Consequences of Conservative Theory:
Policy Implications
Before
proceeding further, we need to make an important qualification: Not all
individualistic theories are inherently conservative nor would many of the
authors of these theories necessarily consider themselves on the political
right. For example, some psychological theories‑particularly those
stressing social learning‑differ only in emphasis from sociological
perspectives such as differential association theory (Sutherland & Cressey,
1970; see also Akers, 1994). Further, more than a few authors of individualistic
theories would favor using information on differences between criminals and
noncriminals to create more effective rehabilitation programs for offenders
entrenched in crime and to assist families at risk for producing troubled
youths (see Andrews & Bonta, 1994).
Despite
these caveats, we identify the revitalization of individualistic theory as
conservative for two main reasons. First, as noted above, by looking inside
people for the sources of crime, individualistic theories do not consider what
is going on outside people. There is a tendency to take the existing society as
a given and to see crime as the inability of deficient individuals to adjust to
that society. There is no consideration of how long‑standing patterns of
inequality in power and in living conditions are implicated in these criminogenic
"deficiencies." Crime as a social problem is thus transformed into a
problem of individual pathology; society is taken as good, offenders as bad. In
this approach, criminology forfeits its "critical" potential: It
risks masking, if not excusing, the inequities rooted in the social order.
Second,
at least in the United States, the revitalization of individualistic theories
has not resulted in an era of progressive practices in criminal justice.
Although individualistic theories may not be (at least in most instances) inherently
conservative, they often are used‑or at times misused‑to justify
"get tough" policies. The events of recent years are instructive.
The
revitalized conservative theories of the 1980s and early 1990s involve two
policy agendas‑incapacitation and deterrence. Although incapacitation
has made a comeback in forms such as the castration of sex offenders and the
deterrence theme has manifested itself in a variety of approaches to crime
prevention such as drug use prevention campaigns with tactics such as mandatory
urine testing, the major policy agenda of the new conservative theorizing
centers around incarceration of larger numbers for longer periods, at least
until methods of behavioral prediction and effective intervention techniques
can be developed. Over the past two decades, the U.S. prison population has
more than doubled, escalating to unprecedented numbers and giving the United
States the highest rate of incarceration in the world (Irwin & Austin,
1994).
Two
aspects of conservative theorizing snake incarceration seem a prudent
practice. First, in revitalizing classical theory, conservatives emphasize the
need to ensure that crime does not pay and see lengthy prison terms as an
effective means of increasing the cost of offending. Rational choice theory
suggests that some will pursue crime as long as the benefits outweigh the
costs. Although one could interpret this to imply that everyone who has
"nothing to lose" will turn to crime and that policies should he
developed to ensure that citizens have enough of a "stake in
conformity" that they are afraid to risk it by criminal activity, the
logic is now
taken to mean that lawbreakers will be deterred best from further offenses by
long incarceration experiences and that those contemplating crime will be
deterred from acting on their criminalistic impulses by examples of stricter
incarceration of offenders. Second, in revitalizing positivist theory,
conservatives are expressing their belief that a proportion of offenders, whether
due to a criminal mind or to a criminal nature, are beyond reform and must be
incapacitated behind thick walls and sturdy bars. “Wicked people exist," observed James Q. Wilson (1975).
"Nothing avails except to set them apart from innocent people" (p. 235).
There
can be little doubt that such thinking has justified, if not actively
encouraged, the ready use of prisons as a solution to crime. If conservatives
gain comfort from rising inmate populations, they have far less reason to be
sanguine about the effects of this policy. Research on the deterrent effects of
imprisonment is equivocal at best; getting tough does not seem to scare past or
future offenders straight (Currie, 1985; Finckenauer, 1982; but see Wright,
1994). Similarly, although locking up offenders
in large numbers reduces crime, its overall effect is modest. A doubling of the
prison population, for example, has achieved only a small decrease (less than
10%) in crime rates (Visher, 1987). More disturbing, with construction costs of
$30,000 to $80,000 a cell and the yearly cost for housing an inmate in excess
of $10,000, this modest reduction in crime was achieved only at substantial
drain on state treasuries nationwide (Camp & Camp, 1987).
