prevent crime but it does destroy human beings.

A WORD ON THEORIES OF CRIME.  Most 'theories' of crime are not theories of crime; they are theories of human behavior which includes both anti-social and pro-social behavior.  Differential Association theory applies equally to popes and prostitutes.   Labeling theory applies equally well to doctors and delinquents.  Control theory applies to salesmen, stock brokers, real estate agents, armies and children as much as to rapists, burglars or bag-men for drug lords.   These are not theories of crime at all; they are theories most convenient to those elites who don't like the controls used in organized crime but do like the control they use in corporate policy.

And these theories exculpate the larger social order which promotes and rewards a lot of crime not made illegal by those who do the defining of crime.

For a much more detailed look at Theories of Crime and Crimes of Theorists, double click on the link to that paper.

A WORD ON METHODOLOGY.  Most researches in crime are greatly limited. Let me count the ways:

A.   Social Location..  Most research is limited to street crime; crimes against persons and crimes against property rights.

This means that corporate crime, white collar crime and political crime are sadly neglected; so when we look at who does street crime, then theories which focus on poor and minorities are supported by the data.

When we look at the other forms of crime, theories which focus on white, rich, well educated folk with lots of control and few labels do the most serious and most profitable forms of crime.   They live in good neighborhoods; associate with solid citizens, go to church as often as the rest of us and enjoy the status honor assigned to wealthy, middle class males.

When we look at race  and street crime in the USA, we find high correlations between the two; yet if we were to look at race and crime in other societies, the correlations would fade and fail.  It is not that Black leads to crime; it is that being Black in a racist society leads to pre-theoretical resistance and rebellion; some forms of which are street crime.

If we looked at the racist labels assigned to those who commit corporate crime, political crime and white collar crime, we would find the crime is almost entirely a white enterprize.

Very few researches looks at the psychological and sociological characteristics of those who commit white collar crime, political crime or corporate crime.  Were they to do so poverty, powerlessness, alienation, religiousity, controls and differential association would lose whatever causal efficacy research finds. 

And most criminals in forms of crime other than street crime are white; attend church; live in good neighborhoods, well educated, have status honor, are not labeled even as they commit crimes with regularity and enthusiasm.

Very few researches looks at the psychological and sociological characteristics of those who commit white collar crime, political crime or corporate crime.  Were they to do so poverty, powerlessness, alienation, religiousity, controls and differential association would lose whatever causal efficacy research finds. 

b.   Social History.   Most research is frozen in time and place.  The larger sweep of history with its great transformations in economy, in gender relations, in politics and in ethnic conflict.  When we do, we see that crime waxes and wanes with the great historical changes in mode of production; that crime wanes and waxes with the great cycles of boom and bust in capitalist societies...cycles called Kondratieff curves.

When we look at the sweep of history, we see that the social, economic and moral power of women is greatly transformed by irrigated agriculture some 4-5000 years ago...that crimes by and crimes against women depend greatly on both class and gender stratifications; that such stratifications are not biology but rather political economy.

When we look at the sweep of history, we see that some of those who live in Africa live in peace and community with neighboring tribes and some engage in predatory warfare which rapes and pillages their peaceable neighbors.  It is culture and economy which drives crime, not race or religion.

When we look at the history of those descendents of Africans who were sold into slavery and follow their history, we find that those who live in the USA have relatively high crime rates while those who live in Canada or Cuba have relatively low crime rates.

It is not race but racism which puts Afro-Americans in economic and political jeopardy and in prison; it is not race whatever that may be.

NON-LINEAR SOCIAL DYNAMICS.   Most researchers hunt, assiduously, for tight and stable correlations; indeed this is the heart of modern, newtonian science.  But the new sciences of chaos and complexity tells us that order is most unlikely; that correlations changes as new attractors are added by small changes in key variables; that even 'normal' people turn to crime when small uncertainties cascade in the society around them.

Entirely new research designs and entirely new methodologies are required if we are to create the kind of postmodern research that is oriented to non-linear social dynamics in crime and other social problems.

In the new sciences of Chaos and Complexity, the concept of feed-back replaces the concept of causality.  Causality works as a concept for very simple systems with linear behavior but for non-linearity, causality fades and fails with the third, fourth and fifth bifurcations of key variables.

