‘Social harm makes good academic critique, but it does not offer realistic

answers to key social issues’. Discuss

There was narrowness of the definition of crime that focuses individual acts of harm, like
violence, theft. Social harm was to expand the notion of harm that could be caused by the
nation state and organisations. It also take the notion of harm free from the hold of the legal
concept of crime.(Reiman)

Alternative lens
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It develops a more accurate picture of the kinds of harm that affect people. It helps us to
understand the harms that occur within society, produce an objective and well-rounded
analyses of harm. It looks at a host of practices, using a wide range of definitions. ‘The range
and type of harm people experience are extremely varied.’ (Hillyard) People could avoid
minimise the amount they perceive which could affect the quality of their lives. Thus leading
to a life with less hindrance. When essential components are compromised or absent from
our lives.
With this approach, ‘victims’ have greater involvement in the overall process as definers of
harm, so the concepts of crime are not preordained by a government. They could protect
themselves and not blindly follow false legal decisions on them. For example, Goldstein’s
‘Problem-Oriented Policing’ seeks to understand the causes of offending behaviour in the
social cotext, rather than simply arresting and punishing offenders.
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There are too many ways to define, not a single way to define harm.

Interconnectiveness
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Normally we look at individual behaviour, but social harm looks at context
-ie poverty not fault of individual
-ie 600 murder per year- normally we think it causes suffering and devastation to the victim,
but social also put certain amount of focus that it affects their families and other people
connected
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Correlation does not mean causation. Not everybody destined to that outcome.
Re-inserting structural accounts of harm
Develop wider sense of moral culpability in harm, a wider focus of responsibilty. We usually
address harms from intent of individuals, wider kinds of harms are harder to track. Ie
individual resilience, behavioural explanations. Social harm allows us to see harm is
unavoidable in structures, where invisibility of harm (harm of indifference) is there when
our focus originally is not.
-ie Policy making: UK has substantially reduced expenditure in social welfare under the
influence of neo-liberalism, making people more prone to crisis (2008, 1997 financial crisis)
-ie Rich people die 10 years less than poor people, place with much poverty has higher
homicide rate- shifts responsibility to government that cannot eradicate poverty
-ie excess winter deaths
Preventable
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Find out which crimes are the most regular/ cause most damage to our lives.It looks at
things that ‘happened’ but not ‘intended’, and within our capacities to prevent these
events.
Successful example: Sweden. We can structure ourselves differently and produce different
outcomes.
But Finland: highest suicide rate.
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Yet behaviour of elite group are usually ‘legally untouched’
A Reformist Strategy
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Too utopia and does bit provide agenda for change.
Theories might not apply in practice.
A term that has little resonance with the public
Reiman:

It also forces one to see that we lack the institutions and the political will to protect people

leftist one—one that is, for example, quite certain that current global capitalism is largely and
needlessly brutal

Those who are impressed with global capitalism’s accomplishments in raising the standard of living
in third-world countries, especially in Asia; those who think that the data show that global capitalism
is not increasing inequality or poverty; those who recognize the harms due to capitalism but worry
that all the practicable alternatives to capitalism are even worse

Criminal law has a clear conception of responsibility

Individuals think about their actions, they respond to arguments and moral considerations, and their
actions are subject to their choices. None of this applies easily to groups or structures

Social harm only states it, but not solve it

people are normally thought morally responsible only for the harms they cause and not for the
harms they fail to prevent

Since there is always more one can do to prevent harms, little else would be morally permissible if
we were held morally responsible for all the harms we don’t prevent

Ie Firm polluting and workers responsible too?

Firm work what artisan did and make them unemplyed

Hughes
Alternative lens: ‘from the cradle to the grave’

Quote from Pemberton