CRJC Discussion Board
Order Description
1.Read Black and offer a description of his piece – the main topic is self-help, focus on modern self-help and theoretical considerations. You will need to define key terms and explain central propositions (such as first paragraph, second column on page 41; see four key patterns on page 42). This will take several paragraphs of text. USE QUOTES SPARRINGLY and with proper use of “” and endnote citation.
2.Apply this perspective to a terrorist action you suggest (see above). Identify the terrorist action you have selected and provide at least one source for me to review the details (news stories are okay here). Describe it briefly. Description is the first step in social science.
3.Demonstrate how applying Black’s perspective to the terrorist act you have selected can help us understand the event. Understanding is the second step in social science. This will take several paragraphs as you are using Black’s terms and propositions to demonstrate your position.
4.On the basis of the case you selected and your discussion above what do you propose ways to predict, prevent and/or control these types of events? This is the final step in social science.
Donald Black article
CRIME AS SOCIAL CONTROL*
DONALD BLACK Harvard Law School
The sociological theory of social control predicts and explains how people define and respond to deviant behavior. One kind of social control is known as self-help: the expression of a grievance by unilateral aggression such as personal violence or property destruction. It is commonly believed that self-help was largely displaced by law in the Western world during the Middle Ages, and that it has survived primarily in the traditional-especially stateless-societies studied by anthropologists. In fact, much of the conduct classified as crime in modern societies such as the United States is similar to these traditional modes of social control and may properly’ be understood as self-help. Several implications follow, including the possibility of predicting and explaining a significant amount of crime with a sociological theory of self-help, itself a branch of the theory of social control.
There is a sense in which conduct regarded as criminal is often quite the opposite. Far from being an intentional violation of a prohibition, much crime is moralistic and involves the pur- suit of justice. It is a mode of conflict manage- ment, possibly a form of punishment, even capital punishment. Viewed in relation to law, it is self-help. To the degree that it defines or responds to the conduct of someone else-the victim-as deviant, crime is social control.’ And to this degree it is possible to predict and explain crime with aspects of the sociological theory of social control, in particular, the theory of self-help.2 After an overview of self-
help in traditional and modern settings, the following pages briefly examine in turn the so- called struggle between law and self-help, the deterrence of crime, the processing of self-help by legal officials, and, finally, the problem of predicting and explaining self-help itself.
TRADITIONAL SELF-HELP Much of the conduct described by an- thropologists as conflict management, social control, or even law in tribal and other traditional societies is regarded as crime in modern societies. This is especially clear in the case of violent modes of redress such as assas- sination, feuding, fighting, maiming, and beat- ing, but it also applies to the confiscation and destruction of property and to other forms of deprivation and humiliation. Such actions typi- cally express a grievance by one person or group against another (see Moore, 1972:67-72). Thus, one anthropologist notes that among the Bena Bena of highland New Guinea, as among most tribes of that region, “rather than being proscribed, violent self-help is prescribed as a method of social control” (Langness, 1972:182).3 The same might be said of numerous societies throughout the world. On the other hand, violence is quite rare in many traditional societies, and at least some of
* Direct all correspondence to: Donald Black, Center for Criminal Justice, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA 02138. Support for this work was provided by the Pro- gram in Law and Social Science of the. National Science Foundation. A number of people made helpful comments on an earlier draft: M. P. Baum- gartner, John L. Comaroff, Mark Cooney, Jack P. Gibbs, Richard 0. Lempert, Craig B. Little, Sally Engle Merry, Alden D. Miller, Calvin K. Morrill, Trevor W. Nagel, Lloyd E. Ohlin, and Alan Stone. A longer version of this paper will appear in Toward a General Theory of Social Control, edited by Donald Black (New York: Academic Press, 1983). 1 The concept of social control employed here re- fers specifically-and exclusively-to any process by which people define or respond to deviant be- havior (Black, 1976:105). This is a broad category that includes such diverse phenomena as a frown or scowl, a scolding or reprimand, an expulsion from an organization, an arrest or lawsuit, a prison sentence, commitment to a mental hospital, a riot, or a military reprisal. But this concept entails no assumptions or implications concerning the impact of social control upon conformity, social order, or anything else, nor does it address the subjective meanings of social control for those who exercise or experience it. 2 For these purposes, self-help refers to the ex- pression of a grievance by unilateral aggression. It is
thus distinguishable from social control through third parties such as police officers or judges and from avoidance behavior such as desertion and divorce. (This conception of self-help derives from work in progress with M. P. Baumgartner.) I Illustrations of traditional self-help are given here in the present tense (known as the “ethno- graphic present” in anthropology), though many of the practices to be surveyed have changed considerably-if not disappeared altogether-since they were originally observed.
