Contemporary Criminological Theory

Crime and Criminal Behaviour in the Age of Moral Uncertainty

Roger Hopkins Burke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781351242073
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

This book offers a critical introduction to trends and developments in contemporary criminological theory. Designed both as a companion to An Introduction to Criminological Theory – also by Roger Hopkins Burke and published by Routledge – and as a standalone advanced textbook, it develops themes introduced previously in more detail, incorporates new critical and radical concepts and explores cutting-edge advances in theory. Key topics include the following: • Constitutive, anarchist, green and species, bio-critical, cultural, abolitionist and convict criminologies
• Globalization and organized crime
• Southern theory
• Critical race theory
• Terrorism and state violence
• Gender, feminism and masculinity
• Ultra-realism
• Radical moral communitarianismThese key issues are discussed in the context of debates about the fragmentation of modernity and the postmodern condition; the rise of political populism, risk, surveillance and social control, and speculation about living in post-COVID-19 society and the future of neoliberalism. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of criminology, sociology and politics and is essential reading for advanced students of criminology looking for a way to engage with contemporary themes and concepts in theory.

Chapter 1
Introduction and structure of the book

Key issues

1. Contemporary debates in criminological theory in political and socio-economic context
2. Rise and fall of modern societies and criminological theories conceptualized in that context
3. Response of society and the criminal justice system to crime in the modern era
4. Contradictions and failings of the postmodern world
5. Inadequacies of modernist criminal justice systems in the postmodern condition

Introduction

This book is a companion to An Introduction to Criminological Theory which is currently in its fifth edition written by this author and published by Routledge. During the review process for that book, reviewers expressed interest in developing the themes and theories discussed in the final section and agreed with my proposition that these should be located in an expanded discussion of the contemporary socio-political context. This new book does just that.

Contemporary Criminological Theory is thus – as the name suggests – a very current text which both develops those previous themes in more detail and one which introduces new critical and radical themes/theoretical approaches which have arisen in recent years in the context of a fragmented even chaotic socio-political environment in post-industrial societies. In short, this is a critical discussion of the criminological and socio-economic responses to a contemporary social condition which has had a differential but negative impact on the lives of most social groups in society. The outcome has been widespread pessimism and anger indicated in the various and varied recent electoral results to have occurred throughout the liberal democratic Western world and which appear to have in common a rejection of the usual political elites. This book seeks out to show that forms of crime and criminal behaviour plus the nature of the criminal justice response are of necessity very distinctive in different epochs and forms of society.

Crime is a feature of all societies at all times. Nevertheless, certain trends and patterns appear consistently at different times and places. In general, traditional or premodern societies, that is rural and agricultural societies which lack significant economic development, tend to have more violent crime and less property crime than economically developed societies. In traditional societies, violent crimes such as murder, rape and assault may be fairly common and often are accepted and tolerated as an unavoidable part of ordinary, everyday life. As these societies modernize and become economically developed, violent acts become increasingly unacceptable and they also become increasingly rare. At the same time, while valuable property exists in traditional societies, it is generally not very portable – the most valuable property may include such things as land and animals – and thus, there is little property crime. Ownership of valuable, portable goods expands rapidly with economic development, and with that expansion comes a vast increase in the stealing of those goods, along with a vast increase in the ways in which those goods can be stolen (e.g. stealing with a pen rather than with a gun). This is a book about explaining crime and criminality in a contemporary criminogenic neoliberal society.

The structure of the book

The book is divided into three parts. The first tells the story of the rise and fall of modern societies and locates within this narrative a brief résumé of the theories of crime and criminal behaviour which have prevailed during an epoch epitomized largely by political confidence and moral certainty. That story concludes with the fragmentation of modernity, the rise of the postmodern condition and a transition to an era of moral uncertainty.

Chapter 2 considers the rise of modern societies and how these were very different from those which had existed previously. During the relatively unchallenged confident modern years, there were different often competing perspectives and these theories – ideologies and ‘isms’ – sought to explain in their own terms the nature and purpose of society, how it worked and in whose interest this all occurred. People understood that by following their particular perspective or grand theory – whether it be liberal democracy, conservatism, fascism, socialism, communism or other – things would eventually get better. All you needed to do was follow and have faith in the sacred texts prescribed by your particular grand theory which was usually supported by some form of research and scholarship which you could claim to be neutral and objective. Social engineering, welfarism and the manipulation and/or even the changing of ‘the system’ would bring about a better world. People were confident that this would happen. It was just necessary to follow the tenets of the sacred texts and the subsequent action they proposed, and all would be well. This was the age of moral certainty.

Chapter 3 considers how crime was explained and dealt with by the criminal justice system in the undisputable modern age. The theories that came to the fore during that period can be broadly conceptualized in terms of one of three models of crime and criminal behaviour with each becoming incrementally more sophisticated over time. The chapter provides a relatively brief, selective resume of these models and the theories contained within them, but all can be located in an unambiguously modernist context.

First, the rational actor model – with its origins in the late eighteenth-century European Enlightenment – proposes that human beings enjoy free will and can thus freely choose to offend in very much the same way that they can decide to engage in other activities. But choices nevertheless entail responsibilities and inevitably consequences. The recommended solution to the crime problem from this perspective is the introduction of punishments designed with the appropriate level of severity to deter people from committing crime. Crime therefore becomes an unattractive choice of action to the rational actor – in theory at least. Clearly, reality has been rather different.

Second, the predestined actor model denies the possibility of human free will and proposes that human behaviour (including criminality) is determined by forces – either internal or external to the individual – to which they have little or no control. There are three formulations of this positivist model – biological, psychological and sociological – and these were to become the dominant orthodoxy throughout much of the twentieth century.

