CRJC Discussion Board

CRJC Discussion Board
Order Description
1.Read Black and offer a description of his piece – the main topic is self-help, focus on modern self-
help and theoretical considerations. You will need to define key terms and explain central propositions
(such as first paragraph, second column on page 41; see four key patterns on page 42). This will take
several paragraphs of text. USE QUOTES SPARRINGLY and with proper use of “” and endnote citation.
2.Apply this perspective to a terrorist action you suggest (see above). Identify the terrorist action
you have selected and provide at least one source for me to review the details (news stories are okay
here). Describe it briefly. Description is the first step in social science.
3.Demonstrate how applying Black’s perspective to the terrorist act you have selected can help us
understand the event. Understanding is the second step in social science. This will take several
paragraphs as you are using Black’s terms and propositions to demonstrate your position.
4.On the basis of the case you selected and your discussion above what do you propose ways to predict,
prevent and/or control these types of events? This is the final step in social science.
Donald Black article
CRIME AS SOCIAL CONTROL*
DONALD BLACK Harvard Law School
The sociological theory of social control predicts and explains how people define and respond to
deviant behavior. One kind of social control is known as self-help: the expression of a grievance by
unilateral aggression such as personal violence or property destruction. It is commonly believed that
self-help was largely displaced by law in the Western world during the Middle Ages, and that it has
survived primarily in the traditional-especially stateless-societies studied by anthropologists. In
fact, much of the conduct classified as crime in modern societies such as the United States is similar
to these traditional modes of social control and may properly’ be understood as self-help. Several
implications follow, including the possibility of predicting and explaining a significant amount of
crime with a sociological theory of self-help, itself a branch of the theory of social control.
There is a sense in which conduct regarded as criminal is often quite the opposite. Far from being an
intentional violation of a prohibition, much crime is moralistic and involves the pur- suit of justice.
It is a mode of conflict manage- ment, possibly a form of punishment, even capital punishment. Viewed
in relation to law, it is self-help. To the degree that it defines or responds to the conduct of
someone else-the victim-as deviant, crime is social control.’ And to this degree it is possible to
predict and explain crime with aspects of the sociological theory of social control, in particular, the
theory of self-help.2 After an overview of self-
help in traditional and modern settings, the following pages briefly examine in turn the so- called
struggle between law and self-help, the deterrence of crime, the processing of self-help by legal
officials, and, finally, the problem of predicting and explaining self-help itself.
TRADITIONAL SELF-HELP Much of the conduct described by an- thropologists as conflict management, social
control, or even law in tribal and other traditional societies is regarded as crime in modern
societies. This is especially clear in the case of violent modes of redress such as assas- sination,
feuding, fighting, maiming, and beat- ing, but it also applies to the confiscation and destruction of
property and to other forms of deprivation and humiliation. Such actions typi- cally express a
grievance by one person or group against another (see Moore, 1972:67-72). Thus, one anthropologist
notes that among the Bena Bena of highland New Guinea, as among most tribes of that region, “rather
than being proscribed, violent self-help is prescribed as a method of social control” (Langness,
1972:182).3 The same might be said of numerous societies throughout the world. On the other hand,
violence is quite rare in many traditional societies, and at least some of
* Direct all correspondence to: Donald Black, Center for Criminal Justice, Harvard Law School,
Cambridge, MA 02138. Support for this work was provided by the Pro- gram in Law and Social Science of
the. National Science Foundation. A number of people made helpful comments on an earlier draft: M. P.
Baum- gartner, John L. Comaroff, Mark Cooney, Jack P. Gibbs, Richard 0. Lempert, Craig B. Little, Sally
Engle Merry, Alden D. Miller, Calvin K. Morrill, Trevor W. Nagel, Lloyd E. Ohlin, and Alan Stone. A
longer version of this paper will appear in Toward a General Theory of Social Control, edited by Donald
Black (New York: Academic Press, 1983). 1 The concept of social control employed here re- fers
specifically-and exclusively-to any process by which people define or respond to deviant be- havior
(Black, 1976:105). This is a broad category that includes such diverse phenomena as a frown or scowl, a
scolding or reprimand, an expulsion from an organization, an arrest or lawsuit, a prison sentence,
commitment to a mental hospital, a riot, or a military reprisal. But this concept entails no
assumptions or implications concerning the impact of social control upon conformity, social order, or
anything else, nor does it address the subjective meanings of social control for those who exercise or
experience it. 2 For these purposes, self-help refers to the ex- pression of a grievance by unilateral
aggression. It is
thus distinguishable from social control through third parties such as police officers or judges and
from avoidance behavior such as desertion and divorce. (This conception of self-help derives from work
in progress with M. P. Baumgartner.) I Illustrations of traditional self-help are given here in the
present tense (known as the “ethno- graphic present” in anthropology), though many of the practices to
be surveyed have changed considerably-if not disappeared altogether-since they were originally
observed.
