There is an opinion that the criminal subculture takes place only in correctional institutions (colonies and prisons), reception centers for minors and youth, pre-trial detention centers, as well as in special educational institutions for juvenile offenders close to them (special schools and special vocational schools) . Of course, this is where the criminal subculture is especially pronounced. However, it should be taken into account that it also exists outside these institutions, i.e. at large - in other institutions (orphanages, boarding schools, hostels for adults in enterprises, in army units and even in ordinary secondary schools and vocational schools).
Let's take a closer look at a minor student, for example, in a secondary school or vocational school. He is in several areas of relationships at the same time. The first sphere is formal (official), related to the student’s compliance with the law on universal education. He is obliged to attend school or vocational school and acquire knowledge. These responsibilities are fixed in the Regulations on the specified educational institutions. While working in production, he must observe labor, production and technological discipline. For violation of established rules and norms of official relations, a variety of sanctions (censure, punishment, etc.) can be applied to the student. Another sphere of relations is informal (informal). It is associated with the minor’s position among peers and in the family, with informal relationships with adults. Here other measures of influence on the individual are used. Naturally, each of these spheres of relations has its own scale of values, prestige of the individual and assessment of his behavior.
Often in a vocational school or school a student is characterized positively, but among his peers he has a low sociometric status and does not enjoy authority. And the one whom teachers consider difficult to educate is an idol for minors and youth. This means that the scales for measuring the prestige of a person and assessing his behavior in each of these areas not only do not coincide, but also contradict one another. Consequently, both spheres of relationships in which a minor and a young person find themselves have completely different influences on the formation of his personality and behavior.
Formal (official) structure is designed to help a teenager or young man obtain a secondary education, choose a profession and master it, and prepare for working life. It represents only one layer of the life activity of minors and youth. In this area of life (attitudes towards learning, vocational training, labor and social work, participation in student self-government bodies, etc.) teachers and adults divide minors and young people into activists and non-activists, academically successful and unsuccessful, disciplined and undisciplined, etc. Essentially, assessments of the behavior and personality traits of a teenager and young man are given from the standpoint of controllability, the degree of obedience, so to speak, its “convenience” for teachers.
Another thing - unofficial (informal) structure. NOMs (informal youth associations) never set anything “from above.” They are completely autonomous and do not fit into higher order structures. NOMs are not dependent on the world of their elders; outwardly it would seem that they do not have clear organizational parameters. Such associations arise due to a lack of communication and the low level of work of formal associations.
Scientists divide NOMs into groups. The reasons for this classification are different. Thus, M. Topalov (Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences) divides NOMs into: amateur associations that have a program and conduct useful work; organizationally established communities (there is a structure, membership fees, elected leadership); actually informal (addressed primarily to the leisure sector).
V. Pankratov (Research Institute of the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation) divides NOMS into leisure, politicized and asocial (or antisocial). V. Lisovsky (Leningrad State University) distinguishes, for example, prosocial, asocial and antisocial NOMs. For further discussion, it is enough to divide informal youth associations into two subsystems: prosocial and asocial. Representatives of these subsystems can act in the sphere of leisure (“leisure consumer”), in the spheres of politics, ecology, technology, etc.
Regardless of the sphere of application of forces, representatives of the first subsystem - these are socially positive groups and public formations of minors and youth. Of course, such formations can reject and subvert established norms, values, views, and attitudes. It `s naturally. There is no denial of universal human values here. This is the normal age-related opposition of the younger generation to adults. It is this that ensures progress in the development of society.
At all times, young people were “not the same”, i.e. significantly different from previous generations. In place of established stereotypes, minors and young people always bring their own values, norms, attitudes, and rules of behavior. All this constitutes the essence of a normal teenage (youth) subculture, which sometimes shocks people with its extravagance, expressed in fashion for clothes, shoes, music, sports, leisure time and activities.
Asocial (or antisocial) type of associations characterized by blur moral standards, criminal values and attitudes. Such associations may include punks, hippies, metalheads, hooligan "gopniks", drug addicts, pro-fascist communities, etc.
Thus, in terms of content, degree of formation, structure and nature of activity, the youth subculture is far from homogeneous. It’s enough to compare the norms and attitudes of metalheads, rockers, punks, representatives of the “system”, Italians, Hare Krishnas, bodybuilders, don’t care (everyone doesn’t care), and on the other hand, neo-Nazis and “gopniks”. We are no longer talking about Wu-shu fans, scouts, true Leninists, Ampilovites, etc. All of them differ significantly from each other in their norms (and those who have programs - and programs), values, attributes, sign-identification system and jargon. The difference here is very significant - from atheism to belief in God (messiah, guru), from passion for sports (music) to passion for politics, from observance of moral and legal norms to their trampling. Each of these groups represents a special layer in the youth subculture, sometimes infinitely moving away from universal human values, sometimes approaching them.
But in all cases, if this or that youth association develops into a criminal (asocial or antisocial) or immediately arises as such, then the norms, values and attitudes of the “normal” youth subculture in it radically change. Criminal groups arise on the basis of informal associations in different ways. Sometimes non-criminal groups (rockers, metalheads, fans, etc.) develop into criminal ones. This largely depends on the composition of the groups and the situation there. It happens that a spontaneously formed group develops into a criminal one under pressure from the leader. It happens that the criminal leader himself looks for associates to commit a crime and forms such a group. Situations also arise when a stable and criminal group turns into a kind of branch of a criminal gang (gang, mafia) from among adults associated with corrupt leaders in law enforcement, government, and in the recent past, party bodies.
In such groups, norms, values, and attributes are purposefully implanted that justify the criminal nature of the activity and ensure unity in achieving criminal goals. Such norms, values, attitudes, attributes, identification-sign system and jargon represent the content of a special subculture. In the scientific literature, it has been called a criminal (asocial) subculture, “another life,” “actual or hidden life.” However, in Lately The most common terms were “asocial (criminal) subculture”, and “other life”, “informal life”.
The term “other life” comes from the Gulag era. It was used by the camp administration to characterize the norms, values and system of relationships among the convicts.
Note that just as the teenage subculture is heterogeneous, the criminal subculture is also multifaceted, representing, as it were, layered cake. Each “layer” in such a “pie” represents a subculture of groups engaged in specific criminal activities, reflecting the degree of their organization and professionalism. From these positions, within the framework of the criminal subculture as a whole, we can talk about the prison subculture, thieves, the subculture of currency traders and black marketeers, prostitutes and drug addicts, racketeers, sexual rapists, pimps, etc.
The concentration of a large number of juvenile offenders contributes to the emergence and functioning of a criminal subculture in closed special educational and correctional institutions (special schools, special vocational schools, technical training centers), reception centers, and pre-trial detention centers. Here it is more systematic and stable than in freedom.
Thus, in the official system of relations, it is impossible to identify the adolescent and youth subculture and the criminal subculture, although, as we will see later, its individual elements, determined by age characteristics, may be outwardly similar.
Criminal subculture is a way of life of minors and youth united in criminal groups. They operate under rules of conduct, traditions and values that are alien to society and universal human values and requirements. Let us name the most important characteristics of the criminal subculture.
The criminal subculture does not like publicity. The life activities of persons belonging to asocial and criminal groups are largely hidden from the eyes of teachers and adults. The norms, values and demands of this subculture are demonstrated only if there is no opposition to them.
It is no coincidence that the places where one of the types of asocial subculture operates are, as we have already noted, school toilets, entrances of houses (this type of subculture is often called “toilet-school”), basements, attics, remote parks, public gardens, and “party” places. And in special educational institutions and correctional institutions, these are places that have little control over the administration and the regime service.
A get-together, as a rule, involves communicating with friends, exchanging information, drinking together, “queuing love,” and antisocial behavior.
From January to August 1990, Leningrad sociologists surveyed 1,100 participants in youth “parties” in Moscow, Leningrad, Sochi, Kustanay, Tyumen and Nizhny Tagil. 80% of respondents were minors. Of these, 39% are schoolchildren, 20% are vocational school students, 6% study at a technical school, 3% at a university, 16% work. It turned out that 58% of respondents spend their free time at the “party” every day.
Every third young man who came to the “party” does not have a father or does not live with his family, and every tenth does not have a mother. Every third person is or has been registered with the juvenile affairs inspectorate. The personal file of every fifth person was examined by the commission on juvenile affairs. Only 40% of respondents claimed that they had not committed any offenses.
The study showed that 60% of party participants are psychologically ready to drink alcohol, 8% are ready to use drugs, 5% are ready to use toxic substances. Only 36% of respondents have independent income.
According to the results of our survey, the most significant values for party-goers - minors and young people - are money, pornography and sex, a "car" (car), visiting restaurants, and vacationing at prestigious resorts. Of all types of activities, they are most attracted to commerce, security work for bankers, and racketeering. Values such as obtaining an education, a profession, creating a strong family, etc. have lost their attractiveness.
From all that has been said, it is not difficult to draw a conclusion about the role of “parties” in the spread of the criminal subculture, introducing teenagers and young people to the criminal world.
In addition, the “party” subculture is a storehouse of criminal experience, a kind of regulator of criminal activity of minors and youth, sanctioning one type of behavior and suppressing another. The peculiarity of the criminal subculture from this point of view is that the norms and values of the criminal environment are constantly updated and improved. Traditional ones are replaced by new ones or transformed in accordance with the requirements of today.
Some researchers, speaking about the origins and reasons for the emergence of the domestic mafia, which adopted much from the arsenal of criminals of the 30s–50s, including their laws and paraphernalia, come to the conclusion that there is purely external borrowing and similarity here.
Professional criminals of the past had, one might say, stricter "criminal morality", rather than the “morality” of today’s criminal communities. In the past, the title of “thief in law” could not be bought or obtained through “connection”; it had to be earned. The hero of “Confessions of a Thief in Law” nicknamed “Dashing”, finding himself at a reception in the office of a modern “thief in law”, reasons like this: “It turns out that’s what’s going on. A “thief in law” is also the head of a cooperative, a businessman operating legally. And the other side of the coin is hidden from prying eyes. It’s a good idea, but for old-school pickpockets it’s unusual and simply unacceptable. To be “in law” meant for us to engage only in thieves’ craft, without working anywhere. I’m not talking about the fact that “bosses”... didn’t exist either. “Thieves in law” were equal, no one had the right to put pressure on them with their experience or authority, at meetings everything was decided by voting...
This is how our unwritten laws that have held for decades are losing ground one position after another. And before, for violating at least one of them, the “tramps” punished their thief brother, sometimes deprived him of his life...”
The transformation of the criminal subculture was influenced by a number of factors. First of all, during the years of the personality cult, a significant part of progressive people (old intellectuals, revolutionaries, office workers, military personnel, cultural and artistic workers, scientists) ended up in prisons and colonies. With their humanistic ideals, selflessness, mercy, and loyalty to their word, they had a positive influence on the world of thieves and ennobled it. Fearing such influence, representatives of law enforcement agencies, and primarily of internal affairs, began to pit criminals against “political” ones, trying to “extort” a confession from them, incriminate themselves, etc. Over time, this led to a decline in morale in professional and spontaneous groups of criminals.
It should also be taken into account that many thieves' laws existed even before the revolution. They moved into Soviet society from Tsarist Russia and for many years regulated the life of criminal communities, dividing spheres of influence between them.
Before the revolution, the morality of professional criminals was also supported by the tsarist police, because it was beneficial for them. Dealing with criminals who adhered to certain principles was easier than dealing with so-called spontaneous criminals.
The police kept the professionals on record and knew from which of them what to expect. The police knew that thieves “gopniks”, “window makers”, swindlers, for example, would not agree to “wet business” not only for fear of too severe punishment, but also because of “ideological considerations”. Each professional had his own criminal signature (“modus operandi”), by which the police easily “calculated” him.
The general criminalization of Soviet society, passed through the Gulag, led to blurring the lines between professional and non-professional crime, and consequently, to the blurring of the boundaries of a clearly defined “thieves” (prison) subculture.
A sharp decline in morals in our society during the period of stagnation (dehumanization interpersonal relationships, cruelty in dealing with one’s own and others, the loss of universal human qualities - a sense of honor, self-dignity, loyalty to one’s word, mercy, compassion) led to a decline in morals in the criminal world. Thieves' "laws" have lost their sacred and inviolable character. A person declared himself a “thief in law” if it was beneficial for him, and if it was unprofitable, he said that he was “out of the law.”
The nomenklatura with its principle of permissiveness began to rule society at all levels. The one with the most rights was right. This has led to the emergence of criminals who are psychologically ready to commit any crime, since they have no internal inhibitors, and there are no principles of criminal professional morality for them.
Group norms, values, conventions and rules strictly obligatory for all supporters of the “other life”. In this regard, the criminal subculture is autocratic and totalitarian in nature. Apostates are punished mercilessly. This is understandable, since the modern criminal subculture has absorbed the vices of the administrative-command, totalitarian system in society and arose on its soil. She does not recognize the freedom of expression of the individual, her rights, believing that only those who are at the top of the hierarchical ladder have rights, and the rest have only responsibilities.
The criminal subculture attracts teenagers because in criminal groups there are no prohibitions on any information, including intimate ones, which is especially noticeable in the conditions of the so-called “sexual revolution”. Here, teenagers have the opportunity to receive information from peers and adults that is prohibited under normal conditions.
The assimilation of its norms and values occurs relatively quickly, since adolescents are captivated by its attributes, which have an emotional overtones, a touch of false romance, mystery, unusualness, etc.
Prominent scientists, writers, and practitioners have studied the criminal subculture, its structure, elements, origins, mechanisms of functioning, influence on the individual, methods of study and methods of prevention. However, today we do not have a complete picture of it. A description of the structural elements of this subculture can be found in M. Goering, M. N. Gernet, A. S. Makarenko, B. Valigur, P. I. Karpov, V. I. Monakhov, A. Podguretsky, M. Losh, E. Andersen, G. Medynsky, J. Korczak, N. Struchkov, V. Chelidze and others.
A deep understanding of the criminal subculture was especially facilitated by the works of fiction by A. Solzhenitsyn, A. Shvedov, V. Shalamov, L. Gabyshev, A. Levi, N. Dumbadze, A. Bezuglova, A. Drippe, and other authors revealing the life of the “GULAG archipelago” ".
The relevance of the problem under consideration in modern conditions is explained not only by the lack of an acceptable theoretical concept on it, but also by the need to combat its most negative manifestations, which degrade human dignity and corrupt young people, and especially minors.
The criminal subculture is the main mechanism of criminalization of the youth environment. Its social harmfulness lies in the fact that it serves as a mechanism for uniting criminal groups, complicates, distorts or blocks the process of socialization of the individual, and also stimulates the criminal behavior of adolescents and young men.
It is very difficult to understand the mechanism of functioning of the criminal subculture, to understand the system of conventions and taboos of a particular criminal group, since teachers and adults, as well as researchers, have to deal with the double opposition of minors in relation to adults: age-related (as discussed above) and asocial. Often adults and teachers fight against age opposition, mistaking it for criminality. It also happens that they do not attach importance to asocial opposition and its harmful influence on minors. How much effort and energy was spent fighting metalheads and rockers. But life has proven that if you approach them with an open mind, directing their activities to benefit society, then the question of the asociality of these groups will be removed.
It is known that in a number of countries, for example in England, authorities use rockers to deliver urgent mail, giving them advantages in travel and allowing high speeds within the city.
In a number of regions of our country, special tracks are allocated for rockers. They are learning material part motor vehicles, traffic rules, rockers are involved in test work. This gives positive results.
Even so-called law-abiding teenagers do not allow outsiders, and above all adults, to see their group secrets, due to the laws of the teenage subculture. What can we say about criminal groups trying to hide the laws and rules of their life from outsiders? That is why the study of criminogenic groups and their subcultures using direct socio-psychological research methods (sociometry, surveys, referentometry, interviews, etc.) does not provide an objective picture. Distortions can be quite significant.
There are a few things to note here. It is impossible to conduct research on a criminal group while it is at large. Therefore, it is always carried out retrospectively, i.e. when the group has already been arrested, is in a pre-trial detention center or a reception center. And this leads not to an objective assessment of the group, but to a reassessment of their position by each of its members. This is understandable. While under arrest, group members do not try to tell the investigator the whole truth about the group.
Thinking about getting a shorter sentence, they blame each other (which means the group broke up during the investigation) or continue to play the game of inflexibility and honesty, shielding the leader (especially if he is an adult), taking responsibility on themselves (group consolidation continues and during the investigation).
Sometimes, in conditions of isolation, pressure from the investigation, and public condemnation, group members tend to engage in a kind of game with the researcher, trying to guess his opinion, give the answer he is waiting for in order to show his best side, or simply incriminate himself. “There is no denying the obvious distortion of the answers of the interviewed offenders who were illegally placed by the investigator or the administration of the institution in the “press hut” (a cell where the testimony and answers these people need are extracted by the prisoners there - they “press” the offender). This means that the researcher’s surveys activate the mechanisms psychological defense and self-justification among group members.
Cases of manifestation of a criminal subculture and its attributes are not isolated. We talked about the fact that it is present in institutions and educational institutions of various types. Here we note the tendency of this subculture towards ordering and systematization (formation of a certain system on a national scale).