When unemployment passes a key point, some dis-employed people turn to theft, prostitution, robbery and mugging.  It is impossible, out of a population of newly dis-employed to predict which will and which will not commit crime...one can only predict that as employment passes critical change points, crime explodes.

So it is not intervening variables which explain differences in crime rates; it is change in the setting of the very same variables which existed before crime rates explode.

All this is quite new.  If one would like to know more about Chaos and Crime, double click on this link.

NATIONALISM AND BLIND PATRIOTISM.  Perhaps the most difficult obstacle one will have in learning about crime is that one will confront some of the negativities of our society that will make one feel uncomfortable. The first reaction may be, as with many, dismay and disbelief. Every society socializes its children to respect and to be loyal to it. That is as true in the USA as it is in the USSR or China or England or Brazil. But the beginning of wisdom is the ability to see beyond what one has been socialized to believe and to weigh the positivities of one's own society along with its negativities. One have been exposed mostly to the positivities of America and to capitalism, while having been exposed mostly to the negativities of other, different, societies.

I don't want to minimize the very real greatness of our society; in many, many ways the USA is a great country but it is not racism, class privilege, sexism or capitalism which makes our country great, it is the ordinary people who build, invent, rear children, write poetry, compose music, teach students, write novels and play softball  with friends on a Friday evening which makes America, the Great.

AN OVERVIEW OF CRIME IN AMERICA The indicators of a poorly organized social life-world impel us toward better theory and better policy in criminology than we now enjoy. In terms of crime, suicide, housing, health care, jobs, and child care, the USA lags far behind most other societies.

Gerald Vaughan, head of the International Association of Chiefs of Police also says that crime is increasing. Police all over the country are being inundated by crime.

THE LEVEL OF CRIME IS UNBELIEVABLE; IT IS A NATIONAL DISGRACE.

                ......Gerald Vaughan

THERE ISN'T MORE CRIME...JUST LESS OF IT OVERLOOKED.

...Steven Schlesinger, BJS director

MORE REPORTS ARE FILED BECAUSE CRIMES ARE GETTING WORSE

                            ...John Eck, Director, Police Executive Research Forum

Whatever the precise figures, the kinds and amounts of crime in America are a major threat to person and property in our society. It is the overall picture that one need...and we have that for one. So here one have some ballpark figures to study.

The University of Wisconsin ranking of nations in terms of quality of life variables put the USA about 40th. The USSR is 41st. We are failing to create a good and decent society.

While all crime data are notoriously unreliable, still the magnitude of the amount of crime in the USA can be seen:

*Americans are 7 to 10 times as risk from violent death than most European countries.

*Americans are 4 to 10 times at risk from robbery as European countries. We are 7 times more likely to be raped than are people in Europe.

*The USA puts 2 times as many people in prison as do European countries. The incarceration rate has doubled since 1973.

*The fasting growing occupation in American cities is in crime and corrections. It is among the best paid jobs left in the US as corporations move higher paid industrial jobs to 3rd world countries with cheap labor.

*The prison population in the U.S. is at an all-time high (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988). There are 175 inmates per 100,000 population in the U.S. for a total of 425,000. This does not include county and city jails which hold about the same number of short-term prisoners. Nor does it include youth who have been diverted to group homes, to the military or to supervised probation.

*Only the Union of South Africa and the U.S.S.R. put people in prison at such high rates. Not very good company.

*In Japan, 96% of the convicted criminals are sentenced to three months or less. In the USA, 80% are sentenced to 5 years or more. Fewer than 10% of Japanese convicts return to prison. Over 50% of American convict return.

*1.5 million wives are beaten by their husbands each year. Another 1.5 million women are beaten by their male friends. Five million more are hit routinely.

*In 1981, almost 1/3 of American households experienced violence or theft. That figure declined to about 1 in four by 1988.

*The homicide rate reached its highest level in 1980.

*Some 2,000,000 children are abused each year by their parents. Some 1,000,000 need medical care for that abuse. Some 3,000 are killed each year by their parents.

