NCJ Number
82634
Journal
Monatsschrift fuer Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform Volume: 63 Issue: 6 Dated: (December 1980) Pages: 358-365
Date Published
1980
Length
9 pages
Annotation
Criminology has concentrated on the analysis of conditions and traits characteristic of individual crime. Its methodologies should also be directed to the study of individuals who participate in collective crime.
Abstract
The phenomena attendant to collective crime are a general suspension of traditional moral and cultural values (i.e., the bases of individual conscience) and the predominance of situational, group-dynamic pressures toward conformity, which lead individuals to acts they would never perform on their own. An individual's liability for collective damage is impossible to measure, as is the individual share of culpability under dynamic power pressures of coercion and intimidation. For these reasons, efforts to explain collective criminality have been macrosocial, examining the rise of political structures and social movements, without analyses of the individual dimension. Criminology can complement the macropicture by studying the behavior patterns, activity spheres, motivations, and value systems of individuals who partake in collective crimes. That a total reversal of traditional norms is possible (e.g., killing in war), indicates that socialization emphasizes group conformity above the value content of the imparted norms. Suppression and rationalization mechanisms relieve individual guilt for mass murder and genocide under totalitarian regimes and war conditions. If these psychological mechanisms operate before genocide or war is perpetrated, they can be viewed as contributing factors in the psychology of collective crime. The concept of 'distant crimes' hypothesizes social distance from the victims as a signifcant factor in the ability to neutralize guilt for war deaths and mass murders. Criminological research of the personality characteristics that determine the level of individual complicity in collective crime can enhance the macrostudies of collective criminality and illuminate the nature of terrorist activity. A bibliography and 30 footnotes are given.