Consensus and Conflict Models Essay

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consensus vs. The conflict model

Consensus and Conflict Models

Compare and contrast the consensus model and the conflict model:

And how do both fall short?

The 'conflict'-based model of criminal justice theory views all of human society as inherently gripped by conflict, with a specific emphasis on class-based conflict. Marxism is the economic theory primarily associated with the conflict theory. Marxists take a broad, sweeping view of all of human global history as an eternal, polarized struggle between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' of the world. The haves, which in modern, industrialized society are the bourgeois property-owners, try to hold onto their power by manipulating all existing political and economic structures to disenfranchise the have-nots.

Naturally, the have-nots of the world occasionally chafe against this control. But, they often do so ineffectually, through petty crimes and unorganized and organized criminal activities. Crime can actually act as a kind of 'safety' valve or release for criminal impulses spawned by economic injustice. For example, if drug dealers profit off of their sales, and drug abuse and selling is only partially contained through the criminal justice system, then the poor can view the sale of illicit drugs as a potential way of circumventing what is an economically 'stacked' deck against them.

Conflict theory suggests that rather than being an objective source of impartial justice, "the criminal justice system and criminal law are thought to be operating on behalf of rich and powerful social elites, with resulting policies aimed at controlling the poor" (Greek, Conflict theory, 2005). A good example of this is how violent street crimes tend to be more harshly punished than white-collar crimes. However, a white-collar crime, such as a CEO that allows his or her company to pollute a water supply through negligence, or an executive that engages in insider trading, can have just as deleterious physical and economic effects upon society as someone who engages in spontaneous acts of violent crime. The fact that society perceives street crime in a more negative fashion is a cultural idea, rather than an actual, material reflection of the seriousness of the offense.

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As well as these hypothetical examples, there are also statistical and anecdotal suggestions that justice is not blind. Minorities are disproportionately housed in jails. Judges look down more upon 'hard' drugs used more in minority communities like crack and heroin, and view the illegal use of equally addictive substances like prescription painkillers as less serious. "The penalty (five years in prison) for possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine is the same as for possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine. This 1:100 ratio has had widespread implications for inner-city African-Americans, who are statistically more likely to get caught using crack cocaine than are white suburbanites, who appear to favor the illicit drug in its powdered form" (Gaines & Miller 2011:6). White, privileged persons are seen as possessing a 'sickness' when they use drugs -- even when they shoplift -- versus minorities and members of the underclass, who are seen as criminals by nature.

This concept is fairly long-standing in criminology: that it is the social perception that creates crime, more so than the intrinsic criminal tendencies of the supposed criminal. In the essay "The Saints and the Roughnecks," William Chambliss compared two groups of adolescents convicted of similar juvenile offenses. "The first, a lower class group of boys, was hounded by the local police and labeled by teachers as delinquents and future criminals, while the upper-middle class boys were equally deviant, but their actions were written off as youthful indiscretions and learning experiences" (Greek 2005). A subset of conflict theory, called labeling theory, suggests that the very act of labeling a person as deviant causes the individual (usually, a lower-class individual) to identify with the deviant label and to be predisposed to criminal activity (Greek, Labeling theory, 2005).

In the conflict view, a lack of class solidarity is the primary source of injustice, not the failure to punish crime. "The middle class are also co-opted; they side with the elites rather the poor, thinking they might themselves rise to the top by supporting the status quo" (Greek, Conflict theory, 2005).….....

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