34 American Sociological Review 1983, Vol. 48 (February:34-45)
CRIME AS SOCIAL CONTROL 35
it is condemned in all. What follows is not intended as a representative overview, then, since only the
more violent societies and modes of self-help are illustrated. First con- sider homicide. In one
community of Maya Indians in south- ern Mexico, for example, any individual killed from ambush is
automatically labelled “the one who had the guilt.” Everyone assumes that the deceased individual
provoked his own death through an act of wrongdoing: “Homicide is considered a reaction to crime, not a
crime in itself’ (Nash, 1967:456). Similarly, it has been observed that in a number of equatorial
African societies homicide is rarely predatory- committed for gain-but is nearly always re- lated to a
grievance or quarrel of some kind (Bohannan, 1960:256). The Eskimos of the American Arctic also kill
people in response to various offenses, including adultery, insult, and simply being a nuisance (see
Hoebel, 1954:83-88; van den Steenhoven, 1962: Ch. 4); and, to mention still another example, the Ifugao
of the Philippines hold that any “self- respecting man” must kill an adulterer discov- ered in
flagrante delicto (Barton, [1919] 1969:66-70). Societies such as these have, in effect, capital
punishment administered on a private basis. But unlike penalties imposed by the state, private
executions often result in re- venge or even a feud, a reciprocal exchange of violence that might last
months or years (see, e.g., Otterbein and Otterbein, 1965; Rieder, 1973). Moreover, the person killed
in retalia- tion may not be himself or herself a killer, since in these societies violent conflicts
between nonkin are virtually always handled in a framework of collective responsibility-or, more
precisely, collective liability-whereby all members of a family or other group are accountable for the
conduct of their fellows (see, e.g., Moore, 1972). Violence of other kinds also expresses a grievance
in most instances. Among the Yanomamo of Venezuela and Brazil, for example, women are routinely
subjected to corporal punishment by their husbands: “Most reprimands meted out by irate husbands take
the form of blows with the hand or with a piece of firewood, but a good many husbands are even more
brutal” (Chagnon, 1977:82-83). In parts of East Africa, “Husbands often assault their wives, sometimes
with a slap, sometimes with a fist, a foot, or a stick” (Edgerton, 1972:164); and among the Qolla of
Peru, a hus- band may beat his wife “when her behavior warrants it,” such as when she is “lazy” or
“runs around with other men” (Bolton and Bolton, 1973:64). Another punishment for women in some
societies is rape by a group of men, or “gang rape” (e.g., Llewellyn and
Hoebel, 1941:202-210). Everywhere, how- ever, it appears that most violence is inflicted upon men by
other men. Property destruction may also be a mode of social control. An extreme form is house burning,
a practice quite frequent, for example, in parts of East Africa (Edgerton, 1972:164). Animals, gardens,
or other property might be destroyed as well. Among the Cheyenne of the American Plains, a man’s horse
might be killed (Llewellyn and Hoebel, 1941:117), and in northern Albania, a dog might be killed (Has-
luck, 1954:76-78). In one case in Lebanon (later punished as a crime), an aggrieved man cut the
branches off his adversary’s walnut tree (Rothenberger, 1978:169). Among the Qolla, crops are sometimes
damaged as a punish- ment, such as “when a man methodically up- roots his enemy’s potato plants before
they have produced any tubers” (Bolton, 1973:234). Netsilik Eskimos may subtly encourage their children
to destroy an offender’s cache of food, so that what appears to be mischief or van- dalism may actually
be a carefully orchestrated act of revenge (van den Steenhoven, 1962:74). Property may also be
confiscated as a form of social control, so that what might at first appear to a modern observer as
unprovoked theft or burglary proves in many cases to be a response to the misconduct of the victim.
Among the Mbuti Pygmies of Zaire, for in- stance, a seeming theft may be recognized by all as an
“unofficial sanction” against a person who has incurred “public disapproval for some reason or another”
(Turnbull, 1965:199). Among the Qolla, the moralistic character of a theft is especially clear “when
the object stolen has no value to the thief’ (Bolton, 1973:233). Lastly, it might be noted that where
women are regarded as the property of their fathers or husbands, rape may provide a means of retal-
iation against a man. This seems to have been involved in some of the gang rapes recorded as crimes in
fourteenth-century England, for example, where even a widow might be at- tacked by a group of men as an
act of revenge against her deceased husband (Hanawalt, 1979:109, 153). In some cases, then, rape may be
construed as another kind of confiscation.