WE ARE, BY FAR, THE MOST DANGEROUS SOCIETY IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD.

...Elliot Currie

*A 1988 Justice Department report says that the USA is the most dangerous of 41 countries for which good comparable data are available.

*The nation spends over 3 percent of its public funds on the criminal justice system, a growth industry. The U.S. spent over 34 billion dollars on prisons and policing last year. There are more police than doctors in the USA.

*Only 6 percent of burglaries, 21 percent of robberies, 5 percent of forgeries and 1 percent of drug sales result in arrests (BJS, 1983: 4).

*Serious crime has increased by 200 percentage between 1960 and 1975 (Feagin, 1982: 274).

One household in 20 experienced violent crime against one of its members, aged 12 or over in 1988.

The National Institute of Justice reports that one-third of the employees in a sample of retail, manufacturing and service organizations report stealing company property. The estimated loss is between 5 and 10 billion dollars (BJS, 1983: 11).

Corporations violate a wide variety of laws with studied impunity: labor laws, environmental protection laws, product safety laws, banking laws, currency regulations, worker safety laws, tax laws and campaign contribution laws regularly ignored by the largest corporations.

Ashland Oil Company was found to have polluted the air, soil and waters in Miami, Atlanta, Memphis, South Bend, Raleigh, Charlotte, Lansing, Rensselaer, and Akron. Taxpayers will have to pay over 100 billion dollars to clean up after Ashland and all the other corporations which pollute for profits.

Price fixing alone is estimated by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee to cost American consumers some 174 billion dollars annually. These corporate crimes are seldom tallied, reported, policed, or punished (Clinard et al., 1979).

At the same time corporation crime is ignored, peaceful and legal political protest is brutally policed. Over the years, Federal and state agencies have arrested tens of thousands of peaceful political protesters from the tax and mercantile protests of the colonial era to the demonstrations against war and nuclear weapons in the 60's, 70's and 80's (Balkan, 1983).

The judicial system in the U.S. is systematically biased against Blacks, women, and political protestors (Feagin, 1982). The advocacy system is a commodity in which the poor are denied adequate legal counsel and the larger corporations richly supplied.

The prison system is a growth industry which confines mostly poor people and/or minorities in miserable conditions said to produce more crime than it discourages. Unarmed minority youngsters are often killed by the police.

JAILS PRODUCE AS MANY CRIMES AS THEY PREVENT

Conrad and Dinitz

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CONCEPTS: We will use the following concepts as the fundamentals of a new criminology for the 21st Century. They include:

A. Human Rights. There are many things which must be provided and many things which a person must do in order to be a productive citizen in a decent society. We will ground our discussion of crime and its definition upon a theory of human rights. Human rights will be the first and the last thing we talk about in this criminology text. But we will also talk about Human Obligations...society is a joint product in which rights and obligations must work together.

B. Crime. Medieval jurists made a distinction between mala in se (offenses wrong in themselves) and mala prohibita (offenses which are not morally wrong but which are prohibited by law). This distinction was made in the effort to eliminate the king's right to pardon his followers who committed crimes against people.

In the middle ages, crime was used to refer to the conscious action of those who acted against the Will of God or who engaged in 'unnatural' acts. Women were burned to death as witches when they practiced medicine to heal their sick children or husbands. It was thought to be up to God whether one would die or not.

The present legalistic use of the concept of crime in American criminology is fourfold:

*a violation of a legal specification

*enacted by a competent authority

*which entails culpable intent

*carrying a penalty

The concept of crime in these lectures will be far different from that used in most criminology textbooks now in the market. We will include those activities which harm the human project whether they are defined as criminal by some law-making body or not.

DEFINITION Crime is any act by an individual, a business, an institution or a nation which interferes with the Human Process.

We will discuss two major kinds of crime: personal crime and structural crime.

A. Personal crime is the harm done to one or more individuals by the acts and intentions of specific human beings for personal motive.

There are several kinds of personal crime listed on the Unified Crime Reports of the FBI. They are include murder, rape, robbery, arson, theft, and assault. These are most harmful to the human project. They also are crimes that produce terror and that interfere greatly with one's life.

