---
title: "Zemiology"
chunk: 2/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zemiology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:59:10.811479+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Relation of welfare benefits to prison population ===
Concern has been expressed that the prison is being used as a mechanism to deal with social problems as spending on welfare benefits and services has decreased. Downes and Hansen argue that a country's welfare spending and prison population are inversely related, meaning that a country with high spending on welfare has a lower prison population and vice versa. Portugal, for example, has 147 prisoners per 100,000 people but spend only 18.2% of their GDP on welfare. This is quite a contrast to Scandinavian states, such as Sweden, whose prison population is 60 prisoners per 100,000 people as they spend 31% of GDP on welfare. During the 1990s the UK, whose spending on welfare is 20.8% GDP, saw an increase of 40% in the number of custodial sentences passed out. This is arguably reflected in the composition of the UK's prison population. For example, almost half of the prison population in Britain has been diagnosed with 3 or more mental disorders. Of those prisoners diagnosed with a mental health problem: 50% of these prisoners are not registered with a GP; 42% of men with a psychotic disorder received no emotional or mental support in the previous year before imprisonment; 79% of men with a personality disorder received no emotional or mental support in the previous year before imprisonment; 46% have been arrested having never received any benefits despite their disorder; over a third are sleeping rough and over two thirds are not in education or training.

== Broadening perceptions of harm ==

=== Physical harm ===
The zemiological or social harm approach attempts to broaden public and sociological focus to vicissitudes of daily life in capitalist society; some of these harms, they argue, are more harmful than those caused by crime. Approximately 1,000 people a year are murdered in England and Wales. However, there are a number of events that cause large amounts of physical harm and even death, which are rarely considered crime or criminalised. In the UK there are around 40,000 serious road accidents in the UK every year. This is equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing every month. In 2002 3,431 people were killed on Britain's roads and 35,976 seriously injured. In 2002, 81,562 cases of food poisoning were reported and the majority of these cases are believed to have been contracted in food prepared outside the home. In the UK, The Labour Force Survey found that 228 people were killed while working due to a work-related incident and 2.2 million people with illnesses in the UK believed their condition was made worse by their past or current job. A growing phenomenon affecting workers' health is stress. A report issued by the British Health and Safety Executive found that 16% of workers were working over 60 hours a week. Similarly, the Department of Trade and Industry found that 19% of men visited doctors for stress related problems, with that figure rising to 23% in men over 40. Also, the Trades Union Congress found 10% of work-based personal injury cases were stress-related. According to the Department of Health there were 3500 deaths occurring from the effects of sulphur dioxide and 8100 deaths were caused due to particulate matter in the air in July 2002.

=== Homeowners ===
Equally, the financial costs theft and burglary are outweighed when one considers wider financial harms. For example, thousands of homeowners have been sold endowment mortgages without any likely means of repaying them. More than 3 million homeowners face the likelihood that their endowment policy, when it matures, will be worth too little to pay off the mortgage. 60% of endowment mortgages are not on track to cover the original debt and 39,000 complainants looking to receive approximately £126 million.
Today in Britain 9.5 million people cannot afford adequate housing conditions, 8 million cannot afford one or more essential good, 7.5 million people do not have enough money to attend social activities and 4 million do not receive proper nutrition.

== Responding to social harms ==
Whilst the UK and other liberal democracies spend large resources on their respective criminal justice systems, other regulatory and policy responses remain less well funded considering the extent and the serious nature of the harms they seek to prevent. This is illustrated through the following case examples.

=== Regulating the minimum wage ===
The minimum wage was introduced in 1998 to combat the problem of in-work poverty and inequality. The act established for the first time in the UK a minimum hourly rate of pay. In order, to guarantee that workers received the wage an enforcement structure was created using two methods. These were worker-led Industrial Tribunal claims and the minimum wage enforcement teams (Inland Revenue). Few workers have used the employment tribunals to recover money because many victims of breach of minimum wage are vulnerable, for example, ethnic minorities, youth, uneducated and non-unionised workers. A more likely channel of action is the minimum wage enforcement teams, which are run by the Inland Revenue. These teams have a number of powers including power of entry into workplaces and seizure of employers' records. In order to enforce these regulations through a ‘pyramid of sanctions’, which include: enforcement order, penalty enforcement and prosecution under criminal law. The enforcement order requests the employer to repay the worker any underpayment. If the employer refuses to comply with this requirement, penalty enforcement is issued which orders the firm to not only repay the worker (s), but to also pay a substantial fine. However, if the employer still refuses payment, as a consequence they will face prosecution under criminal law. This action can, however be seen as ineffective as only two companies have ever been prosecuted for such offences. The low rates of enforcement action are demonstrated below.
Number of cases of non–compliance and regulatory systems

% of non compliance cases that resulted in sanctions