34 American Sociological Review 1983, Vol. 48 (February:34-45)
CRIME AS SOCIAL CONTROL 35
it is condemned in all. What follows is not intended as a representative overview, then, since only the more violent societies and modes of self-help are illustrated. First con- sider homicide. In one community of Maya Indians in south- ern Mexico, for example, any individual killed from ambush is automatically labelled “the one who had the guilt.” Everyone assumes that the deceased individual provoked his own death through an act of wrongdoing: “Homicide is considered a reaction to crime, not a crime in itself’ (Nash, 1967:456). Similarly, it has been observed that in a number of equatorial African societies homicide is rarely predatory- committed for gain-but is nearly always re- lated to a grievance or quarrel of some kind (Bohannan, 1960:256). The Eskimos of the American Arctic also kill people in response to various offenses, including adultery, insult, and simply being a nuisance (see Hoebel, 1954:83-88; van den Steenhoven, 1962: Ch. 4); and, to mention still another example, the Ifugao of the Philippines hold that any “self- respecting man” must kill an adulterer discov- ered in flagrante delicto (Barton, [1919] 1969:66-70). Societies such as these have, in effect, capital punishment administered on a private basis. But unlike penalties imposed by the state, private executions often result in re- venge or even a feud, a reciprocal exchange of violence that might last months or years (see, e.g., Otterbein and Otterbein, 1965; Rieder, 1973). Moreover, the person killed in retalia- tion may not be himself or herself a killer, since in these societies violent conflicts between nonkin are virtually always handled in a framework of collective responsibility-or, more precisely, collective liability-whereby all members of a family or other group are accountable for the conduct of their fellows (see, e.g., Moore, 1972). Violence of other kinds also expresses a grievance in most instances. Among the Yanomamo of Venezuela and Brazil, for example, women are routinely subjected to corporal punishment by their husbands: “Most reprimands meted out by irate husbands take the form of blows with the hand or with a piece of firewood, but a good many husbands are even more brutal” (Chagnon, 1977:82-83). In parts of East Africa, “Husbands often assault their wives, sometimes with a slap, sometimes with a fist, a foot, or a stick” (Edgerton, 1972:164); and among the Qolla of Peru, a hus- band may beat his wife “when her behavior warrants it,” such as when she is “lazy” or “runs around with other men” (Bolton and Bolton, 1973:64). Another punishment for women in some societies is rape by a group of men, or “gang rape” (e.g., Llewellyn and
Hoebel, 1941:202-210). Everywhere, how- ever, it appears that most violence is inflicted upon men by other men. Property destruction may also be a mode of social control. An extreme form is house burning, a practice quite frequent, for example, in parts of East Africa (Edgerton, 1972:164). Animals, gardens, or other property might be destroyed as well. Among the Cheyenne of the American Plains, a man’s horse might be killed (Llewellyn and Hoebel, 1941:117), and in northern Albania, a dog might be killed (Has- luck, 1954:76-78). In one case in Lebanon (later punished as a crime), an aggrieved man cut the branches off his adversary’s walnut tree (Rothenberger, 1978:169). Among the Qolla, crops are sometimes damaged as a punish- ment, such as “when a man methodically up- roots his enemy’s potato plants before they have produced any tubers” (Bolton, 1973:234). Netsilik Eskimos may subtly encourage their children to destroy an offender’s cache of food, so that what appears to be mischief or van- dalism may actually be a carefully orchestrated act of revenge (van den Steenhoven, 1962:74). Property may also be confiscated as a form of social control, so that what might at first appear to a modern observer as unprovoked theft or burglary proves in many cases to be a response to the misconduct of the victim. Among the Mbuti Pygmies of Zaire, for in- stance, a seeming theft may be recognized by all as an “unofficial sanction” against a person who has incurred “public disapproval for some reason or another” (Turnbull, 1965:199). Among the Qolla, the moralistic character of a theft is especially clear “when the object stolen has no value to the thief’ (Bolton, 1973:233). Lastly, it might be noted that where women are regarded as the property of their fathers or husbands, rape may provide a means of retal- iation against a man. This seems to have been involved in some of the gang rapes recorded as crimes in fourteenth-century England, for example, where even a widow might be at- tacked by a group of men as an act of revenge against her deceased husband (Hanawalt, 1979:109, 153). In some cases, then, rape may be construed as another kind of confiscation.
