Limits To Pain, Nils Christie PDF
Limits To Pain, Nils Christie PDF
Limits To Pain, Nils Christie PDF
1981
Table of contents
Table of contents__________________________________________________________________________ 1 Preface _________________________________________________________________________________ 1 Chapter 1. On Pain ________________________________________________________________________ 2 Chapter 2. The Shield of Words ________________________________ ______________________________ 3 Chapter 3. Treatment for Crime ________________________________ ______________________________ 6 Chapter 4. Deterrence ______________________________________________________________________ 9 Chapter 5. Neo-classicism__________________________________________________________________ 13 Chapter 6. The hidden curriculum ___________________________________________________________ 16 Chapter 7. The computer___________________________________________________________________ 20 Chapter 8. Neo-positivism __________________________________________________________________ 22 Chapter 9. Pain forever? ___________________________________________________________________ 26 Chapter 10. Some conditions for a low level of pain infliction ________________________________ ______ 30 Chapter 11. Participatory justice________________________________ _____________________________ 34 Chapter 12. In contrast to pain______________________________________________________________ 44 Bibliography ____________________________________________________________________________ 46
Preface
The major ideas in this little book are simple. The reasoning is as follows: imposing punishment within the institution of law means the inflicting of pain, intended as pain. This is an activity which often comes in dissonance to esteemed values such as kindness and forgiveness. To reconcile these incompatibilities, attempts are sometimes made to hide the basic character of punishment. In cases where hiding is not possible, all sorts of reasons for intentional infliction of pain are given. One major effort in what follows is to describe, expose, and evaluate major features of these attempts, and to relate them to general social conditions. None of the attempts to cope with the intended pain seems, however, to be quite satisfactory. Attempts to change the law-breaker create problems of justice. Attempts to inflict only a just measure of pain create rigid systems insensitive to individual needs. It is as if societies in their struggle with penal theories and practices oscillate between attempts to solve some unsolvable dilemmas. My own view is that the time is now ripe to bring these oscillatory moves to an end by describing their futility and by taking a moral stand in favour of creating severe restrictions on the use of man-made pain as a means of social control. On the basis of experience from social systems with a minimal use of pain, some general conditions for a low level of pain infliction are extracted.
If pain is to be applied, it has to be pain without a manipulative purpose and in a social form resembling that which is used when people are in deep sorrow. This might lead to a situation where punishment for crime evaporated. Where that happened, basic features of the State would also have evaporated. Formulated as an ideal, this situation might be just as valuable to make explicit and to keep in mind as situations where kindness and humanity reign ideals never to be reached, but something to stretch towards. I am grateful to so many friends and colleagues who have helped. All Souls College, Oxford, functioned as a sanctuary during parts of the work, and Roger Hood and Adam Podgorecki gave friendship and advice. Louk Hulsman and Herman Bianchi have acted as important sources of inspiration from Holland. Rick Abel, Kettil Bruun, Andrew von Hirsch, and Stan Wheeler have offered helpful criticism of a first draft of the manuscript. Grants from the German Marshall Foundation and the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology, provided the opportunity for a meeting in June 1980 where examples of participatory justice were thoroughly discussed. Nonetheless, it is a book from Scandinavia. By writing in a foreign language, one comes in a way closer to home. From here I have most of my experiences. And here I receive, year after year, generous criticism and encouragement. For this particular manuscript, I have received valuable help from Vigdis and Lindis Charlotte Christie, Tove Stang Dahl, Kjersti Ericsson, Sturla Falck, Hedda Giertsen, Cecilie Higrd, Per Ole Johansen, Leif Petter Olaussen, Annika Snare, Per Stangeland and Dag sterberg. I have not always listened to my advisers, so none of them are responsible for defects in the final product. Oslo, March 1981 Nils Christie
Chapter 1. On Pain
This is a book about pain. But I do not quite know what pain is, or how to graduate it. Literature is full of heroes so great that pain becomes small, or cowards so small that almost everything becomes pain. To grasp the essence of pain, one would have to understand the core of the good as well as the evil. I refrain from the attempt. Those who look at penal history as stages in progress might argue that I refrain too fast. They would see developments, a gradual decrease in pain, which would make ranking possible. From Foucault's (1975) opening description of the gruesome public execution of Damiens in 1757, through the Norwegian Parliamentary invention in 1815 of a tariff converting branding and cutting off limbs into terms of imprisonment - ten years for a hand - does it not exemplify reduction in pain? From slaveries and workhouses with their uncontrolled abuses, to well-ordered penitentiaries, is that not progress? From whipping for disobedience to loss of privileges? From the old smelling stone castles to single rooms with hot and cold water, - does that not exemplify reduction in pain? I just do not know. Each form would have to be evaluated according to its own time, by those receiving the pain, in the framework of their usual life and other people's usual life, and in the light of what they saw as their sins. I do not see how a scale could be established. Protagonists of hard-data science might also argue that I refrain too fast. We can certainly measure how the nerves are distributed in the body. Or we can standardize situations and persons, and find out what they report as most painful. We can, and the more so the closer we move towards the physiology of the phenomena. But at the same time, the closer we move towards nerve-centres and standardized situations, the further we move away from those social, ethical, and religious elements that seem able to neutralize what ought to have been severe pain, or to aggravate minor pain. Guards in concentration camps (Christie 1972) described with surprise how prisoners reacted more to minor than to major violence. "They cried, as children, if receiving a small cuff. But it was as if they did not react at all if very severely beaten, or if friends were killed." Jacques Lusseyran (1963) is very close to saying that he enjoyed life in the concentration camp of Buchenwald. He was continuously close to extinction. Of the 2 000 on his train from France, 30 survived. He had to use his hand to find his way and discriminate between the dead and the
half-dead in the infirmary. He was blind from childhood. Social anthropology has accounts of villagers singing outside an offender's house. It proves sufficiently painful to drive the offender to death. For these and other reasons, this book will not discuss what pain is, whether certain pains are greater than other, or whether pain on earth has decreased or increased. Those questions are greater than social science. But what I can do, and will, is to describe some acts intended as punishments and also some acts very similar to those intended as punishment. I will describe some forms used when decisions on such acts are made. And I will evaluate acts as well as forms. Moralism within our areas has for some years been an attitude or even a term associated with protagonists for law and order and severe penal sanctions, while their opponents were seen as floating in a sort of value-free vacuum. Let it therefore be completely clear that I am also a moralist. Worse: I am a moral imperialist. One of my basic premises will be that it is right to strive for a reduction of man-inflicted pain on earth. I can very well see objections to this position. Pain makes people grow. They become more mature - twice born - receive deeper insights, experience more joy if pain fades, and according to some belief-systems they come closer to God or Heaven. Some among us might have experienced some of these benefits. But we have also experienced the opposite: Pain which brings growth to a stop, pain which retards, pain which makes people evil. In any case: I cannot imagine a position where I should strive for an increase of man-inflicted pain on earth. Nor can I see any good reason to believe that the recent level of pain-infliction is just the right or natural one. And since the matter is important, and I feel compelled to make a choice, I see no other defensible position than to strive for pain-reduction. One of the rules would then be: If in doubt, do not pain. Another rule would be: Inflict as little pain as possible. Look for alternatives to punishments, not only alternative punishments. It is often not necessary to react; the offender as well as the surroundings know it was wrong. Much deviance is expressive, a clumsy attempt to say something. Let the crime then become a starting point for a real dialogue, and not for an equally clumsy answer in the form of a spoonful of pain. Social systems must be constructed so that a dialogue can take place. Furthermore: Some systems are created in ways that make it natural to perceive many acts as crime. Others are constructed in ways where the same acts are more easily seen as expressions of conflicting interests. To reduce man-inflicted pain, one should encourage construction of the latter type of systems. In the simplification needed here, and well aware that complex matters are shelved, my position can be condensed into views that social systems ought to be constructed in ways that reduce to a minimum the perceived need for infliction of pain for the purpose of social control. Sorrow is inevitable, but not hell created by man.
mean days of isolation in a cell stripped of furniture. Most of the personnel within prisons in my country are called "betjent", which means one who serves. They are not called "guards". We are, however, rather moderate in the use of euphemisms at the top level of the Norwegian prison system. We call prison-directors what they are: "prisondirectors"; we likewise call the highest administrative body the "prisonboard". In Sweden they call the top level "Kriminalvrdstyrelsen". " Vrd" gives associations of caretaking. The Danish director for the whole system is called the director for the crime -"forsorg ", which is the word we use for those in need of care: the sick, the old, the very poor, the small children who have nobody else to come to. General use of the word "forsorg" was abandoned when social security was introduced and to a large extent medicalized. So, now the term has become available for new purposes, such as a title for the director of the system in charge of delivering penal sanctions. What sort of words ought we to opt for? There are certainly many kind thoughts behind the kind words. Prisoners might feel better were they not constantly reminded of their status by being called "prisoners", placed in "cells", transferred to "special punishments cells", watched by "guards", and directed by "prison directors". Maybe they would feel less stigmatized. Maybe they would receive more service and help if the system were called " forsorg " instead of "prison". Maybe kind words create a kind world. What makes me wonder whether there is not more to it than mere kindness is the easy acceptance of these kind words among those in authority. It is not those in sorrow who put a ban on expressing grief. It is society, assisted by the funeral directors. As Geoffrey Gorer (1965) has pointed out: In our types of societies there exists a strong taboo against expressing severe sorrow and grief. Suffering is to be expressed in a controlled form, and not for long. This is supposed to be best for those closest to death and misery. Certainly it is good for those not so close. Through language and ceremony, grief has vanished from public life. But so have also the pains of punishment. When we used flogging, cutting off parts of the body, or killing as punishment, the suffering was more obvious (except for the wicked group who tricked the authorities into executing them and were thereby spared the most sinful act of committing suicide). Heavy chains symbolized the degradation. It was a clear-cut picture of sorrow and misery. Today, some prisons look like modern motels, other like boarding-schools. Decent food, work or education, males and females in the same unit in sinful Denmark, conjugal visits in Sweden, it all looks like a vacation at the tax-payers' expense. In line with this, the phenomenon of pain and suffering has close to evaporated, even in text-books on penal law. Most texts make it clear that punishment is an evil intended as an evil. But beyond this, modern texts do not go much further. Compared to the enormous wealth of detail and subtle distinctions usually offered in these text -books, there exists a remarkable reservation among recent authors when it comes to a description of the core phenomena, the penalties. How the punishments hurt, how it feels, the suffering and the sorrow, these are elements most often completely lacking in the texts. And they are not lacking just by oversight, as one discovers if one challenges penal law writers on their sterile coverage of the core phenomena of their trade and suggests that they ought to become a bit more concrete in their writing. The word penal is closely related to pain. This is more obvious in the language tradition of English and French than in the German/Scandinavian one, where we talk about "Strafferett" or "Strafrecht", that is "punishment law". But in both language traditions considerable turmoil is created if it is suggested that the basic law should be called a "pain-law". I have done it, so I know. The penal law professors do most definitely not like to be designated pain-law" professors. The judges do not like to sentence people to pain. Their preference is to sentence them to various "measures". The receiving institutions do not like to be regarded or to regard themselves, as "pain-inflicting" institutions. Still, such a terminology would actually present a very precise message: punishment as administered by the penal law system is the conscious inflicting of pain. Those who are punished are supposed to suffer. If they by and large enjoyed it, we would change the method. It is intended within penal institutions that those at the receiving end shall get something that makes them unhappy, something that hurts. Crime control has become a clean, hygienic operation. Pain and suffering have vanished from the text -books and from the applied labels. But of course not from the experience of those punished. The targets for penal action are just as they used to be: scared, ashamed, unhappy. Sometimes hidden behind a rough facade, but one which is easily penetrated, as exemplified in many studies. Martha Baum shows in detail how "little old men" become very little when confronted with the fact that they were not to go home to mother (in Wheeler 1968). Cohen and Taylor (1972) describe techniques for "psychological survival". Such techniques are not necessary if suffering does not exist. The whole book is one single sad tale of the successes of those who intended to create suffering in other people. So is also Sykes' (1958) description of what he rightly calls "the pains of imprisonment". And that is what is conveyed in the prisoners' own words. A man just out of one of Castro's prisons describes his destiny in an interview with Inger
