The Sociology of Darfur and Crime

In Darfur and the Crime of Genocide, John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond expand upon the work of Sheldon Glueck, whose mid-century work on international criminal justice and in shaping the arguments of the Nuremburg trial Hagan and Rymond-Richmond use as a jumping off point for a criminological approach to genocide and war crimes. Rather than pioneer a new criminological approach to genocidal crimes, Hagan and Rymond-Richman borrow from theories of American criminology-notably those of Robert Sampson and Edwin Sutherland-that paint genocide as similar to street crime in its collective origin and reliance on polarizing redefinitions and reframing. Hagan and Rymond-Richman bravely and ably extend the criminological approach to international law and the force of their argument about the racist components to the Darfur violence and their labeling of the violence as genocide is laudable. But the final chapter, in which they attempt to draw parallels between the Darfurian genocide and American criminological concepts, stops short of applying solutions from American criminological theories (which their work builds upon) directly to Darfur. What remains is a powerful descriptive theory that fails to lead the way forward.

Using original analysis of the Atrocities Documentation Survey, or ADS, of Darfur refugees, they prove that the Sudanese government perpetrated large-scale, organized genocide in Darfur. Hagan and Rymond-Richman discuss how the elements of the Darfur genocide-"the background tensions between Arab and Black Africans, arming of the Janjaweed, racial targeting, government bombing, government involvement in ground attacks and killing, sexual violence, confiscation of property, displacement, and Arab resettlement"-conspire to wholly uproot and devastate the group life of Black Africans in Darfur. While the actions of the Sudanese government meet the requirements of multiple acts of the Genocide Convention and while the United States has forcefully condemned the regional violence-and, sporadically, even called it genocide-America has stopped short of recognizing and enforcing "the legitimacy of 'the international rule of law'" and addressing genocide has largely remained beyond the ken of American criminology.

Hagan and Rymond-Richman's analysis aims to fill this lacuna. They note the traditional view of genocide's causes-"the energizing role of race or related ethnic, national, and religious constructs in conjunction with more material motivations"-but they recognize that this is only a partial explanation. In envisioning a more complete theory, they look toward collectively and socially rooted theories-collective action, collective efficacy, collective organization, collective violence-to determine "whether the protection and destruction of village life are both collective processes, despite their diametrically opposed purposes." The impetus for genocidal crimes echoes the origins of street gangs. The redefinition of frustrations leads to an "us vs. them" framework that legitimizes a culture of genocidal collective action. Just as informal institutions such as street gangs can redefine the "taking of property" out of the lexicon of criminality, so can the state redefine "not only property norms but also the holders of the settled property ... as appropriate targets for displacement and death." Hagan and Rymond-Richman note the effectiveness of using rebranding tactics in reducing crime in the Global North (from street criminal to street youth), and they express hopes that both the Global North and South can move toward policies that treat crime as a form of restoration rather than punishment.

In Darfur, Hagan and Rymond-Richman use the examples of socially efficacious Janjaweed chieftains Ali Kushayb, Hamid Dawai and Musa Hilal to show how militia leaders exhort a collective racial denunciation of Black Africans in the process of transforming "specific racial intent into collectively organized racial intent" and "mobilizing and organizing genocidal violence as a joint criminal enterprise." Drawing on the ADS data, Hagan and Rymond-Richman advance a "Transformation Model of Genocide" that argues that "state-led Arabization ideology," "Arab-Islamic supremacism and dehumanization," and competition for land converge to create "socially constructed and locally organized groups"-both the Arabized Janjaweed and Sudanese forces and the Black African tribal groups-in which individual "micro-level" actions are transformed (racial epithets are one mechanism) into "collectivized racial intent" and a genocidal state.

Hagan and Rymond-Richman's work exhibits several weaknesses. There is an overreliance on the racial aspects of genocide. Their work on race has scholarly importance; in an article in the New York Review of Books, Nicholas Kristof praises them for demonstrating that "racism against black Africans was more of a factor than many observers believe." But the emphasis on race, while perhaps the strongest prism of analysis from a criminological perspective, leads to the downplaying of other factors that play prominent roles in the shaping of genocide, specifically the political and economic components.