Let's start with the fact that between students of the VTK, students of special schools, special vocational schools, secondary schools, secondary vocational schools, and soldiers in the army, there are communication channels (“routes”) along which “spiritual values” are exchanged. The majority of minors in colonies and special institutions correspond with their peers who are at large. This means that spiritual processes among minors and young people cannot be limited by the walls of these institutions where they are located. It should also be taken into account that there is a “movement of persons” (migration), and not just letters in the teenage population. Juvenile offenders are placed in closed institutions for delinquency and crime, bringing there the norms and traditions of the teenage communities of their educational institutions. In turn, those released from educational labor and correctional labor colonies, who returned from special schools and special vocational schools, bring to vocational schools, secondary schools and enterprise groups the norms, traditions and values that they learned there.
The same exchange occurs between “civilian” youth and those serving in the army and navy. Conscripts bring the “Bugrism” model to the army and navy. Those transferred to the reserve bring the ideology and psychology of army “hazing” to their work collectives. In such cases, trying to determine what is primary and what is secondary in these processes is inappropriate. After all, the criminal subculture has developed into a system, which means it is hardly possible to find its root cause.
In conditions of mutual penetration, the criminal subculture, having an aggressive nature, become a link between primary and recurrent crime, the socio-psychological mechanism of its escalation. A juvenile offender, having returned from a military school, a special school or a special vocational school, is a ready leader who seeks to create a criminal group. Flaunting his knowledge of the criminal subculture, its norms, rules and requirements, he not only asserts himself, but also forces the teenagers around him to accept them and follow them. Some of the “grandfathers” discharged from the army into the reserve do the same, asserting themselves among the youth as criminal leaders.
It should be taken into account that a significant proportion of minors (every second) serving a sentence in a military-technical complex, who are not undergoing re-education in special schools, special vocational schools, registered with the IDN, have one of their adult relatives who may be serving or has already served a criminal sentence, those. family ties , juveniles and youth are closely associated with the adult criminal world. It is no coincidence that they say that during the Soviet era the majority of the country’s population spent time in colonies and prisons. This creates conditions for the penetration of a criminal subculture into almost every Russian family and its cultivation there.
The spread and consolidation of the criminal subculture is facilitated by a massive increase in the number of detective literature, detective films and videos, in which individual elements of criminal activity, their role and functions in the lives of members of criminal communities are colorfully relished.
Another important reason for the aggression of the criminal subculture was the powerful migration processes associated with the “great migration” of young people to the “construction sites of communism.” After all, those who were amnestied, conditionally released, and also those on probation (in jargon they are called “chemists”) were sent there. Merging into one stream, the youth and thieves (prison) subcultures gave rise to a special socio-psychological climate in the places of “communism construction sites”, in which minors born in those places or who ended up there with their parents, getting rid of age-related loneliness, in search of physical and psychological protection quickly adopted the mores of the criminal world.
Empirical signs of a criminal subculture. Social workers, educational teachers, teachers of special educational and correctional institutions (high-technical complexes, special schools, special vocational schools, pre-trial detention centers, reception centers), employees of the IDN and KDN, etc. should know whether there are socially negative phenomena among the students of their institutions, on their territory and how far the stratification of the informal sphere of relations has gone. To do this, you need to know the external signs of a criminal subculture. Many see these signs in people’s passion for criminal (thieves’) jargon, nicknames, desire for tattoos, etc. All this is true, but this is not the only thing. The proportion of certain signs of a criminal subculture varies. In addition, when determining the cause of these phenomena, they should be subjected to systemic socio-psychological analysis, identify the roots, see the carriers and distributors of these phenomena in the team. It is necessary to try to understand the origin and mechanisms of their functioning of this subculture on adolescents and young people.
The degree to which a criminal subculture is formed and formalized in an educational institution may vary. These may be unrelated elements that do not outwardly have a significant impact on the educational process. Sometimes this subculture receives a certain form - antagonism arises between groups of students, and its norms and values begin to play a certain role in the behavior of minors and youth.
Often, a criminal subculture dominates an institution and completely paralyzes the educational process, the activities of the administration and teaching staff.
A survey of employees of educational labor colonies and special vocational schools, acting as experts, showed that the manifestations of the criminal subculture in these institutions are similar and are determined by the criteria specified in
These conclusions were tested on engineering and pedagogical workers of vocational schools and employees of the IDN and compared with the results of a survey of “carriers” of the criminal subculture (persons who returned from the military-technical complex, special schools, special vocational schools). Based on the criteria and signs of “hazing” in the army, a survey was conducted of company and battalion level commanders and political workers, as well as soldiers who retired to the reserve.
In general, the experts have quite fully identified empirical indicators that determine the presence of a criminal subculture in these institutions, the degree of its development and organization.
Based on the study, we can conclude that the manifestations of the criminal subculture are similar in all closed special educational and correctional institutions for minors.
Similar signs of a criminal subculture are noted in military units affected by this disease: the division of soldiers into warring factions based on nationality, a rigid group hierarchy, desertion due to beatings and bullying from the “grandfathers”, unlimited privileges for the latter, cases of sodomy against the “rebellious”, tattooing, group violations of military discipline, etc.
Table 1.
SIGNS INDICATING THE PRESENCE OF A CRIMINAL SUBCULTURE (“OTHER LIFE”) AMONG MINORS IN AN INSTITUTION
In disciplinary battalions (a kind of colonies for soldiers who have committed military crimes) and construction units, sometimes directly considered as “zones,” a criminal subculture dominates.
This similarity, as sad as this conclusion is, is also noticeable in non-closed institutions and institutions (pioneer camps, labor and recreation camps, orphanages, boarding schools, vocational schools, as well as hostels for adults). In order to comprehensively and completely analyze the life of minors and adults in these institutions, you must be able to use considered criteria.
All of these criteria must be used in system, remembering that a number of outwardly similar features are inherent in the teenage subculture in general. After all, among law-abiding teenagers and young people, for example, nicknames are widespread. They willingly use youth slang and often wear tattoos. Attempts to evade “dirty” work, refuse to participate in the activities of the activists, facts of group departures from lessons, damage to public property are also found simply in the pedagogically neglected team of a child care institution.
One should take into account the desire of many teenagers, especially now, to participate in the work of depoliticized informal organizations (various clubs, associations, scout troops). They also create their own attributes, norms and values, which are superficially similar to elements of the criminal subculture.
In order not to confuse age-related phenomena with manifestations of a criminal subculture, it is necessary deeply analyze each criterion separately. Having discovered, for example, an intra-group hierarchy, we need to find out what is behind it, what is the relationship between the leader and lower-ranking teenagers and young people, what is the attitude towards outsiders.
Janusz Korczak also wrote: “I was convinced that there is a whole hierarchy among children, where the eldest has the right to push around a child two years younger than him (or at least not to take him into account), and that arbitrariness definitely varies depending on the age of the pupils.”
In a criminal subculture, the intragroup hierarchy is more authoritarian than the age hierarchy, and intragroup relations are especially cruel and inhumane.
The facts of tattooing should be considered similarly. It is necessary to find out: who applied them and when, whether it was done of their own free will or under duress, how the tattooing ritual itself was arranged, what meaning teenagers see in the applied drawing or sign. Only in this case can it be established whether the tattoo was applied, as they say, “out of stupidity” or because the minor adheres to the norms and requirements of the criminal subculture.
Each fact of negative behavior that is accepted as a manifestation of a criminal subculture must be checked many times by observing, conducting conversations, deciphering wall paintings in toilets and other rooms, on desks and tables, inscriptions in books, especially fiction, etc. In general, it should be remembered that multiple verification of results is an axiom of social-psychological research.
Let's give a typical example. In one of the vocational schools, information about intra-school stratification was found on the walls of toilets and corridors, i.e. about which of the guys is the “old man”, which is the “kid”, which is the “bull”, and which is the “younger”. The director was informed that a criminal subculture was spreading among students. However, the necessary measures were not taken. Soon, facts of extortion among students were revealed (the “bulls” were robbed, put on the “counter”, and money was extorted). The extortionist D. was tried, but the antisocial group remained. Its members killed the “debtor” when they came to his home demanding payment. But if measures had been taken with the first signals (appearance of graffiti on walls, nicknames, tattoos, cases of extortion), it would not have come to murder.
Bearing in mind that the line between the criminal subculture and the age-related manifestations of minors is very flexible and fluid, it is advisable to develop a set of preventive measures and be ready to use them. Finally, one should remember the ability of the criminal subculture not only to mimicry, but also to significant transformation and in connection with the changing structure and nature of crime in the country. Thus, along with the traditional criminal-thieves subculture, a modern criminal subculture is being actively introduced into the youth environment, which is based on the healthy lifestyle of members of a criminal gang (gang) - “no alcohol, much less drugs, playing sports. Abrose, a former drug addict “In order to join the “team” (gang - V.P.) I had to give up my bad habit.”
A new generation of young criminals values family roots. Thus, in a gang of robbers and murderers uncovered in the city of Kursk, “... everyone, with the exception of one, is married, all are lovers of children ... In the hours remaining from their “main work”, they diligently performed, so to speak, “worldly” job responsibilities: watchman, electrician, nuclear power plant operator." Note, not only for the purposes of secrecy: I really wanted respect both “there” and “here” at the same time.
By involving minors in their criminal activities, gang leaders demonstratively protect them from alcohol, drugs and other manifestations of human weakness, preparing them for the main thing - reckless devotion to the leader and criminal activity.
Thus, we see a new generation of “decent” criminals with an ideological bias.
2. Stratification of minors and youth in the system of criminal subculture.The division of people into hierarchical groups (stratification) exists in society as a whole and within different communities. The grounds on which people are stratified are different: social origin (dividing people into classes), age (age classification), education, profession, etc.
Criminal communities in which people are stratified into certain categories (strata, castes) are no exception. Each of them lives by its own laws, its own morality. Criminal groups refer to communities in which stratification is dependent on the nature and characteristics of criminal activity. In conditions when crime is becoming increasingly organized and corrupt, dividing people according to degree and nature of participation in criminal activities (patron in the structure of official power - “godfather”, organizer, executors, cover group, marketers, buyers, etc.).
Caste divisions are found not only in criminal groups at large, but also in places of social exclusion. Here it is especially clear. The division of people into hierarchical groups occurs in correctional and educational institutions for minors in countries with different social systems. This indicates the presence of common features of the criminal world subculture.
Let's compare the stratification of minors and youth in the antisocial subculture in places of social isolation in the CIS, Poland and the USA.
STRATIFICATION OF YOUTH IN DIFFERENT CRIMINAL STRUCTURES
Note: In Poland and the USA, caste boundaries are clearly defined. The intensity of division decreases somewhat with age.
Let us note that, on the one hand, there is a certain tradition of such a division in different social cultures, on the other hand, in the life of criminal groups there is the emergence of elements caused by changes in the nature of crime, social processes occurring in society, including among youth.
The given stratification of young and juvenile offenders is typical and at the same time incomplete, since it reflects only the traditional division of minors into hierarchical groups in closed correctional and educational institutions. A more complete stratification can be made based on a content analysis of existing criminal jargon. It reflects the social roles and status of minors and youth in asocial (criminal) groups in the form of terms (see Table 2).
Table 2.
TERMINOLOGY USED BY JUVENILES AND YOUNG OFFENDERS TO DESIGNATE THE POSITION OF AN INDIVIDUAL IN THE GROUP HIERARCHY
The table shows that, regardless of the number of steps, all the given stratifications are similar in the main thing: “at the top” are stronger and more authoritative teenagers and young men who “hold power in the “zone” or in a certain territory and have a direct connection with the “godparents” fathers" or their associates from among the adults (if the criminal group of minors is not independent, but is, as it were, a branch, a "reserve" of the mafia) and carries out their instructions. In the "lower classes" there are humiliated and exploited teenagers ("strangers") who accidentally find themselves in territory controlled by the group, or “our own” - those who have uncleanly passed their “registration”.
Despite the typicality of the given stratification of minors and youth in criminal groups, recently their significant regional (and maybe national) originality has been observed. In fact, there is a three-, four-, and six-level division of minors and youth into “castes”.
Three-stage: “tops” (“bumps”, “bumps”, “plows”), “middle layer” (“normally living”, “guys”) and “bottoms” (“cracklings”, “garbage dumps”, “pigs”, "dolphins"). The four-stage division includes: “tops” (“bumps”), “normally living”, “bottoms” (“cracklings”) and “strangers” (“anarchists”). The six-stage stratification consists of three “castes”, each of which includes two layers: “tops” (“old tramps”, “young tramps”); “middle layer” (“clean” and “boys”); "lower classes" ("chushki", "offended").
The latter stratification copies the stratification that takes place in the ITC. For example, in the penitentiary colony of the Pskov region: “thief”, he has several “guardians” (in groups), then the convicts are “boys” (up to 30 years old), “men” (the bulk), below are “lowered” (for example , faces drenched in urine), and at the very bottom - “roosters” (persons subjected to sodomy).
Table 3.
STRATIFICATION OF MINORS AND YOUTH IN CRIMINAL COMMUNITIES IN COMPARISON WITH SOCIOMETRIC STRATIFICATION (N.V. Ghukasyan, V.F. Pirozhkov)
In modern conditions, stratification accepted in the criminal environment is increasingly combined with functional and business. In accordance with their status in the criminal environment, the functions and roles performed by minors and young offenders in group criminal activities are distributed. We are talking not just about organization, complicity and concealment, as interpreted by the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, but about the actual division of labor in criminal activity. This is clearly seen in the example of the stratification of minors and youth among black marketeers (see Table 4).
Table 4.
STRATIFICATION OF CRIMINALS-FARMERS
From the above tables it is clear that the stratification of minors and youth in the criminal subculture, which leaves an imprint on the psychology of the individual, has the following properties :
1. A strict division into “us” and “outsiders”, as well as an unambiguous definition of the statuses and roles of minors and youth in educational institutions and in the “in” group with an unambiguous definition of rights and responsibilities: “who is entitled to what and what is not entitled to.”
2. Social stigmatization: the use of euphonious, elevating terms such as “master”, “director”, “big shot”, “master”, “starshak”, “boss”, “authority”, “author”, etc. to indicate the affiliation of minors and youth to higher hierarchical groups. To indicate that a person belongs to lower hierarchical groups, less euphonious, and more often offensive, terms are used ("mongrel", "stub", "rat", "informer", "offended", etc.). Comparing, for example, stratification in the army (“grandfather”, “scoop”, “crow”, “spirit”, fainting”, “meat”), it can be argued that stigmatization in the criminal subculture is an indispensable strict (even cruel) rule. , for example, they single out and stigmatize central (currency), peripheral, homeworkers, station workers, panel workers, etc. The term determines the prestige and scope of activity of a prostitute. By correlating the term used in relation to a specific individual of a minor or young person, one can fully and correctly determine his position and a role in a criminal group, i.e. understand “who is who” and apply the necessary measures of influence on each “caste”: debunk and suppress the activities of the “tops”, provide reliable protection to the “bottoms”.
By knowing the jargon of juveniles and young offenders and relating it to a specific individual, new aspects of group stratification can be identified. Thus, in one special vocational school, teachers drew attention to the fact that students began to ironically call the teenager N. “big shot,” who by all indications should have been classified as a “dumpster.” It turned out that the “authorities,” in order not to “get dirty” in handling the “dumpsters,” assigned him the role of a “big shot” over the “dumpsters.” But in the eyes of the “clean bigwigs” he will still remain a “dustbin”. In the former Mogilev special vocational school, for the same purpose, the “garbage dumps” were divided into “old” and “young”. The “old” are deprived of their rights in relation to the “boys”, but can command the “young trash”.
3. The autonomy of the existence of each “caste”, the difficulty, and more often the impossibility, of friendly contacts between their representatives due to the threat of ostracism and reduced social status for those representatives of the “top” who made direct contacts with representatives of the “lower classes”, for example, “thieves” " gave his hand to the "garbage dump", touched him, finished his cigarette after him, etc.
4. Difficulty in upward mobility while making downward mobility easier, meaning that change social roles and statuses (from lower to higher) is difficult, and for a number of categories of minors and youth (passive homosexuals prone to oral sexual intercourse, “snitches,” “rats,” etc.) is excluded. At the same time, the change in social roles from higher to lower is facilitated. This situation continues even with the liberalization of attitudes in our society towards “gays” (the legalization of male homosexuality and female lesbianism), and the creation of their own “parties” that defend the interests of sexual minorities.
To become an unofficial “boss” in a group (community, teenage environment as a whole) or to rise one step higher in the group hierarchy (upward mobility), you must at least: go through a strict selection system(tests and competition); have a patron from the highest caste (from among the “countrymen”, “dealers”, etc.); have “length of service” or special merits in criminal activity.
For example, in the Kazan "winders" you can climb the next step only after a year. In army conditions, “hazing” is entirely based on “length of service.” It is impossible to rise to any of the high levels of the group hierarchy ahead of time, or acquire new rights. “If you’ve been in the army for less than a year, at best you wash the floors in the medical unit and go to the canteen for rations. If you’ve been in the army for more than a year, you’re freed from all responsibilities and have the right to assign them to others.”
