Willem Bonger, Ralf Dahrendorf, and George Vold on Crime

Willem Bonger
Bonger believed that society is divided into have and have-not groups, not on the basis of people’s innate ability, but because of the system of production that is in force. In every society that is divided into a ruling class and an inferior class, penal law serves the will of the ruling class. Even though criminal laws may appear to protect members of both classes, hardly any act is punished that does not injure the interests of the dominant ruling class. Crimes, then, are considered to be antisocial acts because they are harmful to those who have the power at their command to control society. Under capitalism, the legal system discriminates against the poor by defending the actions of the wealthy. Because the proletariat are deprived of the materials that are monopolized by the bourgeoisie they are more likely to violate the law.

Ralf Dahrendorf
Dahrendorf argued that modern society is organized into what he called imperatively coordinated associations. These associations comprise two groups: those who possess authority and use it for social domination and those who lack authority and are dominated. Society is a plurality of competing interest groups. He proposed a unifi ed confl ict theory of human behavior, which can be summarized as follows:
❚ Every society is at every point subject to processes of change; social change is everywhere.
❚ Every society displays at every point dissent and confl ict; social confl ict is everywhere.
❚ Every element in a society renders a contribution to its disintegration and change.
❚ Every society is based on the coercion of some of its members by others.

George Vold
Vold argued that laws are created by politically oriented groups who seek the government’s assistance to help them defend their rights and protect their interests. If a group can marshal enough support, a law will be created to hamper and curb the interests of some opposition group. Every stage of the process—from passing the law, to prosecuting the case, to developing relationships between inmate and guard, parole agent and parolee—is marked by confl ict. Criminal acts are a consequence of direct contact between forces struggling to control society.


Sources: Willem Bonger, Criminality and Economic Conditions, abridged ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969, fi rst published 1916); Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Confl ict in Industrial Society (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959); George Vold, Theoretical Criminology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958).

Alpha DOG (Crime story)

Twenty-five-year-old Jesse James Hollywood (his real name) was living a comfortable life in Brazil, teaching English and living in a fashionable neighborhood, when he was arrested in November of 2005 and sent back to California, where he faces charges of kidnapping and  killing a 15-year-old boy. Though Hollywood never held a job, by age 19 he was able to purchase a Mercedes and a $200,000 house in West Hills, California. His place became a popular spot for local kids who came and went at all hours of the day. Jesse was a popular guy, an outgoing kid who, despite being short in stature, was an excellent athlete. How was Jesse able to do all this? Unbeknownst to many, he was a largescale marijuana dealer. Jesse’s world began to unravel when he came up with a scheme to get money owed to him by Benjamin Markowitz, 22, one of his customers. Hollywood went to Markowitz’s family home on August 6, 2000, in order to kidnap him and hold him for ransom. According to authorities, on the way there, Jesse and his friends spotted Markowitz’s 15-year-old stepbrother, Nicholas, whom they forced into a van and transported to the home of another accomplice. After being held captive for a few days, Nick Markowitz was made to walk a mile into the Los Padres National  Forest before being shot nine times with a high-powered  assault rifl e and  buried in a shallow grave. His body was discovered four days later by hikers. While four other kids were tried and convicted in the case, Hollywood e scaped and became the subject of an  international manhunt, his mug shot plastered on the FBI’s website. He wound up in Brazil, where he used fake papers that identifi ed him as Michael Costa Giroux, a native of Rio de J aneiro. In 2005, Brazilian authorities d eported him as an  illegal alien. A 2007 fi lm, Alpha Dog, starring Bruce Willis, Justin Timberlake, and Sharon Stone, is based on the case. He is currently a waiting trial for the m urder. Jesse James Hollywood grew up in an affl uent family and seemed to be popular and successful. How could he have become involved in an awful, violent crime? How would a control theorist explain his actions?


Sources: Tim Uehlinger, “The Long Hunt for Jesse James Hollywood,” Dateline, April 12, 2006, (accessed June 9, 2007; Ted Rowlands, “ ‘Hollywood’ Faces Murder Charge,” April 19, 2006, (accessed June 9, 2007).