MODERN SELF-HELP A great deal of the conduct labelled and pro- cessed as crime in modem societies resembles the modes of conflict management-described above-that are found in traditional societies which have little or no law (in the sense of governmental social control-Black, 1972:1096). Much of this conduct is intended as a punishment or other expression of disap- proval, whether applied reflectively or impul-
36 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
sively, with coolness or in the heat of passion. Some is an effort to achieve compensation, or restitution, for a harm that has been done. The response may occur long after the offense, perhaps weeks, months, or even years later; after a series of offenses, each viewed singly as only a minor aggravation but together viewed as intolerable; or as an immediate response to the offense, perhaps during a fight or other conflict, or after an assault, theft, insult, or injury. As in tribal and other traditional societies, for example, most intentional homicide in modern life is a response to conduct that the killer regards as deviant. In Houston during 1969, for instance, over one-half of the homicides occurred in the course of a “quar- rel,’ and another one-fourth occurred in al- leged “self-defense” or were “provoked,” whereas only a little over one-tenth occurred in the course of predatory behavior such as bur- glary or robbery (calculated from Lundsgaarde, 1977:237; see also Wolfgang, [1958] 1966: Ch. 10). Homicide is often a re- sponse to adultery or other matters relating to sex, love, or loyalty, to disputes about domes- tic matters (financial affairs, drinking, house- keeping) or affronts to honor, to conflicts re- lating to debts, property, and child custody, and to other questions of right and wrong. Cases mentioned in the Houston study include one in which a young man killed his brother during a heated discussion about the latter’s sexual advances toward his younger sisters, another in which a man killed his wife after she “dared” him to do so during an argument about which of several bills they should pay, one where a women killed her husband during a quarrel in which the man struck her daughter (his stepdaughter), one in which a woman killed her 21-year-old son because he had been “fooling around with homosexuals and drugs,” and two others in which people died from wounds inflicted during altercations over the parking of an automobile (Lundsgaarde, 1977). Like the killings in traditional societies de- scribed by anthropologists, then, most inten- tional homicide in modern society may be classified as social control, specifically as self-help, even if it is handled by legal officials as crime.4 From this standpoint, it is apparent
that capital punishment is quite common in modern America-in Texas, homicide is one of the ten leading causes of death-though it is nearly always a private rather than a public affair. Most conduct that a lawyer would label as assault may also be understood as self-help. In the vast majority of cases the people involved know one another, usually quite intimately, and the physical attack arises in the context of a grievance or quarrel (see, e.g., Vera Insti- tute, 1977:23-42). Commonly the assault is a punishment, such as when a husband beats or otherwise injures his wife because she has not lived up to his expectations. In one case that came to the attention of the police in Boston, for example, a woman complained that her husband had beaten her because supper was not ready when he came home from work (Black, 1980:161), a state of affairs, inci- dentally, which might have been the woman’s own way of expressing disapproval of her hus- band (see Baumgartner, 1983: forthcoming). Other standards are enforced violently as well. In one instance that occurred in a major north- eastern city and that apparently was not re- ported to the police, a young woman’s brothers attacked and beat her boyfriend “for making her a drug addict,” and in another a young man was stabbed for cooperating with the police in a burglary investigation (Merry, 1981:158, 180-181). In a case in Washington, D.C., that resulted in an arrest, a boy shot his gang leader for taking more than his proper share of the proceeds from a burglary (Allen, 1977:40-43). Years later, the same individual shot someone who had been terrorizing young women- including the avenger’s girlfriend-in his neighborhood. Though he pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon” and was com- mitted to a reformatory, not surprisingly he de- scribed himself as “completely right” and his victim as “completely wrong” (Allen, 1977:62-66, 69-70). Indigenous people arrested for violence in colonial societies are likely to have a similar point of view: They may be proud of what they have done and admit it quite openly, even while they are being prosecuted as criminals by the foreign authorities.5 Those apprehended in
4 Crimes of self-help may be distinguished from other categories of conduct regarded as criminal, such as certain kinds of economic behavior (e.g., predatory robbery and the selling of illicit goods and services) and recreation (e.g., gambling and under- age drinking of alcoholic beverages). This is not to deny that some crime is multidimensional; for in- stance, an incident might be both moralistic and predatory at the same time, as when someone is killed in a quarrel but then robbed as well.
