Crime, shame and reintegration Crime, shame and reintegration JOHN BRAITHWAITE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS t· 'r~B '~: ~E1UiiiWEI~S,JlY ifuiS'si;, :,,:,, ~· Cambridge, New Y6tR:;MeW~~;~Wfiitlrl'd;"'C'a:pt'!!-J'tl';iifj\:si~g~pore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA www.cambridge.org Information on this title:www.cambridge.org/9780521355674 ©Cambridge University Press 1989 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1989 16th printing 2006 Printed in the United States of America A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 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Contents Priface page vii 1 Whither criminological theory? 2 The dominant theoretical traditions: labeling, subcultural, control, opportunity and learning theories 16 3 Facts a theory of crime ought to fit 44 4 The family model of the criminal process: reintegrative shaming 54 5 Why and how does shaming work? 69 6 Social conditions conducive to reintegrative shaming 84 7 Summary of the theory 98 8 Testing the theory 108 9 Reintegrative shaming and white collar crime 124 10 Shaming and the good society 152 Riferences 187 Index 216 v Preface A general theory of crime is an ambitious undertaking. While the theory in this book purports to be general, it is at the same time modestly partial. It is partial firstly because I am conscious of the need for theories of particular types of crime to complement the general theory. The book does not proceed by systematically demolishing compet­ ing theories in order to show the superiority of the theory of reintegra­ tive shaming. For example, the theory provides an account of why women engage in less crime than men. There are some who are persuaded that the explanation for this association is genetic. I have not seen it as my task to attack this competing explanation, but only to argue for the plausibility and consistency with such evidence as exists of the explanation provided by the theory. Prior to a theory having been systematically tested, it is not the time for contentions that earlier theories which have been more satisfactorily evaluated should be jettisoned in favor of the new theory. That may well be appropriate when the evidence is in to show that any variance explained by an older theory, and more, can be explained by the new one. More likely, we would hope ultimately to be in a position to argue that the new partial theory explains a substantial amount of variance not accounted for by pre-existing partial theories. Happily, I do not need to lay waste existing theories in order to make way for an alternative because the existing theories explain fairly low proportions of variance in crime. Indeed, my strategy is in part to integrate the modest explanatory successes of existing sociolo­ gical theories of crime into a theory which aspires to be both more general and of greater explanatory power. Peter Grabosky, Donald Cressey, David Bayley, Marshall Clinard, Gilbert Geis, Dan Glaser, Henry Pontell, Sat Mukherjee, Carl Klock- Vll Preface ars, Dave Ermann, Grant Wardlaw, Philip Pettit,Jacek Kurczewski, Ivan Potas, Stephen Mugford, Anita Mak, Frank Jones and other participants at seminars at the University ofDelaware, the University of California, Irvine and The Australian National University gave extremely helpful advice on improving the manuscript. Robin Der­ ricourt of Cambridge University Press assisted in countless other ways as well as in improving the manuscript. I am also indebted to my subeditor, Shirley Purchase, in this regard. My thanks go to Michele Robertson for endless trips to the library to retrieve works cited in the book and Beverley Bullpitt for dedicated assistance with typing. Most importantly, I want to thank Brent Fisse for inspiring my interest in shame as a crime control mechanism through many discussions we had during the years we worked on The Impact of Publicity on Corporate Offenders. The present book is about a concept which was at the height of its popularity in the Victorian era -shame. Lynd (1958) directs us to Victorian novels like Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to remind us ofhow the concept of shame, which plays a more limited role in contemporary literature and conversation, was once a commanding concept. Since Freud, guilt has been a more popular construct than shame. Yet in the New Testament the word guilt does not appear, while shame is re­ peatedly referred to; Shakespeare uses shame about nine times as often as guilt (Lynd, 1958: 25). An old-fashioned concept like shame is perhaps uncomfortable for contemporary scholars to use in thinking about crime, though when we discuss white collar crime, terms which connote moral indignation are not quite so passe. In a sense it is the white collar crime literature which leads us into a decidedly Victorian analysis of crime in this book. Vlll I Whither criminological theory? The theory in this book suggests that the key to crime control is cultural commitments to shaming in ways that I call reintegrative. Societies with low crime rates are those that shame potently and . judiciously; individuals who resort to crime are those insulated from shame over their wrongdoing. However, shame can be applied injudiciously and counterproductively; the theory seeks to specify the types of shaming which cause rather than prevent crime. Toward a General Theory Crime is not a unidimensional construct. For this reason one should not be overly optimistic about a general theory which sets out to explain all types of crime. In fact, until fairly recently, I was so pessimistic about such an endeavor as to regard it as misguided. Clearly, the kinds of variables required to explain a phenomenon like rape are very different from those necessary to an explanation of embezzlement. Equally clearly, there is a long tradition of purportedly general theorizing in criminology which in fact offers explanations of male criminality to the exclusion of female crime by focusing totally on male socialization experiences as explanatory variables. Other theories focus on big city crime to the exclusion of small town and rural crime by alighting upon urban environment as an explanation; others explain juvenile but not adult crime, or neglect the need to explain white collar crime. Notwithstanding the diversity of behavior subsumed under the crime rubric, the contention of this book is that there is sufficient in common between different types of crime to render a general ex­ planation possible. This commonality is not inherent in the nature of 2 Crime, shame and reintegration the disparate acts concerned. It arises from the fact that crime, whatever its form, is a kind of behavior which is poorly regarded in the community compared to most other acts, and behavior where this poor regard is institutionalized. Perpetrators of crime cannot continue to offend oblivious to the institutionalized disapproval directed at what they do. Unlike labeling theorists, I therefore adopt the view that most criminality is a quality rif the act; the distinction betw~en behavior and action is that behavior is no more than physical while action has a meaning that is socially given. 'The awareness that an action is deviant fundamentally alters the nature of the choices being made' (Taylor et al, 1973: 147). It has been said that there is nothing inherently deviant about using a syringe to inject opiate into one's arm because doctors do it all the time in hospitals- deviant behavior is no more than behavior people so label. However arbitrary the labeling process, it is the fact that the criminal chooses to engage in the behavior knowing that it can be so labeled that distinguishes criminal choices from other choices. It is the defiant nature of the choice that distinguishes it from other social action. Jimmy and Johnny are confronted with an opportunity to commit crime: an unlocked car. Johnny feels pangs of conscience overwhelm him as he approaches the criminal opportunity; he also thinks of how ashamed his mother would be if he were caught; he backs off. Jimmy, in contrast, goes ahead, steals the car, is unlucky enough to be caught, appears before a judge, admits that he has committed a crime and is convicted, a fact announced in the local newspaper. In all of this, Jimmy and Johnny, Johnny's mother, the judge, and those who read the newspaper all shared a view of what crime was and what the courts have the authority to do when criminals are caught. There is no other way for the participants to make sense of such interactions without some shared view of the institutional orders involved - in this case those of the criminal law and the criminal justice system. The critical point is that by all of them invoking the institutional order they help to reproduce it. Jimmy and Johnny, their families, the police who catch them, their lawyers, the judge, all treat the criminal law and the criminal justice system as 'real' concepts which define what Jimmy did. They are institu­ tional relationships within which the encounters with the police and courts are situated, and institutional relationships that· are indeed constituted by interactions such as those experienced by Jimmy.