Moral Indignation, Class Inequality and Justice: An Exploration and Revision of Ranulf

• NCJ Number: 196635
• Journal: Theoretical Criminology Volume: 6 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2002 Pages: 279-297
• Author(s): J. M. Barbalet
• Date Published: August 2002
• Length: 19 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This article describes Svend Ranulf’s account of moral indignation with respect to criminal behavior and the role of human emotion in the operations of law.

Abstract

Conventional accounts of the relationship between crime, human emotions, and law hold that whereas crime might express emotion, emotion is extinguished in the operations of law. The characterization of criminal law is that it is impersonal. Svend Ranulf’s account of the origins and nature of the disinterested tendency to inflict punishment places it in a sociological tradition that treats emotion as the linkage between social structure and social action. This conceptualization of criminal law is contrary to the prevailing view that while human emotions may be central to the constitution of crime they are absent from criminal law. According to Ranulf, criminal law arises in the social manifestation of moral indignation. His assertion that the social carriers of moral indignation are exclusively middle-class is not accepted here. Ranulf’s argument concerning the social basis of the disinterested tendency was formed through historical case studies and comparative analyses. The disagreement concerning the social constitution of the bearers of moral indignation in the formation of the disinterested tendency leads to a reformulation of his account. Ranulf’s approach suggests that two apparently unconnected facts might be considered in the current direction of criminal law. The occupational structure in all western societies has shifted from production work to one in which the largest number of jobs is non-manual. The size of the prison population has grown more or less in parallel with the growing number of non-manual workers. Ranulf highlights changes in emotional disposition experienced by a population undergoing transformation in occupational order. There is in all societies a growing acceptance of inequality that corresponds with changes in the occupational structure. The transformation in social structure, justice regimes, and emotional dispositions raises issues for social scientific investigation and provokes questions concerning the future prospects of political democracy. 46 references