The New Politics of Crime and Punishment

Roger Matthews, Jock Young

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135994822
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides an overview of recent government initiatives in the field of crime and punishment, reviewing both the policies themselves, the perceived problems and issues they seek to address, and the broader social and political context in which this is taking place.

The underlying theme of the book is that a qualitative change has taken place in the politics of crime control in the UK since the early 1990s. Although crime has stabilised, imprisonment rates continue to climb, there is a new mood of punitiveness, and crime has become a central policy issue for the government, no longer just a technical matter of law enforcement. At the same time the politics of crime control have taken on a pronounced gender, race and age preoccupation.

This book will be essential reading for anybody seeking an understanding of why crime and criminal justice policy have risen to the top of the political agenda.

Chapter 1

New Labour, crime control and social exclusion

Jock Young and Roger Matthews

As has been well documented, the countries of the First World, from the late 1960s onwards, experienced a yearly increase in crime, which lasted for over 30 years. There were a few exceptions, and there were some countries in which the rise started comparatively later; but the impact on criminology and on the criminal justice system was widespread. That is to say that there was a prevalent feeling that ‘nothing worked’ – the phrase of Robert Martinson (1974) – which became a widespread belief, whatever Martinson’s actual position or intentions. At times the whole modernist project of crime control through tackling the causes of crime and rehabilitating the offender seemed forced back on its heels and all that could be proffered was the advice of more locks and bolts, greater care and caution, with the admonition to be circumspect about guarding your home and travelling around the city. Indeed David Garland, as recently as 1996 in his survey of the field, sketched out what he saw as ‘the limits of the sovereign state’ (Garland, 1996), where governments could no longer claim the ability to control crime rates and provide security for their citizens, where the public itself acquiesced, however fearfully, to high crime rates, and where crime itself became normalized.

In the more recent period a seachange would seem to have occurred. Crime rates in very many industrial countries have begun to level out or decline (Barclay et al., 2001). Crime, like stocks and shares, can fall as well as rise. The most iconic example of this is ‘the New York miracle’, where the homicide rate of this city fell by just under 50 per cent between 1993 and 1996. It is important here not to embrace the urban myth of the exceptional provenance of New York politicians and police officers, but to note that the crime rate also fell in a large number of American cities (see Blumstein and Wallman, 2000) and indeed in many urban areas of the First World. Yet the widely publicized success in a city of such importance, one that had an extreme notoriety for violence and danger, had important reverberations around the world. Further, the actual appearance of such statistics, whether local or national, whether about burglary or taking and driving away, imbues a new feeling of confidence. It reveals that crime statistics do not always go up, they can fluctuate, and indeed fall. The mindset of ‘nothing works’ begins to change to ‘maybe things do work’ – what is needed is to catalogue good practice in various parts of the world and above all to monitor and evaluate each initiative.

Multi-agency crime-intervention partnerships evolved in the period of rising crime in order to mobilize resources, in an attempt to stem the increasing problem of crime (Lea et al., 1989). In part, these represented the correct understanding of the situation: that criminal justice initiatives alone are insufficient to tackle the crime problem, whether on the level of prevention or of ameliorating the impact of victimization (see Young, 1992, pp. 45–9). They were not the abnegation of responsibility for security by the state, but rather a realistic adjustment to the problem where state agencies maintained central coordination and control. Such a transformation occurred amid the much larger movement in the relationship between public service agencies and the state, that is, education, health, social services and the criminal justice system all became subject to what has been called the ‘New Public Management’ (see Clarke et al., 2000; Flynn, 1997). This attempt to control the cost and effectiveness of public-service budgets involves the by now familiar imposition of performance indicators, publication of league tables illustrating comparative performance, the costing and market testing of all activities (see McLaughlin et al., 2001).

The more benign assessment of the possibilities of a successful intervention against crime in the present period melds well into this general trend of stress on effectiveness and good value. In Britain in particular, under the auspices of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, a regime of finely assessed targets and intricately constructed indicators are set for the multi-agency partnerships of police and council agencies set up to combat crime (see Hough and Tilley, 1998). What is important to stress here is that such a matrix of targets and evaluation would scarcely have been possible in the context of the previous scenario of seemingly inexorably rising crime rates.

