New Directions in Criminological Theory

Steve Hall, Simon Winlow, Steve Hall, Simon Winlow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781843929130
• eBook ISBN: 9781136306266
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This edited collection brings together established global scholars and new thinkers to outline fresh concepts and theoretical perspectives for criminological research and analysis in the 21st century. Criminologists from the UK, USA, Canada and Australia evaluate the current condition of criminological theory and present students and researchers with new and revised ideas from the realms of politics, culture and subjectivity to unpack crime and violence in the precarious age of global neoliberalism.

These ideas range from the micro-realm of the 'personality disorder' to the macro-realm of global 'power-crime'. Rejecting or modifying the orthodox notion that crime and harm are largely the products of criminalisation and control systems, these scholars bring causes and conditions back into play in an eclectic yet thematic way that should inspire students and researchers to once again investigate the reasons why some individuals and groups elect to harm others rather than seek sociability. This collection will inspire new criminologists to both look outside their discipline for new ideas to import, and to create new ideas within their discipline to reinvigorate it and further strengthen its ability to explain the crimes and harms that we see around us today.

This book will be of particular interest to academics and both undergraduate and postgraduate students in the field of criminology, especially to those looking for theoretical concepts and frameworks for dissertations, theses and research reports.

Part I
Epistemological and political reflections

1
Criminological knowledge

Doing critique; doing politics¹

Pat Carlen

The role of academics in society has been of perennial interest to philosophers, scientists and social scientists. In 2005, however, the debate in social science was given fresh impetus by the publication of Michael Burawoy’s 2004 presidential address to the American Sociological Association, entitled ‘For Public Sociology’ (Clawson et al. 2007). Since then, debate about the desirability of a ‘public criminology’ has become one of the staples of criminological polemic (e.g. Uggen and Inderbitzen 2006; Loader and Sparks 2010). However, the term ‘public’ has proved to be something of a dead weight as far as this particular debate is concerned, since it could reasonably be claimed that with the majority of criminologists engaged in publication, teaching, campaigning or government consultancy, criminology has always been primarily ‘public’ (see Ericson 2005 for a similar view). None the less, much of the debate has got bogged down with discussion about how to define ‘public’, rather than with addressing the main issue as to the desirable and possible roles for academic criminologists in penal politics. That is why the term ‘public criminology’ is used sparingly in this chapter. Instead, the phrase ‘doing politics’ is routinely employed. It refers, specifically, to debates and oppositional struggles between players involved in the development of criminal justice and penal policies, including: local and national politicians, civil servants, campaigners on crime and penal justice issues, crime victims, religious groups, media, and academic criminologists – each arguing from a different mix of political, ideological, epistemological and ethical standpoints, and, from each of these standpoints, often developing internally logical criminologies. Academic criminology, in the political context, is but one criminology among many (see Carlen 2010).

The arguments which follow stem from an assumption that although critique is inevitably political, critique and politics are separately embedded in the oppositional discourses of altruism and vested interest. Two questions then arise. First: is it either desirable and/or possible for academic criminologists to engage in critique and penal politics? Second: how can criminologists possibly work with the contradictions between altruistic critique and a penal politics democratically embedded in the different and legitimate interests of all parties involved?

The rest of the chapter will be divided into four parts. First, ‘Criminological Critique and Penal Politics: Are They Compatible?’ puts forward the argument that, although doing academic criminology and doing politics are logically incompatible activities, because of the existential force of those same fundamental contradictions, academic criminologists have no choice: if they do critique, they also do politics. Second, ‘Doing Critique, Doing Politics: Hard Choices’ discusses, with examples, some of the strategic difficulties and dilemmas inherent in the inevitable clash of professional ethics and political interests which confront criminologists engaged in both deconstructive critique and reconstructive criminal justice politicking. Third, ‘Beware the Search for Truth’ identifies and warns against some contemporary threats to criminological critique and a democratic penal politics. Finally, ‘New Directions for Criminological Knowledge’ concludes the chapter by arguing that although criminology as a profession should see itself as a service industry producing academic criminological expertise, its appropriate sphere of political activity, as a profession, is within universities rather than within the political arena. Criminologists enter the political arena with values and agendas other than those developed under the auspices of science.

Criminological critique and penal politics: are they compatible?

