Tabloid Crimes

I was intrigued to read the thoughts of Stephen Pollard in today’s Daily Express. Pollard is one of many journalists - tabloid and broadsheet - who like to point out how soft the criminal justice system is. But it’s interesting to look at his article from a sociological perspective. Pollard picks up two recent cases which he believes illustrate how our justice system has been corrupted by liberal do-gooders. A man in Scotland has been imprisoned for two months for a breach of the peace, after he broke into a drug dealer’s house and flushed the man’s heroin down the toilet. In another case -widely reported yesterday- a Portugeuse lorry driver was jailed for three years after six people died in an accident caused by his negligence.

Firstly, a socio-legal point. The idea of the rule of law means that nobody is above the law. If someone has sold your child drugs, that does not give you the right to take the law into your own hands and commit a crime in the course of administering what you consider to be a fair punishment. Sociologically - it’s interesting how some people or groups of people (I include journalists!) seem to think that the law does not apply to them.

The case of the negligent lorry driver can broadly be placed in the category of ‘white collar crime’. Of course many people may share the view that the three year sentence did not reflect the severity of the crime. That said, informed sociologists would be able to point out to readers of The Sun and other papers, that if they think that was bad, they should also spare a thought for the numerous deaths which occur every year in workplaces throughout the UK, yet which rarely lead to convictions. There’s a point there too, about media selectivity. Sociologists are by no means perfect, but they do try to look at the whole picture, not just selected frames.

Elsewhere in his column, Pollard interestingly argues that we shouldn’t see criminals as victims. Pollard states: “The received wisdom is that drug-related crime is proof of the victimhood of the offender, driven to crime by the need to satisfy his habit. He needs treatment, not punishment. But it is not drug addicts who turn to crime; it is criminals who turn to drugs. A study conducted by the NHS in 1998 found that even when on methadone, offenders continued to commit crime”.

Well, it’s easy to see that Pollard is hardly taking a detached, sociological view of crime. It’s undoubtedly true that some people working in the criminal justice system are sympathetic towards criminals. So too, are some sociologists. But that said, surely criminals - one of our major social problems - do need treatment. Perhaps if Pollard had studied the structure-action debate, he’d be able to see that criminals do make choices, but they are structured choices. One implication of that is that there is nothing contradictory in arguing that criminals need both punishment and treatment. Echoes there I guess, of the New Left Realist view of crime.

As for the idea that it’s criminals who turn to drugs, rather than vice versa - dear, oh dear! The use of many drugs - certainly the one’s Pollard is talking about - are illegal. Therefore to use them or sell them, is a criminal act. What Pollard is doing, as all good sociology students will see, is helping to create a ‘folk devil’. The use of illegal drugs is relatively common amongst many social groups nowadays, including the middle class, yet Pollard doesn’t seem willing to criminalise them as well. That isn’t to condone drug taking; but it does show that society’s rules and judgments are applied in a lop-sided manner. That’s the benefit of studying sociology. What you do about these social problems is another, harder, matter altogether. But if you have a more accurate understanding of the social problem in the first place, perhaps you stand a better chance of solving it.