Crime Does Not Exist

Question 1

What is Limits to Pain (1981)

Answer 1

• CJS as a pain delivery system
• Expansion of system based on the amount of pain ‘society’ agrees to impose on its citizens (collective conscience)
• expansion of system not based on the number of criminal acts

Question 2

What is Crime Control as an Industry?

Answer 2

• it is an industry unwilling to move/change
• prisons have become modern day work houses targeting unemployed and specific groups of people in certain places
• privatized groups relieve the state of the unwanted (who are a burden) at a low cost

Question 3

What do mandatory minimum sentences do for the system?

Answer 3

• speed up the process by eliminating time consuming processes (eliminate considering the needs of the offender and wider community)

Question 4

What does creating a formalistic language about criminals cause?

Answer 4

A stigmatization and narrow view of identity

Question 5

Describe Nils Christie’s House of Perfection

Answer 5

• built in a modern way by a professional building company
• perfect house, move in ready
• those who lived in the house lived a modern life
• not gone bankrupt and so not forced to cooperate with their neighbours (not forced to get to know them)
  - -> not forced to borrow things, cooperate
• lived in a house where they became isolated from their neighbours
  - -> this isolated them from information on . local matters

Question 6

Describe Nils Christie’s House of Turbulence

Answer 6

• had a turbulent history
• builder went bankrupt, no money left, interior of home not completely finished
• prospective tenants already paid before bankruptcy
  - –> forced to remedy worst defects
• people are more interconnected in this society
• neighbours would borrow things, rely on each other to remedy things, borrow things etc

Question 7

What is similar for Nils Christies’s House of Turbulence and House of Perfection?

Answer 7

-both built according to the same set of plans

Question 8

What do various stake holders see crime as (ie. police and politicians etc)?

Answer 8

they see it as an unlimited natural resource

• source of jobs
• can sway votes (help politicians)