Academic criminology is different from other perspectives on lawbreaking and criminal justice because, like other scientific disciplines, it is professionally bound to engage in analytic critique according to the scientific and legitimated methodological protocols of its discipline; and independently of political pressures and self-interest. Accordingly, it attempts to forge analyses which provide accounts for the ever-changing faces of crime and the social, cultural, economic and political conditions in which lawbreaking is seen, or not seen, to be a social issue. This is a complex task, the product of which (like much scientific work) does not easily lend itself to sound-bite description and political rhetoric. To add to the complexity of critique, academic criminologists do not speak with one voice. Insofar as its practitioners (variously) consider the causes of crime to be embedded in an individual’s psychological or psycho-social make-up and/or a jurisdiction’s local and global politics, economy or culture, academic criminology broadens out to become an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary social science, albeit one with no definitive epicentre. The contested meanings of the concepts of crime and justice result in the theoretical and investigative terrains of criminology being constituted and continuously transformed by a range of academic disciplines: sociology, law, economics, psychology, geography, philosophy, statistics and history. All have their experts specialising in crime, and within these groupings a miscellany of investigative methodologies and modes of analysis are deployed.

Cutting across the traditional disciplines, and mushrooming as the preconditions for crime continuously change and regroup, are a bewildering number of specialist academic criminologies: comparative, critical, cultural, environmental, feminist, global, Marxist, psycho-social, crime science, harm reduction, and many more, each fashioned and continuously refashioning, to meet the new demands of changing times (see Carlen 1998, 2010). Yet, however inclusive or exclusive the disciplinary umbrella under which an academic criminologist works, the critical aim is always to interrogate the changing preconditions of specified aspects of crime and criminal justice so that, via discovery and critique, new knowledge might be produced. Criminology’s parameters thus expand or shrink according to the conceptual framework within which any individual research project is pursued. This seeming individuality and difference in pursuit of knowledge, however, emanates, contradictorily, from the altruism of the collective ethic of independence and lack of compromise in critique. Given, therefore, that critique necessarily calls into question the status quo, and altruism declines to pursue personal interest, is it desirable for a professional, academic criminologist to engage in both critique and penal politics? Is it possible? And if, as I shall argue, it is both desirable and possible, what are the implications for doing critique and doing politics? For while all criminology is public, doing critique and doing politics is engaged in by individuals who, though they work under a collective professional ethic, hold a variety of religious, cultural and political beliefs about the nature of crime and punishment and a variety of epistemologies (or anti-epistemologies) about the nature of research, knowledge and ideology. Thus, although it might be common sense to assume that the main reason for doing criminology is to create new, more effective and more just ways of doing penal justice, the desirability and/or possibility of criminologists simultaneously doing critique and doing politics (in the sense of making effective interventions into criminal justice issues) has been hotly contested by both criminologists and government administrators. Criminologists have worried about the corruption and distortion of academic theory by policymakers paying lip service to new criminological knowledge, arguments and findings while at the same time, incorporating them into justifications for retrogressive policies (Smart 1989; Carlen 2002: 155–72; Walters 2003). A further concern, moreover, has been provoked by the recurring summary dismissal by governments of theories and research findings which have not meshed with political desire (Hope 2008).

Policymakers, for their part, have been equally frustrated: either by a criminological pursuit of research not seen as being obviously relevant to immediate and pressing crime and justice issues; or by analyses seen as most probably entailing penal policies involving political suicide for any political party willing to endorse them, and professional suicide for any individual officials rash enough to persevere in proposing them in face of media and popular opposition. There is also a more generally held suspicion that academic criminologists are insufficiently concerned about taking seriously non-academic views on crime and punishment.

The main stumbling block to greater collaboration between academics and policy makers inheres in an historical and fundamental difference in their missions. Under the auspices of science the professional mission of academic criminologists is to engage in constant critique of the taken-for-granted meanings of crime and punishment within which the policy issues are framed. Civil servants, conversely, are employed to advise on, and implement, the policies of their governments. Not all academics and not all civil servants, of course, see their missions in such stark or oppositional terms, and criminological perspectives have, over the years, helped shape many penal policies. Even so, within criminology, there is such a strong feeling that policy formation and critique are incompatible that one of the strongest groupings, or strands of thought, within academic criminology has been loosely termed ‘critical criminology’ – to distinguish it from criminological work more committed to policy formation than to critique.

