Written by EILEEN CONN
Long-term correspondent Eileen Conn sent me the following thoughts with regard to the Pro- & Anti-Social Behaviour feature Crime and Deviance – the Difference. We agreed to post them in the Blog to see what others might have to say about the points Eileen raises.
Keith
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Hi Keith
A useful analysis and commentary as usual. Thank you!
One thing that went through my mind when reading your piece is to ponder on the subcultures in our UK society which have strong family processes.
Two in particular I often think about are
- criminal subcultures like the Krays, Richardsons, the modern one – Adams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerkenwell_crime_syndicate) where it is said the head is in prison but still controlling the empire from inside. The values of these subcultures are very deviant from the main - acceptance of violence, torture and murder, for example, as well as all the actions involved in taking material and finance which doesn’t belong to them, in any way feasible. It may be that the boys that murdered Stephen Lawrence came from the same kind of subculture though not so extreme – but outside the norm, bullying, violence and organised crime mix.
- religious subcultures like some Muslim ones when the value set deviates from the main one in cultural behaviour, eg: attitude to women, gay people, violence and punishment even to murder (‘honour’ killings) to enforce their values.
- In some cases there is a convergence of these two, where immigrant populations have both a minority religious adherence (not just Muslim but also some reported as Hindu and Sikh) and also get engaged in organised crime in the drugs and protection business.
The ‘travellers’ subcultures whether Irish, Romanian, Gypsy or … all share characteristics with some of these other phenomena.
Anyway, I do quite often puzzle about these groupings sparked off by behaviour I observe or news reports I read, and ponder on what is going on, and your new piece got me going again. The thing they all have in common is strong family systems and children growing up with them and perpetuating the subculture.
I will be interested in any thoughts you have, sparked off by what I am saying.
Eileen
Thanks for these thought-provoking comments, Eileen.
Your remarks about family systems and processes are especially interesting. I would argue that they illustrate the PURPLE vMEME working in the manner of Edwin Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory (1947). According to Sutherland, youngsters learn deviant and criminal behaviours from those they are closest to and belong to. That children will model negative behaviour from those they identify with was demonstrated unequivocally by Albert Bandura (see: Bandura, Ross & Ross, 1961 – http://www.integratedsociopsychology.net/bandura_bo-bo_dolls.html)
It can be argued that this perpetuates what Charles Murray (1989) has labelled the Underclass – see: Underclass: the Excreta of Capitalism (http://www.integratedsociopsychology.net/excreta-capitalism.html). So we have multi-generation families, where there has never been anyone in gainful employment, living on the edges of society via a mixture of benefit fraud, prostitution, drug dealing and petty crime.
Though I can’t say I’ve followed the Stephen Lawrence case particularly closely, I would imagine this is the kind family you were thinking his killers might have come from…?
vMEMETICALLY, I think we’re talking a different degree when you mention the old 60s and 70s family-centred gangs like the Krays and theRichardsons. This is more like the RED warlord or bandit leader Don Beck likes to construct to hypothesise RED gone wrong. PURPLE is still there in the form of loyalty to the family but there is a power hierarchy headed by one or two absolute rulers.
Organised crime, by its very name, indicates there is a strong element of BLUE in there, at the centre of the organising. Once we turn to the drugs cartels in Central and South America, I can envisage considerable ORANGE leading them, on top of a sound BLUE structure underpinned with PURPLE loyalty. These guys try to manipulate entire countries, not so much for the sake of power but to pursue their business ambitions.
Perhaps relevant…in the days of HemsMESH (see: http://www.integratedsociopsychology.net/hemsmesh.html), I talked with representatives of the West Yorkshire Police about running a campaign something along the lines of “If you are earning £50,000 a year from dealing drugs, we’d like to talk to you about becoming a businessman…” The idea was that, if you could earn that much from dealing drugs, then clearly you ARE a business person (almost certainly with ORANGE strong in your selfplex) – you’re just doing criminal business and, if we could only persuade you with training and maybe a start-up grant to start a legit business, you would bring that business acumen to the local economy…. Some of the cops really liked the idea but, for most of them, it was just too radical!
Best
Keith
Other countries censor content and not just rogue regimes such as the Iranian mullocracy. Poor people! http://www.baidu.com