MODERN SELF-HELP A great deal of the conduct labelled and pro- cessed as crime in modem societies
resembles the modes of conflict management-described above-that are found in traditional societies
which have little or no law (in the sense of governmental social control-Black, 1972:1096). Much of
this conduct is intended as a punishment or other expression of disap- proval, whether applied
reflectively or impul-
36 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
sively, with coolness or in the heat of passion. Some is an effort to achieve compensation, or
restitution, for a harm that has been done. The response may occur long after the offense, perhaps
weeks, months, or even years later; after a series of offenses, each viewed singly as only a minor
aggravation but together viewed as intolerable; or as an immediate response to the offense, perhaps
during a fight or other conflict, or after an assault, theft, insult, or injury. As in tribal and other
traditional societies, for example, most intentional homicide in modern life is a response to conduct
that the killer regards as deviant. In Houston during 1969, for instance, over one-half of the
homicides occurred in the course of a “quar- rel,’ and another one-fourth occurred in al- leged “self-
defense” or were “provoked,” whereas only a little over one-tenth occurred in the course of predatory
behavior such as bur- glary or robbery (calculated from Lundsgaarde, 1977:237; see also Wolfgang,
[1958] 1966: Ch. 10). Homicide is often a re- sponse to adultery or other matters relating to sex,
love, or loyalty, to disputes about domes- tic matters (financial affairs, drinking, house- keeping) or
affronts to honor, to conflicts re- lating to debts, property, and child custody, and to other
questions of right and wrong. Cases mentioned in the Houston study include one in which a young man
killed his brother during a heated discussion about the latter’s sexual advances toward his younger
sisters, another in which a man killed his wife after she “dared” him to do so during an argument about
which of several bills they should pay, one where a women killed her husband during a quarrel in which
the man struck her daughter (his stepdaughter), one in which a woman killed her 21-year-old son because
he had been “fooling around with homosexuals and drugs,” and two others in which people died from
wounds inflicted during altercations over the parking of an automobile (Lundsgaarde, 1977). Like the
killings in traditional societies de- scribed by anthropologists, then, most inten- tional homicide in
modern society may be classified as social control, specifically as self-help, even if it is handled by
legal officials as crime.4 From this standpoint, it is apparent
that capital punishment is quite common in modern America-in Texas, homicide is one of the ten leading
causes of death-though it is nearly always a private rather than a public affair. Most conduct that a
lawyer would label as assault may also be understood as self-help. In the vast majority of cases the
people involved know one another, usually quite intimately, and the physical attack arises in the
context of a grievance or quarrel (see, e.g., Vera Insti- tute, 1977:23-42). Commonly the assault is a
punishment, such as when a husband beats or otherwise injures his wife because she has not lived up to
his expectations. In one case that came to the attention of the police in Boston, for example, a woman
complained that her husband had beaten her because supper was not ready when he came home from work
(Black, 1980:161), a state of affairs, inci- dentally, which might have been the woman’s own way of
expressing disapproval of her hus- band (see Baumgartner, 1983: forthcoming). Other standards are
enforced violently as well. In one instance that occurred in a major north- eastern city and that
apparently was not re- ported to the police, a young woman’s brothers attacked and beat her boyfriend
“for making her a drug addict,” and in another a young man was stabbed for cooperating with the police
in a burglary investigation (Merry, 1981:158, 180-181). In a case in Washington, D.C., that resulted in
an arrest, a boy shot his gang leader for taking more than his proper share of the proceeds from a
burglary (Allen, 1977:40-43). Years later, the same individual shot someone who had been terrorizing
young women- including the avenger’s girlfriend-in his neighborhood. Though he pleaded guilty to
assault with a deadly weapon” and was com- mitted to a reformatory, not surprisingly he de- scribed
himself as “completely right” and his victim as “completely wrong” (Allen, 1977:62-66, 69-70).
Indigenous people arrested for violence in colonial societies are likely to have a similar point of
view: They may be proud of what they have done and admit it quite openly, even while they are being
prosecuted as criminals by the foreign authorities.5 Those apprehended in
4 Crimes of self-help may be distinguished from other categories of conduct regarded as criminal, such
as certain kinds of economic behavior (e.g., predatory robbery and the selling of illicit goods and
services) and recreation (e.g., gambling and under- age drinking of alcoholic beverages). This is not
to deny that some crime is multidimensional; for in- stance, an incident might be both moralistic and
predatory at the same time, as when someone is killed in a quarrel but then robbed as well.
This reportedly applied, for example, to the Nuer of the Sudan when they lived under British rule: I
have been told by [a British] officer with wide experience of Africans that Nuer defendants are
remarkable in that they very seldom lie in cases brought before Government tribunals. They have no need
to, since they are only anxious to justify the damage they have caused by showing that it is
retaliation for damage the plaintiff has inflicted earlier. (Evans-Pritchard, 1940:171-72)
CRIME AS SOCIAL CONTROL 37
Europe for the crime of duelling-also a method of conflict resolution-have typically lacked remorse for
the same reasons (see Pitt-Rivers, 1966:29-31). Thus, when asked by a priest to pray for forgiveness
before being hanged for killing a man with a sword, one such offender in France exclaimed, “Do you call
one of the cleverest thrusts in Gascony a crime?” (Baldick, 1965:62). As in duelling, moreover,
violence in modern societies is often pre- scribed by a code of honor. He who shrinks from it is
disgraced as a coward (see, e.g., Werthman, 1969; Horowitz and Schwartz, 1974). Many crimes involving
the confiscation or destruction of property also prove to have a normative character when the facts
come fully to light. There are, for example, moralistic burglaries, thefts, and robberies. Over one-
third of the burglaries in New York City re- sulting in arrest involve people with a prior relationship
(Vera Institute, 1977:82), and these not infrequently express a grievance the burglar has against his
victim. In one such case handled by the Boston police, for instance, a woman who had been informed by a
neighbor complained that while she was away “her es- tranged husband had entered her apartment, wrecked
it, loaded all of her clothes into his car, and driven away, presumably headed for his new home several
hundred miles away” (Black, 1980:115). Though the specific nature of this man’s grievance was not
mentioned, it seems apparent that his actions were punitive to some degree, and surely his estranged
wife understood this as well. In a case in New York City, one resulting in two arrests for burglary,
two black women barged into the home of an elderly white woman at midnight to confront her because
