NCJ Number
95674
Journal
Deviant Behavior Volume: 5 Issue: 1-4 Dated: (1984) Pages: 217-238
Date Published
1984
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the development of the LEAA Career Criminal Program and analyzes the ideological consequences on the construction of the legal category 'career criminal.'
Abstract
It is argued that the creation of this program illustrates how the criminal justice process contributes to the existence of ideological hegemony and societal reproduction. No one at LEAA, however, deliberately set out to create a program which would serve these ideological functions. The evidence shows that career advancement, professional goals, fortuitous circumstances, and political interests were the factors that lay behind the development of this particular program. Yet the program did have ideological consequences. There was a complex chain of subtle and often unreflected upon inducements, rewards, and incentives which made it likely that the program would be shaped in accordance with the interests of the dominant class. (Publisher abstract)