To get ahead, it is often necessary to commit a particularly daring crime. Recently, the “tops” have begun to actively use “tables of ranks” for extortion (extortion) among teenagers, carried out in two ways. The first method, for example, in the Kazan "winders", is to give the leader a certain amount of money, a radio tape recorder or other super items. In closed educational and correctional institutions, there is another way - constant “milking” of the lower classes by raising or lowering the status of this or that teenager. For example, a “mongrel” asks a “big guy” to raise his status to “kid”. He demands a certain payment for this in money, food, clothing, etc. Having received the “payment”, the “bigwig” puts on a performance in front of all the teenagers. For example, he finishes smoking a cigarette behind the “mongrel,” which, according to the “law,” would seem to be prohibited. The result is obvious - everyone realized that the teenager was “raised.” Some time passes and the “bigwig” “puts” the teenager down, forcing him to wash his socks, pick up the bull from the floor and finish smoking it, etc. And the “boy” again becomes a “mongrel”, “stupid”, etc.
Thus, the grounds for increasing social status (upward mobility) and decreasing it (downward mobility) have recently changed significantly. Corruption and cronyism corrode not only society as a whole, but also the criminal environment, including, worst of all, minors and youth. Now you can go out into the “people”, become a “bugor” (“godfather”, “thief in law”), without having any criminal “merits” or “length of service”, but by purchasing this title or relying on the strength and predominance of your ethnic group .
5. Strict subordination in interpersonal relations between the “tops” and the “bottoms,” merciless exploitation and oppression of the “bottoms” by the “tops” is an indispensable condition for stratification. Treating representatives of the “lower classes” as their servants and slaves is an indicator of high status and belonging to a higher hierarchical group. A whole system of humiliation and bullying has been developed to which the “lower classes” are subjected. This leads to the "boomerang law". A person who has risen from the “bottom” to the “top” does not forget the humiliations experienced in the past and begins to humiliate, oppress, and rob others. In the “law of boomerang” it is necessary to see one of the conditions for the survivability of the criminal subculture, self-development and “self-improvement” of the stratification of people in an asocial, criminal environment.
6. The presence of certain customs, conventional signs, taboos, values, and privileges among the “tops” (“minor exceptions”). By observing the behavior of adults in ordinary everyday life and coming into contact with groups of adult criminals, as well as exhibiting their own “rule-making,” juveniles and young offenders create a complex system of relations of dependence, subordination, values, and taboos. This system, which puts the “bosses” in a privileged position, emphasizing their exclusivity, is very attractive to the “lower classes” and causes fierce resistance from the “tops” if someone encroaches on it.
7. One should remember about the stability of the status. Attempts to get rid of it, for example, when a minor moves to a new place of residence or is transferred to another special institution, are severely punished. Attempts to inflate one’s status (by applying an “unauthorized” tattoo, assigning an “unauthorized” nickname, etc.) or to take advantage of “privileges” that are “unauthorized” by status are punishable. And this despite the fact that, as noted above, in last years There has been a tendency to buy and sell social status in a criminal environment, and especially among minors and young people.
Every year the process of, so to speak, dehumanization (brutalization) of the criminal world becomes more and more apparent, and the level of cruelty in interpersonal relationships in the criminal environment itself increases. This is understandable. Having passed through all the steps of the hierarchical ladder, having received power, today's "kings", remembering the humiliations experienced in the past, are much more cruel and ferocious towards those below them than those "kings" of the "zone" and gateways, whose power was, as it were, from God (they had certain advantages a priori).
3. Factors determining the situation of minors and youth in a criminal environment.The status of a teenager and young man in the criminal structure, his position among minors (group, microdistrict, special educational institution, military-technical complex, etc.) is influenced by a number of factors. It must be said that in criminal psychology and sociology attempts have been made to identify these factors and determine the specific weight of their influence on the status of the individual. Thus, according to Polish scientists, the “experience” of a minor, his age, social (regional) origin, and the nature of criminal activity have the greatest influence.
However, our research indicates that there is a wider range of factors that in one way or another influence the status of a minor and a young person, his position in the group hierarchy. Among minors and young offenders, the category and qualifications of the criminogenic group, the length of criminal activity or the number of arrests are highly valued; behavior in law enforcement agencies (inspectorates for juvenile affairs, during investigations, in court, in commissions for juvenile affairs); complicity in past offenses and crimes. Due to the rampant nationalism in the country, the importance of the factor of nationality has sharply increased.
The assessment of the personal qualities and physical strength of a minor or young offender given by his peers cannot be discounted. Of course, an important role in gaining and maintaining status among minors and young people is played by the length of stay in a group (special educational or correctional institution), attitude towards weak and vulnerable teenagers (“lower classes”), behavior during the adaptation period of being in a group (including or another educational institution or colony), attitude towards official activists, educational measures and studies.
We tried to classify all of the listed factors influencing the status and position of an individual in a criminal group (see Diagram 2).
Classification of factors influencing the status and position of an individual in a criminal group of minors and youth
Of all individual personal factors minors and young people value first of all “experienced”, i.e. life, criminal experience, the ability to use it to subjugate others. It is known that “experienced” teenagers and young people know the norms and rules of the criminal environment better than others and know how to interpret them to their advantage. The factor of “experience” is given importance not only in the “zone” (special educational institutions, pre-trial detention centers and military-technical complexes), but also often in secondary schools and vocational schools. “Experienced” tries to influence others not only with words (information about what he has seen and heard), but also with deeds. He strives to take control of the group into his own hands.
Among minors and young offenders, the concept of “experienced” is filled with significantly different content. Let's give specific example. Andrey F. - 14 years old, student of the former Moscow special school for children in need of special conditions education. He was raised only by his mother, the boy was out of control from the age of 9, constantly ran away from home and wandered. Many times he was taken to the reception center. He began sexual activity at the age of 11 and acquired experience of sexual perversions. With two friends, Andrei constantly ran away from the special school. At his place of residence, he created a criminal group of 5 teenagers and became their leader. The group committed several thefts from food stalls and stores, and several attempts to extort money and belongings from teenagers. If the teenager who was attacked did not have money or personal belongings, the group took him to a secluded place and forced him to perform oral contact. At the same time, Andrei F. taught the guys how to force a teenager to take the penis into his mouth by influencing his eardrums or “cutting off his oxygen.” He learned this from more experienced teenagers in a special school.
This example shows that “experience” is experience, length of criminal activity. By the age of 14, Andrey F. had 5 years of such experience. Andrei constantly bragged about his criminal adventures to his peers.
“Experienced” teenagers are potential criminal leaders, relays of criminal experience; they should always be in the field of view of teachers and law enforcement officers. Their boasting must be resolutely suppressed, and their desire to spread criminal experience must be blocked.
In order to assert themselves in a criminal environment, a minor or young person must have certain qualities(be an extraordinary person in your own way). Leaders of criminal groups, as studies show, usually have good organizational skills, are able to quickly assess the situation, make decisions, distribute responsibilities between group members, and they have a fairly strongly developed will. They know how to dominate others, to subordinate them to their influence.
The results of I.M. Guseinov’s research showed that the most valuable qualities in the criminal environment of minors are authoritarianism, rudeness, resourcefulness, resourcefulness, cynicism, and cruelty towards even members of their own group. Among the leaders of a criminal group there may be an undeveloped teenager or young man. In this case, he compensates for the lack of organizational abilities necessary to assert himself as a leader with other personal qualities: cruelty, cynicism, sadistic inclinations, etc. In this case, the organizational work is carried out by a teenager close to him, a kind of “gray eminence”. Adolescents and young people who do not have the necessary personal qualities inevitably disperse to the lower levels of the group hierarchy. This is confirmed by a survey of the “lower classes.” Most of them experience fear, a feeling of hatred or deep internal hostility towards the “bosses,” skillfully hiding it behind external servility, sycophancy, and ingratiation.
In the struggle for leadership in a criminal group, physical strength becomes important. After all, with its help you can personally achieve dominance over your peers. However, with mutual support in criminal groups fighting opposing criminal and positively-minded groups, as well as official activists, the factor of personal physical strength can be compensated by the cohesion of the group and its armament.
As weapons of defense and attack, criminal groups use not only knives, chains, sticks, razors, but increasingly also firearms, grenades, and explosive devices. Therefore, in a criminal group that functions according to the laws of a pack (osprey), leadership is often seized not by the physically strong, but by the most resourceful and arrogant teenagers. They acquire “bodyguards” from among mentally underdeveloped but physically strong teenagers.
It should be borne in mind that recently in the teenage and youth criminal environment there has been a tendency towards the cultivation of sports training, martial arts and bodybuilding. This is done to pump up the biceps.
Well-developed muscles and mastery of complex attack techniques become an important means of certifying a teenager or young man for a “high position” in a criminal environment. Following the example of adult leaders of criminal groups, minors and young “bigwigs” and “bugs” also strive to acquire bodyguards.
The status and role of a teenager and young man in a criminal environment have a great influence social group factors: age, social, regional and national affiliation.
Plays an important role in the process of self-affirmation of minors and youth. age. In a criminogenic and criminal environment, the importance of age is especially clear. If we take the average age indicators, then the lowest status in a general education school is 7-10 year olds, in a special school - 11-12 year olds, in secondary and special vocational schools and technical colleges - 14-15 year olds. Under all other favorable conditions, 15–17-year-olds have a high status in general education schools, secondary vocational schools, special vocational schools and technical colleges, and 14–15-year-old teenagers in special schools.
In “winders”, “gangs”, “offices” on the street, in a microdistrict, “parties”, as well as in the “zone”, everything depends on the age composition of those gathered. But in general, these age limits remain the same. If teenagers aged 11–15 years have gathered, then it is clear that 14–15 year olds will dominate. It must be said that among juveniles and young offenders, the age difference of 1–3 years is very significant.
It is no coincidence that the average age of “bumps” (“bumps”, “godfathers”) is 17.5 years in closed educational and correctional institutions, and 13.7 years in special schools. This is the most crime-prone group of minors. Compared to other age groups, 17–18 year olds have greater opportunities to assert and maintain their status in the group hierarchy. They are physically stronger, they have richer criminal and life experience, knowledge of the norms and traditions of the criminal environment.
Age differences also affect self-affirmation among young adults, for example, in the army, as discussed above. All this requires differentiation of educational and preventive work, as well as management of interpersonal relationships, taking into account the age of minors and youth.
Consider the role regional (national) affiliation in determining the status of a minor and young person in a criminal environment and group. Fellowship and national identity form a specific feeling of “we”. If the criminal environment is homogeneous along national lines, then an important stratification role is played by fraternity(group members from one house, one street or one locality - village, city). If it is heterogeneous in national composition, then the role of nationality in the stratification of personality increases. This factor is especially often manifested in closed special educational institutions, colonies and the army, when a minor or young person is cut off from his usual environment (home, friends, acquaintances). The presence of fellow countrymen or persons of their own nationality gives confidence to a minor or young person, makes his life easier in new conditions, and provides psychological and physical protection from the claims and harassment of others.
The national (compatriot) factor has become especially acute in recent years in connection with the republics’ course towards independence and state independence. However, the revival of national self-awareness and sovereignty has, unfortunately, produced a harmful side effect - a surge of ardent nationalism, national chauvinism, and a nihilistic attitude towards other nations.
For example, in place of one evil - “hazing” - another evil came into the army - “groupism” on a national basis, when “one’s own” is only a fellow countryman, and the rest are “strangers”... No sergeant, let alone “grandfathers” ", cannot send a representative of the "predominant" nationality to do dirty work. But you are obliged, if called, to stand up without hesitation for “your own.”
Thus, the compatriot status structure has now entered into fierce competition with the “grandfather” one. This is explained by the growth in the number of non-Slavic groups in the army and the aggravation of national conflicts in society.
Groupism based on nationality or community is typical of minors and youth in colonies, in special institutions and in the wild.
In one of the special vocational schools in Central Asia, victims of homosexuality, for example, were only people of non-indigenous nationality - “migrants” (Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Tatars). From the media, we are quite well aware of the Dolgoprudnenskaya, Chechen, Ingush, Solntsevskaya, Lyuberetskaya and other youth groups fighting for spheres of influence in Moscow under the leadership of mafia structures.
What else the compatriot (national) factor will bring to us in expanding the sphere of influence of the criminal subculture and its transformation is not difficult to predict. Experts believe that an army dominated by a compatriot structure is not only incapable of combat, it is socially dangerous, it supplies “soldiers of fortune” - mercenaries who wander around the hot spots of the planet in search of adventure and blood. It will be increasingly difficult to take constructive measures in educational and preventive work in all social institutions (schools, vocational schools, special, correctional institutions, in the army), as well as to prevent the most vulgar forms of organized crime.
Criminal groups roaming around the country, formed along ethnic lines, are increasingly making themselves known. They develop a certain psychological climate, their own norms and traditions arise and are consolidated. Appearing in one or another region of the country, these groups commit crimes and, having created fear, disappear or subjugate local groups, long time exploit them.
The strongest influence on the status, role and position of a minor and young person in an antisocial group is exerted by criminological factors: experience of antisocial and criminal behavior; category and qualifications of the criminal group; length of stay (“term”) in a special school; special vocational school; colonies; behavior in law enforcement; complicity in past offenses and especially in crimes. These factors are refracted through the prism of individual-personal and social-group characteristics of minors. So, experience of antisocial behavior(vagrancy, running away from home, being brought to the police, drinking alcohol, drugs) determine the “experience” of a teenager or young man, since it very uniquely reflects the acquired life and criminal experience, the level of criminal “qualification”. The teenager (young man) is not new to crime. He knows what the rules are in reception centers, and often in pre-trial detention centers, a kind of switchboards, without which the criminal subculture cannot function successfully.
Minors themselves attach so much importance to the experience of antisocial and criminal behavior that they reflect this in tattoos. It becomes a “signal” when identifying “friends” and the teenager’s “application” for a certain position among his peers at a special vocational school, special school, VTK (reception center, etc.). In order to occupy a higher position in the group (“in the zone”), teenagers attribute “merits” to themselves (convictions and crimes that they did not commit, etc.). True, the desire to “illegally” obtain a privilege is severely punished by the “authorities”, the group. “If they find out that the tattoo is false and made for the sake of courage, a fierce showdown awaits the violator of the convention, from cutting off the finger with the unrighteous “ring” to turning him into a “rooster” despised by everyone. In order to assert themselves and take a high position in an asocial and criminal environment, newcomers must pass the appropriate test to prove what they are capable of.
Among minors and young people, the sense of “we” is highly developed, expressed in an attempt to classify oneself as one or another type of criminal group. The emergence of non-traditional youth associations (pro-Western, non-politically oriented, alternative, historical-nationalist, religious, environmental, sexually oriented, etc.) did not level out, but rather exacerbated the importance of a teenager and young person belonging to “their” social group, determining its status in the youth environment. At the same time, the prestige of traditional criminal and non-traditional modern youth groups does not coincide, existing as if in parallel.
In the traditional criminal group, the highest position was and is occupied by people who consider themselves to be “thieves.” They enjoy the greatest authority in the criminal environment not only in the “zone” (special vocational schools, special schools, military-technical complex, etc.), but also outside it. In importance, next to the “thieves” is the most active part of the offenders - robbers and brigands. Their group crimes have selfish motives and a violent nature. Below are the blackmailers, swindlers, hooligans and rapists. Even less authoritative in the criminal environment are petty thieves, vagabonds, and beggars, who, as a rule, stand apart in special vocational schools, special schools, and technical colleges. The bottom part of the prestigious row of the criminal group is completed by persons involved in sodomy, pimping, etc., those who have committed so-called “unpleasant” crimes, child rapists, and lone offenders. The latter often find themselves in the position of outcasts.
The level of prestige of territorial “gangs”, “teams”, “offices” is not the same. It all depends on the authority of the leader in the adult criminal environment, the degree of connection of this group with criminal groups of adults. If a group of juvenile criminals is a “branch” of a criminal group of adults (mafia), then the authority of the “adult” is completely transferred to the authority of the group of minors, and sometimes to each of its members.
Modern non-traditional groups (for example, fans, Italians, aristocrats, rockers, etc.) initially appear not as criminal, but as uniting young people to solve their own, mainly leisure, problems. They take the criminal path where preventive work is started. They are fought with instead of taking them as allies. The prestige of these groups is transitory. It depends on what kind of youth movement is coming into fashion (whether it is on the path of its formation, has reached its peak, or is in decline).
The predominance of supporters of a particular group in a given special school, special vocational school, VTK, or microdistrict also matters. The existence and prestige of a group also depends on the cohesion of its members and their ability to stand up for themselves. Groups of thieves are more united, so even in small numbers they often “hold power” in the “zone” or territory.
It is important for the self-affirmation of a teenager and young man in a criminal environment. duration of stay in the group, in a closed institution (special vocational school, VTK, etc.).