earlier in the day she had re- monstrated with their children for throwing rocks at her window (Vera
Institute, 1977:88). A crime may also be committed against a par- ticular individual to express the
disapproval of a larger number of people, such as a neighbor- hood or community, as is illustrated by
the report of a former burglar who notes in his autobiography that early in his career he selected his
victims partly on moralistic grounds: We always tried to get the dude that the neighbors didn’t like
too much or the guy that was hard on the people who lived in the neighborhood…. I like to think that
all the places we robbed, that we broke into, was kind of like the bad guys. (Allen, 1977:39-40) It
should be clear, however, that the victims of moralistic crime may be entirely unaware of why they have
been selected, especially when the offender is unknown. Such crimes may
therefore be understood as secret social con- trol (compare Becker, 1963:20). Another possible mode of
self-help is rob- bery, or theft involving violence. Thus, in New York City, where over one-third of
the people arrested for robbery are acquainted with their victims, the crime often arises from a
quarrel over money (Vera Institute, 1977:65-71). In one case, for example, a woman reported that her
sister and her sister’s boyfriend had taken her purse and $40 after assaulting her and threatening to
kill her baby, but she later ex- plained that this had arisen from a misunder- standing: The boyfriend
wanted reimburse- ment for a baby carriage that he had bought for her, whereas she thought it had been
a gift (Vera Institute, 1977:69-70). It seems, in fact, that in many instances robbery is a form of
debt collection and an alternative to law. The same applies to embezzlement, though it may also simply
express disapproval of the em- ployer who is victimized (see Cressey, 1953:57-59, 63-66). Conduct known
as vandalism, or malicious destruction of property, proves to be a form of social control in many cases
as well. Far from being merely “malicious,” “non-utilitarian,” or “negativistic,” with ‘”no purpose, no
rhyme, no reason” (Cohen, 1955:25-30, including quoted material in note 4), much vandalism in modern
society is similar to the moralistic destruction of crops, animals, and other valuables in traditional
societies. But whereas, say, a Plains Indian might kill a horse, a modern agent of justice might damage
the offender’s auto- mobile. Thus, in one American neighborhood where parking spaces on the street are
scarce, the residents have evolved their own distribu- tion system, with its own customary rules and
enforcement procedures. In the winter, one such rule is that whoever shovels the snow from a parking
space is its “owner,” and per- sistent violators may find that their automobile has been spraypainted
or otherwise abused (Thomas-Buckle and Buckle, 1982:84, 86-87). Vandalism may also be reciprocated in a
feud- like pattern of mutual destruction: In one case in a northeastern city, a young man found that
someone had broken the radio antenna on his automobile, learned from some children who had done it, and
thereupon proceeded to slash the tires of the offender’s automobile (Merry, 1981: 179). Business places
and dwellings may be dam- aged to punish their owners or inhabitants. Ar- son, or burning, has a long
history of this kind (see, e.g., Hanawalt, 1979:90-91). Less severe sanctions, however, are far more
frequent. In a case occurring in a suburb of New York City, for example, a young man drove his car
across someone’s lawn during a quarrel, and in an-
38 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
other incident in the same community several young men spraypainted parts of an older man’s house in
the middle of the night because he had called the police to disperse them when they were sitting in
their cars drinking beer and listening to music (Baumgartner, forthcoming). If all of the facts were
known, then, it seems likely that much seemingly senseless and ran- dom vandalism would prove to be
retaliation by young people against adults (see Greenberg, 1977:202-204). Some may even be done by
children on behalf of their parents, in a pattern analogous to that found among the Eskimos mentioned
earlier (for a possible example, see Black, 1980:167-68). If the parents themselves are the offenders,
however, other strategies might be followed. Among the Tarahumara In- dians of northern Mexico,
children with a grievance against their parents often “run away” from home, staying with an uncle or
grandparent for a few days before returning (Fried, 1953:291). Qolla children have a similar custom,
locally known as “losing themselves” (Bolton and Bolton, 1973:15-16). Modern chil- dren do this as
well, though like vandalism it is commonly regarded as a form of juvenile de- linquency. Finally, it
might be noted that the practice of collective liability-whereby all of the people in a social category
are held accountable for the conduct of each of their fellows-occurs in modern as well as traditional
societies. This is most apparent during a war, revolution, or riot, when anyone might suffer for the
deeds of someone else, but during peaceful times too, seemingly random violence may often be un-
derstood in the same way. Today a police of- ficer might become the victim of a surprise attack by a
stranger, for example, because of the conduct of one or more fellow officers in the past. Seemingly
random crime of other kinds may involve collective liability as well. Thus, for instance, a black
rapist described his selection of white victims as a process of ven- geance against white people in
general: It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law, upon his system of
values, and that I was defiling his women-and this point, I believe, was the most satisfying to me
because I was very resentful over the historical fact of how the white man has used the black woman. I
felt I was getting revenge. (Cleaver, 1968:14) Similarly, a former burglar and robber re- marked that
he once selected his victims primarily from a relatively affluent neighbor- hood, but not simply
because this provided a chance of greater material gain: “I really dis- liked them people, ’cause it
seemed like they thought they was better ’cause they had more”
(Allen, 1977:32-33). People might be held col- lectively liable because of their neighborhood, social
class, race, or ethnicity. Crime by young people against adult strangers may also have this logic in
some cases: All adults might be held liable for the conduct of those known per- sonally, such as
police, teachers, and parents.6 Among young people themselves, particularly in large American cities,
rival “gangs” may engage in episodic violence resembling the feud in traditional settings, where each
member of a feuding group is liable-to injury or even death-for the conduct of the other members (see,
e.g., Yablonsky, 1962). A sig- nificant amount of crime in modern society may even resemble what
anthropologists de- scribe as “raiding,” a kind of predatory be- havior often directed at people
collectively de- fined as deserving of revenge (see, e.g., Sweet, 1965; Schneider, 1971:4). And some
might properly be construed as “banditry” since it seems to be a kind of primitive rebellion by those
at the bottom of society against their social superiors (see Hobsbawm, 1969). In short, although much
crime in modern society directly and unambiguously expresses a griev- ance by one person against
another, this may be only the most visible portion of a much broader phenomenon.
THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS When a moralistic crime is handled by the police or prosecuted in court, the
official defi- nition of the event is drastically different from that of the people involved,
particularly from that of the alleged offender. In the case of a husband who shoots his wife’s lover,
for example, the definition of who is the offender and who is the victim is reversed: The wife’s lover
is defined as the victim, even though he was shot because of an offense he committed against the
woman’s husband. Moreover, the lover’s offense is precisely the kind for which violent social control-
by the husband-is viewed as acceptable and appropriate, if not obligatory, in numerous tribal and other
traditional societies. Even in modem society, it
6 It might be added that subpopulations such as women, old people, and the poor may be particularly
vulnerable to vengeance of this kind. Seen in cross- cultural perspective, this is not inconsistent
with systems of collective liability. In some tribal societies, for example, retaliation may be taken
against those who are physically less dangerous, such as women and children, and against those who are
less likely to be revenged, such as social isolates and visitors (e.g., Koch, 1974:132-54). On the
other hand, a “code of honor” may govern revenge and limit it, for instance, to adult males able to
defend themselves (e.g., Hasluck, 1954: Ch.24).
CRIME AS SOCIAL CONTROL 39
might be said that the husband is charged with violating the criminal law because he enforced his
rights in what many regard as the custom- ary law of marriage. The victim thus becomes the offender,
and vice versa. The state prose- cutes the case in its own name, while the origi- nal offender against
morality (if alive) serves as a witness against the man he has victimized- surely a perverse proceeding
from the standpoint of the defendant (compare Christie, 1977). It is also enlightening in this regard
to consider criminal cases arising from quarrels and fights, where each party has a grievance against
the other. Here the state often imposes the categories of offender and victim upon people who were
contesting the proper appli- cation of these labels during the altercation in question. Whether there
was originally a cross-complaint or not, however, in all of these cases the state defines someone with
a griev- ance as a criminal. The offense lies in how the grievance was pursued. The crime is self-help.
It should be apparent from much of the foregoing that in modern society the state has only
theoretically achieved a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence (compare, e.g., Weber, [1919]
1958:78; Elias, [1939] 1978:201-202). In reality, violence flourishes (particularly in modern America),
and most of it involves ordinary citizens who seemingly view their conduct as a perfectly legitimate
exercise of social control. It might therefore be observed that the struggle between law and self-help
in the West did not end in the Middle Ages, as legal historians claim (e.g., Pollock and Maitland,
[1898] 1968: Vol. 2, 574; Pound, 1971:139-40; see also Hobhouse, 1906: Ch.3). It continues.7 Many
people still “take the law into their own hands.” They seem to view their grievances as their own
business, not that of the police or other officials, and resent the intrusion of law (see Matza, 1964:
Ch.5). They seem determined to have justice done, even if this means that they will be defined as
crimi- nals.8 Those who commit murder, for example,
often appear to be resigned to their fate at the hands of the authorities; many wait patiently for the
police to arrive; some even call to re- port their own crimes (see generally Lundsgaarde, 1977). In
cases of this kind, in- deed, the individuals involved might arguably be regarded as martyrs. Not
unlike workers who violate a prohibition to strike-knowing they will go to jail-or others who defy the
law on grounds of principle, they do what they think is right, and willingly suffer the conse- quences.