This reportedly applied, for example, to the Nuer of the Sudan when they lived under British rule: I have been told by [a British] officer with wide experience of Africans that Nuer defendants are remarkable in that they very seldom lie in cases brought before Government tribunals. They have no need to, since they are only anxious to justify the damage they have caused by showing that it is retaliation for damage the plaintiff has inflicted earlier. (Evans-Pritchard, 1940:171-72)
CRIME AS SOCIAL CONTROL 37
Europe for the crime of duelling-also a method of conflict resolution-have typically lacked remorse for the same reasons (see Pitt-Rivers, 1966:29-31). Thus, when asked by a priest to pray for forgiveness before being hanged for killing a man with a sword, one such offender in France exclaimed, “Do you call one of the cleverest thrusts in Gascony a crime?” (Baldick, 1965:62). As in duelling, moreover, violence in modern societies is often pre- scribed by a code of honor. He who shrinks from it is disgraced as a coward (see, e.g., Werthman, 1969; Horowitz and Schwartz, 1974). Many crimes involving the confiscation or destruction of property also prove to have a normative character when the facts come fully to light. There are, for example, moralistic burglaries, thefts, and robberies. Over one- third of the burglaries in New York City re- sulting in arrest involve people with a prior relationship (Vera Institute, 1977:82), and these not infrequently express a grievance the burglar has against his victim. In one such case handled by the Boston police, for instance, a woman who had been informed by a neighbor complained that while she was away “her es- tranged husband had entered her apartment, wrecked it, loaded all of her clothes into his car, and driven away, presumably headed for his new home several hundred miles away” (Black, 1980:115). Though the specific nature of this man’s grievance was not mentioned, it seems apparent that his actions were punitive to some degree, and surely his estranged wife understood this as well. In a case in New York City, one resulting in two arrests for burglary, two black women barged into the home of an elderly white woman at midnight to confront her because earlier in the day she had re- monstrated with their children for throwing rocks at her window (Vera Institute, 1977:88). A crime may also be committed against a par- ticular individual to express the disapproval of a larger number of people, such as a neighbor- hood or community, as is illustrated by the report of a former burglar who notes in his autobiography that early in his career he selected his victims partly on moralistic grounds: We always tried to get the dude that the neighbors didn’t like too much or the guy that was hard on the people who lived in the neighborhood…. I like to think that all the places we robbed, that we broke into, was kind of like the bad guys. (Allen, 1977:39-40) It should be clear, however, that the victims of moralistic crime may be entirely unaware of why they have been selected, especially when the offender is unknown. Such crimes may
therefore be understood as secret social con- trol (compare Becker, 1963:20). Another possible mode of self-help is rob- bery, or theft involving violence. Thus, in New York City, where over one-third of the people arrested for robbery are acquainted with their victims, the crime often arises from a quarrel over money (Vera Institute, 1977:65-71). In one case, for example, a woman reported that her sister and her sister’s boyfriend had taken her purse and $40 after assaulting her and threatening to kill her baby, but she later ex- plained that this had arisen from a misunder- standing: The boyfriend wanted reimburse- ment for a baby carriage that he had bought for her, whereas she thought it had been a gift (Vera Institute, 1977:69-70). It seems, in fact, that in many instances robbery is a form of debt collection and an alternative to law. The same applies to embezzlement, though it may also simply express disapproval of the em- ployer who is victimized (see Cressey, 1953:57-59, 63-66). Conduct known as vandalism, or malicious destruction of property, proves to be a form of social control in many cases as well. Far from being merely “malicious,” “non-utilitarian,” or “negativistic,” with ‘”no purpose, no rhyme, no reason” (Cohen, 1955:25-30, including quoted material in note 4), much vandalism in modern society is similar to the moralistic destruction of crops, animals, and other valuables in traditional societies. But whereas, say, a Plains Indian might kill a horse, a modern agent of justice might damage the offender’s auto- mobile. Thus, in one American neighborhood where parking spaces on the street are scarce, the residents have evolved their own distribu- tion system, with its own customary rules and enforcement procedures. In the winter, one such rule is that whoever shovels the snow from a parking space is its “owner,” and per- sistent violators may find that their automobile has been spraypainted or otherwise abused (Thomas-Buckle and Buckle, 1982:84, 86-87). Vandalism may also be reciprocated in a feud- like pattern of mutual destruction: In one case in a northeastern city, a young man found that someone had broken the radio antenna on his automobile, learned from some children who had done it, and thereupon proceeded to slash the tires of the offender’s automobile (Merry, 1981: 179). Business places and dwellings may be dam- aged to punish their owners or inhabitants. Ar- son, or burning, has a long history of this kind (see, e.g., Hanawalt, 1979:90-91). Less severe sanctions, however, are far more frequent. In a case occurring in a suburb of New York City, for example, a young man drove his car across someone’s lawn during a quarrel, and in an-