B. Structural Crime is that harm done to humans and to the human process by virtue of the way society is organized.

There are five structures of Domination which harm people and society: Racism, sexism, class, ageism, and bureaucratic authority. Nationalism also informs political crime against other nations.

It is easy to focus on individuals as the agent of crime but to focus upon social relations as criminal is much harder...since we are conditioned to view crime as personal activity.

But think a moment...are not some social relations the source of much pain and much death and much theft? Slavery, racism, gender discrimination and colonialism?

Think another moment about corporations which dump toxic wastes...the actual people who do, in fact, turn the valves to let wastes into rivers, streams and air are the workers in a factory or shop. But they got their orders from management. And management got their orders to lower costs from executives. And executives got their instructions to increase profits from Boards of Directors...and Boards of Directors know that without profits, they don't get to keep their seats on the Boards. The investors will fire them and get someone who will show profits. All of this together comes from the structure of capitalism: not from the deliberate intentions of the individual worker or manager or owner to harm other people.

So what is the social location of crime in all this...the quick answer is that the individual is the guilty party. That is true...it is always the responsibility of the individual for the good or evil they do. But that is not helpful to the full picture. The location of crime is not in our genes; not in our body chemistry; not in our stars but in the structure of some very ordinary social relations.

One will find that this emphasis on both personal and structural crime is new to American understandings and may be the source of some stress as one try to explain it to friends and family.

D. Justice. Our meanings of justice derived from the Latin, jus, meaning the law. 'Jus' first referred to natural law as set forth by the gods.

In its present usage, justice means that which is technically right and reasonable in terms of a legal code. The problem with its purely legal meaning is that the law may not be just in terms of human rights and obligations...it is then that reason betrays the human project.

Instead we will encourage one to think of justice in terms of both its technical character (is a judgment reasonably derived from the evidence) and in terms of its substantive character (whether the content of the law; its substance, is oriented to social justice). In this use of the term justice, we will be much closer to the notion of law as mala in se; evil in itself.

In this text, justice will be defined as

the reasonable application of human rights and human obligations to a judgement of the criminality of human behavior; individual or collective behavior.

This definition allows us to get above the politics of law-making since often special interest groups make laws to suit themselves. This definition will also allow us to include structural crime in the text...of which, more later.

E. Social Justice. Social justice results when the existing forms of social control and social organization satisfy basic human rights and enable each person to fulfill human obligations.

The substance of the concept is that all human beings need a variety of goods and interactional resources in the process of becoming human. Without such resources as are listed below in the section of human rights and responsibilities, one does not become a human being.

F. Mode of Production. A mode of production is the way in which the economy of a society is organized. It has two parts: the means of production [technology, factories, tools and such]; and the relations of production. [go to Mike Brooks fine article on Modes of Production by double-clicking the URL above].

In particular, one will learn that, when people have a good relationship to the means by which they produce themselves and society in a communal form, there is little crime. Even the rich commit crime in order to get richer when, any moment, their relationship to the means of production can collapse into poverty....as when doctors begin to do unnecessary hysterectomies a few years before they retire or when the directors of Savings and Loan Banks pay themselves huge salaries and bonuses just before the bank collapses.

When the relations of production are such that people are separated from the means to produce the various forms of human culture, they often, but not always, engage in pretheoretical rebellion and resistance. Usually, when times are bad, people share...but in a society marked by pathological individualism, such times bring crime.

Some of this rebellion gets nasty indeed.

When relations of production are unequal, the rich and the powerful use their position to exploit the labor of others. They parasitize on the work of others. They use scientific and religious theories to justify this inequality.

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G. THE HUMAN PROCESS: A person can become fully human only within the structure of social relations. The concept of the solitary individual is a nonsense concept. One cannot be a mother without a child, a teacher without a student, a merchant without a customer or a judge without an offender.

All forms of human expression occur within social relationships. It is therefore important to look at what kind of relationships are possible within a society.

Studies of feral children, of orphanages, of neglected children, of maternity wards all demonstrate that infants and children need the stimulation and loving attention of others or they do not develop to their full potential.

Studies of prisons, concentration camps, of warfare and of cultural collapse all show that people can be degraded and become as animals toward each other even when they have lived in peace and in cooperative relations for most of their lives.