Such a situation of sporadic, if patchy, decline in crime rates allows those agencies involved to claim success. The research data with regard to changes in crime rates suggest that outside of the influence of changes in public reporting levels and tolerance of crime, a high proportion of variation can be explained by changes in economic and social conditions, rather than by the impact of the various criminal-justice and other agencies, which, so to speak, administer crime (see Field, 1990). For example, the exhaustive analysis of the dip in the American crime rate conducted by Al Blumstein and his associates for the National Consortium on Violence Research (Blumstein and Wallman, 2000) pointed to demographic and economic factors being the most powerful influences on crime change (see Young, this volume). This, of course, does not rule out the impact of police, prisons, and crime prevention techniques, but points to the fact that interventions have to be massive and continuing to have influence (e.g. mass incarceration has had an impact in the United States, although even there not as much as is often made out) and that marginal increases in, say, the number of police officers have only minor impact on the crime rate. Whatever the reality of influences, the existence of declining rates allows single agencies – particularly the police – to make claims to be the sole causes of such change. It also generates a competition for the ownership of the crime problem. In the period of rapidly increasing crime rates there was a tendency for disavowal. A particularly pertinent example of this was the Metropolitan Police Report of 1986, which pretty accurately described the dramatic rise in crime as a result of a Treasury-led monetarist policy, which gave rise to mass unemployment with all the social dislocation that this entailed: ‘The Government pursues an economic policy which includes Treasury driven social policy that has one goal – the reduction of inflation. Any adverse social by-products are accepted as necessary casualties in the pursuit of the overall objective.’

The police, quite correctly, deplored the fact that they were being blamed for a crime wave that was not within their behest to control. But in times of declining crime rates a totally different scenario unfolds, where the ownership of the crime problem is acutely contested. The most public example of this was the spat between Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Commissioner William J. Bratton as to who had instigated the zero-tolerance policies, which had supposedly been so successful in reducing the crime rate in New York City.

Daniel Moynihan, in a famous article written in 1993 entitled ‘Defining Deviancy Down’, suggested that a major response to the rising tide of crime and disorder that occurred up until the recent period was simply to become more tolerant of crime, disorder, disturbance, and mental illness. Indeed, he argues, this is precisely what occurred, and a careful reading of events, from the ‘permissive 1960s’ through to the decriminalization of juvenile delinquency and the decarceration of the mentally ill, gives some support for this. But more recently, from the late 1980s onwards, the very reverse of this process would seem to have been set in motion, namely the ‘defining of deviancy up’. Such a process has come from different directions, both liberal and conservative. For conservatives, control of incivilities became a central plank of the zero-tolerance campaigns against crime; for the liberals, the pursuit of anti-racist and sexist harassment policies, as well as the campaign of zero-tolerance against domestic violence, also contributed to a lowering of tolerance of crime and incivilities (see Hancock and Matthews, 2001; Young, 1999).

The postwar period up to the 1960s was characterized by a tendency to view crime as vestigial, and increased prosperity would eventually reduce it to a minimum. Crime was a propensity of isolated dysfunctional families or inadequate individuals. The rise in crime of subsequent years was closely associated with a very different picture: the notion of a sizeable underclass, cut off from the main body of society, spatially located in the sink estates of the inner city and the outer suburbs, lacking the norms and values of the wider society. The association between crime and a relatively small proportion of citizens – especially boys and young men in these areas – became a motif that would recur throughout the world (see Patrick Slaughter, this volume). The crime problem, therefore, becomes localized, and offenders have a distinct social membership – often racialized. Furthermore, such a group is perceived as a threatening ‘Other’ – something beyond the limits of normal society. The concern with race is fraught with a deep ambiguity, seeing ethnic minorities as disproportionately the perpetuators and victims of crime. The racist murder of Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent Macpherson Report served, as John Lea argues in this volume, to redefine the meaning of racism, while drawing attention to the ways in which the criminal justice system fails victims.

