Thread by @radicaltheory

amos wilson, from “black on black violence; the psychodynamics of black self-annihilation in service of white domination,” on crime, criminals criminality:

“the unexamined assumption that criminality & criminal activity are initiated and sustained by a distinct outlaw class of criminal personalities who are at war against society of innocent, decent, normal persons, while beguilingly simple and direct is nevertheless disingenuous.”

“purported criminal types of classes, degrees or levels of criminal activities, as well as the social strata or groups and individuals who perpetuate, aid and abet criminal activities, functionally vary across time and cultures.”

“this indicates that criminals & criminality, however they may be measured or described, are sociocultural products. they carry & express the sociogenetic inheritance of their societal progenitor. crime and society are blood relatives. they are intimately & inextricably related.”

“criminal personalities, like all personalities, are to a significant degree socially created and defined. their behavioral characters can only be manifested within a social context. they therefore cannot stand outside social time, place, and circumstance.”

“when a society collectively looks into the faces of its criminals it looks in a mirror & sees a reflection of its own likeness[...]”

“as the nature of societies change so does the nature of their epiphenomenal criminality and the behavioral personalities of their criminal constituents. neither criminality nor criminal personalities can exist in the absence of a social milieu.”

“criminality may heuristically be perceived as a sociological symptom of a society, not unlike an obsessive-compulsion may be considered a psychological symptom of an individual.”

“[...]criminality as a societal symptom represents a compromise between forces and needs in opposition; forces repressive and repressed, defensive and offensive, oppressive and oppressive, both seeking overt expression and satisfaction.”

“criminality, as a symptom, is connotative of societal imbalances; of internal sociological incompatibilities; of mutually exclusive inflations and deflations; of social needs being denied and distorted.”

“symptomatic criminality while reflective of the societal whole, is incarnated & actualized in the minds and bodies of its individual & group constituents. it is emblematic of the societal misallocation of power, energy, & resources; of societal hypocrisy; of societal refusal...”