Holt-Seeland in the Danish newspaper Information (11 December 1979). He measures time through changes in those visiting him: I will make an attempt to give you a sort of film version of how time is passing for the prisoner. Try to imagine the first year, when the visits were coloured by the children. They came, running ahead, followed by some young, beautiful women . . . they moved fast . . . behind them, more slowly, came parents, siblings, parents -in-law, loaded with heavy bags. Some years later, things have changed. Now some young people come first - they are not children any more, they are youngsters, 12, 13 and 14 years, then follow what now are middle -aged women in their thirties, with different movements, with different expressions on their faces . . . and those who were 40 or 50 are now 60 or . . ., they now come far behind, slowly ... and just as the character of the visit changes so do their clothes, people are wearing darker clothes, use fewer gestures, the high voices are gone, the jokes are gone, the anecdotes and the stories are gone, only the essentials are talked about. The visit becomes sadder, fewer words are spoken, joy has left . . . And as for the prisoners, their heads have become white, their faces wrinkled, their teeth are going . . . This man spent 18 years behind the walls. So, in Scandinavia we have an easy way out. We can tell ourselves that "this does not happen here", "not that long", "not long at all, for the great majority". Which is all correct. But only up to a point. If we take the trouble to penetrate the facades of Scandinavian design, we meet these supposed vacationers who happen to be as miserable in the few cases of modern Scandinavian design, as they were reported to be in the old Philadelphia-type prisons. How could it be otherwise? Prisoners share most of ordinary peoples' values. They are placed before the judge and inside walls as a consequence of acts they are supposed to be ashamed of. If they are not ashamed of the acts, they are at least ashamed of being in the situation. And if not ashamed, at least filled with sadness by the simple fact that life is passing by without their participation. While writing this, a characteristic illustration of what penal law professors do not cover in their texts arrived in my mail. The journal Nordisk medisin (1980) devotes most of its March issue to the question of pain. The whole front cover is a picture of a face in agony, and the content is devoted to the relief of pain. The editorial (Lindblom 1980, p. 75) says: To stimulate and coordinate research on pain, and to improve teaching on the results of this research, a new interdisciplinary organization has been created. It has been named International Association for the Study of Pain. As the result of US-experience, new ways of handling severe cases of pain have been attempted, particularly chronic conditions where treatment for the cause of pain is not possible. Interdisciplinary treatment of pain in the form of pain-clinics of the type that exist in USA, England and certain other European countries has however still not come into being in Scandinavia . . . The research is interdisciplinary. One wonders what would happen if penal experts were included. Would they then compare notes, and try to construct all the other parties' negations? Penologists might thereby learn more efficient ways of creating pain, doctors more efficient ways to prevent it. But of course, penologists in our cultures would not opt for membership in the Interdisciplinary Association for the Study of Pain. They would become provoked and angry even by the mere suggestion. Attendance would make clear what is now blurred. There might be only small problems in delivering pain in societies where pain is the explicit destiny for most people: pain on Earth, pain in Hell. (Even though the ambiguous status of the hangman indicated that the problems back in time were not insignificant.) But that society is not ours. We have abolished Hell, and have pain-reduction on earth as one of the major goals. In such a society it is difficult to let people suffer intentionally. Still we do it. We inflict intended pain. But we do not like it. Our choice of neutralizing word s deceives us; the law professors' bleak description of the qualities of the intended sufferings indicates the same. We do not like the activity because intentionally causing pain is in grave dissonance with other basic activities in our society. In this book I often apply the words "pain delivery". But I have had to make a considerable effort to preserve that formulation from extinction. My kind and highly qualified adviser in the subtleties of the English language has
insisted that the term does not exist. Pain delivery, it sounds like milk delivery. Dreadful. My point has been the opposite: It sounds like milk delivery. Perfect. This captures exactly what I want to convey. If pain delivery is not a concept in Oxford English, it ought to become one. Pain delivery is the concept for what in our time has developed into a calm, efficient, hygienic operation. Seen from the perspective of those delivering the service, it is not first and foremost drama, tragedy, intense sufferings. Infliction of pain is in dissonance with some major ideals, but can be carried out in an innocent, somnambulistic insulation from the value conflict. The pains of punishments are left to the receivers. Through the choice of words, working routines, division of labour and repetition, the whole thing has become the delivery of a commodity.
particularly since this system would also be confronted with people diagnosed as dangerous criminals. Again, it might be experienced as painful to live in such an institution. But so was also often the fate of the old or permanently disabled. And in the particular case of the dangerous criminals, pains of potential victims were prevented. This whole development reached a climax in Sweden just after the Second World War. A penal law committee proposed the complete abolition of the old penal law and of the concept of punishment. Sweden should have a law of "measures" for social defence, not of punishments. The proposition was defeated.
Norway and Sweden are soon to follow. Borstal institutions and special youth prisons have been abolished everywhere, except in Sweden. The remaining major exception has to do with the so-called "dangerous criminal". Denmark had 20 persons classified as such in 1978, Finland 9. Norway will probably find a solution corresponding to Finland's when we abolish special measures against psychopaths. A recent Swedish committee has proposed to drop the category "equal to insanity". By and large we are back to a system with definite sentences decided by the courts. To a large extent, this was bound to happen. First: The hypocrisy of the system soon became transparent. One study after another indicated that the treatment centres for criminals were not hospitals after all. They were suspiciously similar to ordinary prisons, the "treatment" staff similar to prison staff, and the supposed patients were equally similar to the old prison clientele, only with an even more negative attitude towards what was happening to them than that which ordinary prisoners used to express. Indeterminate treatment for crime was obviously experienced as considerably more painful than old-fashioned intended pain. Secondly: It was also shown that the system of treatment did not successfully treat. Treatment ideology was based on concepts of utilitarian and scientific thought. The protagonists of treatment made claims to be useful for the patient, and were at the same time open to research. But, as efficiently dem onstrated in the literature on the effects of treatments for crime, the claims of usefulness have not been substantiated. Except for the death penalty, lifelong incarceration, and possibly castration, no cure has proved more efficient - as a means of preventing recidivism - than any other cure. Even in the few cases where there have been realities behind the terminology of treatment, no reduction in recidivism rates has been substantiated. The unanimity on this point just now is deafening, to an extent that makes it necessary to add some words of warning: what has been attempted has all the time been within the limits of available resources. Massive economic and social action has never been undertaken. Poor people have not been made rich, workers have not been given middle-class jobs, youth without anchorage has not been helped to realize hidden dreams, lonely people are not effectively given lasting new social relations. Of course they are not. That would demand social reorganizations far beyond the power of criminological research workers. Thirdly, the concept of "dangerousness" was scrutinized. As von Hirsch (1972) summarizes in an excellent article, study after study had documented vague usage of the concept, low predictive ability when it comes to selecting the supposed dangerous ones, and the usual lack of treatment success. Scandinavian studies, Christiansen and others (1972), Dalgard (1966), and Stang (1966), fully agree. The endless row of scandals popping up around the few remaining special institutio ns (in autumn 1980 Reitgjerdet, in Norway, and Rampton in England) illustrate the impossible moral compromises built into them. Science provided the arguments. But arguments are not sufficient to change social life. This brings us to a fourth point in the explanation of the defeat of the treatment ideology. In the 1960's, Labour had gained some power, or at least respectability. Spokesmen for the working class - but of course not necessarily coming from that class or belonging there except through ideology - were upset by the exposed inequalities and abuses disguised as treatment. It did not exactly strengthen the credibility of these measures that most receivers of this type of treatment for crime turned out to belong to just those classes supposed to be in political power. In addition came the fact that alternative measures of control seemed to be within sight. The concept of the welfare state had arrived. Poverty and misery ought to be handled by pensions and social assistance, rather than by prisons. 1. The story of the heyday and later demise of "treatment for crime" has been told by so many and in so much detail, that I can make my coverage very short. Some early Scandinavian works with a critique of treatment ideology and its results can be found in Aubert (1958), Christie (1960 a and b), Aubert and Mathiesen (1962), Brjeson (1966), Eriksson (1967), Anttila (1967) and Bondeson (1974).
Chapter 4. Deterrence
4.1. The twin ideologies
As one of those taking an active part in slaying the ideas and practice of treatment within the framework of penal law, I look with considerable anguish and anxiety on how deterrence is thriving on the death of its competitor. For a considerable period I have been lecturing on the fallacies of treatment during morning sessions in Oslo, while Johs. Andens(1) (1974) has argued for general prevention in the afternoon in the same room - to a very attentive audience. Of course they are attentive. These students are to man the system of crime control. They are in need of rational substitutes for the ideology of treatment. Good, rational, scientific substitutes - such as they are used to. They get them. And they get them in increasing numbers. During the last years we have received important proposals for a change in the penal system both in Finland (Straffrttskommitteens betnkande 1976) (Anttila 1977) and in Sweden (Brottsfrebyggande Rdet 1977). Both declare the treatment ideology to be dead. And both find a most welcome substitute in deterrence - or "general prevention" as we call it in Scandinavia - as the basic foundation for the penal system. Dichotomies rule the world. Treatment-ideas have faded out, so there is a need for general prevention. To me this seems to be the major weakness in the otherwis e inspiring and inspired report on "New penal system" from Sweden (Brottsfrebyggande Rdet 1977). As if treatment and deterrence were the only way of coping with conflicts. It is too simple. But at the same time it is quite natural that ideas of general prevention are replacing ideas for treatment. The two sets of ideas are often presented as essentially different. But actually they are closely related on many points. They are both, in their recent stage, the outcome of an epoch of rational, useful thought. They have in common a manipulative element. Treatment is something intended to change the criminal; deterrence is an attempt to change other people's behaviour. It is in both cases pain with a purpose. In both cases some sort of behaviourmodification is supposed to take place. Another common element is that they are both soundly embedded in science. But it is no longer any fun to measure the effects of treatment. They are all negative. Thus the researchers have moved to the new promised land. Is private killing deterred if state killing is introduced? Isaac Ehrlich (1975) claims 7 to 8 persons saved for each murderer executed, while other authors argue that Thorsten Sellin (1967) was right when he found that the death penalty was of no importance for the rate of murder in a state. The problems are more complex than with evaluation of the effect of treatment, but in principle the problems and potentialities for measurement are the same within general prevention and treatment. So also are the groups taking part in the new quarrels. Since there are questions of fact, of science and applied social engineering, we are again in the hands of measurement experts, as we shall later be in the hands of "social technicians" to get the results translated into action. The similarities between treatment ideology and deterrence explain why they are so easily exchangeable. But there are also differences between the two. Particularly striking is the greater survival ability of the ideas within the field of deterrence or general prevention. The theory lays claim to empirical validity, just as treatment did. But it is a much more difficult topic to research. First, even its basic concepts are vaguely delimited. The unpreciseness within the area is amply illustrated by the simple fact that the key concepts "general prevention" and "deterrence" are used interchangeably throughout most of the literature, and therefore also here (cfr Andens 1974, Appendix 1). Furthermore, skimming the literature, one will see how everything from police activity to hanging can be classified as stimuli in a system of general prevention or deterrence. By and large, I think it is fair to say that everything that might be conceived of as elements in formal social control might also be characterized as elements in general prevention. And lastly: even in cases where the stimuli are pinned down to manageable proportions, the effects are often more troublesome to measure than when it comes to treatment. The reasons are again simple. Treatment effects at least had a formally clear target: those receiving treatment. With general prevention or deterrence these
questions are more complicated. The general population, in whole or in part, is the target. That population might shift their activity from one type of crime to another, or move from one country to another, or might or might not have received the message of increased or decreased dosage of the stimuli. Conceptually, as well as empirically, ideas of general prevention or deterrence are thus more cumbersome to handle than ideas of treatment. Looseness regarding definitions, stimuli, and target makes it next to impossible to disprove these ideas. The theory is strengthened by claims that it is founded on science, but survives empirical scrutiny. It is probably these aspects of the theory that make it possible for general prevention to fill the void after treatment has gone, and which makes the ideology suitable in an epoch where the infliction of pain would otherwise have been problematic.
is based on reason, and that the crime picture would have been different if the methods of punishment were different. Pain is given a scientific legitimization. We are not quite happy with what we are doing, but we persevere in the name of science!
