ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From International Socialism, No.19, Winter 1964/5, p.32.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Crime and the Social Structure
J.B. Mays
Faber, 30s.
J.B. Mays came to sociology through his experience as a social worker, and in his present work, the concern is with practical rather than theoretical considerations. In a brief sketch of the criminology literature he points at ‘the gap between social theory and empirical research’ and calls it ‘the besetting sin’. The implication is that only sheer cussedness makes the theorists neglect empirical research, and if only they had half the moral concern of J.B. Mays, they would be out in the research fields slogging away. Mays is an activist who wants a plan for action, and it is his impatience with theory that makes the action proposed at the end of his book seem so insipid. But first, the ideas he accepts as basic. He makes a plea for an understanding of crime as a social phenomenon – as ‘legitimate’ an adaptation to society as the majority of non-criminal adaptations – and condemns attempts to apply individual therapy to members of what he designates criminal subcultures. He points out that 90 per cent of indictable offences are crimes against property and that an overwhelming majority of criminal behaviour is adolescent. He recognises that the class structure and its concomitant traditions have tended to institutionalise crime in certain social areas. Yet at the end of it all he can quote are ‘stirring Churchillian words’ to the effect that the treatment of criminals is a measure of the level of civilisation; he can say that ‘daring and controlled aggressiveness’ are vital for the future of the country, and juvenile delinquency merely exhibits this anti-socially; and although he calls society criminagenic and crime normal behaviour, he accepts present society as a status quo. By putting the emphasis on action, Mays has had to fill the gaps in criminology with his own acceptance of society as it is. As a general introduction to the phenomena of crime the book is adequate, but it hardly lives up to the aim of this Faber series: to ‘make available a selection of works that exemplify a sociological approach to the description and discussion of modern society.’
ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 4.9.2007