38 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
other incident in the same community several young men spraypainted parts of an older man’s house in the middle of the night because he had called the police to disperse them when they were sitting in their cars drinking beer and listening to music (Baumgartner, forthcoming). If all of the facts were known, then, it seems likely that much seemingly senseless and ran- dom vandalism would prove to be retaliation by young people against adults (see Greenberg, 1977:202-204). Some may even be done by children on behalf of their parents, in a pattern analogous to that found among the Eskimos mentioned earlier (for a possible example, see Black, 1980:167-68). If the parents themselves are the offenders, however, other strategies might be followed. Among the Tarahumara In- dians of northern Mexico, children with a grievance against their parents often “run away” from home, staying with an uncle or grandparent for a few days before returning (Fried, 1953:291). Qolla children have a similar custom, locally known as “losing themselves” (Bolton and Bolton, 1973:15-16). Modern chil- dren do this as well, though like vandalism it is commonly regarded as a form of juvenile de- linquency. Finally, it might be noted that the practice of collective liability-whereby all of the people in a social category are held accountable for the conduct of each of their fellows-occurs in modern as well as traditional societies. This is most apparent during a war, revolution, or riot, when anyone might suffer for the deeds of someone else, but during peaceful times too, seemingly random violence may often be un- derstood in the same way. Today a police of- ficer might become the victim of a surprise attack by a stranger, for example, because of the conduct of one or more fellow officers in the past. Seemingly random crime of other kinds may involve collective liability as well. Thus, for instance, a black rapist described his selection of white victims as a process of ven- geance against white people in general: It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women-and this point, I believe, was the most satisfying to me because I was very resentful over the historical fact of how the white man has used the black woman. I felt I was getting revenge. (Cleaver, 1968:14) Similarly, a former burglar and robber re- marked that he once selected his victims primarily from a relatively affluent neighbor- hood, but not simply because this provided a chance of greater material gain: “I really dis- liked them people, ’cause it seemed like they thought they was better ’cause they had more”
(Allen, 1977:32-33). People might be held col- lectively liable because of their neighborhood, social class, race, or ethnicity. Crime by young people against adult strangers may also have this logic in some cases: All adults might be held liable for the conduct of those known per- sonally, such as police, teachers, and parents.6 Among young people themselves, particularly in large American cities, rival “gangs” may engage in episodic violence resembling the feud in traditional settings, where each member of a feuding group is liable-to injury or even death-for the conduct of the other members (see, e.g., Yablonsky, 1962). A sig- nificant amount of crime in modern society may even resemble what anthropologists de- scribe as “raiding,” a kind of predatory be- havior often directed at people collectively de- fined as deserving of revenge (see, e.g., Sweet, 1965; Schneider, 1971:4). And some might properly be construed as “banditry” since it seems to be a kind of primitive rebellion by those at the bottom of society against their social superiors (see Hobsbawm, 1969). In short, although much crime in modern society directly and unambiguously expresses a griev- ance by one person against another, this may be only the most visible portion of a much broader phenomenon.
THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS When a moralistic crime is handled by the police or prosecuted in court, the official defi- nition of the event is drastically different from that of the people involved, particularly from that of the alleged offender. In the case of a husband who shoots his wife’s lover, for example, the definition of who is the offender and who is the victim is reversed: The wife’s lover is defined as the victim, even though he was shot because of an offense he committed against the woman’s husband. Moreover, the lover’s offense is precisely the kind for which violent social control-by the husband-is viewed as acceptable and appropriate, if not obligatory, in numerous tribal and other traditional societies. Even in modem society, it
6 It might be added that subpopulations such as women, old people, and the poor may be particularly vulnerable to vengeance of this kind. Seen in cross- cultural perspective, this is not inconsistent with systems of collective liability. In some tribal societies, for example, retaliation may be taken against those who are physically less dangerous, such as women and children, and against those who are less likely to be revenged, such as social isolates and visitors (e.g., Koch, 1974:132-54). On the other hand, a “code of honor” may govern revenge and limit it, for instance, to adult males able to defend themselves (e.g., Hasluck, 1954: Ch.24).
