Book Review: Sociology and the Stereotype of the Criminal
| Published date | 01 June 1970 |
| Date | 01 June 1970 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486587000300214 |
AUST. &N.Z. JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY (June, 1970):
3,2
115
to unravel the complexities of
the
law of
Iarceny, Bassiouni essays the
task
in five
pages,
The treatment of these and other
topics is too brief to avoid superficiality.
At times it borders on the perfunctory.
Professor Bassiouni is no stylist. That
is, perhaps, hardly a fair ground for com-
plaint. But too often the
text
lapses into
abarely intelligible legal [argon. It is a
fault particularly evident in the first half
of the book. Writing of causation, for
example, Basslouni produces the following:
Any "independent" intervening cause
will break
the
causal connection between
the actor's Initial conduct and the
hann
or injury suffered by the victim. A
dependent intervening cause, however,
will not break the chain of causation
because such intervening factor is
reasonably foreseen, if not actually con-
templated by the actor, because
the
intent of the actor, manifested by his
conduct, will determine whether or not
he reasonably intended the injury as the
natural and probable consequence of his
conduct. (p. 75)
Passages such as this hover uncertainly
on
the
threshold of meaning.
Aselection
of examples and analyses of decided cases
might have illuminated them. Instead an
exhausted and obseure technical ter-
minology is allowed to take the place of
clear explanation and illustration. Where
the tendency to
employ
iargon does not
lead to obscurity it is often perverse. In
the section on sex offences it is said
that
"Force is an essential element of
the
crime
of
rape",
Force, however, may be
"actual" or "constructive", (p. 228) Later
it is made clear
that
a man who induces
awoman to have intercourse
with
him
by fraudulent means may be held
guilty
of rape. (p,
22'9~'30)
Fraud is, presumably,
the "constructive" force mentioned earlier.
It would have been far simpler to explain
rape as intercourse achieved without
the
woman's consent. There is no consent
where she is forced to submit. Nor is
there consent in those
rare
cases where
she is deceived as to the nature of the
sexual act or the identity of
her
partner.
But to group these diverse cases under
the dogmatic statement
that
force is an
essential element of the offence is inelegant
if not misleading. There is no need to
manufacture aconcept of constructive
force to aid analysis here. One owes a
debt to Bassiouni, however, for the foot-
note to Penn V. Staie, 146 N.E. 2d 240
(1957). 1suspect
that
other cases of
more weighty authority could have been
found to support the propositions for
which it is cited, but the court's remarks
on contemporary mores
were
obviously
too good to be left out of a chapter on
sex offences:
Experience teaches
that
where another
woman enters the sex life of
her
hus-
band a wife does not remain on good
terms with the other woman. She does
not thereafter invite
the
other woman
to her horne to visit, pop corn, and
watch television. Especially, she will
not share her husband and aid and abet
the act by inviting the other woman to
her home and accompany her to the bed
of her husband.
The second half of the book dealing
with criminal procedure is a little more
rewarding. As Bassiouni notes in his
preface, "The style of this portion of the
book is . . . different from the substantive
part". It is a straightforward account of
the development of those constitutional
doctrines which, in America, ensure a fair
trial for the accused. One may, however,
doubt the value of the enterprise. Con-
stitutional doctrines governlng criminal
procedure in America are undergoing rapid
change, A large maiority of the cases
cited by Bassiouni on criminal procedure
have been decided within the last decade.
The Supreme Court has shown a healthy
disrespect for its own precedents which
must make textbook generalisations in this
area more than usually unsafe as guides
to future change. For this reviewer at
least, the ongoing academic debate in
American law journals is a preferable
source of information on the development
of constitutional protection for the criminal
defendant IAN D. ELLIOTT,
Senior Lecturer in Law,
University of Melbourne.
Sociology
and
the
Stereotype
of
the
Criminal, Denis Chapman, Tavistock,
London, 1968, 260 pp., $7.00.
IF Denis Chapman deliberately
set
out 10
be provocative, then Sociology and
the
Stereotype of the Criminal is a remarkable
vehicle for achieving
that
purpose. He
challenges the common assumption
that
society could function without crlme, and
that
crime is a special category
of
behaviour with special discoverable causes:
that
if these causes were known, crime
would be prevented,
Chapman argues
that
much work in the
field of criminology has been unprofitable
simply because it has begun with defini-
tions in the form of stereotypes which
have determined the course of inquiry and
the resultant conclusions. The author
pursues the thesis
that
apart from the
accident of conviction and disapprobation
there are no differences of any kind
between criminals and non-criminals.
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