Deterrence and Self-Help
To the degree that people feel morally obli- gated to commit crimes, it would seem that the capacity of
the criminal law to discourage them-its so-called deterrent effect-must be weakened. For example,
homicides committed as a form of capital punishment would seem to be more difficult to deter than those
committed entirely in pursuit of personal gain (on the de- terrability of the latter, see Chambliss,
1967). This is not to deny that moralistic homicide can be discouraged to some extent. In fact, one
former resident of Harlem has noted that the inhabitants of that unusually violent area ap- pear to
debate in their own minds whether or not moralistic homicide is ultimately worth its legal
consequences: I think everybody was curious about whether or not it was worth it to kill some- body and
save your name or your masculin- ity, defend whatever it was that had been offended-whether it was you
or your woman or somebody in your family. (Brown, 1965:220)
He adds that during his years in Harlem this question loomed especially large whenever anyone was
executed in prison (Brown, 1965:220). That the desirability of killing an- other person is entertained
at all is remarkable, however, particularly when the death penalty is believed to be a possible result
(a belief that appears to be largely unfounded-see below). Furthermore, since other crimes of self-help
carry fewer risks of a legal nature, they should be even harder to discourage than homicide. In any
event, a theory of deterrence surely should recognize that the power of punishment to deter crime
partly depends upon whether a given crime is itself a form of social control (for other relevant
variables see, e.g., Andenaes, 1966; Chambliss, 1967; Zimring, 1971). A related question is the extent
to which victimizations are deterred by self-help rather than-or in addition to-law. Although many
citizens are entirely dependent upon legal offi- cials such as the police to handle criminal of-
7The struggle, however, was once vastly more rancorous and spectacular, in many cases involving open
confrontations between those engaging in self- help-along with their supporters-and the au- thorities
who regarded their conduct as criminal. In medieval England, for example, a prisoner’s friends might
forcibly seize him from the sheriff, and in some instances armed bands violently challenged the au-
thorities in the courtroom itself (see, e.g., Pike, 1873:257-58). 8 It has been suggested that
offenders often con- demn their victims merely in order to “neutralize” their own feelings of guilt
(Sykes and Matza, 1957:668). By contrast, the argument here is that in many cases condemnations of this
kind may be au- thentic. Some criminals may be telling the truth.
40 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
fenders, others are prepared to protect them- selves and their associates by any means at their
disposal, including violence. It is well known among potential predators in one American neighborhood,
for example, that a number of the residents would be dangerous to victimize, in some cases because they
enjoy the protection of family members who act as their champions (see Merry, 1981:178-79). Such people
are left alone. Entire segments of a community may also be avoided from fear of retaliation. For
example, for this reason some thieves and robbers may avoid the poor: “One of the most dangerous things
in the world is to steal from poor people…. When you steal from the poor, you gamble with your life”
(Brown, 1965:214; see also Allen, 1977; 50-52). Moreover, since the deterrent effect of social control
generally increases with its severity (see Zimring, 1971:83-90, for qualifications), it should be noted
that self-help is often more severe than law. Thus, a burglar or robber might be executed by his
intended victim, though burglary and robbery are generally not capital crimes in modem codes of law.
Ac- cordingly, to the degree that self-help is effec- tively repressed by the state, crime of other
kinds might correspondingly increase. Among the Gusii of Kenya, for instance, rape dramat- ically
increased after the British prohibited traditional violence against strangers- potential rapists-and,
when a rape occurred, violence against the offender and possibly his relatives (Le Vine, 1959:476-77).9
Perhaps some of the predatory crime in modern society is similarly a result of a decline in self-help.
The Processing of Self-Help Even while the ancient struggle between law and self-help continues, the
response of legal officials to those handling their own grievances by force and violence is not nearly
so severe as might be supposed. In fact, crimes of self-help are often handled with comparative
leniency. An extreme of this pattern was seen histori- cally, for example, in the generous application
of the concept of “self-defense” to justify homicide-otherwise by law a capital offense-in medieval
England: In cases in which a killing involved social control, it ap- pears that juries routinely
avoided a conviction by fabricating a version of the incident in which the victim had first attacked
the defendant, forcing him to resist with violence in order to save his own life (Green, 1976:428-36).
Likewise, in more recent centuries European authorities and juries have generally been re- luctant to
enforce laws against duelling (see Baldick, 1965: Chs.4-7; Andrew, 1980). Ear- lier in the present
century, the same applied to the handling of so-called lynchings in the American South-executions
carried out by a group of private citizens, usually against a black man believed to have victimized a
white. Typically no one was arrested, much less pros- ecuted or punished, though the killers fre-
quently were well known and readily available (see, e.g., Raper, 1933). Today, much violent self-help
is still tolerated by American officials and juries. Incidents that a lawyer would nor- mally classify
as felonious assault, for example-involving severe bodily injury or the threat thereof-are unlikely to
result in arrest if the offender and victim are intimately related (Black, 1980:180-85; see also Black,
1971:1097-98). Where an arrest is made, pros- ecution and conviction are far less likely when the
offense entails an element of self-help. Thus, in Houston, people whom the police ar- rest for homicide
are often released without prosecution, and in many cases this seems to be related to the moralistic
nature of the killing. In 1969, 40 percent of those arrested for killing a relative (such as a spouse
or sibling) were released without prosecution, and the same applied to 37 percent of those arrested for
kill- ing a friend or other associate and to 24 per- cent of those arrested for killing a stranger
(Lundsgaarde, 1977:232). And offenses that do initially result in prosecution are likely to be
abandoned or dismissed at a later point in the process when self-help is involved, such as when a
burglary or robbery is committed in order to collect an unpaid debt (see, e.g., Vera Institute,
1977:69-70, 87-88). At every stage, then, crimes of self-help often receive a degree of immunity from
law (but see below). If the capacity of law to deter crimes of self- help is weak in the first place,
surely this le- niency, insofar as it is known among the popu- lation, makes it weaker still. But it
might be wondered why so much self-help occurs in a society such as modern America. Why do so many
people criminally pursue their own grievances in a society where law is developed to such a high
degree? Why, in particular, are they so violent?