One becomes human by a long, labor intensive process in which others socialize one. Usually the others are called parents and usually the most important parent is the mother. The most important work in mothering is bonding the infant child to other human beings. As Pepinsky points out,

"...human bonding is the essence of nonviolence; bonding gives us the capacity to love.

Children who are not well bonded grow up to have trouble forming good relations to others when adult. However, there are a lot of people who were well-mothered, well-bonded who commit crime: white collar crime, corporate crime, organized crime and political crime as well as street crime. Bonding is basic but there is more to crime than the ability to love and be loved.

All that really matters is that one learns the roles, rules, values, customs and goals of one's society and engage in prosocial behavior by embodying them in everyday life. But those roles and rules must be oriented to prosocial behavior as well. Morality is a joint effort. As George Herbert Mead might have said, mind, self, morality and society are quadruplets...born in the same instant.

The control of crime depends in part on how well the child is socialized to become a good and decent human being. Take a little time and learn about that process if one don't already know it. It will be important in the final lecture when one consider what is to be done to prevent crime.

Becoming Human. Usually one is born, accepted into some kinship group, provided the material necessities of life while learning the customs of that society. Then, after some time in the socialization process, one undergoes a rite of passage which certifies to self and to the community, that the person has full adult status and may participate in the production of social relations and social occasions which are the core of that culture.

For most of history, people were socialized carefully by several adults, taught how to do family, religion, work, and play. At about the age of 12 or 13, most people were treated as mature adults who had the rights of their gender, their age group, their kinship group, and their tribal division.

In the very same moment that they had the right to create culture and society in the ancient and sacred ways of their ancestors, they had the responsibility to do it and to do it well.

Before that first rite of passage, one is considered to be a nonperson; after that rite, one is considered to be an adult.

In all societies, failure to embody the customs and social relationships is considered to be an offense against the local gods. One may be put through a degradation ceremony and returned to the socialization (Resocialization) process for another cycle as a nonperson. Or one might be exiled. Or one may be put to death. Exile in those societies meant death!

Whatever the case one did not have the freedom to exercise the rights without exercising the responsibilities. We will find that societies which still link rights together with prosocial responsibilities are the societies with low crime rates.

But it is not enough to go through a rite of passage and to join the existing social order. If the social relationships are exploitive and oppressive, there will be much harm done to the human process. If they are supportive, enabling, and ennobling, the human process will go much better.

Obstacles to Becoming Human. There are five kinds of social relations found in American society, indeed in many societies which harm the human project. They are called the structures of domination in conflict theories. They are:

1. Exclusionary racial/ethnic relationships

2. Exploitative class relationships

3. Demeaning gender relationships

4. Degrading age relationships

5. Bureaucratic authority and mass relationships

And, in the world as a whole, patriotism, ethnocentrism, and nationalism serve as the basis for the exploitation of people from other societies. Each society teaches its young people that their own society is the best in the world and that other societies are inferior.

This teaching of ethnocentricism is one way to solve the problem of solidarity, but in a world marked by international contact and trade, it transforms into ugly politics which lead to much crime against other nations. National chauvinism can be listed as a sixth structure of domination when people in other lands are treated as nonpersons to be murdered, raped, robbed or dispossessed of their land and culture.

H. Praxis One of the more important new terms one will want to include in the journey toward the fullness of one's morality is Praxis. Praxis is the means by which human alienation from the human project is overcome.

In socialist theory, praxis has at least four moments...four interrelated aspects. The moments of praxis are:

*sociability

*intentionality

*creativity

and *rationality

Sociability requires that people to think of the well being of others in their everyday labor...rather than thinking of themselves as isolated individuals apart from the main body of people.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French visitor to America, had many good things to write home about us. However, he was concerned that the individualism he observed would result in each person looking after itself and no one looking after the common interest. He said:

Individualism is the calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself [sic] from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself.

We will include excessive individualism as part of the dynamics of crime. Sociability should inform the behavior of most of us most of the time. If we are to have a decent society, we must have a interactively rich democracy in which each person participates using both individual interests and collective interests in the quest for good social policy.