It cannot be that simp le. A more sophisticated goal is suggested by Klaus Mkel (1975). He is one of the key persons behind the proposal for a new penal law for Finland, and his main argument is that the penal system, through general prevention, ought to create a priority list with regard to values in society. This is an interesting possibility. I shall soon come back to it. By and large, the idea has, however, been used simply to say that the more severe acts have to be met by the more severe punishments. Or, as stated in the major Swedish proposal quoted above: "The sanction ought to be dependent upon how dangerous or deplorable the crime is" (p. 200). So, most pain to those who have committed the most deplorable acts. And who is to establish the priorities, that is, draw up the list? - Parliament is, in my part of the world. The pattern is simple: the penal law draws up the list of sins, Parliament categorizes and ranks them and decides in detail the amount of pain to be inflicted for each possible breaking of the law, and of course then allocates the greatest pain to the highest ranking sins. With Klaus Mkel's formulation of a priority list with regard to values, the task has been broadened. The goal is not simply to control crime, but to give priorities to values reflected within penal law. This is also what the Swedish proposal for a "New Penal System" puts forward. It is not the need for control, but what the offence deserves which must determine the severity of the penalty - "The consequences must emphasise the danger or the atrocity of the crime" (p. 200). But if this is the aim - and it can be a perfectly respectable aim - then new questions arise, in particular in relation to the understanding of what we actually are doing while talking like this. Is this really a discussion of general prevention? What are the scientific as well as social consequences of insisting that this is a discussion of general prevention? It is claimed that the murderer is executed not to prevent murder, but to denounce the evil character of murder. But why discuss this in the framework of an empirical analysis? Pain delivery is here used as a moral declaration. Why not say so? By saying so, we would first of all weaken the position of general prevention. Furthermore, it would become even more obvious that pain delivery was intended to function as a sort of language. That would prepare the way for the idea that other, less painful languages, might be used. It would weaken the legitimization of inflicting pain when the pain was perceived as signals instead of concrete forms of controlling behaviour.
1. Johs. Andens is clearly the most important scholar in the development of ideas of general prevention. His first article on the topic is from 1950: AlmenprevensJonen - illusjon eller realitet? (General Prevention - Illusion or Reality?) Most of his writings on the topic are published in English in the book Punishment and Deterrence (1974). For more critical Scandinavian views, see Aubert (1954) and Christie (1971).
Chapter 5. Neo-classicism
5.1. Birth and re-birth
In order to describe the new classicism, it is expedient to take the old classicism as a starting point. A few words will suffice to give us some foundation. This classical trend was a true continuation of what is often known as the age of enlightenment. This age gave us Rousseau and Voltaire, and with it came a general underlining of the dignity and potentiality of man. (But with Rousseau, most definitely not of women.) In the field of criminal law, the movement was based on two main demands. Firstly, there was a demand for as little direction as possible over human conduct. Punishment should not exceed that which was necessary to prevent the criminal from doing the same thing again, and to prevent others from committing similar crimes. Secondly and this was more strongly emphasized there was a demand for a clear specification of what sort of sanction was to follow what sort of crime. Clarity and certainty became key words in the criminal courts. Both crime and punis hment were to be clearly defined in advance. The punishment should be specified in detail according to the gravity of the crime. It was the growth of the bourgeoisie in opposition to the aristocracy that lay at the root of this movement. The classical trend in criminal politics was sustained by the demand for protection from the oppressors' systematic arbitrarinesses. The bourgeoisie had grown in power and self-confidence to such a degree that it would no longer tolerate situations where a nobleman could get off with a fine whereas a commoner had to pay with his life. The demand was for equal punishment for nobleman and commoner in eases where the breach of law was the same. In order to secure this equality, the measure of punishment was to be firmly established in advance, according to the gravity of the deed, and not according to the social standing of the culprit or the discretion of the judge. The great scholars of criminal law, such as Beccaria and Blackstone, became great because they were great; but they also became great because their message was right for the times. It was compatible with the interests of a powerful group and with political and economic ideas and reasoning.
isolation, each in his one-man cell, there to meditate upon their sins in undisturbed contact with God and the prison director, until they were fit to be discharged. As a reaction against this well-intended torture, later Quakers went in strongly for a completely time-fixed system under which punishment was meted out according to the gravity of the crime. Any other considerations not pertinent to the gravity of the crime would lead to an unfair allocation of punishment. The second committee is usually called the von Hirsch Committee. It opened the way for certain exceptions from justice in the case of particularly dangerous criminals. It also allowed for an additional quota of extra time to be served by recidivists, and some reductions or increases in those cases where it was possible to produce evidence of mitigating or aggravating circumstances. The third report can in many ways be seen as an operationalization of the second report; several of the m embers were also the same. Their system is, in their own description (p. 20), as follows: For each subcategory of crime, we propose that the legislature, or a body it designates, adopt a presumptive sentence that should generally be imposed on typical first offenders who have committed the crime in the typical fashion. The legislature also would determine how much the presumptive firstoffender sentence ought to be increased for each succeeding conviction according to a formula based on a predetermined percentage. The theory behind this approach is that sentences for first offenders should be relatively low but that they should increase rather sharply with each succeeding conviction. Thus, we have suggested a geometric progression as the appropriate increment for more serious offenses: 50 percent "enhancement" for the second armed robbery, 100 percent for the third, 200 percent for the fourth, etc. The rise would, however, be less steep for petty offenders: 10 percent for the second-time pickpocket, 20 percent for the third, 30 percent for the fourth, etc. The Task Force recommends that the legislature, or the body it designates, also define specific aggravating or mitigating factors, again based in frequently recurring characteristics of the crime and the criminal. The concrete handling of mitigating and aggravating factors is described later (p. 46): If the number of mitigating factors substantially exceeds the number of aggravating factors, the sentencing judge may reduce the presumptive sentence for the particular offender (presumptive sentence plus increment for prior convictions) by up to 50 percent. If the number of aggravating factors substantially exceeds the number of mitigating factors, the sentencing judge may increase the presumptive sentence for the particular offender by 50 percent.(1)
4. Alternativer tit frihedsstraf et debatophg. Betlnknin nr. 806. 1977. Denmark. (Alternatives to Imprisonment A Debate Proposal. Report No. 806, 1977.) Beccaria would have felt most at home in Finland, where it may be said that neo-classicism has had its strongest spokesmen. This is hardly mere coincidence. Classicism never quite lost its hold in Finland, which is natural in a society where the judicial system represents an important line of defence in foreign policy. In a Swedish summary of the Finnish edition of the Penal Law Committee's report, the conclusion is as follows: To guarantee proportionality between crime and punishment, as well as the legal predictability, crimes within the new penal law have to be strongly differentiated according to severity so that the limits for punishment for each individual crime will be sufficiently narrowly delineated. To direct the opinions and attitudes with regard to law (rttsuppfatningarna) and the flow of information, one ought to mention typical punishments for each category of crime (p. 182). In an article describing the proposals, a key member of the commission, Inkeri Anttila (1977, pp 103-104) states: To make the system more clear there is proposed an ordering of all crimes in a limited number of severity grades . . . so that each category is related to a fixed place on the scale of punishments. The very name of the crime should be sufficient to decide on the minimum and maximum punishments. The Swedish proposals for a new penal system are more soft-spoken than the Finnish with regard to the demand for simple categories: One must consider both the desire to obtain a clear and uniform practice in relation to the nature of the offence and the desire to be able to adjust the sanction according to the personality and social conditions so that future law-abidance might be accomplished (p. 405). But this is immediately qualified: According to the views of the working group, the gravity of the crime and the demand for proportionality between crime and punishment ought to be given a more dominant influence as regards the choice of punishment. Special rules must be created to do this. The necessary and natural reasons for such rules are well defined punishment scales in the catalogue of crimes, and specific rules concerning the internal severity of various means of punishment (p. 406). That general prevention is the reason for punishment seems to be increasingly clear both in Finland and in Sweden. Inkeri Anttila (1977, p. 103) states: The system has still, according to the committee, a major function in clarifying the content of and limits to the central prohibitions at the same time as it expresses the authoritative condemnation of disapproved acts. The punishment is first and foremost supposed to have a general preventive effect. The Swedish report is completely built up around a discussion of the two alternatives: individual prevention (treatment) or general prevention. And at page 199 comes the conclusion: "We do thus recommend a penal system with a careful upgrading of the importance of general prevention." The Norwegian report is very much like the other two in that it rejects the ideology of treatment for crime. What is different, and what Beccaria would dislike, is that the Norwegian report does not advocate any precise relationship between the gravity of the crime and the severity of punishment. Neither does it attempt to found the system on a basis of general prevention. Denmark has kept somewhat to the sidelines in the ideological debate, but has perhaps done more in practice through taking the lead in. drastic reductions in the application of special measures based on treatment. So far, so good. And I really do believe that what has happened is to the good so far. The injustices within systems pretending to give treatment have been exposed by criticisms of such systems. The pains of punishment have been honestly exposed through the writings of the advocates of general prevention or deterrence. The need for protection against unjust pain delivery has been brought into focus by the neo-classicists. These have been necessary and important steps.
But now, when all that is done, what then is the next task? My personal view would be: now the time is due, overdue, to stop any further advances of the ideology of general prevention, and also to prevent ideas of neo-classicism getting any further hold, at least within our Scandinavian societies. These ideologies have had a happy clarifying effect, they have triggered off necessary awareness. The simplicity and rigidity of neo-classicism makes it easy to see what it is all about. It also makes it easy to see that such a system is not acceptable as a foundation for a crime -control system. 1. von Hirsch, followed by Judge Gilmore, dissents at this point and says that "The presumptive sentencing structure should also recognize that some mitigating or aggravating factors may be more important or serious than others and therefore could be assigned different weights" (p. 46). In the von Hirsch report, however, it is stated explicitly concerning aggravation or mitigation: "But such variations could not depart from the presumptive sentence by more than a prescribed amount. The limits on the permitted variations should be designed to preserve the basic ranking of penalties and restrict overlaps in the severity of punishments for offenses of characteristically distinct seriousness" (p. 100).
but again false, message: the world is simple, and all its sins can be squarely and clearly classified and ranked in advance.
days scold their Scandinavian colleagues for letting them down. They have attempted to humanize their penal systems by pointing to treatment in Scandinavia. In the meantime, the Scandinavians declare treatment dead, and thus make it completely impossible to modify old fashioned unkind penal systems. In an attempt to counteract some of this dama ge let me just add: Treatment is out of fashion. But not all treatment. What has gone, at least in Scandinavia, is "treatment against crime", measures initiated to change the criminal tendencies of a particular person. It is the credibility of measures of control, most often disguised infliction of pain, that has vanished, but not the credibility of treatment or care of sick or suffering people. Prisons are filled with people in need of care and cure. Bad nerves, bad bodies, bad education prisons are storing houses for deprived persons who stand in need of treatment and educational resources. Those fighting "treatment for crime" are of the opinion that humans should not be sentenced to imprisonment to give society the opportunity to treat them. But if human beings are in prison to receive punishments, they ought to get a maximum of treatment to improve their general conditions and soften their pain. Treatment for crime has lost its credibility. Treatment has not. With the breakdown of the ideas of corrective treatment in criminal law, and the advance of neo-classicism, we have arrived at a most serious situation in our country, where the respectability of inflicting pain has been reinstated. We inflict pain that is intended to be pain, and we do so with a clear conscience.
