Who Is A Criminal?
In this article, I look at why some people are labelled criminals while others aren’t.
At first glance, the answer to the question above seems painfully obvious: a criminal is anyone who commits a crime. Many people commit crimes, however, not all of them are labelled a criminal — regardless of the severity of their offence. Some don’t even have to commit a crime to be called criminals, which begs the question: Why are some people labelled criminals while others aren’t? What factors determine whether a behaviour is criminal or not? What’s a crime?
What’s a crime?
According to Cornell Law School, crime is any behaviour, “either by act or omission,” punishable by statutory or common law. For a behaviour to be considered a crime, prosecutors must prove that the person did it intentionally. However, prosecutors don’t need to prove intent with certain crimes such as parking violations.
In addition, the Cornell Law School says that a crime can be “mala prohibita (‘bad because prohibited’),” which is illegal behaviour that’s not “inherently evil.” The law treats mala prohibita crimes as minor, and they usually don’t result in imprisonment. Examples of mala prohibita crimes are parking in a handicapped zone and traffic violations.
“Mala in se (‘bad in themselves’)” crimes are behaviours considered “inherently evil under general community standards.” Examples of mala in se crimes include rape, murder, and theft. The law sees mala in se crimes as serious crimes that warrant imprisonment or death.
Like the law, natural law theorists think certain behaviours are inherently immoral and unacceptable and must be universally banned. Moralistic theorists argue that legal statutes and codes consist of behaviours that most of society deems morally unacceptable.
Interactionist theorists, on the other hand, don’t believe in objectively or inherently deviant behaviour. Anthony Giddens and Philip W. Sutton define deviance as not conforming “to a given set of norms” that many people in society accept. Deviance isn’t the same as crime, but the concepts often overlap.
Why are some people labelled criminals while others aren’t?
According to Labelling theorists, labelling in society has a lot to do with money and power. Giddens and Sutton argue that the wealthy define deviance for the poor, “men for women”, “older people for younger people,” and “ethnic majorities” for ethnic minorities. The authors say that Howard Becker believes that behaviour is only deviant if people and the law label it as such.
Sometimes, people label the same behaviour differently depending on who does it and where. Giddens and Sutton mention the example of authorities accepting university students’ (specifically ‘white’ middle-class or rich students’) legal and illegal drug use as a ‘right of passage’ and labelling that of poor, ‘black’ inner-city youth criminal.
In addition, many — including the law — would argue that murder is inherently evil and criminal. Yet, when governments or soldiers murder people, their actions aren’t labelled as such, especially when an influential and affluent government or military kills an ‘enemy of the state.’
The most recent example is the U.S. drone strike on an innocent man in Kabul, Afghanistan that killed seven children and two other adults. In any other situation, the media and the public would label someone (especially a poor person of colour) who intentionally kills the innocent — especially children — as a hardened criminal and a monster.
Yet, media coverage of the U.S. drone strike doesn’t focus on the U.S.’ ‘inherently evil’ criminal behaviour. Instead, coverage focuses on how the U.S. military killed the wrong person, not on labelling the U.S. military as criminal monsters for intentionally killing innocent people. Had the U.S. military killed ‘the right person,’ the murder would’ve been praised. Who’s the right person? An enemy of the state. Who’s an enemy of the state? Anyone that the state decides is an enemy. Not only do those in power get to define an enemy of the state, but the definition is always changing, and it isn’t always just or justified.
Not so long ago, ‘black’ people, native Americans, immigrants, and union workers were labelled enemies of the U.S. merely for belonging to these groups. No criminal action or behaviour was required for them to be labelled criminals. As was the case in Kabul, all the U.S. government and institutions needed was to label them as such.
What factors determine whether a behaviour is criminal or not?
How come the labels given by the U.S. stick more than those of others? The short answer is power. However, it’s not that the U.S. has the power to coerce, but rather, the power to convince.
According to Jonathan Gaventa, late French philosopher Michel Foucault defined power as “accepted forms of knowledge, scientific understanding and ‘truth.’” Truth is knowledge produced or verified by legitimate institutions that society accepts as true and uses to tell fact from fiction. Society accepts this knowledge as truth because it believes that the institutions that produce or verify it have the authority to do so, use proven techniques and follow due processes.
Authors Siegfried Jäger and Maier Florentine argue that truth has power because it regulates and institutionalises “ways of talking, thinking and acting.” Truth also informs human action and, as a result, influences “individual and collective creation of reality.” The authors argue that not everyone has the power to influence truth because people and countries have differing access to institutions such as the media due to historical, political, and socioeconomic factors. The media is highly influential in producing and reporting the truth, especially the U.S. media, which is one of the most powerful in the world.
Crime and Dehumanisation
When reporting crime, the U.S. media uses dehumanisation to label people and divert the focus from certain people and institutions. Sophie Oliver says that Herbert C. Kelman defines dehumanisation as denying someone identity and community, factors Kelman believes make someone fully human.