Intentionality means that human action is determined by the human being rather than by outside forces. Bosses, rules, orders, commands, compulsions subvert intentionality. The structures of domination obstruct the ability of people to determine, without coercion, how they shall live.

Moral behavior is impossible if the individual is excluded from deciding important questions. A moral society must be a democratic one at work, in school, at church and in civic affairs.

Creativity is stressed in order to facilitate the necessary change and renewal each generation must make as local, national and international conditions change. As the systems theorist, H. Ross Ashby said, only variety can cope with variety.

Creativity is opposed to sameness and routine...both of which are necessary 99% of the time but a deadly flaw if theoretically appropriate change is obstructed.

Rationality must be part of the human condition. It has two faces, each of which must show brightly to the world in each individual...technical rationality in which one's behavior is such that one maximizes the probability that one will realize one's own intentionality.

Then there is substantive rationality: that rationality which includes reasoned choice of personal and societal goals.

A society oriented to technical rationality alone has no moral base. However, without technical rationality, morality is doomed to failure.

A praxis society is one which facilitates each and every moment of praxis for all its members...not merely its leaders.

I. Power There are four kinds of power used to create ourselves and others as human beings; to create social relationships; to create social occasions and social institutions. It is well to know these kinds of power in order that one may use them; may know when others are using them legitimately; may know how to change the sociology of it all when trying to create a praxis society.

*moral power Moral power comes from shared values.   Usually these values grow out of some sort of religious sensibility but often out of a sheer humanism which transcends particular religious beliefs.

*social power  Social power grows out of shared status roles.  Moral power exists between people who may not know each other; social power always involves those who share social life worlds either in primary or secondary groups.

*economic power  Economic power arises out of control over scarce resources; not out of social relationships but  in spite of them. 

*physical power  Women, children, prisoners, minorities, slaves and colonial peoples know too well that, absence compliance with the wishes of those in power fists, knives, guns and ropes await.

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In order to give one a basis for judging the merits of human actions: to have a foundation upon which to call a thing a crime; to know when the forms of power are properly employed; one should think about the list of human rights and human obligations listed below.

Question: Is this list adequate for a theory of crime? Are there basic rights and basic obligations which are missing? Are there things listed which give some people or some societies an unfair advantage?

Without some such listing of human rights and human obligations, the concept of crime becomes a political football and takes crazy bounces. The next section is the most important section in the study of criminology. I add human obligations to the concept of human rights since, often, people insist upon using human rights for their own private good and ignore the effect that such rights have on others who, equally, have human rights.

We will begin our study of crime and social justice with a good hard at human rights and human rights and human obligations. The list below is derived and expanded from the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, 1949.

The basic assumption here is that human beings become human beings only within certain kinds of social relations...and become criminal in other kinds of social relations. Societies can be organized to promote crime or to reduce it.

Social relations and social occasions require a material base. Things of the spirit do not exist apart from things of the flesh. Our human rights must provide for the essential material goods and services. The human rights literature has suggested several essentials for all humans. We will begin with these:

1. Food. A wholesome and nourishing diet is a human right. Good health and good spirits require it.

The corresponding obligation of the individual is to respect the food supply and to use it wisely. To bless the food and then to waste it or to act the glutton is to profane the act of eating.

2. Shelter. A clean and comfortable home is essential to the human project. Housing is the material basis for a home in its social meaning.

The corresponding obligation is to care for the house and to pass it on improved to the next resident.

3. Parenting. One needs the love and the discipline of a parent who has parenting skills.

This is the most important labor found in any society. The material resources for quality parenting must be a first priority of a praxis society.

The corresponding obligation of the child is to honor one's mother and father as well as others in the parenting process.

And...we must accept that we are all parents to all children...not just those to whom we personally give birth.

4. Education. One must learn the technical skills and develop the moral values within which to practice those skills.

The corresponding obligation is to learn to one's capacity the forms of knowledge essential to a praxis society. The first job of the child is to learn. A decent society would make that a rewarding and positive experience for all its children...not just the children of privileged.

Moral values and morality must be built into all social institutions; especially the market place.

5. Religion. Religion speaks to the fundamental questions of life...How to relate to each other...How to deal with problems of death and loss...What is the good life...How are goals and means to be established.