It is interesting that minors and young people equate criminal punishment in the form of imprisonment and a compulsory educational measure in the form of placement in a special vocational school and special school, respectively, equating the time spent in them with the term of imprisonment (in the VTK). This period is objectively assessed by minors and youth in two aspects:
as the time of continuous stay in a special institution and VTK, when with its increase the “weight” and significance of the individual increase. This automatically makes it possible, after appropriate “initiation,” to move from the category of oppressed newcomers to the category of “lads,” and then to the category of oppressed old-timers (“old men,” “old men,” “grandfathers”); as the total time spent by a minor or young offender sequentially in a special school, reception centers, special vocational schools and vocational schools. It is identified with experience in closed institutions, knowledge of the rules and procedures in force in them. The more time a teenager spent within the walls of various institutions of this kind, the greater the experience, the “experience”.
The presence of special vocational schools, other educational institutions, reception centers and colonies is reflected in tattoos. This allows you to clearly demonstrate the superiority of the “old guys” over the newbies. The problem of relationships between “old people” and newcomers is relevant in any institution for minors and young people. However, it is of particular importance in closed educational institutions and military-technical complexes, when working with juvenile offenders, as well as with young soldiers, where the omnipotence of the “old men” takes on a negative character.
A teenager and young man can secure a high position for himself in an asocial environment if he enlists the support of those who know him here and can vouch for him.
Therefore, the presence or absence in a criminal group plays a very important role. accomplices of crimes and offenses who enjoy authority in this environment. Fellow countrymen who know him, have heard about him or have mutual acquaintances who have authority in this community can vouch for the newcomer. Of particular importance is the guarantee of persons same nationality with newcomers. The presence of accomplices and representatives of his nation guarantees the newcomer protection from the claims of other persons and relieves him of the need to undergo a humiliating verification procedure (“registration”). In turn, the “old men” are also interested in finding newcomers and fellow countrymen who would join the ranks of their supporters. The same picture is observed in army units.
Thus, the factors of nationality, fraternity, complicity in past offenses and crimes are closely related to each other, since their role in the process of self-affirmation in a criminal group is to provide guarantee for a newcomer joining the group.
The status of a teenager and young man, his “fall” or “rise” in the criminal environment largely depends from behavior in law enforcement agencies(when brought to the police, while in reception centers, in the juvenile affairs commission, with the investigator, etc.). The biggest offense towards accomplices is considered to be admitting one’s guilt, repentance, turning oneself in, helping the investigation and court in establishing the truth, unwillingness to take the blame and shield the leader, especially an adult. Anyone who behaves in this way becomes a “traitor” and forever loses his authority in the criminal environment. The “bad” reputation of such a person becomes known in a special school, special vocational school, VTK, or at the place of residence.
The game of “inflexibility” and corporate “honesty” benefits experienced criminals who capitalize on the feelings of camaraderie and collectivism of minors and youth.
Thus, criminological factors make it possible to highlight a person from the standpoint of the depth of his criminal infection and antisocial experience.
The status of minors and young people in the criminal environment is greatly influenced by psychological and behavioral factors. This includes the behavior of a newcomer during the period of adaptation to the group, the attitude towards the activists and the “lower classes”, means of education, the regime of the institution or moral standards in freedom. When entering a new environment, a teenager or young man usually chooses his own line of behavior. But he often fails to realize his plan, since he is under the close attention of the leader of the criminal group and the “old men” (“godfathers”, “bugors”).
The method of “covering up” a beginner is widely used, i.e. gradually drawing him into criminal activity. A newcomer may be forced to commit a crime, thereby trying to cut off his path to law-abiding behavior. The more serious and daring a crime he commits personally, the greater his role in a group crime, the faster he will assert himself, the higher his status.
An important factor contributing to the self-affirmation of a minor and a young person is on the one hand, his attitude towards “authorities” and on the other hand - towards outcasts. The system of influence on members of criminal groups is structured so that each of them “honors” the “bigwigs,” “bigwigs,” “leaders,” and “authors.” Strictly following their orders allows you to get closer to them and influence other teenagers and young offenders on their behalf. The desire for servility gives rise to servility and ingratiation to the “strong”. But the weaker members of a criminal group tend to strive to become “the people” at any cost, to break away from the “lower classes”, and to reach the heights of unofficial power. They mock, first of all, those who are not part of a given criminal group, who are at the lower levels of the group hierarchy.
Communication with these persons, their protection, joint activities (entertainment, eating, physical contact, etc.) inevitably lead to the undermining of the authority of those who allow this. The more irreconcilable and merciless a minor and young person is towards the “lower classes”, the stronger his position in the criminal environment.
The real force that opposes the “authorities” is the active, socially positive groups “in the zone” and in freedom. Law enforcement officials, teachers of special schools, special vocational schools, and employees of closed special institutions should rely on them in the fight against the criminal subculture.
It is natural that hostile attitude towards activists and socially positive groups, the desire to discredit them in every possible way is considered the merit of a teenager and a young offender in a criminal environment. Participation in the work of public organizations and student government bodies of any educational institution is not encouraged here. Today, the importance of student self-government bodies, public organizations of minors in schools, vocational schools, special educational institutions, and military and technical complexes is increasing significantly. In a special school, special vocational school and vocational school, for example, participation in their work is taken into account when determining correction and deciding on early release from the vocational school, graduation or transfer of a teenager from a special school or special vocational school to continue his studies. Despite this, cases of direct refusal to participate in the operation of an asset are common. However, even when they become active, asocially and criminally inclined minors and young people often begin to double-deal and corrupt the student self-government bodies. In order to prevent such a phenomenon, it is not practiced to appoint (elect) as commanders (heads) of educational groups, departments, detachments or chairmen of student councils persons from among the “authorities” in special schools, special vocational schools and military technical schools.
It should be noted that in recent years, previously unobserved tendency of assets to merge with criminal authorities, allowing you to use the fullness of official and unofficial power to keep the “lower classes” in obedience and live at their expense. Is this not a kind of echo of the merging of mafia structures with representatives of the authorities in freedom? There is food for thought here.
The regulations on a special school (special vocational school), the Correctional Labor Code of the Russian Federation define basic means of correction and re-education offenders. These include general education and vocational training, educational and productive work, political and educational and cultural work. In criminal groups of minors and young people, a negative attitude towards such means is encouraged and given credit to the teenager or young man. However, they have to reckon with the fact that a positive attitude towards the means of correction and re-education (conscientious study, honest work, exemplary behavior, participation in the work of various sections, subject clubs, etc.) is one of the indicators of correction. Early release from a special school, special vocational school, parole from a military training complex, and various benefits depend on it.
In order to demonstrate to the “authorities” their negative attitude towards work, study, political and educational work and at the same time maintain the official advantages given for honest work, exemplary behavior, diligent study, supporters of the criminal subculture resort to to hidden opposition from the administration. In such cases, ostentatious activity and ostentatious zeal are demonstrated, and in the absence of the master in the training and production workshop, sophisticated methods of appropriating the results of other people’s work are used through extortion, racketeering, playing cards, betting (fraud), charging for patronage, etc. To avoid work, minors and young people use simulation, aggravation of illnesses and self-harm, passing them off as industrial and domestic injuries.
“Authorities” willingly attend lectures on morally neutral topics that are primarily informational in nature, but they skip educational events or try to disrupt them so as to remain above suspicion. They try to skip classes for a “valid” reason, and often disrupt them by not completing their homework.
Persons who violate, for example, regime demands in a special school (special vocational school, VTK), schedule in a comprehensive school or vocational school, they can increase their status in a criminal group. Demonstrative violations, arguments with teachers, disruption of lessons create an aura of masculinity and courage around such a teenager or young man. The press reported about students beating teachers. Therefore, in some schools, for example. Krasnoyarsk Territory, are forced to establish police posts. The profession of a teacher becomes life-threatening not only in a colony or special vocational school, but also in a regular school or vocational school. Therefore, we should not forget that such actions are very contagious and can develop into group violations, and in special and correctional institutions - into mass excesses. According to the mechanism of mental infection, the majority of minors and young people are drawn into them. The result of this could be mass departures from special schools and special vocational schools, mass escapes from the VTK, group disobedience, refusals to work, etc. For example, in the former Moscow special school for children in need of special educational conditions, when there were 100 people per year, 360 escapes. At the same time, the “buhrs” left the school without permission at any time, essentially dictating to the administration and teaching staff their demands, which they are forced to put up with, thereby deliberately increasing the status of the “bugors” by providing them with privileges, endowing them with police functions by forming a “capture group” from them to search, detain and return to school fugitives from among the “lower classes”.
We tried to identify the significance of each of the analyzed factors in determining the status of a minor’s personality in the group hierarchy using two sections (1980 and 1990) (see Table 5).
Table 5
Ranking, carried out by minors and experts, of the importance of factors determining the status of an individual in the group hierarchy
The table shows that there is a fairly close connection between a number of factors ranked by juvenile convicts studying at special vocational schools and experts (employees of the Higher Technical School and special vocational schools) - 1980 - r = 0.83; 1990 - r=0.65. This means the proximity of their assessments and opinions on this issue. However, it should be noted that in 1980 the relationship between these two estimates was much closer. In modern conditions, the range of opinions among students of special vocational schools and expert schools is greater.
At the same time, the study revealed a significant change in the ranking places of a number of factors. In determining the status of a minor in a group, the importance of the “nationality” (regional origin) factor, as well as the “complicity in past crimes” factor, has primarily increased. The factor of “attitude towards the weak”, the “lower classes” ranks high (among students of special vocational schools in 3rd place). This indicates a further dehumanization of vertical relations in criminal groups. The importance of age has increased somewhat (when comparing those convicted in 1980 and students of special vocational schools in 1990) in determining the position of an individual in a criminal group (environment).
The change in the significance of specific indicators by 1990 reflects the dynamics of the criminal subculture, while maintaining stability in the assessment of the factors under consideration. Two processes seem to be going on in parallel: the tightening of the morals of the criminal subculture, especially in groups of vulgar criminals and at the same time its democratization in groups of professional criminals. Essentially, the hierarchy of relationships in criminal gangs copies our social relationships, as if in a distorting mirror. This thought is continued by a former prisoner: “... The laws there are harsh... But the essence, both for you and for us, is the same. Authority must be ironclad. And it doesn’t matter in what ways you do it.” He is echoed by another “simple Soviet prisoner” who wrote a letter to Izvestia: “I have seen a lot of “good” here: how they kill, and how they take away their last honor - they rape, “so as not to blather.”
Vulgar crime is called vulgar because force and cruelty “rule the roost” there. All this is reflected in the ways of determining the status of an individual, his role in a criminal group and criminal acts. Professional Crime is a different matter, where the main thing is intelligence and cold calculation. The press notes that in such a criminal environment, “there has recently been a kind of democratization, so gangs today are not led alone.”
In addition to the “infantry” (as ordinary militants in criminal gangs are now called), each group has several leaders. They may hate each other, but they act together against the “lower classes” (“infantry”, “machine gunners”). All this significantly affects the significance of one or another factor in determining the position and status of any group member. In the event of collusion (especially in teenage and youth groups), the leaders can easily reduce the status of any group member who has good indicators on all the factors under consideration, “so as not to blather.”
Thus, deep knowledge and comprehensive analysis of each of the factors under consideration, as well as their dynamics in connection with changes in the criminal world, make it possible to fairly accurately determine the status of any minor and young person in a criminal environment, without resorting to sociometry and other psychological methods; anticipate his behavior, develop differentiated and individual programs for the prevention of crime, correction and re-education of the “upper”, “normally living” and “lower”.
4. About the causes and origins of the criminal subculture.The criminal subculture, like crime, has many causes. There is no comprehensive concept of the causes and conditions of its occurrence and functioning yet. This is largely due to the lack of knowledge of social processes not only among young people, but also in the spiritual sphere of society as a whole.
In our opinion, it is impossible to approach the study of the origins of the criminal subculture from the position of searching for a single cause or a number of reasons that are not related to each other. Apparently you need to look complex of multi-level causes and conditions, which are in constant dynamics and make up a certain system: main and secondary, direct and indirect, external and internal (within crime itself and its subculture, contributing to its self-development).
It is only clear that there is no crime without a criminal subculture, just as a given subculture cannot exist without crime. The criminal subculture is generated by the same objective reasons as crime, which is alien to the official culture of society and is, as it were, “another life” in it.
It is impossible to understand the essence of crime in general, and juvenile and youth crime in particular, without analyzing the criminal subculture, which is its breeding ground. Let's try to understand how crime and the criminal subculture are related to each other.
Crime is not only the illegal actions themselves, but also the groups and communities of individuals who commit them. According to statistics, there are about 10 thousand criminal groups in the CIS, each with at least 8–10 people. Moreover, many of them have their own “branches” in the form of teenage and youth groups.
There are contacts between many groups, and spheres of influence have been divided. Thus, criminals represent a social community, a layer of society. Like any other community, criminals adhere to a certain way of life. It is the criminal subculture that is a certain stabilizer that regulates the life of criminal communities, introducing a kind of order into it, no matter how we treat it.
Criminal subculture as part of the culture of society (no matter that it is only a surrogate for culture) depends on the processes occurring in it (general social, economic, ideological, socio-demographic, socio-technical, social and everyday life, socio-educational, legal, organizational and managerial, etc. .).
Let's consider general social processes. Probably, in the first place here we can put the destruction unprecedented in the world, which came as a result of the revolution and many years of totalitarianism, of national culture. The damage done to it cannot be repaired, as many researchers and outside observers have noted. A descendant of the first wave of emigrants, Russian nobleman M.P. Orlov argues: “Traditional Russian culture has been destroyed, not to mention class subcultures, merchant culture, and so on... I have seen many countries, but nowhere have I felt such a global devastation of the culture historically inherent in the nation ". He is echoed by Yu. Nagibin: “Our culture has disappeared... Our rulers do not need culture. Unfortunately, the people do not need it either.”
But “a holy place is never empty.” From the ruins of national culture, a culture of totalitarianism arose, which directly affected the youth subculture. After all, the culture of totalitarianism did not allow dialogue between class cultures. Most juveniles and young offenders cannot classify themselves as belonging to a certain social class (class), and those who can do this cannot characterize the basic principles, norms and rules of life of the parents of their class (skilled workers, peasants, doctors, scientists, entrepreneurs , representatives of trade, officials, etc.). Such conversations are not cultivated in the family. Parents do not value the spiritual values of their family, family, or profession and do not pass them on to their children. Therefore, minors and young people become familiar with what exists: the courtyard subculture (the subculture of “dorms”, communal apartments and barracks), from which it is one step away from the criminal one.
It should also be taken into account that violations of the principles of democracy and social justice led to the collapse of the social ideals of youth, the emergence of a tendency towards dehumanization in interpersonal and intergroup relations. All this, naturally, resulted in a search for other ideals and norms of life and led to the emergence of numerous informal associations of young people with their own rules, norms and attributes operating in the group. The ground arose for a criminal subculture, which took from the barracks-barracks youth subculture all the worst things that were alien to universal morality.
The currently observed process of social instability at all levels and in all areas, disorganization of society, the collapse of its social structures, the exacerbation of political, regional, national and other social contradictions helped the criminal subculture strengthen and develop. Under the influence of this factor, intensive renewal processes arose and are developing in it. Elements of dehumanization, unjustified harshness towards victims, sadism, violence, aggression, and vandalism are growing in it.
Affected the development of the criminal subculture and economic turmoil in the country, the presence of a shadow economy. They gave rise to a wild market, special types of economic crimes (among cooperators, entrepreneurs, bankers, etc.) and related new types of crimes, such as the artificial creation of shortages and speculation on it, the capture of wealthy citizens as hostages for the purpose of ransom , racketeering, smuggling, etc. The functioning of the wild market is largely due to the high rates of economic crime.
This is most clearly manifested in the process of analyzing the sources of goods supplied to the “black market”. According to estimates, approximately 5/6 of its turnover comes from sources of a criminal nature, including 1/3 from theft, almost the same amount from extortion, extortion and the so-called “gray” economy (material benefits for reciprocal services, including illegal, and the rest - for speculation and smuggling).
A wide stream (from theft and racketeering to profiteering and smuggling) includes criminal groups of minors and youth in economic crime. In pursuit of profit, young people cross moral barriers that seem impossible to overcome. For example, extorting money from relatives. So, the son deserted from the army, got involved in racketeering, began to extort money from...his mother, which caused indignation even among the members of the criminal gang: “Stop you mocking your mother! Where will she get this money...” - shouted at him one of the gang members (the extortionist’s mother worked as a teacher in kindergarten. In Togliatti, a son kills both parents, workers at an automobile plant, in order to take possession of their old Zhiguli car and wretched household belongings.
These examples are not isolated. They indicate that in a criminal environment the level of intra-group “morality” under the influence of the economic factor has dropped to the limit. Thus, the criminal subculture responded to the emergence of new types of mercenary and mercenary-violent crime and criminal communities. A subculture of racketeers, hostage takers, drug trafficking clans, prostitute business, cattle thieves, etc. has emerged.
The influence can also be traced ideological factor on the development of a criminal subculture. Formalism in ideological work, stereotypical methods of ideological influence, the emergence of ideological “clichés” caused people, especially young people and minors, to have a negative reaction, aggressiveness and departure to “another life”, where, as it seems to them, everything is more honest and discovery: friendship, partnership, "thieves' honor", nobility, material, physical and psychological mutual assistance, etc.