interesting similarities in their views on the state. Johs. Andens gives us a glimpse of his conception in his most recent article on general prevention. He says: "If one looks at law-making and crime control as one large piece of machinery with the task to direct the behaviour of the citizens, then . . ." Klaus Mkel (1975) concludes with a statement that the purpose of the penal law is not limited to the prevention of crime. Its purpose is in addition to "reproduce the official morals and thereby itself" (p. 277). Inkeri Anttila (1977) states that the penal law committee emphasized that the penal law system could not be the only or even the major means for directing the citizens' behaviour in accordance with the goals of official policy (samhllspolitikens mlsttningar). But the system has still, according to the committee, a basic function of clarifying the content of the central prohibitions and their limits while at the same time expressing the authoritative denunciation by society of disapproved acts. At first sight the situation appears different in the USA. The psychoanalyst Willard Gaylin and the historian David Rothman have a joint and very emotional introduction to the von Hirsch report (1976): If progressive reformers shared a basic trust in the state, more eager to involve its power in the society than to limit it, we as a group shared a basic mistrust of the power of the state. At the least we suspected that discretion might cloak discrimination and arbitrariness. We were certainly not prepared, a priori, to construct a system in which the benevolent motives of the administrators were sufficient reasons to cloak them with power. (p. XXXII). But when we go into the report, and Gaylin and Rothman were both members, quite a different picture emerges. Here it is described how that power, taken away from the administrators, is to be used in their combined system of classicism and deterrence. For example, when it comes to the question of the level of punishments: The difficulty is the absence of data: the deterrent impact of an untried scale of penalties is not known. It will be necessary to choose the scale's magnitude on the basis of surmise on a best guess of what its deterrent effect is likely to be. Once a scale has been implemented, with its magnitude chosen in somewhat arbitrary fashion, it can then be altered with experience. If the magnitude selected leads to a substantial rise in overall crime rates, an upward adjustment can be made (within the upper bounds of commensurate deserts). If no such rise results, it would then be appropriate to experiment with further reductions diminishing the scale's magnitude in stages and observing whether any significant loss of deterrent effect occurs. (pp. 135-136). A system is created where the whims of the administrators are exchanged for an enormously powerful, simple and centralized system of state control. Neo-classicism, as expressed in the spectrum from Ervin Goffman in the von Hirsch committee to Police Chief Joseph D. Mcamara in the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force, has created a system that both needs and strengthens a strong centralized state.(2) Their Scandinavian parallels are in the same situation. The defeat of treatment ideology for crime and its practice was a necessary first step. It cleared the ground and brought some severe abuses of power against the weak to an end. The neo-classical school, with its rigid system for demanding a year for an eye and three months for a tooth, was probably both unavoidable and on balance a good second step, at least until such a system became law. The simplicity and rigidity in neo-classicism makes it relatively easy to see what it is all about. When guilt, recidivism, and aggravating as well as mitigating circumstances have been quantified, the remainder is simple arithmetic. But when we do see it all, and particularly when we see it in a system that claims to be there to establish a ranking order of values, then I must admit that I am very far from being happy. That society is not, by choice, my society. It is a centralized, authoritarian state which, in the eagerness to create equality, has to block all those softer values from being considered at all. As an alternative to this we must create arrangements to enable us to cope with the task of re-establishing a situation in accordance with the total value pattern within the social system. 1. I do fully agree with Stan Cohen (1977) when he states: "The much maligned humanitarianism which has been used to shield the otherwise unjustifiable positivist goal of 'treating' criminals, should not itself be obliterated. Once upon a time it was 'radical' to attack law, then it became 'radical' to attack psychiatry. As we now rush back to the bewildered embrace of lawyers who always thought we were against them, we should remind ourselves just what a tyranny the literal rule of law could turn out to be." 2. It all seems to be a replication of the Becker/Gouldner debate from the late sixties. That debate started
with an important presidential article by Howard Becker (1967) on "Whose side are we on?" Becker declared himself clearly on the side of the underdog, fighting prison officers, guards, administrators and bureaucrats. Al Gouldner's (1968) caustic comments were that the unintended consequences of the defeat of the middle men would be more power at the top.
Here we can think of a vast number of alternatives in the decision-making bodies. Decisions could be made by: The United Nations in the General Assembly The United Nations in the Crime Committee Regional bodies such as the European Council or the Union for the Arabic States National Parliaments State Parliaments such as the Californian legislature Sub-units of politicians such as the Parole Boards or Law Committees within the legislature A random sample of the population questioned through the telephone or personal interviews A sample from the county, or county representatives A sample from the municipality of the victim or the offender A totality of those close to the victim or the offender Or the decisions could be made by the victim and the offender in cooperation. This list is, as you will see, organized so that the decisions on the content of the computers the norms that will decide the outcome are brought in increasing proximity to those concerned as we go down the list. You will also observe that the moment the proximity is perfect, then the computer is also completely superfluous. In that case, people can talk, directly. It is in the United Nations end of the scale that computers are unavoidable. In other words, whether or not the computer is a good and necessary thing within penal law depends on the character of the decision-making system. At the same time it is clear that the very existence of the computers represents a temptation and probably also a pressure towards giving higher priority towards those types of decision-making systems that can make efficient use of computers. Those who dislike such systems will be negatively inclined towards the use of computers within this area. This leads to a third, and maybe the major, problem with computers within penal law. It is not only the parties that do not need to go to court, since their mini-computers could tell them the outcome in advance. But the judge does not need them there either in cases where guilt is clearly established. Why should he? Every category to be considered for sentencing is strictly defined in advance. If he is given the necessary information that makes it possible for him to fill in the correct number in the category, he has no need to see the criminal. Since the categories are agreed on as relevant, and are known in advance, the judge could simplify his task by asking the parties to deliver written information on the relevant points and order his secretary to clear up any possible disagreements on relevant information before he started the process of sentencing, that is, before he touched the button on the computer for the final answer. The computer in penal law has through these elements double ability to create distance. Decisions on relevance the computer rules can be made very far away from the parties concerned. And when they are applied, the parties need not be there. Decisions on pain can thus be made in complete insulation from those who are to receive sentence. Here will be no distraction caused by sorrow and tears, by sweat and swear. It will be more like a bureaucracy. Documents, clean desks and better than in any bureaucracy clear answers. It will be those answers needed to allow society to remain stable. The principles in the answer will have been decided by people far above. The concrete answer will be exactly similar to the answer given to all criminals belonging to the same category. And the answer is clearly initiated by the criminal himself. The judge has no other responsibility than to push the button. A fourth point with computers has to do with their hidden curriculum. Their hidden message is that conflicts are there to be solved. Computers are calculating machines, they are designed to give answers. But is it so obvious that answers are what is called for? Is it the final outcome that is of primary importance in criminal proceedings, or is it the process? I will come back to this in the next Chapter. Training in law is training in simplification. It is a trained incapacity to look at all values in a situation, and instead to select only the legally relevant ones, that is, those defined by the high priests within the system to be the relevant ones. Neo-classicism is just a logical extension of that whole process of elimination. So few elements of the totality are considered that complete equality is guaranteed. But it is, through its simplifications, a primitive system. Computers open the way to new, complex possibilities. But now when a technical tool for perfection has been created, we are able to see more clearly that complete clarity, predictability, and pre-programmed behaviour suited for administrative control can never be the only ideals for any legal system. Neoclassicism is maybe an oversimplified attempt to reach a goal that never was. Maybe law is closer related to art than most of us are aware
Chapter 8. Neo-positivism
8.1. The impotent society
After the meetings of the International Sociological Association in Sweden in 1978, I received several letters from colleagues abroad asking for explanations of what they had seen. The meetings took place in Uppsala, only a short journey from the capital, Stockholm. They had been there, and they were shocked and bewildered by what they had seen: the drunks, the drugged, young derelicts roaming about, gathering at the doorsteps of Parliament, the major concert hall, in the subways, dark spots on an otherwise immaculately clean, beautiful, Scandinavian design. Police were in attendance, but very seldom interfered. Several participants had also travelled through the other Scandinavian countries, and had been struck by the same thing everywhere. In Oslo, one of the favourite hang-outs for small traders and users of drugs is a hillock in the park at the doorstep of the Royal Palace, with the Old University and the National Theatre as the closest neighbours, and Parliament just in front. It is as if these young drop-outs want to be seen, as if they want to say something. Maybe they do. There are several interpretations of what they are saying. The simplest is that they are not saying anything at all. At least not anything new. They have always been around and have now only become more visible. It is just a question of old figures against a new ground. We have torn down the worst slums. The natural meeting-points for the lumpenproletariat have been eliminated, converted into pleasant, dull, clean blocks for dull, clean, adapted families. In the absence of ghettos for the losers, they gather around the centres of pride. If Harlem and its equivalents did not exist, they would gather outside the Rockefeller Center. Another interpretation concentrates on the position of youth in modern, industrialized societies. Youth has become a highly prolonged stage of life. The age structure has been adapted to the work structure. People are less needed for work than before. We take care of this by increasing the number of years spent waiting for work, and pensioned off after work. The general age for retirement is gradually being decreased. We call it a privilege, and so it is for many. At the other end of the age scale, we increase the number of years people are kept outside the work force by increasing the number of compulsory or close to compulsory years spent in the educational system. That system is open to everybody. It has been the pride of our social democratic countries. Everybody is given the privilege to compete on an arena built by and for the middle classes. It is an arrangement perfectly suited for transforming structural inequalities into experience of individual failure and guilt (cfr Hernes and Knudsen 1976, Callewaert and Nilsson 1978). Most losers are good losers. They accept the verdict, they are not better than their grades, and they do also accept the position in or outside of the work force deserved by the grade. But some do not. They sit it out in the park. Ivan Illich (1978) has made a case for the fruitfully occupied unemployed. In Denmark, a group of unemployed have created a society for enjoying their happy free status. Freedom from the slavery in the types of work given to large groups of the working population is a great privilege, for those given the resources to enjoy it. But it takes a long life and lots of training in classical languages and upper class puritanism to create one of those idle Englishmen who enjoyed life on inherited means. It took a Jesuit training and considerable natural talent to create an Illich. Useful unemployment is beyond the reach of most people in societies where we are programmed to follow the rhythm of days and years of work. The unemployed or pensioned are literally paid off, given free time without content. They will easily end up in life-styles beyond their own and other peoples' control. In addition comes the factor that class-differences are more visible now. Seen from abroad or fromthe perspective of old people, and measured in money or material belongings, most people are unbelievably wealthy within our Scandinavian societies. But people do not look at themselves from abroad or in a historical perspective. Inequalities remain, and the growth in wealth which could temporarily soften dissatisfaction has come to a stop. Inequalities are not any more only a preliminary stage. They are seen by all parties concerned as permanent features of societies
with explicit emphasis on equality. If these societies are of the Scandinavian type, they will designate themselves as welfare states. Hasse Zetterberg has called these societies a gambler's paradise, a place where you can only win, not lose. It was in the sixties he coined the term in a lecture in Oslo. I am not so sure he would use it today. It is possible to lose completely, drug addicts prove it every day. Prostitutes exemplify it. The minimum pension for old or sick people is in Norway close to one fourth of the average salary of an industrial worker. Those dependent on money from the municipal social security system might end up with less than half of the minimum pension. As formulated by Knut Dahl Jacobsen (1967), "the greatest hindrance towards attaining the welfare state is the belief that we have one." Balvig (1980) has made a strong case showing that the old relationship between poverty and crime is still in existence, regardless of all talk to the contrary. Nonetheless; we live in some sort of welfare state. Those belonging to the conforming poor cannot lose completely. For them there is a safety-net somewhere far below. This is the big difference from the beginning of this century. Our old labour politicians look with a deserved pride on their accomplishments. These are societies where the "deserving poor" are not starving, have some sort of shelter, and are also given some sort of material care during the very last stages of life. But this very system creates certain peculiar problems for social control. Parts of the lumpenproletariat have lost close to everything. There is nothing more to take away as punishment. They cannot be controlled by a threat of losing work, they are out of it. They cannot be controlled by any threat of losing family -relations, they have none. They cannot be controlled by the threat that relatives will suffer; the welfare state is supposed to take care of them. The belief that we have one is as useful for members at the bottom as for those more privileged when it comes to calming guilt for lack of attendance to relatives or friends in need of care. And lastly; those members of the lumpenproletariat willing to live at the absolute minimum cannot be starved into control. They will be assured the basic minimum even though they are often forced to convert it into drugs or alcohol. The time is free, the minimum-money is mine (and could not be removed without shaking the whole base of our welfare societies), and nobody needs me anyhow. Why should I not drink or drug myself to any stage I want. Any stage, including my o wn death. In addition comes the recent history of crime control as described in this book. Treatment for crime seems to be of no use. Science, as well as social developments, have killed it all. Compulsive treatment of deviant behaviour did not work, and it was clearly demonstrated that the idea of treatment resulted in severe injustices directed against members of the working class. Treatment institutions for young offenders, dangerous offenders, and psychopaths are nearly all abolished. Forensic psychiatrists have got a very low status among doctors. The younger generation has up to now nearly all been against all sorts of compulsory treatment for most types of deviant behaviour. As a reaction to abuses in the name of treatment, and to forestall potential abuses in deterrence theory, we have got a more legalistic ideology, exemplified through neo-classicism. We can still cope with severe crime, that is, we can get the severe offenders off the streets in the name of justice. But when it comes to the small ones, we are impotent. They are easily seen. It is a disgusting sight. They drink or dope themselves to death. But some do it on a pension, others on petty crimes difficult to prove. Treatment would not help.
