Question

Analyze the death penalty through the conflict theory

Answer 1

“Crime” is not a phenomenon that can be defined according to any objective set of criteria. Instead, what a particular state, legal regime, ruling class or collection of dominant social forces defines as “crime” in any specific society or historical period will reflect the political, economic and cultural interests of such forces. By extension, the interests of competing political, economic or cultural forces will be relegated to the status of “crime” and subject to repression,persecution and attempted subjugation.  Those activities of an economic, cultural or martial nature that are categorized as “crime” by a particular system of power and subjugation will be those which advance the interests of the subjugated and undermine the interests of dominant forces. Conventional theories of criminology typically regard crime as the product of either “moral” failing on the part of persons labeled as “criminal,” genetic or biological predispositions towards criminality possessed by such persons, “social injustice” or“abuse” to which the criminal has previously been subjected, or some combination of these.  (Agnew and Cullen, 2006) All of these theories for the most part regard the “criminal as deviant” perspective offered by established interests as inherently legitimate, though they may differ in their assessments concerning the matter of how such “deviants” should be handled.  The principal weakness of such theories is their failure to differentiate the problem of anti-social or predatory individual behavior per se from the matter of “crime” as a political, legal, economic and cultural construct. All human groups, from organized religions to outlaw motorcycle clubs, typically maintain norms that disallow random or unprovoked aggression by individuals against other individuals within the group, and a system of penalties for violating group norms. Even states that have practiced genocide or aggressive war  have simultaneously maintained legal prohibitions against “common” crimes. Clearly, this discredits the common view of the state’s apparatus of repression and control (so-called “criminal justice systems”) as having the protection of the lives, safety and property of innocents as its primary purpose.