Criminals filled the ideological vacuum not only and not so much with stories of “apolitical” anecdotes (this is characteristic not of criminals, but of so-called “dissidents”), but with the “philosophy” and ideology of gangsterism, the creation of their own asocial “clichés”, stereotypes of a “beautiful” criminal life. This is also how inexperienced teenagers are caught, dragging them into a life of crime, with its criminal romance, risk to life, thirst for profit, etc. The process of departitionization and de-ideologization of social institutions (schools, vocational schools, the army, law enforcement agencies, labor collectives) does not help in the fight against this. Communist dogmas are being replaced by the dogmas of modern democrats with their ultra-left phraseology, the destruction of monuments, the overthrow of previous totalitarian ones and the exaltation of new “leaders - liberators of the people.”
The criminal subculture has intensively enriched itself at the expense of others socio-cultural(or rather "subcultural") sources. Thus, the increasing alcoholization of the population has led to the dominance of the traditions of alcoholic feasts with their own traditions and attributes. All of them moved into vulgar criminal groups of minors and young offenders prone to alcoholism.
The emergence of video art led not only to video piracy, but also to the preaching of extreme forms of hedonism, business in erotica, and demonstrations of sexual perversion. All this contributed to the growth in the number of groups of violent criminals, an increase in the level of cruelty towards victims of criminal attacks, etc.
Here's an example. Minors Vladimir S. and Vladimir Z. stopped a private Zhiguli and asked the owner to give them a ride. Having got into the car, they killed the owner with particular cruelty and were detained at the crime scene. “Despite the horror of the crime, they did not feel any remorse. Both, as it turned out, are big fans of video films, especially those that show unbridled violence and cruelty. They admitted that they wanted to bring what they saw in the films to life.”
Extreme manifestations of youth fashion gave rise to speculation, consumerism, materialism, prostitution. Corresponding criminal groups of minors and youth have emerged.
Prostitution has always existed in our country, but they turned a blind eye to it. However, “... recently this “profession”, covered in legends about gigantic earnings, has begun to be considered prestigious and romantic among young people.” This led to a sharp rejuvenation of the ranks of prostitutes. Pimps who “specialize” in “catching” 11-12 year old provincial girls and selling them are exposed.
It also has its own morality, its own way of life, there are its own rules and values. Today, many are demanding the legalization of prostitution in order to more successfully combat the crime associated with it.
The decline in the morals of minors is also influenced by the almost uncontrolled repertoire of video salons, where pornographic films predominate. Recently, among adolescent strawberry lovers, the number of those who are involved in homosexuality, including lesbianism, has increased. The morals here are different from those of prostitutes and their keepers and surroundings.
Sociotechnical reasons in the form of costs of scientific and technological progress, urbanization and out-of-control migration processes, the development of the media, also significantly influenced the criminal subculture. Thus, the constant migration (“unidirectional” and “pendulum”) of the youth part of the population contributes to the rapid spread of the norms and traditions of the criminal world in various regions of the country.
The criminal subculture is being “improved” due to connections between domestic criminals and mafias abroad, including at the level of groups of minors and youth.
The computer "boom" led to the emergence of groups of minors and young people doing criminal business using computer equipment. Not only computers are stolen, but also programs are stolen, computers are used for various financial frauds, computers are infected with a “computer virus,” etc. Criminals do not work alone in this area. Uniting in groups of specialists in this technology, they develop rules, norms, and values of “techies” doing business, by which they live.
Mass media and the information itself (including printed materials) also became the object of criminal fraud, speculation in printed materials of dubious nature, especially erotic and pornographic content.
Youth and minors, uniting in groups, divide spheres of influence and territory among themselves, creating their own subculture that serves their criminal business. Certain intergroup and intragroup relations arise.
Due to mass motorization and motorization, groups of motorized criminals(not only rockers, but also specialists in robbing cars, dismantling them, and speculating on spare parts). There are criminal groups engaged in night driving, night trade in alcohol, “personal” servicing of the “bosses” of the underworld and foreign exchange prostitutes. It also has its own rules, norms and values. Relations between criminals and criminals with citizens are also strictly regulated.
Social factor- the underdevelopment of the sphere of consumer services also affects the development of the criminal subculture. Criminal elements flock here. They divide spheres of influence, establish their own rules, introduce a monopoly on prices and services, and fleece cooperators, private traders, and competitors. It is on this basis that clashes between criminal groups most often occur, often leading to the death of innocent people who are not involved in criminal activities. So this constantly happens in Moscow during clashes between the Ivanteevskaya, Solntsevo and other groups, in the process of struggle in the Moscow markets for the spheres of influence of the “Lyubertsy” and “Chechen” groups. Minors are often used as scouts and instigators in such groups.
In these groups, there is iron discipline, an army-like order, a strict distribution of roles and responsibilities, and unquestioning submission to the “boss.” Here, bladed weapons and firearms are used, bodyguards are present, and the consumption of alcohol is strictly prohibited.
During the stagnant years, the root objective social, political, economic and other causes of crime, especially among minors and young people, were denied. The whole complex of causality was reduced to shortcomings in educational work, i.e. to the subjective factor. However, even in modern conditions, one should also remember about the shortcomings in the educational work of many social institutions, such as schools, vocational schools, technical schools, universities, labor and army collectives, and trade unions, which influence the development of the criminal subculture.
The main disadvantages of recent upbringing are the underestimation of universal human values, preference for the class approach, the formalization of all educational work, suppression of the individual, an encroachment on her beliefs and inner peace. These shortcomings still make themselves felt in the field of education. Therefore, the so-called “toilet-school” subculture arose and began to develop in all social institutions. “She is the younger sister” of the antisocial, criminal subculture, its beginning.
As you know, young people and minors strive to unite. They are attracted to romance. The West took advantage of this long ago by creating the scout movement, which, by the way, was developed in pre-revolutionary Russia.
It ceased to exist after the revolution (the last scout congress took place on April 23, 1918). Instead of scout organizations, a pioneer organization was created, which adopted the rules, traditions, and all the external attributes of scouts. The difference between them is one thing: the scout movement stood outside of politics, and the pioneers were immediately included in the “struggle for the cause of the Lenin-Stalin party.” Pioneer and Komsomol organizations that were formalized to the limit did not provide the opportunity to express and liberate the individual. They gave birth to opportunists, careerists, and little bureaucrats. It was the double morality (they say one thing from the podium, but in reality another) that minors fled, recording their rules and norms on walls and fences, ridiculing activist bureaucrats. As soon as teenagers and young people, capable and strong-willed organizers with criminal tendencies, so the “toilet-school” subculture degenerated into a criminal one.
One cannot fail to mention the influence on the criminal subculture social and legal factors. The criminal subculture is very dynamic. It spreads quickly in new conditions. Therefore, any inconsistency in the application of legal measures in the fight against crime causes a quick reaction from criminal groups, i.e. creation of norms and rules that help to use any “crack” in the laws in the interests of a criminal group.
The role of shortcomings is great organizational and managerial factor in the formation of a criminal subculture. Thus, the untimeliness and inconsistency in solving current youth problems, the lack of a detailed youth policy in the country, form a “social niche”, which is immediately occupied by the criminal subculture.
These are common sources feeding the criminal subculture. In special educational and correctional institutions, several other reasons and conditions operate in addition, and perhaps in parallel. Scientists are trying to explain the reasons for the emergence of a criminal subculture, as well as the division of minors and youth in closed institutions into castes, based on various hypotheses. One of these hypotheses is influence of thieves' traditions. Of course, the role of these traditions cannot be underestimated. It is difficult to fight them, since they are not only conservative, but also mobile, capable of transforming, taking on a modern look under the influence of fashion and changing modern conditions. The strength of thieves' traditions lies in their emotional appeal and contagiousness, in maximum consideration age characteristics minors with their craving for risk, romance, mystery and unusualness. Therefore, among minors and young people, especially those who are fully or partially deprived of freedom, criminal traditions revive and spread faster than among adult criminals.
At the same time, it should be borne in mind that the majority of minors and youth who adhere to criminal traditions do not know their true meaning. Therefore, when organizing groups, they are forced to create these traditions themselves. Here the “role” of “tips” from among adults or “experienced” people is great. Along with many similar rules of behavior adopted among juvenile offenders, each special school, each special vocational school and technical college, as well as the reception center have their own norms and values. So local “rule-making” appears, proceeding through common socio-psychological mechanisms, both in socially positive and criminal groups of minors.
It would be wrong to explain the reasons and conditions for the emergence of a criminal subculture in special educational institutions, colonies and reception centers only by the action of criminal traditions. These reasons are also not so much psychological (age) and socio-psychological (group), but social nature. The social nature of the criminal subculture in these institutions and its relationship with crime is evidenced by the fact that many of the elements of this subculture (group stratification, norms, functions, traditions, jargon, tattoos, etc.) are common in the criminal environment and in the free world. They can be transferred to closed educational and correctional institutions. The social nature of the “other life” and its connection with crime is manifested in the fact that the contingent of convicts in correctional institutions, students in special schools and special vocational schools, so to speak, “deteriorates” in criminological indicators. This contributes to the intensive development of the criminal subculture.
The desire not to notice the phenomena of “another life” in military-technical complexes, special schools, special vocational schools, in the army, or to deny the possibility of their occurrence for reasons of falsely understood prestige causes serious social harm. The criminal subculture arises in connection with the incomplete inclusion of a person in social culture, the dissatisfaction of not only his elementary, but also higher needs. It is a “field” of self-affirmation of an individual who has not received recognition or is dissatisfied with his social role in the system of official relations.
The criminal subculture helps such a person to realize himself. The model for him is often a “lump”, a “businessman” who thrives on unearned income, making a living from the resale of video cassettes, tape recorders, and branded items. This corrupts a certain part of teenagers and young people, forms in them consumerism, a cult of things and pleasures. In the criminal subculture, interaction is manifested, and, for the time being, mutual support, psychological and physical protection, etc. The same socio-psychological mechanisms operate in it as in the system of official relations (imitation, suggestion, infection, competition, rivalry). But they are filled with the specific content of the criminal subculture.
There is an opinion that one of the reasons for the emergence of “another life” is the separation of youth and adults in special educational institutions and colonies by gender. In the absence of persons of the opposite sex, due to age characteristics among minors, a division of adolescents into active and passive homosexuals can easily arise. However, as noted above, homosexuality among adolescents is also common in the open. In addition, homosexuality in special and correctional institutions is not so much a means of satisfying sexual needs as a way of affirming some (“hillocks”) and overthrowing others (“bottoms”). This phenomenon is reflected in group norms and rules. Persons who performed sexual acts as passive partners are relegated to the “lower classes.”
Other sexual perversions, the so-called “fetish homosexuality” (picked up the “bull” from the floor in the toilet, washed with soap, which the “bump” used to wash the genitals), oral satisfaction of sexual needs, etc., are also used as a means of reprisal against the unwanted, their overthrow. . Let's give an example. IDN worker Khudakov interviewed Zhenya T. about the reasons for his escape from the Moscow special school for children in need of special educational conditions. He pointed out that the “bump” forced him to pick up cigarette butts in the toilet, tried to knock his teeth out on his knees, and then at night the teenagers urinated on his bed. The other “mound” forced me to take his penis into my mouth. Subsequently, acts of sodomy began to be systematically carried out on Zhenya. That's why he constantly ran away from school. Here we see a whole system of discrediting a teenager.
Only in some special schools, special vocational schools, and technical colleges such phenomena do not occur. In them, the energy of adolescents and young people is switched to various types of socially useful activities (the principle of sublimation is used). In addition, in these institutions, friendly, humane relations among minors and young people are formed and maintained, facts of mockery of the individual are strictly suppressed. The author wrote about the need to humanize relations among minors back in 1979. It is believed that one of the sources and causes of the criminal subculture is mutual aggression of minors in closed institutions.
Nowadays we often learn from periodicals about unmotivated crimes committed by aggressive people with particular cruelty and sophistication. There are various theories explaining this phenomenon (biological, social, psychological), which deserve separate consideration. Here we will turn to the problem of aggression of minors and youth in closed institutions within the framework of the criminal subculture.
The emergence of mutual aggression in the criminal environment “in the zone” is influenced not so much by the very fact of isolation of adolescents and youth from society, but by its combination with punishment, based on the interpersonal system into which minors and youth are included against their will. A teenager or young man who finds himself in a closed special institution experiences a state of frustration (breakdown of life plans), which generates tension and stress. He becomes increasingly aggressive, suspicious, distrustful, quarrelsome, and conflictual.
Here, psychological, moral and criminal incompatibility arises more easily and quickly than in freedom; in this case, adolescents and young people take the most drastic measures to protect their “I”.
Sending a minor to these institutions means for him a situation of pressure caused by strong environmental pressure on his personality. This situation can distort her behavior, causing conformist behavior or retaliatory aggression.
Staying in these institutions creates serious consequences for minors and young offenders. traumatic situation, characterized by the destruction of previous connections, social circle, support from friends, as well as the need to live in a foreign environment. This situation inevitably activates the psychological defense mechanism (searching for friends, fellow countrymen, accomplices, etc.), as well as methods for relieving mental trauma.
In addition, it is known that being in closed institutions makes you act more intensively imitation mechanisms(contagiousness) caused by the behavior patterns of more experienced people around them, who know how to show resourcefulness and get along “well” by exploiting and oppressing newcomers and the weak.
Deprived of the opportunity to habitually satisfy a number of basic needs (choose food and diet, move freely, freely choose a form of leisure, etc.), constantly under the control of other adolescents (young men), checking what he is capable of, expecting imaginary, and Often and real, punitive claims from the administration, a teenager or young man is forced to seek measures of protection. One of these measures is the unification of minors and youth into informal groups. It seems to a teenager and young man that he will not stand out in these groups and thus will attract less attention from the administration and educators. He thinks that there are always more experienced people in the group who will help him choose a behavior strategy. In addition, the teenager or young man believes that the group will not betray him to the administration and will support him in case of claims from other groups.
Thus, in the criminal subculture, minors and young people unite in groups where mutual support and psychological protection begin to appear, and other socio-psychological mechanisms are put into action.
It should be noted that the processes considered occur not only among teenagers and young people in closed educational and correctional institutions, but also in Kazan “winders”, Almaty “gangs” and “offices” in other cities. The “street” is becoming more and more hostile for teenagers and young men; danger awaits them everywhere in the form of aggression from “offices” and “gangs” from neighboring neighborhoods or “strays” (visitors from other settlements).
By uniting, teenagers and young men feel their strength and superiority. If you try to divide such a group, it will resist by strengthening intra-group solidarity, setting a common goal that unites all its members, transferring aggression to one of them, creating its own norms, values, and conventions based on informal connections that specifically regulate relations in the group.
Resolving your aggression by speaking out against the administration of a closed educational and correctional institution (representatives of law enforcement agencies and the public at large) is risky. There remains one object - his own comrade (convicted in the military technical complex, studying in a special school or special vocational school, and a teenager from a neighboring block or house is free).
However, mutual aggression among their own kind leads to chaos, which cannot last long.
Therefore, minors and young people try to organize interpersonal relationships in such a way that aggression itself becomes regulated by certain unwritten rules and norms. Among young people, such codification takes place much faster. Adolescents and young people adhere more readily to established group rules. The same can be said about mutual support, called “nashism”: if “our people are beaten,” in this case the group comes to their defense, without thinking about the causes of the conflict and the guilt of the parties.
“A variant of “nashism” is “hazing.” The ideal structure of the hierarchy: at the head is a professional (company commander, foreman); behind him are our real people - demobilization. Next are our second and third ranks (grandfathers, elders, etc.). And in "at the base of the hierarchy are powerless young men who can be mocked by the most worthless grandfather. But when confronted with strangers, especially civilians, the slogan “they are beating ours” sounds, and even demobilization stands up for the honor of their uniform, and the godfather covers them."
These are some of the origins and mechanisms of the emergence of the criminal subculture, its norms and rules that determine the behavior of hierarchical groups, individual teenagers and young people. All of them operate on the basis of age-related emancipation, the desire for age-related independence. Thus, in the criminal subculture, mutual punishment (aggression) and mutual support are transformed into a strictly ordered system of punishment and pleasure. This system allows those at the top level of the group hierarchy to receive certain unofficial advantages that ease the pressure of isolation and separation from home, family and friends while in a closed institution. In freedom, this system provides such a teenager with certain guarantees of personal protection in his immediate environment.
Consequently, two directly opposite mechanisms act on the formation of a criminal subculture:
1. A mechanism for an individual to seek psychological and physical protection in a new environment, including protection from the administration of a closed institution (at large - from law enforcement agencies) and hostile youth groups;
2. The mechanism of mutual aggression of community members, mutual punishment and oppression of the weak for the sake of their own satisfaction and aggrandizement.
From the above we can conclude that the main socio-psychological measures prevention of criminal subculture are:
creation of reliable psychological protection for every teenager and young person (both in closed correctional and educational institutions, and at the place of residence);
the formation in all institutions for minors (schools and vocational schools, special schools and special vocational schools) as well as in the military and technical complex of socially valuable traditions that could compete with asocial and prison traditions and displace them;
maximum humanization of the teenage population based on universal human ideals of benevolence, compassion, mercy, and justice;
stimulation of official independent rule-making activities of minors and youth, which would regulate their interpersonal relationships and behavior, life in educational, educational and correctional institutions.