schools, treatment-homes, collectivities and eventually prisons becomes the declared alternative to work. Some old liberals are attempting to stem the tide by pointing to the dangers of stigma and the horrors of prisons. They are easily neutralized by parents pointing to a child lost in drug abuse. They would rather see him alive, in prison. I agree. A second vocal category consists of the actual or potential victims of visible crime. It is impossible to say whether crime has increased or not. But it seems to be certain that anxiety concerning crime has increased. Crime is such an imp ortant part of the commodities sold through the mass-media. At the same time, the social structure has changed in a way that makes it impossible to find out how representative these news reports are. Balvig (1979) has clearly documented that the anxiety for being a victim of crime increases the more isolated a person is. The lonely old lady will see the same as the foreign visitor in the centre of Stockholm. In addition, she will read the newspaper and get it all confirmed. But she is not the only one. And there are realities behind the concern. The welfare states have had a considerable success in distributing property. There are few grown-ups without belongings, things that can be stolen, property for which they demand protection through stern measures against intruders. Again some old liberals attempt to intervene, telling the old ladies that it is not all that dangerous, and pointing out to the new, affluent worker that those who threaten his property are sad, bad cases, poor and sick, and in need of understanding rather than pain. The former Minister of Justice from the Labour party in Norway said so, but she became former through such sayings. The political far left seems confused and in doubt as to how to handle this matter at present. Most take a liberal position, but there are exceptions, as represented by the influential Maoist Jan Myrdal (1977). In several articles he has argued that criminals are the enemies of the working class. Police and prison guards are according to Myrdal closer to the working class than the lumpenproletariat. It is according to him far from obvious that the worker in all cases ought to support demands from the prison movements. "We are in favour of law and order. We are at the side of the police both in the fight against crime, and in the policemen's fight for improved working-conditions and increased salaries". It was back in the 1960's that prisoners and former prisoners held their first general meeting in Sweden. The press called it "The thieves' parliament". It came as a shock. Prisoners should keep quiet, not make demands, not interfere in the penal process. A few years later, all the Scandinavian countries had their prisoner organizations. They were in the centre of public attention. They worked for the improvement of pris on conditions, they organized prisoners, they organized strikes. Thomas Mathiesen (1974) describes it well. They experienced many defeats, but also some victories. The most important effect of it all was probably an increased feeling of self-confidence and dignity among the participants of the movements. Today, the situation has changed dramatically. These days activities within the prison movements tend to be much more defensive of positions attained in the beginning of the 1970's. The movements are not any longer in the centre of public attention. The climate has changed. Former allies have become enemies, more soft-spoken, or out of power. An economic recession makes for less willingness to experiment. The highly visible dark spot on the welfare facade strengthens those forces demanding action, not softness. Demands for law and order have also had a breakthrough in Scandinavia. Of course they have. Highly industrialized societies are bound to create situations where that will happen. During the first stages, when there was always more of everything, more to distribute, we could all relax, liberalism could rule, problems could be defined as transitory. Now they are permanent. There is not more to distribute every year. The situation has changed from one with a perceived potentiality of unlimited progress, to one of defence of what has been attained. But more embittered, and also more confused than any, are the architects of it all, those who were young and poor and active in a fight for a socialism later converted into a social democratism, later converted into a welfare state. Compared to our past poverty, our recent affluence is beyond imagination. Studies (e.g. Ramsy 1977) show it, and we do not even need the studies, since so many still remember. Compared to past insecurities, our recent social security system has outstanding qualities. Is it not obvious that we have reached the goal, that we are there? Why do they then remain, those thin, pale youngsters outside the Palace, visible both to the King and all the King's men? The temptation must be tremendous. Just a few decisions in Parliament, and the last dark spot would be removed. It would not be necessary to call it a law against hooliganism; that might be misunderstood. One could call it a law for the protection of problem-youth. They need protection. Their parents need it. Their victims need it. The welfare states need it now that they have come so close to perfection that they lose control.
To sum it all up: The situation is one where minor offenders have become more visible and also more difficult to control at the very same time as their relatives, victims of crime, left-wing politicians and architects of the welfare states have become vocal advocates for some sort of action. In its totality, this is an unstable situation. Something is bound to happen, and so it does.
years we have had an enormous expansion in the number of professionals trained into an identity of caring for other people's behavioural problems. Now they are there, some of them with their identity at stake. But at the same time they are functionaries, most of them working in bureaucracies, from nine to four, with clear lines of command, with documents, with short encounters with clients, with potential power vis --vis these clients, but just administrative power. They will not have to live with the consequences of their decisions; they will drive home to the suburbs, to partner and children and dogs and summer-house, and somewhere someone will have to let drug-users feel the consequences when they do not live according to the rules of a game between comrades. Those someones will become the new breed within social control in westernized societies. I suggest we call them comrade-functionaries. But some will do more than talk as comrades but act as mere functionaries. They will start collectivities for drugusers themselves. They have learned how to do it. If clients run away, they will try to find them and bring them back. If they cannot find them, they will ask the police to do so. When the police bring them back, they will keep a close eye on them, and prevent them from running away anew. But they will get tired. Partners will need attention; their children have got the measles; the police get irritated; they install some locks. But locks are easily opened, and illegal opening is a challenge in itself. A fence is raised, some clients dig a hole; a wall is raised, some jump the wall; bars are installed, some remove the bars and jump the wall. A special treatment unit is built. It is like an old film. We have been through it all before. The potentialities of the Hassela ideology reflect a repetition of work schools for criminal youngsters. They started as idealistically run and completely open offers to young people who really deserved an honest offer. Through the mechanics of teachers being obliged to keep their unusually unwilling pupils, they ended as unusually unpleasant indeterminate prisons. It is difficult to understand why social workers should prove more successful. The special arrangements and institutions for children difficult to govern were established in Scandinavia at the end of the last century as a result of combined interests among law personnel, educationalists and politicians (Stang Dahl 1978). It came as a great relief to everybody on the controlling side. The staff should be experts, to a large extent recruited from education, health or welfare. But this last element never materialized. There were not so many professionals around in those days. But now there are, eagerly waiting for new tasks, and also protected against the memories from past approaches by seeing themselves as comrades. We end up in a system of enforced consumption where one of the commodities becomes socia l control, served by a comrade-functionary close to that type of personnel we otherwise meet in totalitarian societies.
One reason why compromises are so easily reached within the crime-control system might be that the extreme positions on the pendulum are not that different after all. Maybe the similarities between positivism and classicism, as well as between neo-positivism and neo-classicism are greater than their differences. I have earlier argued that treatment ideology and general prevention (or deterrence) have basic similarities. Now I want to push the level of provocation one step further, and argue that posit ivism and classicism as they appear within the field of crime control also envisage some fundamental similarities. Beccaria punished with a purpose. The von Hirsch report establishes the level of pain delivery so as to be able to prevent crime. They fought for equality in pain delivery. But the delivery had a cause. Behind it all is the obvious goal of crime control. Neo-classicism is not only activated by the revival of interests in general prevention. The two are in a harmonious relationship. Just deserts would be only an empty shell if it were not seen as a regulatory mechanism for pain with a purpose. Pendulum moves between classicism and positivism represent a true picture when the task is to describe the major practical important positions in the debate on crime control. But it is an untrue picture if the intention were to give an analysis of fundamentally different positions within the area. The pendulum I have described up to this point is in a way a one-dimensional one. There is another dimension, by and large ignored by makers of criminal policy and neglected or mostly frowned upon by sociologists as well as liberals. Let me try to bring us a bit closer to this alternative position. But it is a difficult task, so let me hasten slowly.
and might create them in the process. This will often make us forget that we are not quite so foreign to each other as some writers make us believe. Some do still live in the countryside. And some never do leave their neighbourhood within their Megalopolis.
Christiania values when I slowly realized that the bear was chained. The place has its ups and downs. My last experience was in the Grey Hall. Two thousand people were crammed in to initiate a fight against the use of hard drugs in Christiania and in Denmark. In the following period, very strong pressure was exerted on sellers and users. A national movement was created, and Christiania moved upwards. But it is a society with great scepticism against leadership, any leadership. Observed from a distance, it looks as if natural leaders are born, again and again, when crises emerge. Taking responsibility, they become visible both inside and outside Christiania. But thereby they break with the rule of equality, and lose their potentiality to act. The same has been observed within the feminist movement. So, Christiania cannot be ruled. But it cannot easily be killed off either. Each time an attempt is made, it mobilizes enormously, and the government hesitates. Christiania has many friends. As Ben Kutchinsky (1981) puts it so well: liberalism is important in Denmark. And Christiania itself is an important part of Denmark. In addition to the dirt and sin and misery, it is also an expression of core values of Danish society. In the good periods - but remember there are also bad ones this is a place for communal living. Since so many work so little, they have more time than usual for talk, cultural activities, and mutual attendance. At the same time, however, there are clear indicators (Madsen 1979) that commercialism is important inside Christiania. Christiania is a challenge to Denmark, but maybe the more ordinary Denmark will in the end take over from the inside. Christiania is a sort of medieval town, based on a mixture of small private enterprises and communal sharing. At the other end of Denmark is another collectivity, one based more on hard work and socialism. Its name is the "Tvindschools", its symbol the largest windmill in Denmark, built by the participants. It has grown out of the folk-high-school movement of Denmark, a strong current of that country, mostly with Christian affiliations, a place of development and learning for youth after they have gone through the compulsory school. The teachers at Tvind put all their salaries into one hat and share. It is a very efficient technique applied by a minority within a capitalistic welfare state. The Tvindsystem has become rich, and buys more and more farms, which they convert into schools. An essential element is that the pupils as well as the teachers work and study at the same time. They have built their own buildings, invented their own sewage system, now copied in several places, and their own electric power system. The windmill gives a surplus of electricity, sold to the electricity companies. If you do not know how to repair a broken window or carburettor, you just have to try. Of course you can do it. They buy old buses, convert them into class-rooms, and drive all over Europe and Asia to study the living conditions and to become able to report home in lectures and speeches from real life, not only from books. When abroad, they attempt to take part in ordinary peoples' life, often through some joint projects in villages or cities. In addition to the "Travelling folk-high-school" they operate a teachers' high school, and a so-called "After-school" for young people just out of the compulsory school system. Work is a core value. The discipline is very strict. Alcohol and "hash" are absolutely banned, even in vacations. Breaking these rules means eviction. Christiania and Tvind, they are both a part of the surrounding society, but also in contrast to it. And they stand in contrast to each other. The abundance of time in Christiania, the shortage of it in Tvind; the lack of discipline in Christiania, the abundance of it in Tvind. The danger of Christiania seems to be too little intervention, tolerance to an extent that might endanger life. The danger of Tvind is a collective attitude so strong that individuals might become crushed. But still, what unites the two systems is something more important. It is basic trust in human beings. Christiania and Tvind are societies of anti-clients. Through their concrete practice, they declare that humans can accomplish what they really want to accomplish. Man is a creator, not a mere consumer. This spring, thirty persons held a meeting on the West Co ast of Norway. They gathered to discuss ethical and philosophical questions, as well as very practical ones, such as how to organize their daily life and get the necessary work done. They kept on for three days. Except for a few invited speakers, they were all, according to our official system of classification, mentally defective. Were they? This is an uninteresting question. They had their meeting. Their discussions were interesting. After the meeting, they all went home to four different villages where they have their permanent life. They all work. They all take part in
decision-making. They are all engaged in various cultural activities. There is a totality in the existence which gives it qualities beyond the usual. They are supposed to be dumb. I was thinking of that the other day during an evening meal in one of the villages. We were probably ten people around the table. Two or three had no "official handicap", others had several. Vidar asked if we wanted more tea, and served us all, quietly, no mess, not a drop was spilt. In addition to being designated mentally deficient, Vidar is blind. But the point of the story is not that the blind, classified as mentally deficient, Vidar, served tea. The point is the behaviour of the remaining persons around the t able. It was a matter of course that Vidar should serve us tea. It was an atmosphere of confidence. I think I observed a slightly watchful glance on the face of one who had taken particular responsibility in setting the table; but no interference, no comments afterwards. This was no result of planning. I asked an old aquaintance the next day. No strategy, it had never been discussed in the household. The only threat I can envisage against the circle of people around that table, is that there might be too ma ny helpers around. Not professionals, they are banned from this community, at least in their capacity as professionals. But do-gooders. It is a very realistic threat. Young people are enormously attracted to this community. They queue up to take part. Too many would easily mean that they would take the teapot away from Vidar and maybe even push him out of his major job in the household: drying the dishes. He does it, once a day, in addition to his other job outside the household. To protect Vidar and others, dishwashers are not allowed into the system. Also to protect him, some of the young people who would otherwise be tempted to give too much help are forced to take their meals in a ghetto where there are none of the formerly declared mentally deficients, no insane, no blind, no crippled. In other words the situation has been turned exactly upside down. The youngsters have become the handicapped, those to protect the others against. And the young people know it. They strive to get access, to get close to a totality, to get teachers of all sorts, that is, from the whole variety of mankind, in vital questions. This is not only a counter-culture as Teodore Roszak (1969) would have called it. It is a counter-society, more radical than any I know of, more so than Tvind and Christiania, more than any political movement. In the midst of our well-regulated, immensely affluent societies of providers of service, even here there are counter-forces, societies of anti-clients, places where it is not obvious who are the providers and who are the receivers. Vidarsen is the name of the collectivity Vidar lives in. (The similarity in names is probably a coincidence.) Officially, Vidarsen is an institution for mentally handicapped persons. It receives money from the State. As in Tvind, all salaries are put in a hat and shared. Collectivities of this type were first created in Scotland by the German refugee Karl Knig. His inspirer was Rudolf Steiner. Internationally, they are known as Camphill villages. They show interesting s imilarities to the French type of villages called "Larche", created by Jean Vanier (Clarke, 1974). The ground seems particularly fertile for such villages in Norway. There are four of them, with plans for two more to come. Just now, they are striving to get the authorities to redefine them from being institutions for handicapped people into being communes for such people who for one reason or another find life in large, compartmentalized units unsuitable. Vidarsen could not function without subsidies from the State. It is a reaction against domineering features of the welfare state. At the same time it is a form of life dependent on that state, yet possessing potentialities for the renewal of the welfare state. Of course they are believers, as we all are. In Vidarsen and Camphill they have the same idea with regard to souls as are found in so many belief-systems. They think that the soul, when a body dies, passes to another body. This is a hypothesis with great consequences for social life. It makes people very attentive. External signs such as blurred talk, eruptive bodily moves, or permanently running noses do not become all that important as indicators of who you are. Inside might live a dignified soul. When we look hard, they are proved right.