CRIME AS SOCIAL CONTROL 39
might be said that the husband is charged with violating the criminal law because he enforced his rights in what many regard as the custom- ary law of marriage. The victim thus becomes the offender, and vice versa. The state prose- cutes the case in its own name, while the origi- nal offender against morality (if alive) serves as a witness against the man he has victimized- surely a perverse proceeding from the standpoint of the defendant (compare Christie, 1977). It is also enlightening in this regard to consider criminal cases arising from quarrels and fights, where each party has a grievance against the other. Here the state often imposes the categories of offender and victim upon people who were contesting the proper appli- cation of these labels during the altercation in question. Whether there was originally a cross-complaint or not, however, in all of these cases the state defines someone with a griev- ance as a criminal. The offense lies in how the grievance was pursued. The crime is self-help. It should be apparent from much of the foregoing that in modern society the state has only theoretically achieved a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence (compare, e.g., Weber, [1919] 1958:78; Elias, [1939] 1978:201-202). In reality, violence flourishes (particularly in modern America), and most of it involves ordinary citizens who seemingly view their conduct as a perfectly legitimate exercise of social control. It might therefore be observed that the struggle between law and self-help in the West did not end in the Middle Ages, as legal historians claim (e.g., Pollock and Maitland, [1898] 1968: Vol. 2, 574; Pound, 1971:139-40; see also Hobhouse, 1906: Ch.3). It continues.7 Many people still “take the law into their own hands.” They seem to view their grievances as their own business, not that of the police or other officials, and resent the intrusion of law (see Matza, 1964: Ch.5). They seem determined to have justice done, even if this means that they will be defined as crimi- nals.8 Those who commit murder, for example,
often appear to be resigned to their fate at the hands of the authorities; many wait patiently for the police to arrive; some even call to re- port their own crimes (see generally Lundsgaarde, 1977). In cases of this kind, in- deed, the individuals involved might arguably be regarded as martyrs. Not unlike workers who violate a prohibition to strike-knowing they will go to jail-or others who defy the law on grounds of principle, they do what they think is right, and willingly suffer the conse- quences.
Deterrence and Self-Help
To the degree that people feel morally obli- gated to commit crimes, it would seem that the capacity of the criminal law to discourage them-its so-called deterrent effect-must be weakened. For example, homicides committed as a form of capital punishment would seem to be more difficult to deter than those committed entirely in pursuit of personal gain (on the de- terrability of the latter, see Chambliss, 1967). This is not to deny that moralistic homicide can be discouraged to some extent. In fact, one former resident of Harlem has noted that the inhabitants of that unusually violent area ap- pear to debate in their own minds whether or not moralistic homicide is ultimately worth its legal consequences: I think everybody was curious about whether or not it was worth it to kill some- body and save your name or your masculin- ity, defend whatever it was that had been offended-whether it was you or your woman or somebody in your family. (Brown, 1965:220)
He adds that during his years in Harlem this question loomed especially large whenever anyone was executed in prison (Brown, 1965:220). That the desirability of killing an- other person is entertained at all is remarkable, however, particularly when the death penalty is believed to be a possible result (a belief that appears to be largely unfounded-see below). Furthermore, since other crimes of self-help carry fewer risks of a legal nature, they should be even harder to discourage than homicide. In any event, a theory of deterrence surely should recognize that the power of punishment to deter crime partly depends upon whether a given crime is itself a form of social control (for other relevant variables see, e.g., Andenaes, 1966; Chambliss, 1967; Zimring, 1971). A related question is the extent to which victimizations are deterred by self-help rather than-or in addition to-law. Although many citizens are entirely dependent upon legal offi- cials such as the police to handle criminal of-
7The struggle, however, was once vastly more rancorous and spectacular, in many cases involving open confrontations between those engaging in self- help-along with their supporters-and the au- thorities who regarded their conduct as criminal. In medieval England, for example, a prisoner’s friends might forcibly seize him from the sheriff, and in some instances armed bands violently challenged the au- thorities in the co