In a previously published work, based on the party-class approach that was instilled at that time, the author was forced to write that “other life” became widespread in correctional institutions for minors and young offenders only in capitalist countries, often taking precedence over official life, which allegedly contributed to the exploitative system of class relations that permeates these institutions. The division into “strata” occurs there due to the class inequality of juvenile offenders. “Being in the grip of class contradictions,” the author wrote, “bourgeois society cannot eliminate “other life,” no matter what measures it takes, since such a society cannot eliminate exploitative class relations.”
Further, the author was forced to write that supposedly in institutions for juvenile offenders in socialist countries, “another life” has no class-economic basis, just as crime has no class-economic roots.”
In a work published at that time, the author said that the labor of minors in our institutions is regulated by labor legislation. Does not allow teenagers to be involved in work that is harmful to health. But in fact, the existing legislation concerning minors and youth is hopelessly outdated. In addition, in special schools, special vocational schools and technical colleges, it is constantly violated “due to production needs.”
In practice, adolescents are involved in work that is harmful to health or work that causes a persistent negative reaction in them, for example, in the manufacture of containers, handles for hammers, handles for shovels, etc. Often they have to move loads weighing more than the norm established for them. Not everyone is involved in work. This work is not always paid according to its quantity and quality. Therefore, minors leaving special schools and special vocational schools and being released from the military technical complex often cannot earn enough for themselves at least for the first time of their life in freedom and are forced to again take the path of crime.
Minors are also unequal before the law. The financial situation of the family, level of education, nationality and religion also influence. As an example, we talked about the explosion of nationalist passions and the suffering of non-indigenous teenagers subjected to oppression in different regions countries. All this requires the development of a scientific approach to the study of the causes of the emergence of a criminal subculture among minors and young people and ways to overcome it, moving away from the party-class principle.
As we see, the party-class approach to the problem leads the researcher into a dead end, ignoring objective reality. The criminal subculture is widespread in our country, not only in closed educational and correctional institutions, but also beyond its borders in the criminalized adolescent and youth environment and in the army. It permeates all spheres of life in society, which has become essentially a criminal society. In closed institutions, the criminal subculture is only more clearly expressed and more clearly defined organizationally.
For many years, we overestimated the role of the student body, referring to the experience of A.S. Makarenko, forgetting that it was a different time and a different situation. By creating October stars, pioneer squads, and Komsomol groups at school, we ourselves cultivated leaderism, a cult of personality, from which it is one step to “hazing” and “bulgerism.” In this regard, the idea is true that “a team, if it exists long enough, will necessarily strive to become a corporation. The idea generator or coordinator will sooner or later become leaders. A cult of personality will appear. The team will acquire a rigid structure, only subordinates and executors will appear. By creating a children's team, we introduce the gene of corporate associations, the gene of hazing.Hazing is instilled by us, adults, from the first grade.
When we create “stars” and give children a 7-9 year old child as a leader, who does not know what leadership is and does not own the means of leadership, he begins to perform the functions of a leader. If we start creating children's groups before that age, when children are ready for them, we provoke children to develop corporate tendencies in them - tendencies towards violence, towards unaccountable power." And power is one of the most powerful drugs.
Of course, the vitality of the criminal subculture is influenced by the violation of the principles of social justice, the collapse of social ideals among young people, mistakes in working with minors, misunderstanding of the characteristics of their age (in totalitarian conditions this is impossible), the desire for communication and grouping for the purposes of self-expression and self-affirmation. But all this is secondary. The primary ones, as we have argued, are the root (social and economic) reasons. The criminal subculture is a copy of the “socialist” culture that was created in the country after the revolution, its mirror image. A totalitarian society gave the country totalitarian crime, in which there was a place for minors and youth, their criminal groups, gangs and gangs.
5. Structure of the criminal subcultureThe question of the structure of the criminal subculture is one of the most complex and intractable. By analogy with general culture, we can distinguish the material and spiritual spheres (elements) of the criminal subculture. But this division is not specific. We proceed from the fact that a criminal subculture is a certain level of development of the life of criminal communities, expressed in the types and forms of their organization, the activities of members of these communities, as well as in the material and spiritual values they create.
Like human culture as a whole, the criminal subculture contains not only substantive performance results criminal communities and their members (instruments and methods of committing a crime, material assets, etc.), but also subjective human strengths and abilities implemented in the process of criminal activity. This includes knowledge and skills, professional criminal skills and habits that offenders develop in criminal activity; their level of intellectual development, aesthetic needs, ethical views, worldview, forms and methods of mutual communication within these communities and beyond; methods of resolving disputes and conflicts, managing criminal communities, etc.
Criminal communities have their own mythology, privileges for individual members, tastes, certain ways of spending leisure time, forms of relationships with “friends” and “strangers”, persons of the opposite sex, etc.
Paradoxically, the primitive life of criminal communities is so diverse and has so many spheres of influence that it is impossible to describe all the elements of the criminal subculture in one book.
Therefore, in the narrow sense of the word, a criminal subculture represents a special spiritual area of a community of people - criminal groups, gangs, gangs. It contains criminal ideology, certain ethical norms and values, aesthetic attitudes and needs, mythology, tastes, preferences that determine the daily life and everyday life of offenders and their communities.
Criminal ideology - This is the system of concepts and ideas that has developed in the group consciousness of minors and young criminals, their “philosophy” that justifies and encourages a criminal lifestyle and the commission of crimes, removes the psychological and moral barriers that a person must overcome in order to commit a crime. Currently, the ideas of gangsterism predominate in criminal ideology. The presence of a criminal ideology is the main condition for launching mechanisms of self-justification and denial of responsibility.
In the criminal environment of minors and youth, various ways of self-justification, explained by a variety of motives. The most common denial of responsibility is when a teenager or young man refers to the compulsion of his actions, committing them against his will. Thus, persons who committed hooliganism and caused grievous bodily harm justified their actions by saying that they were offended, insulted, or disrespected. This allegedly prompted them to retaliate in order to teach the “offenders” a lesson. In this case, in the human mind, base motives are replaced by noble and sublime ones, which seem to justify the immoral and illegal behavior of the offender and his group.
Self-justification is widespread in youth criminal groups ideas of collectivism, camaraderie, “nashism”. In this case, it is customary to refer to the fact that members of a criminal group acted “for company”, defended a comrade, as if this were enough to relieve themselves of responsibility. This behavior is often observed in the so-called territorial gangs, “offices,” when resolving territorial disputes.
The motive for removing responsibility is idea of kinship, friendship, which allegedly prompted the teenager to stand up for a peer (for example, in group hooliganism, in interethnic conflicts and showdowns).
The motive for self-justification can be vendetta (revenge), individual (for an “offense”) and group (wall to wall). Here's an example. Two girls from Volzhsk took off the sneakers of their Volgograd counterpart. Revenge was not long in coming. “On both sides, more than three hundred young men and... girls armed with stones, nunchucks and knives took part in the fight.”
In criminal ideology, an important place is occupied by the attitude towards guilt. By denying responsibility, a person thereby denies guilt. Self-defense associated with partial denial of responsibility and guilt. They reason like this: “Yes, I’m guilty, but not so guilty that they’ll put me in prison.”
The motive of “sovereignty” plays an increasingly important role in the self-justification of group criminal behavior: the inviolability of the territory (neighborhood, street, etc.) where the group is “registered,” as well as the spheres of criminal activity in which the criminal community is occupied. Protecting the territorial interests of the group from invasion by “outsiders” is the sacred duty of every member of the community.
Nowadays, criminal groups often arm themselves. And the idea of self-justification immediately appeared: “Everyone is arming themselves, but why shouldn’t I (we)?” idea weapons for self-defense There is also the opinion that if citizens do not arm themselves, it will be difficult to protect themselves from criminals. This idea is fueled by separatist tendencies and rampant nationalism - the creation of “self-defense units to protect sovereignty.” The decree of the President of the country on the voluntary surrender of weapons and the disarmament of illegal armed groups does not help in the fight against this phenomenon. The manufacture and acquisition of weapons, their carrying and use for criminal purposes has become a craze. The presence of firearms in a group is important psychological aspect, since group consciousness and group well-being change significantly. Firstly, there is a feeling of superiority over others, a feeling of strength. Second, there is an impulse to immediately demonstrate this power. Thirdly, the matter does not end with just a demonstration; teenagers tend to move directly from words to action (the use of weapons). Therefore, if a group has a weapon, it will definitely use it.
When sorting out relations with other groups, they use grenade launchers, mines and time bombs. Everything is like in the West. And these terrorist acts are justified.
It should be noted that the transition to a market economy contributed to the further development ideas of enrichment in the criminal world. It is hidden under the guise of entrepreneurship and the transition to market relations. Thefts, thefts, and the subsequent “laundering” of money accumulated by criminal means become an important ideological, so to speak, attitude in criminal communities. Here are the protective motives for this attitude: “You need to be able to make money,” “Money is lying on the floor, you need to be able to pick it up and put it into circulation.”
Among teenagers and young people, there are also ideological attitudes towards self-justification of the old type, the period of general theft, called “non-Sunism”. “I took something that would have been lost anyway” or “Why should good things go to waste.” Partial admission of guilt is often associated with an appeal to others: “Officials steal more and nothing else”, denial of the harm of the actions committed (when a “badly” stored item or value is appropriated).
In the ideological attitudes of criminal groups and individual offenders, there is a violation of the logical connection between actions and consequences. It must be said that the objective basis for such an idea in a criminal environment is the situation of general ruin, global “rip-off”, “privatization”, loss of a sense of responsibility for state property. This is especially fertile ground for teenagers and young adults.
In the criminal ideology of criminal communities of youth and minors, self-justification can also manifest itself in moving the center of gravity from misconduct on the motivation for the violations committed.“I wanted to do the best, but it turned out completely different...” (research by V.A. Eleonsky, A.R. Ratinov, etc.). Of course, such a criminal-ideological approach is more often characteristic of juvenile delinquents and youth with mental retardation.
In the group consciousness of criminal communities of minors and youth, the idea of self-justification can also take on even more cynical forms: opposition, boasting about one’s illegal actions and one’s past (research by G.G. Bochkareva, A.S. Mikhlin, V.F. Pirozhkov). Often, such behavior is necessary for the self-affirmation of a minor and a young person in a criminal environment in general and in a specific group.
The presence of protective motives in the group consciousness of offenders complicates preventive work, not to mention the re-education of adolescents and young people, because in this case, a conflict arises between the teacher (law enforcement officer) and the teenager (young man). psychological barrier, making the latter insensitive to other views, beliefs, and ideological attitudes.
Knowing the essence of criminal ideology, attention should be paid to ensuring that offenders realize the illegality of their actions, admit guilt and repent of the crime committed. Unfortunately, society as a whole is not ready for this, for universal repentance. It is no coincidence that the judicial audience often shows sympathy and pity for criminals, demanding their forgiveness.
It does not help to overcome criminal ideology and another stereotype that exists in the public consciousness and is associated with the demand for tougher criminal penalties and the prevention of refusal to death penalty in criminal law.
The criminal subculture is also associated with defects in the legal consciousness of minors, youth, their criminal groups, she “feeds” on it. Let's name the main defects. In spontaneous, territorial criminal formations one can encounter such a defect as legal ignorance - ignorance of certain legal prohibitions by some adolescents and young people. Experienced leaders of criminal groups often deliberately keep them in the dark. The prevalence of this defect is evidenced by the results of the legal knowledge of adolescents who have committed offenses. It turned out that more than 70% of them did not have a clear idea of the criminal liability of their actions. When asked whether they would have committed their illegal acts if they knew that they could be prosecuted, the majority answered in the negative.
Of course, retrospective studies of pre-criminal and criminal behavior are subject to significant bias and do not accurately reflect reality. One teenager would actually not commit a crime, another would commit crimes with significant hesitation, and a third - without hesitation. If these crimes were committed in a group, the picture could be completely different. It is important to remember that at the time of the interview (in hindsight) it was important for them to justify the crime committed by anything, at least ignorance of the laws. This is necessary both for your own peace of mind and to look better in the eyes of others. There is a mechanism at work here. psychological defense and self-justification, which were mentioned above.
However, it should be noted that legal ignorance most often arises due to the lack of proper legal information when legal education is at a low level. This is evidenced by the sources from which adolescents and young people draw legal information and the shortcomings of legal education (see Table 6).
Table 6
Assessment of the legal education system operating in vocational schools
Legal ignorance and distortion of legal information received by adolescents and young people lead to the formation of a defective legal consciousness and are fraught with serious social consequences.
First of all, the lack of information is compensated speculation (legal misinformation, according to M.M. Babaev, 1987) i.e. false, distorted information about the operation of law and the activities of law enforcement agencies, as well as measures to combat crime.
The group legal consciousness of criminal communities of minors and youth is fueled by dubious sources that undermine the faith of the younger generation in the inviolability of law and order in the country. Fertile ground here is created by rampant crime, instability of legal acts, and their lag from the realities of today. Under these conditions, it is not difficult to mislead even people experienced in matters of law.
This is an interesting feature of the legal ignorance of minors and youth in criminal groups. There are always “experts” and “interpreters” of the laws here, most often these are persons released from the military-technical complex or those who have returned from special educational institutions. They become “teachers” in the field of law and order for minors and youth.
Ultimately, legal ignorance, lack of legal information, and legal misinformation corrupt group consciousness, undermine faith in the rule of law and the triumph of justice, and in the inevitability of social responsibility. This is exactly what those who instill the norms and values of the criminal subculture need.
In functional criminal groups, the sphere of organized and professional crime, we encounter the opposite phenomenon - high legal awareness members of criminal groups. In such groups there are experts in the laws. They often use the services of legal consultations, have their own lawyers, study newly adopted laws, and certainly find workarounds in them that allow them to fearlessly commit crimes and evade criminal punishment. This is especially true for crimes committed in the economic sphere and illegal acts of persons under the age of criminal responsibility.
From the above, we can conclude that minors and young offenders cannot be considered ignorant of criminal law norms and do not follow changes in the field of criminal law in the country. It is no coincidence that the ban on the sale of wine and vodka products to persons under the age of 21 gave rise to a whole series of ways to “circumvent” this ban and, as a result, turned out to be ineffective.
This means that in criminal groups of minors and youth, everyone is an expert in criminal law. There are teenagers and young people with pronounced social and legal infantilism, indifferent not only to the rules of law, but also to the norms of morality, not knowing and not being able to observe social and legal prohibitions. Due to social irresponsibility, they do not suffer from remorse for the crimes they have committed and do not feel guilty. Social infantilism is a fertile ground for training from the “lower classes” individuals who take responsibility and shield the leaders of criminal groups.
The following defect in the individual and group legal consciousness of minors and youth is lack of legal culture. It happens that a teenager or young man agrees with the requirements of legal norms, is convinced of the need to comply with them, but violates them due to the lack of legal culture and habits of law-abiding behavior. The lack of legal culture manifests itself first in administrative offenses, and then in criminal offenses. The leaders of criminal groups take advantage of the lack of legal culture among teenagers and young people, keeping them in criminal gangs and gangs. Typically, the methods used here are blackmail, intimidation, “covering up” (compromising) the guys, threatening to hand them over to the police if they try to leave the criminal community, demanding to “pay off” with money or property. The lack of legal culture among frightened teenagers is expressed in the fact that they do not know and do not know how to find the necessary protection and help. This is often done not only by teenagers, but also by adults, for example, businessmen, bankers, who do not report threats and persecution of them by racketeers, fearing responsibility for not always correct relations with the law.
However, the greatest influence on the group legal consciousness of minors and youth in criminal communities is exerted by socio-legal nihilism (negativism), expressed in a distorted understanding of legal norms, laws, disagreement with them, and an incorrect assessment of moral and legal prohibitions. Socio-legal nihilism manifests itself in active immoral behavior and violation of legal prohibitions. It arises due to the discrepancy between the demands of society and the group and personal interests of criminal communities. Most often this is the result of an incorrect assessment of the relationship between the personal (group) and the public. With social and legal negativism, a person is prone to self-justification by referring to others and their incorrect behavior.
The thirst for self-affirmation in the immediate environment causes adolescents and young people to strive at all costs to prove their superiority over others by any means, including illegal ones. It is clear that in groups of nihilists a microclimate develops that sets them up for illegal behavior.
The deepest defect of individual and group legal consciousness in the criminal environment is social and legal cynicism. It manifests itself in the denial of the significance of any prohibitions, a tendency towards anarchy, and an active immoral and illegal position. Such people believe that they are their own legislators. They do not need to justify their behavior to anyone, since it is the only acceptable one for them.
Thus, in a criminal environment, a special group legal consciousness is developing as an element of its criminal subculture. Defects of legal consciousness are more often aggravated defects of group moral consciousness, consisting in the presence of antisocial views, principles, habits.
Recently, certain trends have emerged in the ethical views of criminal groups of minors and youth.
1. Some criminal communities are moving to operating on the edge of the law in order to prevent law enforcement agencies from persecuting them. They believe that there is no point in, for example, engaging in open racketeering, taking hostages, demanding ransom and exposing themselves to danger. After all, you can do it differently: agree with the businessmen that the group will take their store under protection, and they are obliged to include one of its group members in their composition. He will only be listed in the “clump” and receive a salary. It is not difficult to convince businessmen that it is better to pay tribute and be protected than to be attacked by “wild” racketeers.