The
financial burdens of prison in fiscally tight times have provided ample
motivation to search for alternative methods of social control. Still, in
turning to community corrections, conservatives have brought a distinctive
look. These conservative times have resulted in a redefinition of the meaning
and importance of community, public, and privacy. Just a few short years ago it
would have been highly offensive to the American public to turn a home into a
prison, a bedroom into a cell. But by the mid‑1980s, several states
followed the lead of Florida and Kentucky in passing laws permitting house
arrest and electronic monitoring (see Ball & Lilly, 1985; Ball, Huff, &
Lilly, 1988; Lilly & Ball, 1993). An idea rejected in the United States in
the 19th century reappeared in the 1980s: charging offenders a daily fee for
their supervision and keep. Although it has several drawbacks, by the late
1980s communities in California, Ohio, Michigan, and Maryland were charging
inmates between $20 and $85 per day (USA Today, 1987, p. 8A).
These
high economic costs of incarceration and the search for reasonable
alternatives, however, were viewed by some observers as part of a larger trend.
Early in the 1990s it was reported that corrections in the United States and
other parts of the world were part of a "corrections commercial
complex," not unlike the military industrial complex President Eisenhower
warned about in 1961. The central point of this argument is that the costs of
corrections cannot be explained by high crime and incarcerate rates alone,
because corporations providing goods and services to corrections, as well as
corrections officials and political interests, profit economically from
"get tough" policies, including President Clinton's "three strikes and you're out"
proposal for life sentences
for repeat offenders. Observers of this development also contend that it is not only a U.S. phenomenon but one that is transnational and which at times influences
justice policies for profit
in foreign countries (see Lilly, 1992; Lilly & Deflem, 1993; Lilly &
Knepper, 1992, 1993).
The
biological approach has had one of its most dramatic policy applications in
the pharmacologic treatment of sex offenders. Although discussion of actual
physical castration of sex offenders has resurfaced, the major biologically
oriented technique has become a form of chemical castration through
antiandrogen agents such as Depo‑Provera administered to reduce the sex
drive. The problem here lies in the fact that sex offenders seem to be
responding to complex interacting factors so that a simple technique such as
antiandrogen therapy may not have the expected effects (Demsky, 1984).
Interestingly
enough, few of the conservative theorists have focused much attention on the
potential impact of improved prenatal care as proposed by some researchers
(Moffitt, Mednick, & Gabrielli, 1989). Minor physical anomalies (MPAs) that
result from problems in fetal development, for example, are considered by some
to be indicators of deeper anomalies such as impairment of the central nervous
system, and a relatively high incidence of MPAs has been detected among
hyperactive and criminally violent populations. Because MPAs are believed to
result from fetal traumas provoked by such problems as poor diet, stress, and
drug use on tire part of the mother, significant improvements in prenatal care
could be expected to have a major impact here.
At the
same time, public humiliation or public punishment reappeared. In Portland,
Oregon, for instance, a sex molester not only received the usual sentence of no
alcohol, no drugs, counseling, orders to stay away from parks and school yards,
plus a jail sentence, but also on release from jail was required to put a sign
on his front door that read "Dangerous Sex Offender, No Children
Allowed" (New York Times, 1987j, p. 10). A similar form of public
humiliation was used in one Oklahoma city in which convicted drunk drivers
were required to put bumper stickers on their cars that read "I am a
convicted DWI, driving while intoxicated, DUI, driving under the influence.
Report any erratic driving to the Midwest City Police" (ABC News Nightline, 1986).
Even when offenders
remain in the community, then, the more conservative policy approach of the
1980s and 1990s tends to pay less attention to the societal roots of crime than
was the case in the 1960s and early 1970s. Operating on the assumption that
social circumstances are either unimportant or unfixable, these policies tend
to restrict their attention to finding inexpensive ways to incapacitate
offenders (e.g., chemical castration or house arrest), deter crime by
increasing its psychological costs (e.g., public humiliation), or inculcate
more acceptable values through advocacy of certain forms of traditional family
values or use of such programs as DARE, a drug abuse prevention program that
consists of using police officers to go into schools
for antidrug discussions.