A Justice Site
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: March 7, 2001
Latest update: March 7, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org
"Youth who commit crimes of violence must be held accountable, and the punishment must be firm and fair and fit the crime. At the same time, we must do everything we can to prevent crime in the first place." (At p. 3 of the report.) This statement occurs early in the report, on the first page. Identify the theoretical orientation.
jeanne's notes on one plausible answer:
The juxtaposition of "accountable" and "punishment" suggests that this report is based on an adversarial approach given more to predicting and preventing violent crimes than to restructuring the social context in which the violent crimes presently occur. We have discussed this in theory as focussing on the individual as the source of the problem and change in the individual as a solution to the problem. The constitutive theory approach would, on the other hand, suggest that we need to look to the infrastructure to understand the interdependence between that structure and individual responses. Constitutive theory would see the problem in a dysfunctional structural context, and would consider an amelioration of the infrastructure in any solution to the problem.
What does it mean that the DOJ report takes the approach of viewing the criminal activity as under the agency of an individual, while the constitutive approach of viewing the entire context as interdependently responsible and accountable? For me, it means that our criminal justice system is still looking at only half of the problem, the half that falls within the purview of individual agency. That means that I am concerned that we as a society are not taking responsibility and holding ourselves accountable for the constraints we have built into our system in which individuals are bullied and harmed, not necessarily by the specific intent of a perpetrator, but equally by the ritualized and categorized rules we have promulgated.
In this connection, I should like for you to reread the Culture Club and related comments. Can you see the parallel in the Chinese and American ways of viewing a campus shooting? The Chinese saw the incident as a structural problem. The Americans saw it as an individual problem. We're going to need to go back and look at the interdependence.