2. “Renting over” certain “points”, “squares” and “routes” to other criminals (farmers, Christian mongers, thimble mongers, speculators, prostitutes, etc.), who must pay tribute to a certain criminal group for this.
4. The increasing bitterness of a number of criminal communities, their violation of all existing ethical views, attitudes, and values not only in society, but also in the criminal environment. Here, first of all, the human life of others is devalued, hostage-taking and violence are justified. Torture of victims of criminal attacks becomes the ethical norm of these groups, characterizing their appearance.
In general, there are many conventions in the ethical views of criminal groups. for example, oaths, curses, hierarchy, etc. They ensure the integrity and cohesion of criminal groups, strictly regulate the behavior of their members, relationships with “friends” and “strangers”.
The criminal subculture has developed its own aesthetic tastes, priorities, values. First of all, this concerns the concept of a “beautiful life”, the components of which are considered visiting prestigious Restaurants, having “your” girls, sex and pornography, fashionable clothes, music, having a car (“cars”), applying a certain type of tattoo, mastery of jargon, etc. .P.
However, in the field of criminal aesthetics there is a variety of trends. The aesthetic priorities of traditional thieves in law are fundamentally different from the aesthetic tastes of spontaneous groups of criminals. Separately, we need to talk about prison aesthetics. In the youth criminal environment, as well as in the environment of law-abiding teenagers and young men, the laws of fashion for lifestyle, leisure time, clothing and shoes, music and sports, etc. apply. Fashion also works in places of social isolation. Unfortunately, the aesthetic priorities and values of the youth criminal world have not been deeply studied since the 1920s.
All ideological, legal, ethical and aesthetic elements of the criminal subculture appear in unity and interconnection. For example, tattoos and jargon necessarily act as an ethical, aesthetic and ideological value, a “common pot” - as the economic base of criminal groups, etc. But they can still be classified:
1. Behavioral attributes to which we include “laws”, rules and traditions of “another life”, oaths and curses. All of them act as regulators of the actions and behavior of adolescents and young people.
2. Stratification-stigmative elements, allowing the “top” to divide minors and youth into hierarchical groups, in accordance with the position they occupy, and “tag” (brand) each of them. These elements include “registration” as a way of stratifying minors and youth, nicknames, tattoos, privileges for certain individuals as a way of stigmatizing them;
3. Communication attributes(tattoos, nicknames, criminal jargon), acting as a means of communication, interpersonal and intergroup interaction;
4. Economic attributes(“common pot” and principles of material mutual assistance), which are the material basis of criminal groups, their unification and further criminalization;
5. Sexual and erotic values - special treatment of persons of the opposite sex, sexual perversion, prostitution, pornography, eroticism, homosexuality;
6. A special attitude towards your health - from simulating illnesses, self-harm as a way to achieve certain benefits, to playing sports, “pumping up” muscles, strict adherence to a lifestyle and diet;
7. Alcoholism, use of narcotic and toxic substances as a means of “unifying” criminal communities, self-affirmation of adolescents and young people in their immediate environment.
From the above we can draw the following conclusions:
Firstly, many attributes of the criminal subculture multifunctional.
For example, a tattoo is simultaneously a symbolic system of communication, a means of stigmatization and decoration; nicknames - a verbal system of communication, a means of stigmatization and self-affirmation; homosexuality - as an independent sexual value, as a means of stratification, punishment of the enemy - lowering his status through sodomy (for women this leads to an increase in status); self-harm as an indicator of masculinity and a means of achieving personal moral and material benefits, self-affirmation, etc.
Secondly, the above classification of the attributes of a criminal subculture is to a certain extent conditional, of a working nature, allowing us to model the elements of a given subculture for a more in-depth and comprehensive study. With a different approach, the same tattoos would have to be studied when studying criminal ideology and when studying the ethical and aesthetic views of criminal groups, etc.
Thirdly, all of the listed elements of the criminal subculture are reflected differently in personality psychology a minor and a young person, in his behavior, as well as the life of the group (gang, gang, etc.). Knowing the group’s commitment to certain values, attitudes, and conventions, it is possible to predict with sufficient reliability the behavior of the group and each of its members, which is very important for preventive work and for operational purposes. If, for example, a group has developed attitudes that deny “wet dealing” as a way of getting rich (i.e. the group is opposed to killing its victims), then if a “wet case” is discovered in its area of activity, it can be assumed that another gang was operating here ( gang), “substituting” this criminal group for law enforcement agencies.
Morgunov Sergey Vasilievich, candidate of legal sciences, senior researcher of the research and editorial publishing department of the Tyumen Institute for Advanced Training of Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation [email protected]
Sociopsychological determinants of recidivism
Abstract. The article is devoted to the problems of the emergence of determinants of recidivism at the socio-psychological level. The author reveals these problems from the perspective of the different influence of microsocial groups (family, work collective, everyday and informal environment) on the formation of criminogenic motivation of a recidivist depending on his age. Key words: socio-psychological level, recidivist, family desocialization, everyday environment, work collective, informal leisure environment , determinants of recidivism.
Repeat offenders, after being released from prison, lose some professional skills and are faced with changed working conditions (changes in the technological process, remuneration, work hours, labor discipline requirements, etc.). As a result of a survey of people with previous convictions, it was found that every second person (48.6%) was denied employment due to a previous conviction. All this leads to psychological discomfort, on the basis of which emotional breakdowns occur. Due to their low educational and moral level, repeat offenders try to relieve psychological stress by drinking alcohol, drugs, absenteeism, and frequently moving from one place of work to another. Avoiding problems in the work collective in such marginal ways does not contribute to a repeat offender’s respectful attitude towards work. Persons in this category during the adaptation period after being hired very often develop difficult interpersonal relationships with the employer and other members of the work team. In addition to low labor qualifications, during the first time after being hired, a significant role is played by the factor of the repeat offender’s past criminal record, which puts the employer on guard and sometimes forces him to play it safe, not trust the new employee, and also entrust control over him to long-term team members. Excessive guardianship and distrust of a repeat offender who has gotten a job does not contribute to the development of a positive attitude towards this person’s employer. In the speedy socialization of a person who has previously been convicted, interpersonal relationships between him and the employees of the work collective play an important role. Currently, the educational role of the workforce has been reduced to a minimum. The environment in which a repeat offender works consists not only of working conditions, but also the behavior of other workers during working and non-working hours. In conditions where there is unskilled, low-paid heavy physical labor, a working repeat offender is usually surrounded by workers with a socially marginal attitude, who drink alcohol, have low professional qualifications, and do not strive to improve their professional level. Scandals and quarrels break out between these employees due to alcohol abuse, in which repeat offenders often become participants, which ultimately leads to the commission of crimes. Very often, work collectives, where there are positive, established traditions, reject people who have previously been convicted and are trying to establish relationships in a new workplace, since the educational process is very labor-intensive and is not paid by the employer, and therefore most experienced workers refuse mentoring. According to our research, after release, only 39.4% of recidivists returned to their old work collectives, and the majority of this contingent - 60.6% - tried to join the new labor collective. The difficulty of adapting a repeat offender to the work team leads to emotional breakdowns, which are very often accompanied by conflicts, abuse of alcohol, drugs, and an indifferent attitude towards work, which leads to frequent job changes. All this negatively affects the consciousness of the recidivist and ultimately causes the commission of repeated crimes. In an informal leisure environment, relationships arise between people, to maintain which they use time free from work and other social responsibilities. Informal communication occupies a significant place in the life of a recidivist, and this is confirmed by our research; more than half (51.2%) of recidivists spent their free time in the sphere of non-family relationships, that is, in an informal setting. When there are insoluble problems that arise in family, everyday and work life, the recidivist satisfies the need for communication and other human needs in an informal environment. Sometimes the informal environment remains the last place of socialization for him, completely absorbing the entire time the repeat offender is free.
In the case of a negative impact of the informal leisure environment, a partial or complete blocking of the positive influence from the family, neighbors, and work collective occurs in relation to the repeat offender. Our study found that they spent time in an informal setting for the following purposes: drinking - 4.8% of repeat offenders, physical idleness - 1.6%, visiting friends - 16.2%, being on the street - 8.9%, being in a cafe -4.0%, aimless stay at large -9.7% and visiting entertainment establishments -0.4% of repeat offenders, in total -45.6%. Almost half of recidivists, while free, prefer to lead an idle, aimless lifestyle, accompanied by drinking alcohol, using drugs, promiscuous sex, consuming low mass culture, orgies, drinking bouts, and physical idleness. The informal leisure environment of a recidivist is closely related to the criminal subculture, of which he is the bearer. The role of criminal traditions and customs not only maintains the stability and continuity of repeat crimes, but is also a moral and spiritual justification for the antisocial lifestyle of a repeat offender. Together with the criminal subculture, the informal leisure environment accelerates the production by recidivists of a wide variety of forms of antisocial behavior at the level of socio-psychological determination of recidivism. At a young age, the family has both negative and positive influence on the recidivist; it almost completely dominates the influence of other small social groups (schools, streets, neighbors). In adolescence, the consciousness of a recidivist is increasingly negatively influenced by the informal environment, alienating him from the positive influence of family, school, and neighbors. In adulthood and up to 25 years of age, the recidivist is almost completely influenced by the informal environment, giving him some isolation and independence from his family, neighbors and work collective. At a more mature age, a recidivist tries to establish positive relationships with his family and work environment, but he often fails to do this due to criminal habits and customs deeply rooted in his mind, which lead him to frequent psychological breakdowns during the period of social adaptation. In this regard, the informal leisure environment in which a repeat offender can feel relatively comfortable and be accepted by other people comes to the fore. The different degrees of negative influence of small social groups, depending on the age of the recidivist, determine at the socio-psychological level the determination of recidivism in his juvenile, minor and adult age. Thus, at the socio-psychological level, the determinants of recidivism, on the one hand, will be the difficulties of post-penitentiary adaptation of recidivists in microsocial groups (family, work or school groups, everyday and informal environment), leading to a complete loss of the status of a member of these groups and facilitating the acquisition of membership in informal criminogenic environment, on the other hand, a decrease in anti-criminogenic potential on the part of positive microsocial groups.
Links to sources 1. Shesler A.V., Smolina T.A. Female crime associated with illegal drug trafficking (based on materials from the Tyumen region): monograph. Tyumen: Tyum. legal int Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, 2007. 185 p. 2. Prozumentov L.M., Shesler A.V. Criminology. General part: textbook. allowance. Krasnoyarsk, 1997. 256 pp. 3. Andrienko E.V. Social psychology: textbook. aid for students higher ped. textbook institutions / ed. V.A. Slastenina. 3rd ed., erased. M.: Academy, 2004. 264 pp. 4. Criminology: textbook / ed. V.N. Kudryavtseva, V.E. Eminova. –5th ed., revised. And additional M.: Norma: INFRAM, 2015. 800 p. 5. Artemenko N.V., Magomedov M.A. Some problems of preventing recidivism in the Russian Federation // Eurasian Scientific Association. 2016. No. 2 (14).P. 4850.6.
Kim E.P., Romanov G.A. Prevention of domestic crimes by internal affairs bodies: lecture. M.: Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, 1989. 32 p. 7. Lebedev S.Ya. Antisocial traditions, customs and their impact on crime: tutorial. Omsk: Omsk Higher School of Police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, 1989. 72 p.
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CRIMINAL SUBCULTURE OF YOUTH
criminal subculture youth
Recently, the problem of child and youth crime has become increasingly acute. In modern society, there is a tendency to deform the moral and social norms of society, cultivate asocial attitudes and stereotypes among young people, and form a special deviant and criminal subculture of youth society.
Subculture is a set of values and practices accumulated by a group of people, united by specific interests that determine their worldview, accumulated by a certain worldview. Subculture is a sovereign integral formation, part of public culture. From the point of view of cultural studies, a subculture is such associations of people that do not contradict the values of traditional culture, but complement it.
The criminal subculture of youth is a way of life of minors and young people united in criminal groups. It is the main mechanism of criminalization of the youth environment and differs from the usual teenage subculture in its asocial and criminal content; pronounced totalitarian ways of influencing people’s behavior; closedness from teachers and adults; the presence of strict criminal morality and sanctions; orderliness and systematization of the status-role behavior of its participants.
Places of operation (entrances of houses, basements, attics, remote public gardens, individual buildings and places) are called “parties” in the jargon of young people. Party is a pastime that involves communicating with friends, exchanging information, drinking together, and antisocial behavior.
The emergence and development of a criminal subculture is based on a complex of multi-level causes and conditions:
Dehumanization in interpersonal and intergroup relations, violation of the principles of democracy, social justice, collapse of the social ideals of young people;
The emergence of new types of crimes due to economic turmoil and the presence of the shadow economy;
The lack of a clear and generally accepted ideology in society, the dominance of criminal philosophies and stereotypes replicated in the media and informal youth associations, the disorientation of young people regarding moral values;
Increasing alcoholization of the population, the spread of traditions of alcoholic feasts with their own attributes;
Lack of sufficient opportunities, abilities, and in some cases, the desire of official authorities, including the command of military units, to resist the negative influence of asocial elements on young people, formalism in educational work, legal, psychological and pedagogical incompetence of officials;
Exceptionally high mobility of criminal communities in exploiting regulatory “gaps” and sluggishness of authorities and officials in applying measures to combat crime;
The presence of numerous informal associations of youth, characterized by vague moral standards and legal nihilism.
The formation of a criminal subculture is influenced by two mechanisms:
A mechanism for an individual to seek psychological and physical protection in a new environment, including protection from hostile youth groups and the administration of a closed institution (at large - from law enforcement agencies);
A mechanism of mutual aggression among community members, mutual punishment and oppression of the weak for the sake of their own satisfaction and aggrandizement.
Empirical signs of the presence of a criminal subculture among adolescents and young people in these organizations include:
The presence of warring factions;
Rigid group stratification;
The appearance of marked tables, dishes, clothes and other items;
The presence of an unofficial system of “minor” exceptions for the “top”;
Psychological isolation of the “outcasts”;
Availability of nicknames for group members;
Prevalence of gambling in groups, criminal jargon;
Facts of extortion of money, food, personal belongings;
- “registration” of newcomers, the prevalence of prison oaths;
Refusal, evasion of a certain type of economic work,
Participation in the work of activists and public organizations, etc.
Like human culture as a whole, the criminal subculture of youth has its own structure. It includes not only the objective results of the activities of criminal communities and their members, but also subjective human forces and abilities realized in the process of criminal activity (knowledge and abilities, professional criminal skills and habits, the level of intellectual development of offenders, aesthetic needs, forms of communication, methods management of criminal communities, etc.).
The main condition for the formation of asocial consciousness and behavior of young people, the condition for launching mechanisms of denial of responsibility for committed actions and self-justification is the presence of criminal ideology. Criminal ideology is the system of concepts and ideas that has developed in the group consciousness of minors and young criminals, their “philosophy” which justifies and encourages a criminal lifestyle and the commission of crimes, removes the psychological and moral barriers that a person must overcome in order to commit a crime.
Elements of the criminal subculture are classified as follows.
1. Behavioral attributes - “laws”, rules and traditions of “another life”, oaths and curses. They act as regulators of the behavior of adolescents and young people. Norms and rules are divided: according to the method of regulation - into prohibitive and obligatory; according to the degree of generality - applicable to everyone, to specific hierarchical groups; by focus - to regulate relations with government officials, with strangers, intergroup and intra-group relations; by function - to ensure the safety and integrity of the group, the success of criminal activity, leisure activities, staffing the “common fund”, group, compliance with sanitation rules, etc.
2. Communicative attributes - tattoos, signs, nicknames, criminal jargon, acting as a means of communication, interpersonal and intergroup interaction.
3. Economic attributes - a “common pot” and the principles of material mutual assistance, which are the material basis of criminal groups, their cohesion and criminalization.
4. Sexual and erotic values - special attitude towards persons of the opposite sex, sexual perversion, prostitution, pornography, erotica, homosexuality.
5. A special attitude towards your health - from simulating illnesses, self-harm as ways to achieve certain benefits, to playing sports, pumping up muscles, and strict adherence to a lifestyle and diet.
6. Stratification-stigmative elements that allow the “top” to divide community members into hierarchical groups in accordance with their position and “tag” each of them. These elements include “registration” as a way of stratifying minors and youth, nicknames, tattoos, and privileges for certain individuals.
The traditional scheme of stratification of members of the youth criminal community includes: “tops” (authoritative teenagers and young men who “hold power” in a certain territory and have a direct connection with the “godfathers” or with their close associates among adults and follow their instructions); “middle layer” (“normally living”, “boys”); “lower classes” (humiliated and exploited teenagers: “outsiders” who accidentally found themselves in the territory controlled by the group, or “insiders” - those who registered dishonestly).