10.1. Knowledge
The importance of knowledge might be best illustrated in the contrasting features of a society of experts versus the subterranean pattern suggested through the stories from our valleys. All other things being equal, but obviously they are not, it seems to be a plausible hypothesis that the greater the amount of information on the totality of the life of the relevant system members, the less useful (and needed) are generalized concepts such as "sickness", "madness", and "crime". The system members come to know so much about each other, that the broad concepts in a way become too simple. They do not add information, they do not explain. In Norwegian we have the word "bygdeoriginal". "The odd local character" might serve as a translation. Small-scale societies are not characterized by similarity in ways of presenting oneself, or in general behaviour. On the contrary, they exhibit a most colourful variation in the gallery of persons. A large amount of our older literature is filled with descriptions of them. These are not flat societies where everybody is and behaves just like everybody else. But such societies are often characterized by continuity in the highly individualized life styles. "Bygdeoriginalene" are persons created through a long period of interaction during which the parties get sufficient time to get to know each other. In this type of society, we find a great amo unt of variation between persons, but not so much in the person. Eccentricity is tolerated, but inconsistency is not. It becomes a tolerance of variation in the sense of consistent differences from the usual ways of behaving. It becomes tolerance of patterned behaviour so closely related to a specific individual that it might be called a personality trait. Strange people are tolerated, but their roles are not for hire. But with so much information regarding the system members that the simple generalized abstractions do not suffice, the most simplified reactions towards unwanted behaviour do not suffice either. Crime and punishment. The two concepts are at the same level of abstraction. In a social system where the one is not useful, the other might not be useful either. Knowing the "bygdeoriginal" the odd local character the system members will understand his behaviour to an extent that makes one aware of the complexities in changing it. Simplified punishments will not be seen as natural and obligatory answers. It is important to realize that not all small-scale societies have knowledge about their members. Smallness is no guarantee of knowledge, while at the same time some large systems contain considerable mutual information between the system members. A very important factor here is the question of how long the system has been in existence. Small societies without a common history will have no place for individualized deviance. There has not been the time, nor the encounters necessary, to create such roles. In a small-scale society with a limited amount of mutual knowledge between the system members, the demands will often be great for similarity in behaviour. Non-conforming will be categorized in abstract terms, and censured by simplistic actions. Systems with limited internal interaction will remain without a common history. Modern "dormitory towns" are exemplary cases. The extreme cases should probably not be called systems at all, since so little interaction is going on. Not even punishments will create interaction, since external police are called in and the rest of the procedure of punishment is done outside the system. To arrange the situation in a way that forced those who lived there in the non-system to cope with a breach of conformity without possibilities for exportation of the problem, would in itself help to create a system of the non-system. The need for pain infliction might thus be reduced through system-creating. Another essential factor limiting common knowledge is segmentation. A small caste society might keep the participants efficiently separated. The effect of this will of course be increased through inequalities in power.
10.2. Power
People with power can deliver pain. Power means the ability to get other people to do what you want them to do, independently of their own wishes. The penal judge is above the defendant. He is protected by the symbols of the courtroom, the elevated bench, the robe, in some systems also the wig, the prestige of the building, the atmosphere, his training, affiliations, special class, and enjoys the advantage that the decisions are in reality made somewhere else; the judge is only carrying out a heavy task. His heart is bleeding, but he is obliged to act, to punish.
People without power are in quite a different situation. If they have no protection, or they are not strong, pain delivery is not a tempting alternative. The potential receiver would not take it. He would hit back. Intentional infliction of pain is easier the further away the recipient is from the deliveryman. Milgram (1965) has shown it experimentally. He hired people in the name of science to give electric shocks to other people. The hired ones were brought to believe that the object of the study was to find out whether people would learn faster if they were punished for mistakes. Few were hesitant to apply punishment, even when they thought the voltage was dangerously high. But they became hesitant the closer the victim was brought to them. I have similar data from a study of behaviour in concentration camps (Christie 1972). The more prisoners were able to define themselves as ordinary human beings vis --vis the guards, the closer they came, the greater were their chances of survival. These prisoners were Jugoslavians in Nacht- und Nebel-camps in the North of Norway. Those who were able to learn the essentials of the language were protected, at least against intentional extermination. They made their guards vulnerable to the guards' usual standards of behaviour against usual humans. By talking, the prisoners became individualized and humanized. They came so close that punishment was seen to be what it really was. Here we are at the heart of the matter. We saw how the neo-classical approach objectified the process of punishment. The choice was in a way made by other authorities, and by the criminal who started the whole thing. The judge became only a tool, an instrument of destiny. Delivery of pain is converted to the appropriate scientific method, and the yardstick is the gravity of the crime. The whims and wishes of the judge are of no importance, nor are those of the criminal. With a little help from computers, they do not need to meet at all. In other words, the whole situation is unusually well designed for a process of pain -inflicting. If there is a conflict, and some people are given the task of doing something about it, we are faced with two alternatives. One is to give those people power. If so, that power must be controlled. Neo-classicism is one way of controlling power. Elaborate possibilities for appeal from the decisions of the power-holders is a related one. So also are training, professionalization and all sorts of "objectifying mechanisms" such as rules of competence, protection by rank, and selection by qualifications. The solution at the other extreme is that those given the task of handling the conflict are not given power. The dwarf at the royal court symbolizes the idea; so small that he was unusually well suited as a go-between until he became a specialist, and was therefore regarded as potentially dangerous. The child might sometimes take on this role in a family conflict. Or one whose advanced age made him an outsider might take the role. The other symbol on this side is the independent third party asked to help, but not given authority to enforce, and with no possibility of personal gain related to the outcome of the conflict.
10.3. Vulnerability
A way of controlling power is to make the wielders of power vulnerable. Vulnerability might be established in several ways. Three are particularly important. They are vulnerability through equality in status, through equality in qualifications, and through close and available physical proximity. The importance of proximity is exemplified in the recent discussion of neighbourhood-police. As a reaction against the alienated conditions in many urban areas, several attempts have been made to decentralize police services as well as social and health services. It is again an expression of one of the many pendulum moves in society. After having destroyed municipal police systems, the numerous small police stations, the small health units, and the general practitioners in so many areas of life, it is now in vogue to re-create them. Police cars and electronics did not quite make up for the loss of that old constable Bollingmo who patrolled my neighbourhood in my early childhood. So, we re -invent him. We do, as in Oslo quite recently, convert some caravans into local police stations, allocate a permanent squad to serve there, and make serious attempts to let the police come closer to those they ought to serve. It is at the same time an attempt to become able to control the controllers. Police cannot be controlled through bureaucratic means. As Stkken (1974) has underlined, police work leaves little trace on paper, if the police so wish. That makes control from above close to impossible. The alternative is control from below, from the public in contact with the police. But to make that type of control efficient, the police must be converted into a neighbourhood-police. There are, however, sceptics around. Stan Cohen (1979) and Thomas Mathiesen (1978) are among them. The core of the critique centres on Focault's (1975) concept of the disciplined society. And they are right. These become uneven relationships. Prisons might be abolished by a method that makes the whole society into something similar
to it. Within the police, it is not old constable Bollingmo we re-create. It is a stream-lined officer integrated in quite another way into a huge, army -like unit with great striking capacity. The electronics are there, and the cars. The new "local" policemen are only local in the sense of being there while on duty. They have no lasting commitment; they leave the beat after service-hours. They leave for a life unknown to those who remain. In other words, they are not vulnerable. The old local policeman was. He had of course his status as a policeman, and he could call for assistance. In bad cases he could mobilize the power of the State. But he would not call in external authorities all the time. He was in so many ways a hostage of his community. He lived there, or close by. His children were in their schools, his wife in their stores. This was not a case of the iron fist and the velvet glove (Cooper 1974). This was a case of real vulnerability. In contrast to this, a decentralized system of control by personnel anchored outside the system might easily convert into a system of espionage completely uncontrolled by the system-members themselves. To avoid a perversion, the idea of a decentralized police service presupposes a police force dependent on the neighbourhood it is to police, with weak links to the police force outside the neighbourhood and with important changes in the organization of the ordinary police. If we let the neighbourhood police expand, we must shrink the central police and block the communication channels between centre and periphery. The police must be seen as a total sys tem. If we just add neighbourhood police, we come dangerously close to "the punitive city" so well described by Cohen (1979). The vulnerability of the police has to be preserved. "Special qualifications" represent another shield against vulnerability. Experts on social matters have that form of defence. They are certified as more competent than-others on social matters. They are trained in a language peculiar to their equals. They will come to the local office for social matters to serve the community, but will easily end up as rulers. More than the policemen, they are out of control, seen from the locals' point of view. They are not designed to let people cope with their conflicts, but to solve the conflicts for them. And as judges, they are preprogrammed to disregard certain possibilities, and put emphasis on others. But in contrast to judges, they are not trained into a realization that they are handling conflicts. They will, like the old treatment personnel within crime control, easily convert into pain-delivering persons under the disguise of being health personnel. With increased insights regarding the dangers of power and the needs for vulnerability maybe the time was ripe to re-establish the respectability of the Child Welfare Boards and the Temperance Boards we have in most of Scandinavia. Again a pendulum move; after heavy criticism of the boards, now back to the boards! But it would have to be back to a different type of boards than those operating today. It would actually be a form much closer to the law-makers' original intentions with these boards, only with some changes due to our experience up to now, and because they are to function in a different society. These new boards would not be the domain of the child savers (Platt 1969). We have gained experience. We will man them with equals. Nor would they get power. We know more now about the paralysing effects of power on social systems. Respectable boards would not get functionaries either. They would consist of members, not rulers. And lastly, but important for the boards' possibilities for useful functioning, they would operate in a completely new social setting. The old boards came into being in societies where poverty was still an important fact of life. The child savers from the last century are probably less open to criticism when evaluated according to their own time. Ours is the post-welfare state in the sense that the supply of basic social needs is to a large extent taken for granted.
