Social control agencies help constitute crime through labeling, not just respond to it

Evidence

PTC pursued this line of argument: the culture and institutions of social control were as much part of deviant or criminal phenomena as those who committed crime. They played an active role, not only in the control of antisocial behavior but in how that behavior was labeled, defined, and publicly understood. In this expanded context, however, “control culture” came to seem too vague a concept. These institutions were more appropriately identified as that condensed site of different kinds of power—the state. This move to the state, then, drove the analysis of mugging into the heart of society, the shifting tides of public opinion and the centers of social power and political authority. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1046

Categorization

• XREF: Hall’s move from ‘control culture’ to ‘the state as condensed site of power’ extends Gramsci’s state analysis toward conjunctural media studies.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that control institutions are part of the crime phenomenon itself, and the analytical substitution of the state for a vague ‘control culture,’ is a dense theoretical pivot worth returning to.