Provide a short Description of ‘Social Harm’ and Briefly Indicate why it Challenges: Harmful societies Assignment, UOB, Singapore

Provide a short description of ‘social harm’ and briefly indicate why it challenges traditional criminological approaches.

First, describe what is social harm and then discuss in terms of the following: – Ontologically (i.e. transcend social construction, focus on human needs and why they are sometimes not met) – Sociologically (i.e. it’s not individuals we should focus on but, as above, the social structures and processes) – government institutions, corporations, hierarchies… – Politically (i.e. we can apportion blame to different interests and we can start to think more holistically about how to end harm)

Second, briefly indicate the challenges to traditional criminological approaches. The following are some examples: – ‘Crime’ has no ontological reality (i.e. crime does not equal harm, there is no way to define crime beyond its own definition) – ‘Crime’ excludes many serious harms – Criminal justice organizations work around concepts of men’s rea (guilty mind) – i.e, focus on individuals not social processes – Criminal justice institutions only focus on certain crimes and harms – Essentially, ‘crime’ maintains existing power relations. i.e. that which institutionally is defined/focused on is generally crimes of the poor Make use of the files attached.

Critical Perspectives on Crime and Social Harm: Toward a Criminology of Human Rights

While most mainstream criminologists have largely overlooked issues pertaining to human rights and social harms, those of a more critical perspective has taken both areas of concern as primary arenas for academic inquiry (e.g. Galliher 1989). Indeed, the individual and social harms produced by the violation of basic human rights have been a particular area of emphasis for those concerned with state, white-collar, and organizational criminality.

Addressing social harm: better regulation versus social Transformation

Crime or social harm? A dialectical perspective

Ever since Edwin Sutherland’s groundbreaking research into the crimes of the powerful, criminologists interested in explaining the harmful conduct of states and corporations have suffered a crisis of disciplinary identity. The principle focus of this crisis has been on the category of crime and whether it constitutes an adequate foundation for this research program; or on the other hand, have scholars been forced to do a certain amount of abstractive violence to the category of crime in order to artificially fit such research within the boundaries of criminology.

Social harm future(s): exploring the potential of the social harm approach

The notion of social harm has sporadically interested critical criminologists as an alternative to the concept of crime. In particular, it has been viewed as a means to widen the rather narrow approach to harm that criminology offers. More recently, the publication of Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously has renewed interest in the notion of social harm. The book asserted a number of very valid reasons for a social harm approach that provoked a number of interesting critical responses.