solidarity, and punitiveness decreases. I can follow Durkheim all along, with the exception of the last sentence above. Durkheim was indeed a product of the French urban culture. He quotes with approval a statement that if one has seen one Indian, one has seen them all, while it is obvious that among civilized people two individuals can immediately be seen as different. This bias has probably made him blind to the amount of variation in small-scale societies, and also to the problems of control within the large ones. Since he believes that small "primitive" societies consist of equal persons, he sees limited reasons for exchange of services. But then he is losing what could have been his best example of organic solidarity: a small-scale society with lots of mutual dependence and where the participants cannot be replaced. Here organic solidarity can be said to function at its maximum, and so does also the parties' possibility of exercising mutual control. In large units, conditions for solidarity are more limited, since roleincumbents might so easily be exchanged. We can buy them at the labour market and use the leftovers as targets for pain.
industrialized countries have to a large extent applied civil law where we apply criminal law. Especially in societies that lack a strong central power, where the State is a weak one, or where the State representatives are far away, people are forced not to apply force. What do they do instead? First, it is important not to presuppose that conflict ought to be solved. The quest for solution is a puritan, ethnocentric conception. For most of my life I have taken it for granted that the outcome ought to be a solution, until I was kindly made aware of my limited perspective. Then for a while I clung to an alternative concept: "conflict management". Again a narrow, ethnocentrically determined choice. To manage, the word is related to the Italian expression to train a horse for the mange, or in our time, managers, the word for those who direct other people. It is very far from a participatory term. Conflicts might be solved, but they might also be lived with. "Conflict-handling" is probably a better term. "Conflict participation" might be the best. That term does not direct attention to the outcome, but to the act. Maybe participation is more important than solutions. Conflicts are not necessarily a "bad thing". They can also be seen as something of value, a commodity not to be wasted. Conflicts are not in abundance in a modern society; they are a scarcity. They are in danger of being lost, or often stolen. The victim in a criminal case is a sort of double loser in our society. First vis --vis the offender, secondly vis --vis the state. He is excluded from any participation in his own conflict. His conflict is stolen by the state, a theft which in particular is carried out by professionals. I have applied this perspective in an article "Conflicts as property" (Christie 1977), and will therefore not go into further details here, except for one quotation, which tries to illustrate the most important loss when conflicts are stolen (p.8.): This loss is first and foremost a loss in opportunities for norm-clarification. It is a loss of pedagogical possibilities. It is a loss of opportunities for a continuous discussion of what represents the law of the land. How wrong was the thief, how right was the victim? Lawyers are, as we say, trained into agreement on what is relevant in a case. But that means a trained incapacity in letting the parties decide what th ey think is relevant. It means that it is difficult to stage what we might call a political debate in the court. When the victim is small and the offender big in size or power how blameworthy then is the crime? And what about the opposite case, the small thief and the big house-owner? If the offender is well educated, ought he then to suffer more, or maybe less, for his sins? Or if he is black, or if he is young, or if the other party is an insurance company, or if his wife has just left him, or if his factory will break down if he has to go to jail, or if his daughter will lose her fianc, or if he was drunk, or if he was sad, or if he was mad? There is no end to it. And maybe there ought to be none. Maybe Barotse law as described by Max Gluckman (1967) is a better instrument for norm-clarification, allowing the conflicting parties to bring in the whole chain of old complaints and arguments each time. Again we are close to a most important difference between the neo-classical approach in penal law, and a general aspect of participatory justice. In penal law, values are clarified through a gradation of the inflicting of pain. The state establishes its scale, the rank-order of values, through variation in the number of blows administered to the criminal, or through the number of months or years taken away from him. Pain is used as communication, as a language. In participatory justice, the same result the clarification of values is accomplished in the process itself. Attention is moved from the end-result to the process.
insight, extend the system of victim compensation, and let the domain of penal law diminish? Three reasons often given are close to the obvious. Let us look at them in turn. First it cannot be done in societies of our type. Ours are societies of specialization. We need experts to handle crime. I will soon go into this problem in greater detail. Here it suffices to mention that not all social arrangements are there because they are necessary. They might also be in existence because it once was a good thing for those with power that they should come into existence. Later, the arrangement continues by the very fact that it also serves other interests. The servants of the courts are well served by themselves. So are also their auxilliary personnel. Secondly; Compensatory justice presupposes that compensation can be given. The offender must be able to give something back. But criminals are most often poor people. They have nothing to give. The answers to this are many. It is correct that our prisons are by and large filled with poor people. We let the poor pay with the only commodity that is close to being equally distributed in society: time. Time is taken away to create pain. But time could be used for compensatory purposes if we so wished. It is an organizational problem, not an impossibility. Furthermore, it is not quite true that prisoners are that poor. Lots of young apprehended criminals have the usual range of youth gadgets; bikes, stereo-equipment, etc. But the law and those running it are surprisingly hesitant to take any action to transfer any of these belongings from the youngsters to the use or benefit of the victim. Property rights are better protected than rights to freedom. It is simpler to take away a youngster's time than his bike. Property rights are important to us all. Imprisonment is highly improbable for the ordinary citizen. In addition, those medieval sinners who were dealt with through systems of civil justice were not always all that rich. Herman Bianchi has in an article (1979), and also in lectures, described how sanctuaries functioned in those days. Churches and monasteries functioned as places where offenders could not be touched. Thus they became bases for discussions between representatives of the offenders and victims about guilt and compensation. A killer might be forgiven if he promised to pay 1000 guilders. He was then free to leave the monastery. But it might later become clear that he was not able to pay the 1000 guilders. In this case he was also a bad man, but less so. He was now converted from a killer to a debtor. New discussions might follow, and the parties might agree to reduce the debt to a size that could realistically be paid. A little to the victim was better than the life of the criminal to the state. Offenders completely unwilling to compensate were slowly and subtly pushed down in rank and comfort within the sanctuaries, and eventually out of them as refugees to other countries, or as crusaders in the combined fight for Christianity and trade privileges. Herman Bianchi is now engaged in attempts to re-establish sanctuaries in Amsterdam. That is one of the few original ideas within our field in the latter part of this century. But here comes the third objection: this would lead to the most terrible abuses. The strong victim would squeeze the poor offender out of all proportion, or the strong offender would just laugh at the victim if compensation were mentioned. Or vendettas would threaten. Victims and their relatives or friends would take the law into their own hands, and the offender and his gang would do the same. Violence would not be limited to the mafia but spray its mischief all over the system. It is exactly to prevent this anarchy that we have, so to speak, invented the state. And again there are counter-arguments: Many crimes take place between equals. Abuses in the compensatory process are not all that probable. Furthermore, in a process of participatory justice, the offender and the victim are not left in limbo. Their discussion must be a public discussion. It would be a discussion where the situation of the victim was scrutinized, where every detail regarding what had happened legally relevant or not was brought to the court's attention. Particularly important here would be detailed consideration regarding what could be done for him first and foremost by the offender, secondly by the local neighbourhood, thirdly by the state. Could the harm be compensated, the window repaired, the lock replaced, the wall painted, the loss of time because the car was stolen given back through garden work or washing of the car ten Sundays in a row? Or maybe, once this discussion was started, the damage would not seem so important as it looked in documents written to impress insurance companies? Could physical suffering become slightly less painful through any action on the part of the offender, during days, months or years? And in addition: had the community exhausted all resources that might have offered help? Was it absolutely certain that the local hospital could not do anything? What about a helping hand from the janitor twice a day if the offender took over the cleaning of the basement every Saturday? The situation of the offender would have to be analyzed in the same way. This might expose needs for social, educational, medical or religious action. Not to prevent further crime, but because needs ought to be met. And to all the objections: why should the impossible cases hinder a decent solution where decency is possible? Why not restrict the area for punishment to the utmost by actively taking away all those cases that might be taken away? Let us construct conciliatory bodies. Let variation blossom when it comes to the selection of personnel,
rotation, training, etc. Let us just remember some of the basic lessons from their predecessors: Let us make them vulnerable. Let us not give them power. Let them not become experts. Let them not become distant. We should have to see it that by and large they were equal to those they had to conciliate and also that they would be living with them. Instead of justice created by a veil of ignorance as suggested by Rawls (1972) this would become justice created thro ugh the knowledge that one would have to live with the consequences of the decisions for a long time to come. Such bodies will not be able to handle everything. The state will not wither completely, but will decline a little, one hopes. How far we can go, will be a question of experience. But we cannot move without a goal. The goal must be pain-reduction. Within law as within the other institutions of society. Louk Hulsman once gave a lecture in Oslo with the title: "Penal law as a social problem". From that formulation it follows clearly that the territory of penal law has to be delimited to the utmost extent. In the long run it will be a question here, as in other main areas in society, of organizing things in such a way that the common people become participants in those matters which are of importance to them instead of just onlookers; or that they become the producers of solutions and not mere consumers. It will be important for us to grope our way forward towards solutions which compel those involved to listen instead of using force, to search for compromise instead of dictates, solutions which encourage compensation instead of reprisals and which, in old-fashioned terms, encourage men to do good instead of, as now, evil.