9 It appears that predatory behavior within tribal and peasant villages is often effectively deterred
by the threat of self-help. This was the impression, for example, of an anthropologist who studied the
Nuer of the Sudan: “It is the knowledge that a Nuer is brave and will stand up against aggression and
en- force his rights by club and spear that ensures re- spect for person and property” (Evans-
Pritchard, 1940:171). Why people in any society refrain from victimizing their fellows raises difficult
questions of motivation, however, and lies beyond the scope of the present discussion.
CRIME AS SOCIAL CONTROL 41
The Theory of Self-Help Several centuries ago, Thomas Hobbes argued that without a sovereign state-
without law-a “war of every one against every one” would prevail, and life would be “solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short” [1651] 1962:100). Many stateless societies have since been observed by
anthropologists, however, and Hobbes’s theory has proven to be somewhat overstated: Life without law
does not appear to be nearly as precarious as he believed (see, e.g., Middleton and Tait, [1958] 1970;
Mac- Cormack, 1976; Roberts, 1979). Even so, the idea that violence is associated with stateless- ness
still enjoys considerable support. With various refinements and qualifications, an ab- sence of state
authority has been used to ex- plain high levels of violence in settings as di- verse as the highlands
of New Guinea (Koch, 1974: Ch.7), Lake Titicaca in the Andes (Bol- ton, 1970:12-16), and western Sicily
(Blok, 1974:210-12).1O It has also been used to explain war and other violent self-help in
international relations (e.g., Hoffmann, 1968; Koch, 1974:173-75). A version of the same approach may
be relevant to an understanding of self- help in modern society. Hobbesian theory would lead us to
expect more violence and other crimes of self-help in those contemporary settings where law-
governmental social control-is least devel- oped, and, indeed, this appears to fit the facts: Crimes of
self-help are more likely where law is less available. This is most apparent where legal protection is
withheld as a matter of public policy, such as where a contract vio- lates the law. A gambling debt is
not legally enforceable, for example, and the same applies to transactions in illicit narcotics,
prostitution, stolen goods, and the like. Perhaps for this reason many underworld businesses find it
necessary to maintain, in effect, their own police, such as the “strong-arms” of illegal loan
operations and the “pimps” who oversee the work of prostitutes (see, e.g., Allen, 1977:100).
Furthermore, it appears that social control within settings of this kind is relatively violent (but see
Reuter, 1983). Law is unavailable, or relatively so, in many other modern settings as well, though not
necessarily as a matter of public policy. A teenager with a grievance against an adult, for example,
will generally be ignored or even rep- rimanded by the police (Black, 1980:152-55).
Lower-status people of all kinds-blacks and other minorities, the poor, the homeless- enjoy less legal
protection, especially when they have complaints against their social superiors, but also when conflict
erupts among themselves (see Black, 1976: Chs.2-6). To the police and other authorities the problems of
these people seem less serious, their injuries less severe, their honor less important.” A fight or
quarrel among them may even be viewed as itself a “disturbance of the peace,” an offense in its own
right, regardless of the issues dividing the parties (see Black and Baumgartner, 1983: forthcoming).
People in intimate relationships, too, such as members of the same family or household, find that legal
officials are relatively unconcerned about their conflicts, particularly if they occur in private and
do not disturb anyone else (see Black, 1976:40-44, 1980: Ch.5). 12 In all of these set- tings neglected
by law, crimes of self-help are comparatively common. There are, so to speak, stateless locations in a
society such as modern America, and in them the Hobbesian theory appears to have some validity.’3
10 A cross-cultural survey of 50 societies shows that those with the least “political integration”-
which means, inter alia, those without a state-are the most likely to have “coercive self-help” as
their dominant mode of conflict management (Koch and Sodergren, 1976:454-55).