Hagan and Rymond-Richman at times give in to the writer's temptation toward florid prose and sharp characterization at the expense of sociological rigor. Their chapter on various militia leaders is effective at portraying the villainy of its subjects, but there is more of a focus on the militia leaders' duplicities than on the social forces that conspire to enable them.

These conspiring forces (as Hagan and Rymond-Richman do mention in other chapters) are primarily those of social bonds. Hagan and Rymond-Richman seem in alignment with Travis Hirschi and Marcus Felson on the basic amorality of social bonds. If, as Hirschi said, the "differences between delinquents and nondelinquents are not differences in motivation [but] rather differences in the extent to which natural motives are controlled" than genocide acts as a crucible for this theory, a proof that when the threat of punishment is removed from an amoral person acting in his own self interest, there is little limit to how far he will transgress exterior opinion-i.e., the international community's. The extreme example of genocide also supports Felson's theory that crime is a confluence of the offender, target, and lack of guardianship.

In Sampson and John Laub's formulation of social bonds, there is an emphasis on looking at social bonds over time, and Sampson and Laub point to the change of social bonds over time and state that looking at how an individual can "escape from the risk process" can yield a better understanding of delinquency. In this respect, it would be helpful if Hagan and Rymond-Richman examined the lives of former Janjaweed members. By studying the escape, we can better understand the crime.

One of Hagan and Rymond-Richman's most persuasive arguments regards the "framing of injustice": they show how the Arab Sudanese dehumanize and label the Black Africans in "'us' and 'them' racial terms. This would be a good place for Hagan and Rymond-Richman to engage the concept of social distance. Genocide, that crime of crimes, makes Nils Christie's argument that increased social distance increases only the perception of crime-not actual crime-seem like an intellectual abstraction too flimsy to deal with the heavy-handed certainties of murder on a scale as large as Darfur. With genocide, Robert Park's Classical Era contention that social complexity breeds crime becomes compelling. Postmodernism is allergic to genocide.

But the greatest weakness in Hagan and Rymond-Richman's criminological perspective is the ways in which its only endorsed solution-an international criminal justice approach-differs from solutions suggested by American criminological theories. An international criminal justice approach, without a military intervention element (which has its own complications and which Hagan and Rymond-Richman do not endorse), is too removed from the lives and community of the perpetrators of genocide to alter behaviors. If there is one common component to all the American criminological theories, it is that changing undesirable, delinquent, and criminal behaviors requires tangible intervention in the lives of those whose behaviors would be reformed. Hirschi would raise the cost of crime by increasing social bonds or by increasing expected sanctions or he would make following the law beneficial through the substitution of a reward system. Felson would harden targets and decrease the opportunity for crime. Sutherland would change group associations or change the group But they would all work to change people, their motivations, their opportunities, or their circumstances. Hagan and Rymond-Richman avoid proposals pertaining to direct societal intervention. This may be wise: The Global North's history of intervention in and attempted assistance of the Global South has been rife with imperialism, both latent and blatant racism, and a host of unintended consequences. Hagan and Rymond-Richman's hesitancy is understandable. However, criminology hinges on social control, and if Hagan and Rymond-Richman are not willing to contemplate exerting social control to end genocide, they should reconsider whether the extension of criminology into the study of genocide does as much to help the study of genocide as it does to help the field of criminology itself.
Works Cited

[1] John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richman. 2009. Darfur and the Crime of Genocide. New York: Cambridge University Press.

[2] Kristof, Nicholas. "What to do about Darfur." New York Review of Books. July 22 2009. Vol. 56, Num. 11.

[1] Hirschi, Travis. 1977. "Causes and Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency." Sociological Inquiry 47: p. 329.

[1] Marcus Felson. 2002. "The Chemistry for Crime." Crime & Everyday Life, Third Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press: 20-36.

[1] Robert J. Sampson and John Laub. 1993. Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 1-24.

[1] Nils Christie. 2004. A Suitable Amount of Crime. New York: Routledge.

[1] Robert E. Park. 1967 [1925]. "Community Organization and Juvenile Delinquency." Pp. 99-112 in 58 in The City, ed. R. ark, E. Burgess, and R. McKenzie. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.