Despite the perceived danger associated with the growth of the underclass, there is a greater tendency for optimism in terms of intervention. There is a demand for the monitoring and evaluation of programmes closely related to the emergence of the New Public Managerialism, a greater competition for the ownership of programmes, and deviancy is defined up. At the same time there is a widespread decrease in tolerance with regard to crime and incivilities that impact on the quality of life, and, lastly, it is recognized that crimes and incivilities are widespread throughout the structure, although unevenly distributed spatially and socially. As Garland (2001) has quite correctly indicated, all such motifs in crime control are subject to interpretation within specific political, historical, and social contexts. Indeed, if the present authors have any difference with his book, The Culture of Control, it is that he does not take this interpretative position far enough. Thus, to our mind, he makes too much of the similarities between the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as, incidentally, discerning quite different general motifs from our own. What is of interest is convergence and differences between the various advanced industrial countries in their perceptions of the crime problem and their techniques of crime control (see Matthews 2002; Young 2003).

In the next section, we wish to examine the politics of New Labour, where general patterns emerge amid very specific interpretations, reflecting both the Third Way philosophy of the party and the particular political and social context of contemporary Britain.

Hard on crime, hard on the causes of crime

Tony Blair’s article ‘Crime is a Socialist Issue’, published in the New Statesman in 1993, which contains the catchphrase ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’, is a very much cited but little-read piece. Yet the article, written while Blair was shadow Home Secretary, contains all the seeds of the subsequent crime policy of New Labour, both in terms of analysis and policy implications. It is an article remarkable for its clarity, and what is of particular interest is the consistency of these ideas over time, as New Labour entered government for its first and second terms, and the continuity of the tensions in policy.

First of all, Blair recognizes in his article the normality of crime, that crime is part and parcel of everyday life and a serious problem in the inner cities and in the suburbs. He points to ‘our core voters [who] look to Labour to reflect their anxiety and anger, not to respond with patronizing sympathy or indifference’ (Blair, 1993, p. 27). The impact of crime is not localized: it affects both Labour’s traditional voters in the inner cities and those in the suburbs and rural areas. The article is intensely critical of Conservative ineptitude in this area – it calls for the Labour Party to make crime a genuine ‘people’s issue’ and the subject of a campaign ‘for better and safer communities’ (ibid.). Secondly, it clearly demarcates the ‘third way’: ‘we are moving the debate beyond the choice between personal and social responsibility – those who want to punish the criminal and those who point to the poor social conditions in which crime breeds’ (ibid.). And he adds: ‘the obvious common sense of the matter – which would be recognised instantly by any member of the public – is that the choice is false and misleading’ (ibid.).

As far as ‘tough on crime’ is concerned, he points out that people have a right, and society a duty, to punish those offenders who have violated the rights of other citizens in a way that ‘properly reflects the seriousness of the crime. To act otherwise would be to betray the interests of those we serve’ (ibid.). However, equally, punishment and deterrence should be combined with rehabilitation – these are not alternatives – and for this reason we must reform ‘our monstrous prison regime’ (ibid.).

Yet we must also be tough on the causes of crime: ‘Above all, any sensible society acting in its own interests … will recognise that poor education and housing, inadequate or cruel family backgrounds, low employment prospects and drug abuse will affect the likelihood of young people turning to crime’ (ibid.). And here he introduces the motif of social exclusion, which is to dominate New Labour’s thinking with regard to the causes of crime: ‘if these young people are placed outside mainstream culture, offered no hope or opportunity, shown no respect for themselves, there is a greater chance of their going wrong’ (ibid.). This can only be challenged by active community intervention: ‘to see this requires not a Ph.D in sociology but a small experience of life’ (ibid.). Undergirding Blair’s argument is the distinctly New Labour credo of rights and responsibilities. People have the right to security, job opportunities, a stable community; agains...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editors’ Preface
• About the contributors
• 1 New Labour, crime control and social exclusion
• 2 Winning the fight against crime? New Labour, populism and lost opportunities
• 3 Institutional racism in policing: the Macpherson report and its consequences
• 4 Youth justice in England and Wales
• 5 It’s the family, stupid: continuities and reinterpretations of the dysfunctional family as the cause of crime in three political periods
• 6 Drugs: the great cannabis debate
• 7 Urban regeneration and crime reduction: contradictions and dilemmas
• 8 The politics of policing: managerialism, modernization and performance
• 9 Of crowds, crimes and carnivals
• 10 Probation into the millennium: the punishing service?
• 11 Rethinking penal policy: towards a systems approach
• Index