Abstract
Sociologists have shown the presence of statistically significant associations between changing economic conditions and rates of imprisonment in a number of countries characterized by common law systems. Furthermore, these associations do not seem to be mediated by changing rates of criminal behavior. This article considers the possibility that the same relationships exist in a civil law society, Italy, for the period 1896–1965. It then goes on to highlight an hypothesis and possible test to explain the nature of these associations, based on the intervening role of public opinion.
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Notes
Donald R. Cressey, “Hypotheses in the Sociology of Punishment,”Sociology and Social Research, 39 (July–August 1955), pp. 394–400.
Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer,Punishment and Social Structure (New York: Russell & Russell, [1939] 1968). On Rusche, see Dario Melossi, “Georg Rusche: A Biographical Essay,”Crime and Social Justice, 14 (1980), pp. 51–63.
Ivan Jankovic, “Labor Market and Imprisonment,”Crime and Social Justice, 8 (1977) pp. 17–31; James Inverarity and Daniel McCarthy “Punishmentand Social Structure revisited: Unemployment and Imprisonment in the U.S. 1948–1981,” paper delivered at the Law and Society Association Meeting, Chicago (1986); David F Greenberg, “The Dynamics of Oscillatory Punishment Processes,”The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Vol. 68, No. 4 (1977) pp. 643–651; Steven Box and Chris Hale “Economic Crisis and the Rising Prison Population in England and Wales,”Crime and Social Justice 17 (1982), pp. 20–35.
The argumentation supporting this view is developed in Dario Melossi,The State of Social Control (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1988). The concept of “vocabulary of motives” is derived from C. Wright Mills, “Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive,” pp. 439–452 in C. Wright Mills,Power, Politics and People (New York: Oxford University Press [1940] 1963).
Egon Bittner, “The Police on Skid-Row: A Study of Peace-keeping,”American Sociological Review 32 (October, 1967) pp. 699–715; David Sudnow, “Normal Crimes,”Social Problems 12 (Winter 1965) pp. 255–276; Arthur Rosett and Donald R. Cressey,Justice by Consent, (New York: Lippincott, 1976); Douglas Maynard,Inside Plea Bargaining (New York: Plenum Press, 1984).
Don H. Zimmerman, “The Practicalities of Rule Use,” pp. 221–238 in J.D. Douglas (Ed.),Understanding Everyday Life (Chicago: Aldine, 1970).
Max Weber “Knies and the Problem of Irrationality,” pp. 91–208 inRoscher and Knies: The Logical Problems of Historical Economics (New York: Free Press, 1905-1906), p. 146.
For a more complete explanation and for the technical aspects of this section, see Dario Melossi, “Punishment and Social Action: Changing Vocabularies of Punitive Motive Within A Political Business Cycle,”Current Perspectives in Social Theory 6 (1985), pp. 169–197.
Ibid., pp. 174–178.
See literature cited in note (3).
Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull (Eds.)Social Control and the State (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1983) p. 7. This is but an instance of a more general theoretical move stressing the importance of what Sutherland and Cressey called the “politicality” of processes of formal social control, namely the fact that “only violations of rules made by the state are crimes.” Sutherland and Cressey, however, hastened to add that it may indeed be difficult to recognize what a “state” is in a situation without a modern type of “legislative justice.” Edwin H. Sutherland and Donald R. Cressey,Criminology (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1978), p. 5.
Erik Olin Wright,The Politics of Punishment, (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 22.
Dario Melossi “A Politics Without A State: The Concepts of ‘State’ and ‘Social Control’ From European to American Social Science,”Research in Law, Deviance and Social Control, 5 (1983), pp. 205–222; Dario Melossi,The State of Social Control.
J. Zvi Namenwirth, “Wheels of Time and Interdependence of Value Change in America,”Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3 (Spring 1973), pp. 649–683; Robert P. Weber, “Society and Economy in the Western World System,”Social Forces 59 (June 1981), pp. 1130–1148.
George H. Mead “The Psychology of Punitive Justice,” pp. 212–239 inSelected Writings, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, [1918] 1964); Joseph R. GusfieldSymbolic Crusade (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1963); Murray EdelmanThe Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1964).
Arthur L. Stinchcombeet al., Crime and Punishment—Changing Attitudes in America (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980).
Arthur F Bentley, “Epilogue,” pp. 210–213 in Richard W. Taylor (Ed.),Life, Language, Law (Yellow Springs (Ohio): The Antioch Press, [1953] 1957), p. 212.
Gary Becker, “Crime and Punishment: an Economic Approach,”The Journal of Political Economy 76 (March/April 1968) pp. 169–217; for a critique of this general approach see Dario Melossi, “Overcoming the Crisis in Critical Criminology: Toward a Grounded Labeling Theory,”Criminology 23 (May 1985), pp. 193–208.
Anthony Giddens,The Constitution of Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Douglas Maynard and Thomas P. Wilson, “On the Reification of Social Structure,”Current Perspectives in Social Theory 1(1980), pp. 287–322.
Additional information
Paper originally presented at the ASSA Annual Meetings, New Orleans, December 1986.
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Melossi, D. Political business cycles and imprisonment rates in Italy: Report on a work in progress. Rev Black Polit Econ 16, 211–218 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02900930
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02900930