I1 It should also be recognized that people in these settings are relatively unlikely to bring their
griev- ances to legal officials in the first place. For instance, it would not occur to most teenagers
to call the police about an adult, and the same generally applies when someone has a grievance against
an intimate such as a spouse or friend (but see Black, 1980: Ch.5, espe- cially 124-28). It might even
be said that many people choose statelessness as a way of life. This pattern presumably undermines
still further the ca- pacity of law to deter crimes of self-help. 12 To a degree, self-help may
function-whether by design or not-as a mechanism through which law is mobilized among those who might
otherwise be ignored. In at least one tribal society, the Meta’ of the Cameroon, it appears that
violence was con- sciously employed as a technique of this kind: Vil- lage elders were empowered to
arbitrate disputes only if the parties became violent, and so it was not uncommon for people to
initiate a fight in order to assure a hearing of their case (Dillon, 1980:664). Children in many
societies seem to use the same technique to mobilize adults. In some instances, violence in modem
society may similarly serve as a cry for help from people who are less capable of attracting legal
attention without it. Reports of vio- lence occasionally may even be fabricated in order to assure that
the police will handle cases that the call- ers fear-possibly with justification-would other- wise be
dismissed as trivial (for a likely example, see Black, 1980:151). But then, as noted earlier, the
police are likely to respond with indifference any- way. 13 It might be added that the opposite of
stateless- ness can occur as well, with opposite results: The availability of law can be extended to
such a degree that it almost entirely displaces self-help. People can become so dependent upon law that
they are unwill-
42 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
Before closing, it is possible to specify the relationship between law and self-help more precisely.
The likelihood of self-help is not merely a function of the availability of law, and, moreover, crimes
of self-help are not al- ways handled leniently by legal officials. Dif- ferent locations and
directions in social space have different patterns. In other words, the relationship between law and
self-help depends upon who has a grievance against whom. Four patterns can be identified: First, law
may be relatively unavailable both to those with grievances and to those who are the ob- jects of self
-help, as when people of low status and people who are intimate have conflicts with each other (on the
distribution of law, see generally Black, 1976). This pattern has been emphasized above. Secondly, law
may be rel- atively unavailable to those with grievances in comparison to those who have offended them.
Should the former employ self-help, they may therefore be vulnerable to harsh treatment by legal
officials. This is the situation of people with a grievance against a social superior, such as a
teenager with a grievance against an adult, and may help to explain why they tend to de- velop their
own techniques of social control, including, for instance, covert retaliation, self-destruction, and
flight (see Baumgartner, 1983). Those with grievances against a social inferior illustrate a third
pattern: Law is readily available to them, but not to those against whom they might employ self-help.
In this situation, the aggrieved party seemingly has a choice of law or self-help. A man might easily
obtain legal help against his teenaged son, for example, but if he simply beats the boy instead-a kind
of self-help-he is unlikely to be handled with severity by the police or other officials (see Black,
1980:152-55). The fourth possibility, where law is readily available both to those with grievances and
to those who have offended them, is seen where people of high status, and also people who are
strangers, have conflicts with each other. Here self-help seems to be relatively infrequent. In sum,
law and
self-help are unevenly distributed across social space, and each is relevant to the behavior of the
other.14
CONCLUSION The approach taken in this paper departs radi- cally from traditional criminology (as seen,
e.g., in Cohen, 1955; Miller, 1958; Cloward and Ohlin, 1960; Sutherland and Cressey, 1960). Indeed, the
approach taken here is, strictly speaking, not criminological at all, since it ig- nores whatever might
be distinctive to crime as such (including, for example, how criminals differ from other people or how
their behavior differs from that which is not prohibited). In- stead it draws attention to a dimension
of many crimes that is usually viewed as a totally different-even opposite-phenomenon, namely, social
control. Crime often expresses a grievance. This implies that many crimes belong to the same family as
gossip, ridicule, vengeance, punishment, and law itself. It also implies that to a significant degree
we may predict and explain crime with a sociological theory of social control, specifically a theory of
self-help. Beyond this, it might be worthwhile to contemplate what else crime has in common with
conduct of other kinds. As remarked ear- lier (in note 4), for instance, some crime may be understood
as economic behavior, and some as recreation. In other words, for certain theoretical purposes we might
usefully ignore the fact that crime is criminal at all.15 The criminality of crime is defined by law,
and therefore falls within the jurisdiction of a com- pletely different theory (see especially Black,
1976).
ing to handle their own grievances. It appears, in fact, that this extreme is almost reached by so-
called totalitarian societies, such as the Soviet Union under Stalin or Germany under Hitler, where the
state in- sinuates itself throughout the population by actively encouraging citizens to make use of its
coercive ap- paratus however they see fit. Since apparently nearly anyone can have nearly anyone else
sent to prison, each person is dangerous to others, and yet vulnera- ble to them at the same time (see
Gross, 1983). The result seems almost what Hobbes called a “war of every one against every one,” but
within the frame- work of a state. Under these conditions, self-help tends to wither away.
14 It should also be understood that other condi- tions besides the availability of law are relevant to
the incidence of self-help in each of its various man- ifestations. After all, no effort has been made
here to develop a comprehensive theory of self-help. The analysis has been intended merely to indicate
the relevance of such a theory and to offer a single for- mulation that it might include. Furthermore,
it should be clear that despite the emphasis upon con- temporary society in the present discussion, a
sociological theory of self-help would ideally apply to all instances of this phenomenon, traditional
as well as modern. ‘5 This is not to deny that the definition of conduct as criminal may be relevant to
its form and fre- quency. Even so, a given category of crime may share more with particular kinds of
noncriminal con- duct than with other crime. The use of illicit drugs is seemingly more similar to the
legal consumption of alcoholic beverages than to robbery or rape, for example, and extortion is
seemingly closer to the practices of many landlords, physicians, and corpo- rations than to vandalism,
trespassing, or treason.