despised as a profanation of an emotion known as important to all with something dear to lose. Loss might lead to sorrow, and mourning. It might also lead to anger, and punishment. There are of course important differences in the process. Mourning does not necessarily have any target, anger converted into punishment has. But there are also similarities. And my point is that the more the anger expressed through punishment is given a form with similarities to mourning the less objectionable I would find the activity. It is a sort of limiting analogy I am attempting to establish. If pain is to be given away, it is only acceptable in a form with structured similarities to mourning. Concretely: punishments seem more acceptable the more personalized they are, the more emotions they allow for, and the less they are perceived in a utilitarian perspective. If I inflict pain, it must to the largest possible extent be me, in emotions, and with pain as the purpose. Not a representative, calm, and with a purpose beyond the expressive one. What I am describing here, is often classified as an "absolute theory of punishment". Absolute, because no reasons are given. You punish because you punish, just as you are sad because you are sad. An absolute theory of punishment is completely out of fashion among modern penal thinkers. It gives no reason, shows no utility. I like the theory because of that. If there were no purpose behind the pain, it would be more of a clear moral matter. The parties would have to think again and again whether pain was right. Not whether it was necessary, but right. The chances are great, that the more they thought, the less they would find it right. Reflection would exi le anger. The norm-transgressor would be confronted, and might counter-attack. The procedure for punishment would be transformed into a dialogue. We should be back to civil proceedings. But it is not by chance that absolute theories of punishment are out of fashion, and that the dominant penal theories of our time are of the utilitarian type, with pain as treatment or pain as a deterrent. This is all a true reflection of our societies as often presented to us: Societies of calculating individuals, deeply em bedded in the exchange of commodities to maximize individual benefit. We have distant democracy, well suited to a distant penocracy, well suited to serve a large-scale society using taximeters to control the price of all acts. Nothing could be more in harmony with a marked model of exchange than neo-classical thinking around just deserts. A just measure of pain. A proper prize. As we grow more and more international, we will also here establish a world market. Also in organizational form, our present system of punishment is a pretty good explication of major features of present society. Ours is a society of clients, one where we are represented by others, one where others investigate, debate and decide. Why should we not be clients as victims when we are clients in so many other life spheres? Why should we not let other people receive both money and gratitude to inflict pain on the wrongdoer when we do not really know him, and probably never will. Why should we not buy punishment, when we buy health and happiness? The reasoning above leads close to the conclusion that punishment as mourning is an impossibility in a society of our type. Which is all right. But also all wrong. We know, all of us, that there is more to our lives than markets and calculation. We have friends for friendship, fall in love for no rational reasons, behave as beasts or heroes even when we know it will not profit us. We talk about markets and calculation, but know pretty well that markets and calculation could not function if there were not a back-stage in operation where words such as communal spirit, totality, solidarity and trust were the important ones. At that backstage, absolute theories of punishment would probably be a natural feature. Here it would be a question of expressive acts, not goal-oriented ones. It would be punishment as an outcry, not as rational behaviour to take care of something. In reality, I think that a lot of punishments today have their motivational base at this back-stage. But they are carried out by paid functionaries, which forces theoreticians to give reasons acceptable at the open, utilitaristic front-stage. When reading or discussing with Andens (1950, 1977), Mkel (1975) and their followers, I do increasingly get the feeling that we might find common ground if we all dared to embark on a debate on solidarity, social demands, cohesion and other elements which made a society into more than the sum of individuals and rational acts. Advocates for general prevention have and more so than advocates for treatment important sociological elements behind their reasoning: We might sometimes be able to create doubts concerning the general preventive effects of a certain type of punishment. But we will seldom be able to convince the believer, because behind the general preventive idea is another idea, one that says that something has to happen when wrongs have occurred,
something in analogy with mourning. In other words, many arguments in favour of pain delivery as a necessity for general prevention or deterrence, might be elements of an absolute theory of punishment in disguise. These views must not be pushed too far. Theories of general prevention or deterrence have to be evaluated on the basis of their own stated merits, and in the extreme versions such as removing all police or imposing death sentences for traffic offences, they have obvious merits. All I suggest, is that there is more behind some parts of the claims for punishment than stated in the simplistic, utilitarian version. And it is important to get that "more" out into the open, make it explicit, and start a debate on it. Pain delivered as a measure of general prevention can be controlled in a neo-classical system of justice. But as argued earlier, this is a primitive system of control with unwanted side effects. If at least parts of the activities are related to an absolute theory of punishment, this might open the way for new discussions of the needs for pain, and of forms of control of the pain. Our situation is one where incentives for "an absolute type of punishment" are transformed into a system suited for handling utilitarian punishments. This leads to a perpetual dissatisfaction with law and order in society. The gesellschaft -structure or market-structure of society is cared for, but the gemeinschaft -structure is undernourished. Within penal law, this leads to an ever-lasting demand for more punishments carried out by representatives who rightly in the impossible situation in which they are placed perceive themselves as a buffer between a savage population filled with a lust for vengance, and some misfits in need of protection against receiving too much pain. This situation adds to a basic instability in societies of our type. What then, are the consequences of this analysis? Let me suggest two. First, pain delivery in western society is not carried out in a form with structural similarities to mourning. It is motivated by anger, but expressed through representation. This explains probably why the volume of pain delivery can vary so much from time , to time, and between societies. The amount as well as the activity in general is not so closely linked to the informal web of interaction within western societies that variation in volume matters. The paid representatives judges, prison officers, prison administrators, parole directors build up various systems for pain delivery. In this process they are of course influenced by numerous reasons other than those related to any calculation of which volume of pain delivery would be the "right one". Bu t this means at the same time that we would be more free to work for a reduction in the volume of pain delivery within the framework of certain forms of absolute theories of punishment. Secondly, if punishment were to be accepted, it would have to be of the expressive type related to mourning. Then a whole row of new questions would have to be raised: Was the punishment one where ordinary people including the victim took part in all aspects of the decision? Did they take part in the actual execution of the punishment? Did they all one after the other carry out the work inside the penal establishments? How much did everybody in society know about all the details? What could be done to increase knowledge? Might local TV be brought into local courts and punishment institutions all over the country? If one hesitated to bring in local TV, ought they not instead to hesitate to bring in punishment? If pain is too bad to be executed by everybody, and seen by everybody, is it not because it is too bad? If the purpose of pain was pain, was it then arranged so that this became crystal clear to everybody. If we brought it close, we would become participants, sometimes accomplices. That would be when it did not feel right, when we, for example, knew the offender, or the victim, or the situation or similar situations and saw that this was not a case where pain was right. It would create an opening for that fundamental discussion of moral matters where norm-clarification would become the central task. But with these new questions, and bearing in mind those conditions discussed in Chapter 10, we are probably able to see that absolute theories of punishments in a society based on participation and not representation, might easily lead to a society of pain-reduction. It is absolute theories of punishment disguised as utilitarian which in a society of representatives creates the strong incentives towards using pain. An absolute theory, seen as absolute, and executed by those close to the scene of misbehaviour, would not by any necessity have the same effect. An absolute theory of punishment, applied between equals standing close to each other, would in this concrete application most probably be converted into a civil conflict.
shrinkage of the official economy. There exist behaviour-patterns and exchange relationships with a remarkable resemblance to forms in existence before the industrial revolution. The famous poachers of England are still vividly alive, and vegetables are happily being produced in the back-yards for exchange with other non-taxable utilities. As the official rate of unemployment increases in western societies, these informal economic activities are bound to increase in importance. We get two economies. One official, within highly automatized plants and with a taxable profit, which provides a base for a minimum of social security of the type we know today. But in addition, we get the informal one. By informal economy, I mean something different from what Ivan Illich (1981) calls shadow work. Shadow work is to Illich what has to be done to keep the industrially employed going. It is the wife needed to keep the husband able to go to the factory. But Illich contrasts shadow work with vernacular values or "folk"-values. And that is closer to my theme. The formal economy as we know it through labour-contracts, salaries, tax -deductions, job safety and all those regulations accomplished through centuries of labour actions is for an increasing number of western workers just becoming a non-reality. The plant is moved to Korea or Thailand and the Western worker is back to a situation with provocative similarities to his distant past. This new, and very old, situation is bound to have consequences for social organization, and thereby for social control. As Pahi (1980) in particular has pointed out, the situation is one where some of the more handicapped groups within the old industrialized societies suddenly might have a particular advantage: Those categories or strata which have resisted most effectively incorporation into the dominant values of industrial capitalism may be able to survive the problems imposed by the decline of formal employment in the years ahead more easily. Pahl specifies three groups of unemployed, with those most advantaged at the top: 1. Those with skills and services available for sale or for exchange and who have the local knowledge and contacts to provide access to informal markets. 2. Those with few or no tradeable skills or products but who have access to local networks and have the resources to buy such skills and facilities that they need. 3. Those who have neither skills, knowledge or resources to contribute to the informal economy. In terms of a more traditional system of stratification such a disadvantaged category might fall in the middle of the social hierarchy, being the petty bourgeoisie with some clerical or minor bureaucratic or managerial administrative skill and which has been geographically and possibly also socially mobile. They are isolated from communal resources and do not have enough surplus income to buy their way in. In other words: it pays to be a member. If the formal economy deteriorates even further, membership will be a necessity for survival. We are anew in the situation most humans always have been in, where participation, trust, communal living and mutual dependence become the central elements in life. These are exactly the conditions where participatory justice might function at its best.
and if the rulers as well as their courts took great care to activate the protective devices. and if the society was a transparent one where abuses were easily registered. and if the weak parties trusted the courts. and if the courts were open to all sorts of complaints, and acted according to the ideals. This would of course still be a justice accepting the basic inequalities making the weak parties just weak. It would be that the husband should not beat his wife more than she deserved, that blacks should not be arrested for walking through a white community when they had a task to perform there. It is better than nothing, but not quite as much as often stated. But let me repeat it, just to protect the obvious from oblivion; independent courts do represent an important source for the protection of weak parties against abuses of the minimum rights ascribed them. This then raises important questions on how to accomplish a greater extent of participatory justice, without losing important protective devices within our recent system. Is it possible to construct some sort of neighbourhood justice with the advantages of participation, but without losing the protection of legality? Can the State come in and help the weak parties in a conflict, but help them without taking over the conflict? And what happens when the State itself is one of the parties? Again, any answer to this must of course take into consideration the weak position weak parties have within our existing system. A related question is how to prevent ideas of civilization and participation from becoming perverted. Recent experiences with "alternatives to prison" indicate that they easily turn into "additions to prison", and that conditional sentences in reality turn into more time spent in prison. The lesson from periods of "treatment for crime" ought also to be kept vividly in mind. If pain delivery is limited, will we then get a rehearsal of the old story? Will new, subtle punishment appear, administered within these seemingly so civil bodies. Sceptics will be greatly needed. So also will independent research, institutionally as well as intellectually protected against embracement by authorities. This book is not a book on revolution, it is one on reform. Essential questions are whether courts can be more participatory, or whether bodies for conflict handling can be added to the recent structure. A central concern here is to attempt to activate neighbourhoods, which again will make it more known, to the participants, what actually goes on within them. As Ray Shonholtz has expressed it (private communication) on the basis of his experience with community boards in San Francisco, weak parties will generally have a better chance if neigbourhoods become more neighbourly. Maltreatment of wife or children is more easy to hide if the whole family is hidden, than if wife and children have many contacts in the community. Kinberg, Inghe and Riemer (1943) illustrated vividly how this factor operated in cases of father-daughter incest. In isolated families, the father's physical dominance got out of control. Community integration gives weak parties within sub-systems a chance of making their misery known, and also of establishing protective coalitions. If weak parties were to gain, one should probably see to it that the relevant system was not too small, not so small that coalitions were impossible and not too large not so large that transparency was impossible. I share the feeling of relief and freedom by being among strangers. I am aware of the blessings of a community without community character. But I am afraid there are others who pay the bill. But of course, integration does not always help. Neighbourhoods might organize against minorities. Participatory justice might thus mean increased strength to the oppressor. This raises enormously complex problems that I will not go into, except for two remarks. First, few among us would claim that to work for a "non-community" would be a good solution. The problem then seems more to be how closely knit a neighbourhood one should work for, and not an all or nothing. Living in post-industrial society of the Norwegian type, my simplistic view would be: More than at present. In danger of falling into the ditch on one side of the road, one can easily argue for steering more towards the other side, even without knowing exactly how far out that other dangerous ditch is . Strengthening participatory justice would, however, clearly strengthen tendencies to pay tribute to local values. Justice would not be quite as equal from neighbourhood to neighbourhood as it is supposed to be today. Participatory justice will in other words. strengthen the survival ability of local values. In a world-perspective, that might be a considerable gain. Our highly industrialized world is increasingly creating one homogeneous culture of consumers. Subcultures, native populations, completely other ways of thinking and acting, all this has probably become exterminated to a greater extent during the last 30 years than ever before in the history of our globe. Diversity in social arrangements has become heavily reduced. But we know that diversity oft en functions as a protection of a species. Some among us looking at the highly military, industrial establishments in East and West as a threat against alternative values and actions, would perceive the fostering of diversity as being of extreme importance. States nearly always defend themselves through armour similar to that of their greatest perceived
enemies. Neighbourhoods might succeed by being so small that they are not worth conquering, so different that they are difficult to digest, so cohesive that they through joint action can force giants to find other areas for the contaminating plant, alternative areas which also turn out to be cohesive and resistant. In this broader perspective, participatory justice might turn out to be one of the essential elements in the protection of diversity, and thereby also of values in danger of extermination. If these views have any validity, then, the major tasks ahead of us are not a discussion of crime control. Nor are they a discussion of theories of treatment, deterrence, or types of punishment. The major task will instead be one of discussion on how to establish a social system that provides the utmost possibilities for exposure and discussion of the total set of values in society. How can we create systems that ensure that all important values, and all important parties, are included in the considerations? How can we arrange it so that the conflict-setting mechanisms themselves, through their organization, reflect the type of society we should like to see reflected and help this type of society come into being?
hypothesis was that social systems organized according to these principles would also exhibit great hesitancy in their application of pain. But at the same time, State government will most often represent a negation of these principles. In other words; the more State, the more the conditions are laid down for punishment, and the less State, the less the conditions encourage punishment. But here the reasoning brings us into a dilemma. In a small, stable system the chances are great that the sense of justice will be shared by all the participants. They talk the same legal language. This means that the victim's forgiveness will be the other system-members' forgiveness as well. But what if that did not happen? Individual cases might deviate from the pattern. A deviant victim might be in favour of torture, or a subsystem might believe in it. To control such cases, we need large systems with independent non-vulnerable State power in other words exactly the social conditions that I have suggested create possiblities of using pain in social relations. To control cruelty, we might need more State power. But creating State power might lead to more use of pain. I see no way out of the dilemma in principle. The nearest I can come to an answer is to say: so little State as we dare. So small systems as we dare. So independent systems as we dare. So egalitarian systems as we dare. So vulnerable participants as we dare. In such cases, they would be inhibited in using pain. But I have then no answer to the question of what to do with a phenomenon such as, for example, pain application which seems "natural" to systemmembers. Maybe there exists an optimum somewhere, some "five grains of State-power"? But in practical politics, I have an answer. Our time is the heyday of the large national States. They are seen as natural solutions rather than problem-creating ones. Since that is such an overwhelming tendency, any move in the opposite direction must be a right one. The situation where the punitive consequences of too little State will emerge are so far away that any concrete advice in our recent situation would be to work towards the opposite principle for social organization.
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