All societies need to provide its members with the material resources which free them to ask these religious questions and to consider a variety of answers. This is the realm of social philosophy and is essential to the human project.

The corresponding obligation is to act on the fullness of one's morality in every domain of life. One may not compartmentalize morality to the narrow confines of a church building or a church service one hour a week and still honor one's god.

One must honor the religious impulse of others in the thousand and one ways religion has developed over the long centuries of social evolution.

6. Labor Every person has the right to a form of work in which the special needs of the individual for constructive labor and the general needs of society are met. One becomes human most fully in the work one does.

The corresponding obligation is to express one's human genius, skill, and talent within that work process rather than within crime. Low crime societies offer prosocial work for all people.

7. Recreation. Play and friendly competition in sports provide zest and delight which adds to the fullness of life.

Make believe and just pretend are the realms of unlimited imagination which, at times, provides the grounding for better ways of doing society. Serious social endeavor is only part of the human process. Fun, nonsense, whimsy, jouissance and surprise are also important to the drama of social life.

The corresponding obligation is to bring play and good spirits into those seriously intended social occasions: parenting, teaching, religion and work.

8. Health care. The human body is the material base of the human spirit. Every human being needs a healthy body and the material resources to maintain good health.

Preventive health practices as well as therapeutic health care is a basic human right.

The corresponding obligation on the part of the individual is to honor one's body and to take care of it as long as one lives.

This means taking special care to avoid harmful practices and dangerous chemicals. If one has a right to expect good health care from a society, one has an obligation to minimize the demands one places on the health care system. Abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and other psychogens strain one's right to expensive and long term health care.

9. Human sexuality. One has the right to express one's sexuality in joyous and enlivening relationships with another human being.

Human sexuality means more than mere sexual intercourse. It means a tender and intimate eroticism which suffuses all kinds of acts in a loving relationship.  It means compassion, caring and the good grace to forgive.  There are as many ways to make love as there are to do gender.

Human sexuality as praxis is limited by moral obligations to other human beings. One may not use another human being for one's private pleasure nor harm another person sexually.   This is a fundamental obligation for those who claim sexual freedoms.

10. Political Rights. One has a right to determine, along with others with whom one lives, the social conditions in which one must live out one's life.

The corresponding obligation is to respect the right of others to participate in the political process.

One's own political rights end when repression is used to retain the structures of domination listed above or obstructs the human process in some important way. It is necessary to repress the oppressor.

These, then, are some of the rights and obligations of those who would presume to the human estate. They begin with physical needs, a concern for one's own society, extend to the culture of other peoples, include the physical and natural environment, center upon the material requisites for a prosocial individual and end with the political rights of a democratic citizenry.

Because there are other essential rights and obligations, we will keep this list open for reasoned arguments for and against these and others.

FORMS OF CRIME. There are five major forms of crime that are directly linked to the dynamics of market societies. Corporate crime, street crime, organized crime, political crime and white collar crime all have differing sets of dynamics. They are all related in that they are not oriented to human rights and human obligations; in that they are not oriented to praxis and the building of a praxis society.

A. Corporate Crime. Corporate crime is crime done by corporations acting as an entity in the pursuit of corporate goals. Corporate goals include:

1. Profit

2. Growth of market share

3. Control of production and distribution factors.

Corporate crime includes a wide variety of crimes against workers, against consumers, against the environment, against the political process, against the economic health of the USA and the 3rd world as well as crimes against the growth and development of young people.

Corporate crime is by far the greatest threat to the life and to health as well as to the integrity of the American economy. If one want to know why so many corporations commit so much crime, the short answer is that they do so in order to achieve their short term corporate goals.

Corporations in a market economy have three goals in conflict with the law: profit, growth and control of the business environment. When times are good, corporations can achieve these goals. During bad times, they must cut corners or face bankruptcy.

B. Political Crime. Political crime is the use of power to exclude people from collective discourse and decisions which determine their fate.

Political crime in the U.S. has two major forms. The first entails crimes of the state against its own citizens and laws. The second entails crimes of citizens against their own state.

