6.5.2: The Criminal Justice System as an Instrument of Oppression

 6.5: The Conflict Perspective PT

 6.5.2: The Criminal Justice System as an Instrument of Oppression

 Conflict theorists regard power and social inequality as the main characteristics of society.

 The criminal justice system, they stress, is a tool designed by the powerful to maintain their power and privilege. 

For the poor, in contrast, the law is an instrument of oppression (Chambliss 2000; Pfaff 2017; Zalesne 2019).

 The idea that the law operates impartially to bring justice to all, they say, is a cultural myth promoted by the capitalist class to secure the cooperation of the poor in their own oppression.

 The working poor and those below them pose a special threat to the power elite. 

Receiving the least of society’s material rewards, they hold the potential to rebel and overthrow the current social order (see Figure 8.6 in Chapter 8). 

To prevent this, the law comes down hard on the poor and the underclass. 

They are the least rooted in society. They have only low-paying, part-time, or seasonal work—if they have jobs at all. Because their street crimes threaten the social order that keeps the elite in power, they are punished severely. From this class come most of the prison inmates in the United States. The criminal justice system, then, does not focus on the executives of corporations and the harm they do through manufacturing unsafe products, creating pollution, and manipulating prices. Yet the violations of the capitalist class cannot be ignored totally; if they become too extreme, they might outrage the working class, encouraging them to rise up and revolt. 

To prevent this, a flagrant violation by a member of the capitalist class is occasionally prosecuted. The publicity given to the case provides evidence of the “fairness” of the criminal justice system, which helps to stabilize the social system—and keeps the powerful in their positions of privilege.

The cartoonist’s hyperbole makes an excellent commentary on the social class disparity of our criminal justice system. 

Not only are the crimes of the wealthy less likely to come to the attention of authorities than the crimes of the poor, but when they do, the wealthy can afford legal expertise to wiggle around laws that the poor cannot. 

Credit: Leo Cullum/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank 

The powerful are usually able to bypass the courts altogether, appearing instead before an agency that has no power to imprison (such as the Federal Trade Commission). These agencies are directed by people from wealthy backgrounds who sympathize with the intricacies of the corporate world.

It is they who oversee most cases of price manipulation, insider stock trading, violations of fiduciary duty, and so on. 

Is it surprising, then, that the typical sanction for corporate crime is a token fine?

 In early capitalism, children worked alongside adults. 

At that time, just as today, most street criminals came from the marginal working class, as did these boys who worked in a glass works company in Indiana in 1908. 

Credit: Photo Researchers/Science History Images/Alamy Stock Photo In Sum Conflict theorists stress that the power elite developed the legal system to stabilize the social order. 

They use it to control the poor, who pose a threat to the powerful. 

The poor hold the potential of rebelling as a group, which could dislodge the power elite from their place of privilege. To prevent this, the criminal justice system makes certain that heavy penalties come down on the poor.