Unlikely to Break the Law

Would be unlikely participate in law violation. The vast majority of people would understand legality in this way, and would be unlikely to want to run afoul of an institution that has legitimacy and the capacity for deterrence they are unlikely to triumph over. The second schema Ewick and Silbey identify is with the law. Instead of existing outside their everyday life, law conceived this way is understood as a set of rules, procedures, and interactions with legal actors that intersect with the rest of their every-day experiences.

Individuals who experience and interpret the law through these schema perceive it as a tool to get what they want, and a game to be played. In the study of crime, this schema would be particularly useful for examining how people who engage in white collar crime seek to subvert legal processes for their own gain.

As Galanter (1974) points out, “repeat players,” those who interact with the legal system on a regular basis, have accrued the expertise and experience necessary to use the law to their advantage.

Finally, the authors identify the schema of against the law. The law viewed through this prism is often capricious and unjust. Subjects for whom this serves as the primary interpretive schema see themselves as combatants with the law, and respond by resisting against what is understood to be unfair treatment by it. Evidently, this appears to be the most relevant schema as it relates to people who participate in lower-level, non-white collar crime. This schema is greatly informed by past experiences with the law, and it is not that this way of interpreting legality will necessarily lead to individuals committing crime.

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However, it illustrates the impact of certain forms of legal intervention on peoples’ orientation toward the law. Those who perceive unfair treatment by it likely often do so because of negative sanctions that have been applied to them.

As discussed in a previous answer about the role of social disorganization in explaining entry into crime, these three schemas represent distinct experiences with the law. For those who live in communities and neighborhoods marked by social disorganization, interactions with the law have mostly negative implications. In addition, the access to resources such as knowledge of the legal system and related legal skills does also play a role in the interpretive schema individuals possess. Those with greater access and more experience with the legal system are more likely to see themselves as players rather than passive recipients of the law’s power, and are also likely to have a significant advantage in the legal game over those who see their engagement with the law as having significantly higher stakes (Galanter 1974). If these individuals see themselves in direct and unbalanced conflict with the law but also have the skills to be able to navigate the legal system, they are likely to interpret their position as being against the law. For the most part, Ewick and Silbey do not deal extensively with participation in crime as a variable in legal consciousness, but I argue that this perspective is useful for understanding how crime and criminalization shape and inform the interpretive schemas.