A LIFE IN THE DRUG TRADE

In summer 2004, a dramatic murder trial took place in New York City that aptly illustrates how lower-class cultural concerns—the code of the streets—clash with the rules and values of American culture and how deviant cultures can exist side by side with middle-class culture. Two Bronx men, Alan Quiñones and Diego Rodriguez, were accused of heroin traffi cking and killing a police informant. The trial hinged on the testimony of one of their confederates—Hector Vega, a key government witness who had previously pleaded guilty to taking part in the murder. He described in vivid detail how he watched the defendants beat the victim, Edwin Santiago, as he lay handcuffed on the fl oor of a Bronx apartment. He told the jury how the defendants Quiñones and Rodriguez spit in Santiago’s face to show what they thought of police informants. Santiago’s body was found mutilated and burned beyond recognition on June 28, 1999. During the trial, Vega gave the jury a detailed lesson in retail drug operations. In the Bronx, beatings, slashings, and shootings are routinely used to enforce what he called “the drug law”: “If people deserved it, I beat them up.” He showed them a tattoo on his upper right arm that meant “Money, Power, Respect.” Vega, 31, also told the jury that he headed a group of heroin vendors who did business from his “spot,” his sales area, between Daly and Honeywell Avenues in the Bronx. He said he had learned the trade from a stepfather, a building superintendent who he said had a second job as a narcotics entrepreneur: “I always knew about the drug business. I was raised around it.” As a mid-level drug dealer, Vega received heroin on consignment from big-time drug wholesalers and turned it over in $100 packages to people he called his “managers,” who in turn found “runners” to sell it on the street. His job was to “make sure everybody is working, and I will make sure everything is running correctly.” Vega received a “commission” of about 35 percent of all sales in his organization; he estimated that he made a total of at least $500,000 in the fi ve years before his arrest. Vega told how he used strict rules to run his organization. He did not sell between 1 and 3 P.M. because of “school hours.” He did not allow anyone to sell at his spot without his approval, or steal drugs from him, or pass him a counterfeit bill, or taint the quality of drugs sold under his name. If that happened, he said, “I’d be looking like a fool. The drug spot will go down.” When Manny, one of his workers, stole one package of heroin, Vega slashed his face with a box cutter. When the wound did not immediately bleed, “I didn’t see nothing cut, I didn’t see anything I did, so I did it a second time,” he said, until he saw blood. Angered by a counterfeit bill he received from a crack addict, “I punched him in the face, I kicked him, I threw him on the fl oor and kicked him again.” He disciplined one stranger who cheated him by hitting the man in the back of the head with a three-foot tree branch. Police informants were given special treatment. “In the drug world, in the drug law, we say that snitches get stitches,” he said. “In jail you cut their face. In the street, you beat them. You kill them.” Vega testifi ed that the defendants Quiñones and Rodriguez were heroin wholesalers and that he began buying drugs from them a few months before Santiago’s death. After he learned that Quiñones suspected Santiago of working undercover for the police, he helped him lure Santiago to the apartment of a girlfriend where the beatings and murder took place. For his cooperation, Vega faced a 15-year sentence rather than the death penalty.


Source: Julia Preston, “Witness Gives Details of Life as Drug Dealer,” New York Times, 12 July 2004.

Criminal Profile

Andrea (Kennedy) Yates was born on July 2, 1964, in Houston, Texas. She seemed to have a successful, normal life, being the class valedictorian, captain of the swim team, and a member of the National Honor Society. She graduated from the University of Texas School of Nursing in Houston and worked as a registered nurse at a University of Texas–run facility. She met and married Rusty Yates, and the couple began to raise a family. Though money was tight and living conditions cramped, the couple had fi ve children in the fi rst eight years of their marriage. The pressure began to take a toll on Andrea, and her mental health deteriorated. On June 17, 1999, after attempting suicide by taking an overdose of pills, she was placed in Houston’s Methodist Hospital psychiatric unit and diagnosed with a major depressive disorder. Even though she was medicated with powerful antipsychotics such as Haldol, Andrea continued to have psychotic episodes and was hospitalized for severe depression. Her losing battle with mental illness culminated in an act that shocked the nation. On June 20, 2001, she systematically drowned all fi ve of her children, including her eldest, seven-year-old Noah, who tried to escape after seeing his siblings dead, but was dragged back into the bathroom by his mother and drowned also. At trial, Yates’s defense team attempted to show that she suffered from delusional depression and postpartum mood swings that can sometimes evoke psychosis. Though she drowned her children one by one, even chasing down Noah to drag him to the tub, did she really have any awareness that what she was doing was wrong? Postpartum depression affects about 40 percent of all mothers and in its mildest forms leaves new mothers feeling “blue” for a few weeks; more serious cases can last more than a year and involve fatigue, withdrawal, and eating disorders. The most serious form, which Andrea Yates is believed to have suffered, is a psychosis that produces hallucinations, delusions, feelings of worthlessness, and inadequacy. Though very uncommon, postpartum psychosis increases the likelihood of both suicide and infanticide if left untreated. Despite her long history of mental illness and psychiatric testimony suggesting she lacked the capacity to understand her actions, the jury found her guilty of murder on March 12, 2002, ordering a life sentence instead of the death penalty sought by the prosecution. Andrea’s conviction was later overturned when a Texas appeals court ruled that an expert witness, Dr. Park Dietz, made a false statement during the trial. (He claimed she might have been infl uenced by an episode of Law and Order, though no such episode ever aired; it was actually L.A. Law that dealt with a case of a mother killing her children.) At the time of this writing Andrea remains in a psychiatric facility. The Andrea Yates case illustrates the association between mental illness and crime. Who could claim that a woman as disturbed as Andrea chose to kill her own children? While the jury may have reached that verdict, it was constrained by the legal defi nition of insanity that relies on the immediate events that took place and not Andrea’s long-term mental state that produced this horrible crime.


Sources: “Andrea Yates: Ill or Evil?” CourtTV Crime Library, CNN, “The Case of Andrea Yates,” (accessed July 10, 2008).