Dr Carlie Goldsmith
Aims of the workshop
 Introduce you to academic debates on social
inequality.
 Examine rates of income and wealth inequality in
Britain and comparatively.
 Examine evidence that shows how the size of the gaps
in income affects social life, and in particular the
prevalence of social problems.
 Explore why this issue is of interest to people who
write and research on issues of crime and justice.
What is inequality?
‘disparities between individuals, groups and nations in
access to resources, opportunities, assets and income’
(Ridge and Wright 2008 p4)
Income is only one form of inequality….there are many
others…….
National Equality Panel 2010
 96% of all employees earn less than 46,500 PA.
 Gap between bottom and top earners is very
large – e.g care worker £12,500 PA, CEO of
bank upwards of £1.2 million PA (exc. Bonuses
and other payments in kind e.g shares)
 Wealth inequality larger than income inequality:
richest 10% own 100x more wealth than poorest
10%
 Median wealth for routine occupations £72,000,
higher managerial £450,000
Inequality...
How much richer are the richest 20% in
each country than the poorest 20%?
Income gaps
How many times richer
are the richest fifth than
the poorest fifth?
9.7
8.0
Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level
UK
Po
r tu
ga
l
US
A
Sin
ga
po
re
7.2
6.7 6.8 6.8 7.0
It a
ly
Isr
Ne
ae
l
w
Ze
ala
nd
Au
st r
ali
a
6.1 6.2
d
No
rw
ay
Sw
ed
en
De
nm
ar k
Be
l gi
um
Au
st r
ia
Ge
rm
an
Ne
y
t he
r la
nd
s
Sp
ai n
Fra
nc
e
Ca
na
da
Sw
izt
erl
an
d
Ir e
lan
d
Gr
ee
ce
lan
Fin
Ja
pa
n
4.6 4.8
4.3
3.9 4.0
3.7
3.4
5.6 5.6 5.6 5.7
5.2 5.3
8.5
www.equalitytrust.org.uk
Who cares?
 New developments in inequality
 The implications of those for the future
 The impact of inequality on society and
quality of social relations
 Are we happy to let income and wealth gaps
grow bigger? What are the future consequences
of this?
 Concentration of power and influecne.
The Spirit Level
Professor Richard Wilkinson,
Epidemiologist
and Professor Kate Pickett,
Epidemiologist, University of
York
 Interest in public health
and the wider social
determinants of health in
rich societies.
 Extensive record of
academic publication on
the impact of inequality on
health and health
outcomes.
The Methodology
 Secondary analysis of existing quantitative data sets.
 Such as? United Nations Human Development Report,




World Bank data, World Health Organisation,
Organisation for Economic Co-Operation etc. etc.
Statistical analysis of the prevalence of factors that impact
on health.
Statistical analysis of the prevalence of a range of other
social problems/harms.
Combined with levels of income inequality within a
society. Measurement used: 20.20 ratio
50 States of the United States and 23 industrialised
nations
Index of:
• Life expectancy
• Math & Literacy
• Infant mortality
• Homicides
• Imprisonment
• Teenage births
• Trust
• Obesity
• Mental illness
– incl. drug &
alcohol
addiction
• Social mobility
Index of health and social problems
Health and social problems are worse
in more unequal countries
Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level
www.equalitytrust.org.uk
People in more unequal countries
trust each other less
Wilkinson & Pickett, The Spirit Level
www.equalitytrust.org.uk
Social Harms
Greater income inequality
Increased social distances between income
groups, less sense of common identity
More ‘them’ and ‘us’
More dominance and subordination, superiority and
inferiority, snobbery and downward discrimination,
hierarchical and authoritarian values.
Increased status competition, shift into more anti-social
values, emphasis on self interest and material success,
carelessness of others welfare, aggressive exploitation of society
for individual gain.
Others as rivals: poorer quality of social relations
1. Functionalist model: SI is essential part of society
as long as recruitment is based on merit and
rewards are fairly distributed. Meritocracy.
CONSERVATIVE CORPRATIST STATES e.g.
Germany, France, Italy, Spain.