At the same time, citizens sometimes go underground and try to use force to achieve their goals. Workers, peasants, Blacks, small business people all turn to political crime in elitist systems when institutional politics don't work.

There are other kinds of political crime which are more serious. There is genocide and there is the crime of one state against another in organized warfare.

C. Organized Crime. Organized crime deals in the production and distribution of those sacred supplies historically used to establish and celebrate cherished social relations.

Alcohol, drugs, sex, violence, gambling, and many other goods and services are oriented to the creation of community and a sense of the sacred in traditional societies.

Organized crime treats these sacred supplies as commodities to be bought and sold in the market. In so doing, organized crime profanes these supplies.

D. White Collar Crime. White collar crime involves the violation of a position of trust in an relationship for private gain.   It is the crime of specific individuals; corporate crime is the crime of large scale organizations rather than particular persons employed by a firm or agency.

White collar criminals embezzle, defraud, steal, convert and harass those over whom they have social power. Lawyers, doctors, bankers, managers, clerks, and professors often betray the trust accorded to them for private gain.

E. Street Crime. Street crime involves the use of force or guile to exploit unknown others.

Street crime includes burglary, shoplifting, auto theft, mugging, robbery, prostitution, and rape as well as arson, murder and assault.  It is these face-to-face crime which so offend human sensibility since they bespeak a betrayal of the human project in the most personal and offensive ways.

As one will learn, most street crime is pretheoretical response to alienated economics, alienated power or alienated sexuality.

Good policy in matters of crime and social justice requires sound theory. In turn, sound theory requires adequate data...adequate in terms of its historical, social and comparative origins.

A good grounding for social policy requires that one look to the social context in which crime arises; to the historical patterns of crime in a given society; and to the features of low crime societies compared to those with higher crime rates.

At the same time, it is necessary to review and to critique existing theories of crime which now serve as the basis for social policy in crime control. We will examine the limitations of the most respected theories in American Criminology. We will show that they are seriously flawed as theories of crime. The most important theories today are:

1. labeling theory

2. differential association theory

3. control theory

4. deviancy theory

5. various biological

6. evolutionary theories

Against these theories and, sometimes, in harmony with aspects of current theories, we will offer a contemporary understanding of crime from a democratic socialist position. By that, I mean an examination of the dynamics of class relations and of the ordinary, everyday dynamics of capitalism as these contribute to the logics of criminal behavior.

While class analysis will be central, I want to emphasize that there are other theoretical approaches which must be brought to bear. To provide the best possible understanding of the factors which make tend to lead one person to participate in a social process which does another person or set of persons harm.

For example, feminist theory will be most useful in sorting out the dynamics of rape, assault, murder and sexual exploitation of women. Patriarchy predated capitalism by centuries and survives in economies which claim to be socialist societies. We shall use feminist theory to help sort out alienated sexuality and alienated gender relations.

As a final point, I want to remind each student that social justice may be inspired by the teachings of the prophets which come out of a wide variety of religious traditions or by the social philosophies of more secular theorists. One will find a lot about religion in these lectures. Some religious practices produce low crime societies and some ways of organized religion do little to prevent crime.

For example, one must consider carefully the unification of the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx found in liberation theology and in the base communities in Latin America and elsewhere. In terms of social justice and the elimination of exploitative relations...legal and illegal...it is the most important historical event in Latin America and the Philippines in the 20th Century. It may be the most important event in the 21st Century.

Although these lectures present democratic socialist understanding of crime and social justice inspired by the economic and philosophic writings of Marx, one should always remember that a lot of people contributed to socialism...and that Marx is dead. However valid his analyses were 100 years passing, conditions have changed and will change and so, too, will the validity of analyses.

The mean-spirited, repressive versions of bureaucratic socialism found in many East European societies are hostile to the human enterprize and require the same systematic critique that Marx gave the capitalist world system.

It is this generation of students who are responsible for extracting the validities of a tradition and rejecting its deficiencies. Before one is a marxist or a durkheimian or a weberian or a student of that good man, E. H. Sutherland, one is first a human being whose loyalties must go to the human project as broadly conceived.

We can not blame those theorists who are now dead for the mistakes which we who are alive, now make. It is our responsibility; not theirs.