Constitutive Criminology

Crime, Criminals, and Victims

Constitutive criminology defines crime as the harm resulting from humans investing energy in harmproducing relations of power. Crimes are nothing less than disrespect for people; the effect is to deny or prevent them from positively transforming their world and themselves. If some prevent this positive transformation, or limit or undermine it, people become less than human; they are harmed. Thus, crime is “the power to deny others their ability to make a difference” (Henry and Milovanovic 1996: 116).

Constitutive theory divides crimes that deny humans' ability to make a positive (that is, non-harm producing) difference into two types: crimes of reduction and crimes of repression. Harms of reduction occur when offended parties experience a loss of their capacity to be human. For example, they could have property stolen from them, suffer physical injury or psychological abuse, or have their dignity stripped from them. Harms of repression occur when people experience a limit, or restriction, preventing them from accomplishing (nonharmful) goals or desires. For example, they might prevent a person from achieving a career goal because of sexism, racism, or a promotional “glass ceiling.”

Considered along a continuum of deprivation, scholars may base harms of reduction or repression on one or more constructed value differences. In Western industrial societies, harms cluster around the following values: economic (class, property); gender (sexism); race and ethnicity (racism, hate); political (power, corruption); morality; human rights; social position [Page 274](status or prestige, inequality); psychological state (security, well-being); self-realization or actualization; biological integrity; and so on. Whatever the particular value construction, actions are harms either because they reduce victims from a value position they currently occupy or because they repress or prevent them from occupying a value position that they desire (the maintenance or achievement of which does not deny or deprive another). Consequently, is it ever legitimate to reduce or repress another, even in attempting to prevent or control the other's commission of harm? Moreover, how can one justify the reduction of standing of those who have achieved their current positions using power to exploit difference? In short, how does constitutive theory limit harm without itself exercising the power that causes harm?

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