The concept of critique being inherent in science, at first sight it might be seen as being nothing more than a spurious claim to political probity for any academics to claim that they engage in critical analysis. None the less, many contemporary criminologists do feel obliged to make that claim. And the main reason for such academic self-branding is because, insofar as the criminology of official agencies is oriented towards problem solving, it cannot usually call into question the official definitions or priorities embedded in the construction of policy issues in the first place. Even when civil servants and agency administrators are very much committed to deriving deconstructive practical lessons from the arguments or findings of academic criminology, recent experience, in the UK, at any rate, suggests that the final arbiter of criminological research relevance will be party political expediency rather than, say, ‘the public good’, ‘the cause of justice’ or ‘ethical considerations’ (see, for recent UK examples, Lewis 1997; Ramsbotham 2003). So much is obvious, and it is not a dilemma peculiar to criminology, or even to social science research in particular. All academic research has political, cultural and economic conditions of existence which are beyond the control and often even the knowledge of the players (see Lyman and Scott 1970: 58–66 on information games).

The determination of critical criminologists in universities to resist erosion of their professional obligation to do independent research has, moreover, been strengthened during the last couple of decades by the acceleration and intensification of government demands that universities make the direction, quality and quantity of their research explicitly relevant and accountable to the priorities of government funding councils, with the concepts of quality and quantity always being contentiously defined and, too often, conflated. In the jurisdictions where these demands have been made, the amount of government funding of specific academic institutions has been made conditional upon the extent to which the researches of academic personnel have been seen to meet governmental ‘relevance’ and ‘quality’ criteria. Consequently, the political demands for, and definitions of, ‘relevance’ and ‘quality’ have been buttressed by an institutional acquiescence and collusion inimical to the independent critique previously valued as a defining characteristic of academic research. Criminological research environments have thus become much more overtly politicised at the local, national and trans-national levels.

Overall, the responses of criminologists to this state of affairs have been pragmatic. Most academics have had little choice but to acquiesce in their employing university’s injunctions to chase grants. But while some policy-oriented criminologists have seen the demand for ‘relevance’ as being sufficient justification for doing as much grant-funded agency research as possible, some critical criminologists have also viewed policy-related research as endowing them with both greater authority and opportunities for making effective interventions into the related policy debates. Either way, universities have encouraged policy-related research because government and local authority invitations to tender often result in the large (and often repeat) contracts which swell university coffers. At the same time, a steep increase in the number of university students has, in the UK, resulted in academics having more teaching and administrative duties and less time to do the types of research that are intensely time-consuming. Smaller-scale, solely theoretical and/or ethnographic studies have, as a consequence, been seen by criminologists as being less productive of career rewards (Wacquant 2002).

Yet, although policy research (such as evaluation studies) is usually not seen as contributing much in the way of new knowledge of crime and criminal justice, criminologists who promote and encourage it may well justify problem-solving research on the following grounds: that the extra funding it attracts has a significant spill-over effect for individual criminology departments by subsidising research of a more theoretical kind; that academics, especially critical criminologists, have a public duty to develop policies directed at the reduction of certain crimes (feminists, for example, may be eager to do agency research which they hope will lead to a reduction in crimes against women). On the other hand, and in direct opposition to the agency-funded pragmatists, theoretical altruists, primarily concerned that their research should be independent and fundamentally critical of prevailing concepts of criminal justice, may well insist that the only justification for criminologists working in a university (as opposed to a government agency research institute) is that they should engage in constant criminological critique independently of populist, political or institutional considerations.

Meantime, the terms ‘critical’, ‘pragmatist’, ‘policy-oriented’ and ‘altruistic’ criminologists are, of course, ideal-typical constructions and few criminologists can be characterised as being deserving of only one categorisation. (See Loader and Sparks 2010: 134–44 for a more detailed and nuanced typology which ingeniously demonstrates the complexity of the discursive moves that professionals can...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The need for new directions in criminological theory
• Part I Epistemological and political reflections
• Part II Criminological theory, culture and the subject
• Part III Criminological theory and violence
• Part IV Crime and criminological theory in the global age
• Index