2. Libertarian model: social change a product of
individual hard work, effort and motivation. Idleness
is bad for society. Rewards are not based on notions
of desert but freedom.
NEOLIBERAL STATES e.g. USA, UK, Australia, NZ,
South Africa.
3. Egalitarian model: SIs not a reflection of effort but
accumulated disadvantages. Equality should be goal
of society and political efforts directed at achieving
this.
SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC STATES e.g. Sweden,
Denmark, Norway, Finland.
See Cavadino and Dignan (2006)
Why might criminologists be interested in this?
The new punitiveness and the rise
in inequality
• Change in popular attitudes and
understandings of crime and the
criminal justice system.
• Individuals have become more punitive
and more likely to support ‘harsh’
criminal justice policies – particularly
in countries where inequality has risen
significantly.
• Crime a political issue.
• Politicians and policy makers more
likely to respond to popular opinion
about crime issues and seek to gain
electoral advantage by ‘being tough’.
• This is distinctly different from the
consensus on crime that existed
between 1945-1979 (Loader, 2001)
Exclusion and Stigmatisation
 Social distance and territorial
stigmatisation (Wacquant,
1999)
 Hyper mobility, immobility
and territoriality (Kintrea,
2009)
 Respect, disrespect and
hierarchy
 Social control of excluded
populations. Not excluded
from cultural norms of
contemporary society, but
opportunity to gain these.
Consumption
Purpose and Scope of the CJS
What is the purpose of punishment?
Deter, rehabilitate, restore, punish, incapacitate
(Ashworth, 2005)
What does this have to do with inequality?
US Incarceration Rates 1925-2006
(per 100,000)
Mass imprisonment
Garland (2001 p1) defines mass imprisonment:
‘...a rate of imprisonment...that is markedly above the
historical or comparative norm for societies of this
type.....[imprisonment] ceases to be the incarceration
of individual offenders and becomes the systematic
imprisonment of whole groups of the population’.
Prison used as a mechanism to control
economically redundant populations
 Incapacitation and not punishment or rehabilitation.
 Characteristics of the prison population: education,
employment, mental health issues.
 Prison regime: architecture of the penal estate,
availability of rehabilitation programmes, use of
segregation, engagement between the staff and
prisoners.
 Who owns punishment? Public bodies or private
companies?
Scope of the CJS
 Not just interested in detecting and punishing criminal





acts.
Pre-crime and anti-social behaviour management
Intolerance
New Labour Crime and Disorder Act 1998
Developed a range of enforcement tools and tactics to
manage….
Problem youth, problem parents, problem families,
‘broken society’?
But if it is broke, who broke it?
Treatment of offenders and former
offenders
 Othering
 Rehabilitation
 Reintegration
Or
 Exclusion
 Control
 Ongoing punishment
Risk of being a victim of violent crime 2008/09
Men aged 16-24
Visit nightclub more than once in last
month
Full-Time Student
Unemployed
Series1
Single People
Mixed Ethnicity
All Adults
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
% Victims once or more
Source: Home Office. 2009. Crimes in England and Wales 2008-2009. London:
HO
‘When people are made to feel
worthless then there are more
fights, more brawls, more scuffles,
more bottles smashed and more
knives brandished and more young
men die. The lives of young men
have polarised and this inequality
has curtailed opportunities;
hopelessness appears to have bred
fear, violence and murder’ (Dorling
et al,2005)
Follow Up
 Thomas Piketty slides
http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/fr/lectures and lecture on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zytqTSh3oGw
 Loic Wacquant website
http://loicwacquant.net/
 The new penology Feeley and Simon (1992) article
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1717&con
text=facpubs&seiredir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.co.uk%2Fscholar%3Fhl%
3Den%26q%3Dfeeley%2Band%2Bsimon%26btnG%3D%26as_sdt%3D1%2
52C5%26as_sdtp%3D#search=%22feeley%20simon%22
 Downes and Hansen – the welfare state and punishment: a
comparative perspective
http://cls.ioe.ac.uk/librarymedia%5Cdocuments%5CWelfare%20and%20Punishment%20in%20Co
mparative%20Context.pdf