Conflicts of Property

Conflicts of Property

Critical Summary: Conflicts as Property

Nils Christie’s article Conflicts as Property discusses the lack of internal conflict felt by highly industrialized societies and by what means legal cases have become the property of lawyers rather than the involved parties. He argues that court procedures have taken away the rights of victims to participate and lawyers have become too involved in the outcomes of court proceedings. Furthermore, Christie proposes the reorganization of social systems to both nurture conflict and solve it, and to see that professionals do not monopolize from the outcomes of court proceedings (Christie, 1977).
To support his proposition, Christie first introduces where criminology has gone wrong in legal society. Christie suggests that the social consequences of criminology are more dubious than society thinks (Christie, 1977). He suspects criminology has forced a process where conflicts are taken away from the involved parties and either makes them disappear or become other people’s ‘property’ (Christie, 1977). He states that conflicts might hurt individuals and social systems, but too little conflict will paralyze them (Christie, 1977). To Christie, conflicts must become useful to those originally involved in the conflict and criminal institutes should be abolished rather than opened (Christie, 1977). Only then will conflicts become beneficial not only to the involved parties, but officials and social systems. To outline his ideas, Christie uses the example of a case that occurred in Tanzania between a pair of ex-lovers. The substance of the case is of no importance to Christie rather than the structure of how the case was handled. Christie outlines five major elements of the structure that strengthen his main argument. The parties were in the centre of the room and made the centre of attention; each party was able to talk often and was listened to (Christie, 1977). Relatives and friends were able to take part, but were not allowed to...

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