Youth stratification has the following properties:
A rigid division into “us” and “strangers”, an unambiguous definition of statuses and roles, rights and responsibilities;
Social stigmatization, the use of euphonious terms such as “master”, “director”, “master”, “authority” to indicate belonging to higher hierarchical groups and offensive terms (“mongrel”, “rat”, “informer”, etc.) to indicate a person’s belonging to lower groups;
Autonomy of existence of each caste, reduction of status for contacts with representatives of the “lower classes”;
Difficulty in upward mobility while facilitating downward mobility;
Strict subordination in interpersonal relations between the “tops” and the “bottoms”, merciless exploitation and oppression of the “bottoms” by the “tops”;
The presence at the top of certain privileges, taboos, conventional signs, and values.
The factors that determine the status of a teenager and young man in the criminal structure are: age; experience of criminal activity; “experienced”, i.e. life and criminal experience; the presence of influential patrons; behavior during detention by law enforcement agencies; nationality; attitude towards official activists; the presence in a person of personal qualities that are especially valued in a given criminal group (organizational abilities, cruelty, resourcefulness, cynicism, physical strength, etc.).
Basic socio-psychological measures to prevent criminal subculture:
Creating reliable psychological protection for every teenager and young person, including him in socially approved activities, increasing his legal and psychological competence;
Formation of socially valuable traditions in all educational and educational institutions, humanization of interpersonal relationships between command and subordinates, administration and the teenage contingent;
Showing the negative consequences of a young person’s participation in a criminal group, debunking crime bosses, creating barriers to the free transfer of traditions and norms of the criminal world into the teenage environment, etc.
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The most important psychological characteristic of the criminal environment is subculture. Criminal subculture- this is the spiritual life of a relatively limited part of society, namely citizens of a criminal orientation. When they talk about a subculture, they mean criminal traditions and customs, slang and tattoos, informal norms of behavior and leisure activities.
The criminal subculture unites offenders and acts as a regulator of their behavior. But its main danger is that it distorts public consciousness, transforms criminal experience, undermines the integrity of the population, blocks the process of socialization of youth, forms public opinion about the advisability of violating certain legal norms (for example, tax evasion), creates a positive image for certain categories of criminals and , on the contrary, condemns citizens who assist law enforcement agencies in their arrest. In other words, the criminal subculture is the main mechanism for the criminalization of communities and, above all, the youth environment.
Elements of criminal subculture. The central element of the subculture is criminal psychology, those. a system of unwritten social values and ideas in the minds of people that justifies and encourages a criminal lifestyle and the commission of offenses. Among social values, attention should be paid to such as: human life, family, sense of civic duty, decency, honesty, responsibility for one’s word and other moral values. The attitude towards family as a social value has also undergone a change in the criminal subculture. Former authoritative criminals did not have the right to “bind” themselves with family ties, and modern thieves consider it their duty not only to create a family, but also to ensure its proper existence. Moral values acquire a specific semantic connotation in the criminal environment: “decency”, “honesty”, “freedom”, “responsibility for one’s word”, etc. For example, all convicts, with a few exceptions, value freedom (it is no coincidence that there is even an oath “A century of freedom will not be seen”) However, a “decent” convict does not have the right to be released early , cooperate with the administration. The responsibility of criminal elements to each other for the given word, for the expressed assessment addressed to another is quite high. The reason for this is not their high morality (in relation to law-abiding citizens, these values are absolutely not respected), but because violation of criminal ideology should be held accountable and more severely than under the laws of a rule-of-law state.
To implement social values, support them and punish those guilty in a criminal environment, criminal norms (rules) of behavior. Their main function is to regulate the relationships and behavior of representatives of the criminal community. They regulate all spheres of life of the criminal community: the social status of its members and their rights; attitude towards law enforcement agencies and the administration of correctional institutions; behavior in places of detention and at home; attitude towards work; procedure for resolving interpersonal conflicts; rituals for admitting new members to the criminal community (“registration”); the procedure for holding “gatherings” and coronation of “thieves in law”, etc. As a mechanism for maintaining criminal norms, there is a system of sanctions against persons who violate them. This includes simple censure for minor and unconscious deviations from regulations and a decrease in status (for example, they can be “lowered” for unjustified cruelty “towards their own”), physical impact and even deprivation of life. Therefore, the motive for compliance with criminal norms is not only internal beliefs, but also fear of punishment.
stratification, those. dividing people into conditional hierarchical groups depending on their authority relative to real power in the criminal environment. The stratification of the criminal community can be compared to the division of society into social groups. The stratification of the criminal environment is most clearly presented in penitentiary institutions, but it persists even after release from prison
1. Leaders criminal environment and their followers (malicious violators of the regime, the most aggressive individuals). 2. Middle peasants(“men”) - they take into account the criminal ideology, support the leaders financially, but do not actively defend the subculture; they generally comply with the established regime, work in production, and strive for parole. 3. Active - representatives of this group violate one of the main criminal commandments - not to cooperate with the administration. Therefore, in the social environment of convicts, they do not enjoy authority and experience constant pressure from malicious violators of the regime. But they are actively supported and protected by the administration of the institution, so they are forced to be taken into account. 4. Les Miserables - convicts with the lowest social status. Their lifestyle not only conflicts with criminal ideology, but is not approved by the administration of the institution. This group is not homogeneous: it includes convicts who violated mandatory criminal norms (for example, those who stole food from their own - “rat-catchers”); those who did not undergo “registration” upon admission to a pre-trial detention center or colony; sloppy (“chushki”); suspected of informing (“informers”); prone to sodomy, expelled from a higher stratum, etc.
Principles of stratification: division into ours and strangers; social branding; difficult upward mobility and easy downward mobility (grounds for upward mobility - passing tests, guarantee of authority; downward - violation of the law); strict subordination, the elite has its own values and privileges.
A specific element of the criminal subculture is criminal communication and, in particular, such means as slang, nicknames, tattoos. Jargon - This is a conventional language. Its main function is to hide the meaning of the transmitted information for others. In the Russian state, the origin of criminal jargon is associated in some cases with the appearance of the Volga robbers, in others - with the peculiarities of communication of the ofeni (traders - peddlers of small goods). The latter, for the purpose of fraud, used a secret language to communicate with each other in order to mislead ordinary citizens. From here to the present day, the expression has been preserved in the criminal subculture: to speak “by hairdryer”, i.e. in slang. Nicknames - This is a personalized form of slang addressing representatives of the criminal community. A nickname not only replaces a person’s last name, first name, but also consolidates his status in a criminal environment and simultaneously performs an evaluative function (“good”, “bad”, “evil”, “kind” person). A reputable criminal can never have offensive nicknames. If jargon and nickname are verbal attributes of communication in a criminal environment, then tattoo - a symbolic, non-verbal means of transmitting information.
The following can be distinguished types of tattoos, indicating:
1) a person’s belonging to one or another stratum: a) authoritative - a cross on the chest, one or two shoulder straps (epaulet); eight-pointed star on the chest (recidivist thief); a six-pointed star on my knees (“I will never kneel before the court”); image of a church (“Prison for a thief is a home” or “Pure before God”); ring with a suit of spades, etc.; b) neglected - a dot (spot) under the eye or eyes on the buttocks - a passive homosexual (there are more than ten tattoos to “brand” this category of criminal elements); dot (front sight) between the eyebrows - “garbage dump”, “slob”; dot on the nose - informer, informer; dot on the chin - steals from his own (“rat-royal”); the dot on the earlobe is “lowered” because he broke his word; a ring with the image of the number six or six dots, like in dominoes - “six”; c) neutral: peasant ring (rhombus with a vertical line in the middle);
2) nature of the crime committed: a) criminals of sexual and erotic orientation: busts of women, naked women, genitals, cynical inscriptions. They are usually applied to closed areas of the body; b) those convicted of theft, pickpockets: a cross suit in the form of a ring on the finger and other parts of the body; “chess ring” of four squares; c) convicted for robbery: a ring with the image of St. Andrew's cross on a black background;
3) aggressive personality or committing violent crimes: images of animals with grins, gladiators, skeletons, coffins, skulls, daggers with pierced shoulder straps, hearts, etc.
Based on tattoos, you can obtain information about the number of convictions, time served in prison and the place where the sentence was served 1
Criminal communication characterized and specific ways of transmitting information. These include tapping in prison; visual communication on fingers (prison semaphore or manual “fenya”); transmission of information through the position of the cigarette when smoking, puff patterns, smoke release, etc. Functions of criminal communication: 1. communicative-attributive (transfer of information), 2. exchange of criminal experience, 3. organizing (distribution of roles), 4. cognitive (identifying one’s own), 5. affective-attributive (mental violence), 6. compensatory (relieving stress in an aggressive way ).
An important element of the subculture is leisure members of the criminal community. In the process of leisure, tasks such as relaxation of community members (relieving emotional stress after various criminal operations), informal acquaintance, meetings with representatives of other criminal structures, and even discussion of various criminal problems are solved. Currently, many restaurants, casinos, discos, bathhouses have the “calling card” of one or another criminal group; these establishments themselves are often the business area of criminal authorities or are under the patronage (“roof”) of certain criminal communities. Employees of leisure establishments, including security officers, even if they are not part of the criminal community, are forced to communicate with criminal elements and maintain a certain neutrality. The classic forms of leisure for criminal elements remain card games, heavy drinking, communication with prostitutes, and mischievous and even violent behavior.
ShshYaShshZhi
Popovich E.V.
INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS OF CRIMINAL SUBCULTURE ON PERSONAL CRIMINALIZATION
The article is devoted to revealing the “social face” of a person who has committed a crime and is a product of the interaction of socio-cultural and psycho-biological forces that are formed in various types social activities.
Key words: criminal subculture, criminal act, interpretation of the crime, criminal ideology, subject of the criminal subculture, consciousness of the criminal, social environment, value-normative system of the individual, lawful behavior.
THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS OF CRIMINAL SUBCULTURE ON THE PERSON'S CRIMINALIZATION
The article deals with the analysis of the “social face” of a person who committed a crime and be the product of the socio-cultural and psycho-biological forces that are formed in various kinds of social activities.
Key words: criminal subculture, criminal action, the interpretation of the crime, the criminal ideology, the subject of a criminal subculture, consciousness of the offender, social environment, value lawful behavior.
Popovich E.V. -normative system of the person,
The connection between social conditions and criminal behavior is complex, and social conditions always manifest themselves in crime, refracted through the individual. However, in some cases, in advance, in the process of long-term specific social interaction, they leave a relatively stable imprint on the personality and, as a result, give rise not to individual criminal acts, but to a stable unlawful orientation, which manifests itself in a system of offenses. Such a person is capable of committing crimes even under changed conditions, if she herself has not changed, adapting the environment for herself if necessary and overcoming the obstacles that arise.
The criminal subculture has been and remains the subject of close attention of many jurists, sociologists, psychologists, teachers, linguists and other specialists. In particular, this problem was comprehensively studied by V. Pirozhkov, Yu. Antonyan, V. Vereshchagin, G. Kalmanov, A. Balyaba, E. Vilenskaya, E. Didorenko, I. Matskevich, A. Prokhorov, S. Sergeev, A. Kochetkov, V. Batirgareeva and others.
The purpose of this article is to study the psychological influence of the criminal subculture on the criminalization of the individual, since a person does not receive a ready-made social program from birth, it is created in him by social practice in the course of his individual development. There are no genes to “fix” a person’s spiritual state; the traits of the human psyche are formed through the social and practical activities of people.
Criminal behavior was almost always considered in the “environment - criminal” coordinate system, but at the same time, the question of which of the two factors played the primary and decisive criminogenic role was resolved differently. The 19th century saw a struggle between two extreme views, one of which was most fully expressed in the works of C. Lombroso1.
C. Lombroso saw the root cause of crime in the criminal himself and considered his congenital anatomical and physiological anomalies and mental characteristics to be determinative.
1 Lombroso Ch. Criminal man: trans. from Italian / Cesare Lombroso. -Moscow: Eksmo, 2005. - 880 p. - (Giants of thought).
benignity. Without biological anomalies, “the physical environment and the social environment are unable to explain crimes,”
Written by student Lombroso Ferri. Representatives of the anthropological school took credit for paying attention to the person who commits crimes, but it was they who argued that against “innate” criminals “there is no therapy. The only measure against them
Kill them or keep them in correctional facilities; the latter method would help avoid relapses.”2 As for “children branded by heredity,” “education in such cases is powerless,” wrote Lombroso3.
theories of the biological nature of crimes and the role of man in their etiological conditionality as a biological, and not a social individual, are preached to this day. They are multivariate and use approaches from the positions of Freudianism, “characterological” teaching, the theory of constitutional inclinations, and many others.
At one time, attempts to biologize criminal behavior and its causes were convincingly criticized in Soviet literature4. The essential thing, in our opinion, is that in a person it is generally impossible to isolate his biological characteristics in some “pure form”; in relation to him, the question of “social” and “biological” cannot be raised. Without exception, all characteristics are influenced by the process of socialization of the individual, so none of them can be considered as a purely biological factor. To express the integration essence of human biology, the term “socio-biological” is used, because in the course of social development of the individual,
2 Ferri E. Crime as a social phenomenon / Enrico Ferri // Problems of crime. - Kyiv: State Publishing House of Ukraine, 1924. -Sb. 2nd. - P. 20.
3 Lombroso Ch. Crime. Latest Advances science about the criminal. Anarchists / Cesare Lombroso; comp. Vladimir Ovchinsky. - Moscow: Norma-INFRA M, 2004. - P. 228-229. - (Criminologist's Library).
4 Karpets I.I. Contemporary issues criminal law and criminology / I.I. Karpets. - Moscow: Legal literature, 1976. - P. 31.
Popovich E.V.
further development of its biology, “included in the composition of its integral social nature”5.
At the same time, a situation cannot be ruled out when, as a result of a pathology, congenital or acquired, the normal process of socialization of an individual is disrupted and, due to a painful condition, he cannot properly manage his actions or be aware of them. Such cases exclude the recognition of an individual as sane, and, therefore, he cannot be the subject of attention of criminologists. Criminologists, as specialists in crime problems, solve another question: why do mentally healthy persons who can understand and control their actions and can avoid the corresponding criminal act, still commit it?
Modern supporters of a hereditary predisposition to criminal behavior actually also avoid the question of sanity. They declare it a "clumsy diagnostic tool" and the best remedy To resocialize criminals with behavioral abnormalities, they are considered to be placed in special closed institutions “regardless of the degree of their sanity.” As noted in this regard by D.R. Luntz, “such views, stemming from the biologization of antisocial behavior, blur the lines between mental illness and non-painful manifestations, as well as between punitive measures and compulsory treatment”6.
In the course of criminological study, the analysis of the individual in interaction with the social environment is important, since criminal behavior is not generated by the environment itself or the individual, but only by their interaction.
The social environment is society, not only the objective conditions and circumstances that determine human behavior, but also the ongoing activities of people who create and change these circumstances - people as a product and source of social development7. Because the influence social environment Since criminal behavior is complex in nature, it would be fundamentally wrong to consider crime not only from biopsychological, biosocial, but also from vulgar sociological positions. The divergence of views of the majority of criminologists of past years is not at all due to the fact that some do not recognize the fact of interaction, while others defend its importance and expose the vulgar sociological approach. It is important what meaning is put into such interaction. Recognition of the complexity of the mechanism of determination of criminal behavior, the interaction processes that underlie it, does not exclude the need to determine the leading side of the interaction, solve the problem of primary and derivative, study cause-and-effect patterns, including in the “traditionally analytical aspect.” This is all the more important since it is practically impossible to effectively influence the personality of a criminal without making adjustments to his social environment, without changing the ways of interaction with such an environment8. But at the same time, one cannot fail to take into account the participation in the corresponding interaction of the individual as a relatively
5 Rubinshtein S.L. Fundamentals of general psychology / S.L. Rubinstein. -St. Petersburg: Peter, 1999. - 705 p.
6 Lunts D.R. The problem of insanity / D.R. Lunts // Guide to forensic psychiatry / ed. G.V. Morozova. - Moscow: Medicine, 1977. - P. 30.
7 Grigoryan B.T. Philosophy about the essence of man / B.T. Grigoryan. -Moscow: Politizdat, 1973. - P. 52.
8 Zelinsky A.F. Criminal psychology: scientific and practical. ed. /
Anatoly Feofanovich Zelinsky. - Kyiv: Yurinkom Inter, 1999. -S. 110.
independent phenomenon. As a result, the other extreme position, which originates in criminology from Lacassagne, the founder of the so-called “French school,” which contrasts the theory of the innate criminal with the theory of the social environment, is also incorrect. Lacassagne recognized the physical and mental abnormalities of criminals, but considered them socially acquired and came to the conclusion that the latter gives grounds to pay attention only to social influences9.
Today, not all authors adequately take into account the fact that the personality of a criminal is of independent interest to criminology, since it does not simply reflect certain external conditions, but acts as an active side of interaction. It is characterized by conscious, purposeful activity. Identification of the causes and conditions of criminal behavior if these circumstances are ignored is based on a direct comparison of some data on objective social phenomena and processes, on the one hand, and data on criminal behavior, on the other hand. Sometimes the living conditions of criminals and non-criminals and the level of income in their families are compared
BURMISTROV IGOR ALEXEEVICH, ERMAKOV DMITRY NIKOLAEVICH, SHMYREV DENIS VIKTOROVICH - 2015
DONSKIKH DARIA GENNADIEVNA - 2009