After being dehumanised, people stop seeing the person as part of the community who has human rights worth respecting. The person then falls outside the ‘moral scope,’ making them a target for abuse and exclusion. Once outside the moral scope, treating the excluded person or people inhumanely without guilt or remorse becomes acceptable. These people are often used as scapegoats, especially since society perceives them as a threat or inferior. As a result, people call for their temporary or permanent removal to avoid ‘polluting’ the rest of the community.
For example, the media dehumanised George Floyd because he had a criminal record and used drugs. His drug use, criminal history, and profile made people perceive him as a hardened criminal and an outsider, warranting his inhumane murder at the knees of police. Moreover, his outsider status made it easy for police to scapegoat him to deflect public focus on their brutality.
The media’s dehumanisation of those who commit crimes or those perceived to commit crimes also allowed the U.S. military to get away with murder in Kabul. Media coverage of the U.S. drone strike reinforces the idea that the U.S. military was pursuing a legitimate ‘threat’, thus deflecting the focus away from the U.S. military’s criminal behaviour. In doing so, the media turned the murder of innocent people into nothing more than collateral damage.
The media and humanisation
The media has the power to dehumanise people, but it also humanises criminals closest to those in power (‘white’ men), even when they commit the most “inherently evil” crimes. For example, Jeffrey Epstein was a rich, convicted sex offender and trafficker of minors, yet the media refers to him as a financier — not a criminal, monster, or pedophile. The media also tells us about Epstein’s life outside of his criminal activities, which humanises him.
Another example is GQ’s 2017 article that humanises Dylann Roof by speaking to his friends, family, and former teachers to discover what made him murder nine innocent churchgoers. In doing so, GQ humanises him by showing him as someone with an identity, who’s part of a community, and isn’t ‘inherently evil.’
However, there’s no such courtesy given to Nikko Jenkins, a ‘black’ man who killed four people. There are no visits to his hometown, no interviews with friends and teachers, no effort to discover “what went wrong.” Instead, articles about Jenkins mention how he came from a family of criminals and has been a coldhearted criminal his whole life. He has no identity or community. Articles report that Jenkins endured abuse as a child and that he has numerous mental illnesses, which his wife confirmed.
Yet, despite all of this, the media mentions that psychiatrists think he’s faking mental illness to avoid punishment and proceed to label him as “one of the most hardened killers on death row.” Roof, who stood before a federal jury and said, “there’s nothing wrong with me psychologically,” is also on death row. A psychiatrist diagnosed him with numerous disorders. However, the judge presiding over Roof’s case didn’t think his mental condition was severe enough for him not to stand trial or represent himself.
The media and stereotyping
The dehumanisation of Jenkins isn’t surprising, as the U.S. media tends to treat deviance in ‘black’ men as the norm and that of ‘white’ men as an anomaly. As a result, the U.S. media is hard on Jenkins because they expect him to be a criminal by nature. On the other hand, the U.S. media doesn’t expect the same of Roof; hence they make efforts to investigate “what went wrong.” The U.S. media’s campaign to show ‘black’ men as inherently deviant began with the first Hollywood blockbuster, Birth of A Nation (1915).
According to Britannica, the movie shows ‘black’ people “as the root of all evil and unworthy of freedom and voting rights.” The film also shows black men as constantly “lusting after white women” while representing the Klansman as the hero who is “restoring order to the chaos and lawlessness.” From then on, ‘black’ men were stereotyped by the media as violent sexual predators prone to crime. Stuart Hall says the stereotyping of racialised ‘black’ men made it seem as though the traits mentioned above exist naturally in them and that they’re “beyond history, permanent and ‘fixed.’”
Stereotyping is a strategy used by the media to ‘fix difference’ and exclude people. Hall argues that stereotyping usually happens where “there are gross inequalities of power.” To maintain social order, institutions such as the media use it to distinguish the ‘normal’ people from the ‘abnormal others’ that the ‘normal’ group should exclude. As a result, Marxist and critical theorists see the media’s role as reproducing dominant ideology (including stereotypes), legitimising capitalism, and furthering the interests and opinions of the elites until they become the truth, giving elites supreme power.
In addition, authors Mike Maguire, Rod Morgan, and Robert Reiner argue that the news media paints law enforcement in a positive light and protestors in a negative light. The authors also say that in a bid to be objective and impartial, the media gives power to institutions to frame narratives, as it prioritises ‘credible sources.’ For example, news reporters tend to rely on the police and criminal justice as prime sources for crime stories. The police then use the opportunity to frame the truth about a situation, which later becomes hard to debunk. As a result, news-making processes aren’t objective or impartial, yet we’ve been convinced that they are.
Moreover, Maguire, Morgan, and Reiner say that due to safety concerns during riots and protests, news cameramen tend to stand behind police lines, making the police look like “the vulnerable ‘us’ threatened by the menacing ‘them.’” The authors quote McNair, who says, “‘Journalists are not necessarily biased towards the powerful — but their routine assumptions make them willing conduits of that power.’”
The media is partly why ‘white’ people and elites tend to escape being labelled as criminals, as it has the power to convince us that they aren’t. This brings us back to the initial question, who is a criminal? Anyone that people and institutions label as a criminal. Based on the research, this person will most likely be poor and ‘black.’