Third, the victimized actor model proposes that it is the offender who is the victim of an unjust and unequal society. It is the behaviour and activities of the poor and powerless which are targeted and criminalized while those of the rich and powerful are either ignored or not even defined as criminal. The victimized actor model encourages neither punishment nor the treatment of offenders, instead proposing non-criminalization and measures to reduce unequal power relations and improve the life chances of the individual.

The three models are very much part of the modern tradition. Proponents usually believe in what they are doing and acknowledge that by rectifying perceived and proven errors often in response to ‘neutral’ objective research findings they can revitalize the whole theory or even the broader contextual model. Some researchers and scholars have gone further and sought to show that the integration of theories from different traditions can produce an even stronger explanatory model. Again, these can be easily conceptualized as part of the modernist tradition. They are very much underpinned by a fundamental moral certainty and as such are discussed much more thoroughly in the companion text.

Chapter 4 concludes the first part and discusses the fragmentation of the modernity that has provided the socio-economic foundations underpinning the criminological theories discussed in the previous chapter. This fragmentation consists of an ever-increasing succession of economic and political developments that were to increasingly indicate a retreat from the post–Second World War settlement between governments and the people. These agreements were primarily based on the full-employment, subsidized housing, free education and ‘cradle to grave’ welfare policies which were to provide socio-economic orthodoxy throughout the Western world until at least the mid-1970s. This period – little more than 30 years in total – arguably marks the highpoint of modernism. The world was often (sometimes cruelly) unequal but things were on balance getting better and there was still widespread confidence in the capacity of social democratic institutions and the relevant grand theories to deliver the good life. Eventually. With a little encouragement. At the ballot box or picket line. An age of moral certainty.

Cracks within the modernist project were nevertheless becoming increasingly apparent with the old certainties being questioned right across the political spectrum. For example should groups of workers – such as the powerful National Union of Mineworkers – be able to hold the government and the country to ransom in pursuit of higher pay and better conditions of employment? Increasingly more and more people asked this and similar questions. With the passing of time, these and other contradictions become ever more apparent with the consequence that modernist societies were becoming increasingly unmanageable during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. They have now reached a virtual crisis point. At the same time, there has been a serious decline in the confidence of the old trusted grand theories to take us to the promised land. The sacred texts have been found increasingly inadequate or simply wrong. Yet, ironically, they have managed to find credibility amongst previously fringe political groups who have actually gained in popularity among whole groups of the previously politically unrepresented.

The second part of this book provides a substantive discussion of crime and criminal behaviour, the response of society, criminal justice professionals, criminologists and other ‘moral entrepreneurs’ during this era of a fragmented modernity or postmodern condition. The nature of crime and what is considered to be crime is ever changing as society becomes more diverse and the old traditional modernist criminal justice responses increasingly appear to be inadequate and inappropriate.

Chapter 5 thus discusses the morally ambiguous nature of crime and criminal behaviour in what some social scientists have called the postmodern condition. Postmodernism nevertheless provides an extremely negative and nihilistic vision, for, if, as it is proposed, there is no such thing as the ‘truth of the human condition’, it is clearly difficult to formulate an argument in support of basic human rights or to locate legitimate foundations for law. The relativism implied by postmodernism simply denies the possibility of objective truth and hence of justice in anything other than a purely subjective form, which inevitably consigns us to the prospect of conflict and confusion. The essential problem for the development of legislation and explanations of crime and criminal behaviour in the fragmented modernity or postmodern condition remains the crucial difficulty of making any objective claims for truth, goodness and morality. Postmodernism advocates giving a voice to the oppressed and less powerful – and may celebrate diversity – but it could be argued that, in practice, power relations and political decisions are fundamentally important and may restrict this ideal.

Chapter 6 considers constitutive criminology which is the only well-developed attempt to rethink the central issues and themes of criminology in terms of postmodernism. Proponents have defined crime as the power to deny others and have argued that the conventional crime control strategies, in the form of the fast-expanding criminal justice industry with which we are familiar – the police and prisons, in particular – or as political rhetoric rehearsed in the media, actually fuels the engine of crime.

Chapter 7 considers anarchist criminology, which, in contrast to most modernist intellectual orientations that we encountered in the previous part of this book, seeks not to incorporate reasoned or reasonable critiques of law and legal authority but, in contrast, argues that progressive social change requires the pursuit of the ‘unreasonable’ and the ‘unthinkable’. Thinking outside the traditional modernist correctional box. Anarchist criminology thus advocates the abolition of criminal justice systems and considers the state to be an inherently oppressive entity. Anarchist justice advocates not only social justice (equal access to all resources) but also the protection of diversity and differences among people.

Chapter 8 discusses cultural criminology and its key proposition that the various crime control agencies are simply cultural products which can only be understood in terms of the meanings they carry for those involved. Everyday existences, life histories, music, dance and performance have been used by cultural criminologists to discover how and why it is that certain cultural forms become criminalized and others do not. Jack Katz has written about the ‘seductions of crime’ in which disorder is itself a ‘delight’ to be sought and savoured with the causes of crime constructed by the offenders themselves in ways which are compellingly seductive – getting satisfaction from a job well done.

Mike Presdee (2000) has developed this sense of the interrelationship between pleasure and pain with his notion of ‘crime as carnival’ where the pleasures of playing at the boundaries of illegality are temporarily legitimated at the time of ‘carnival’. Think Christmas and the office party. This author takes this proposition further and uses the phrase ‘the schizophrenia of crime’ to refer to the apparently contradictory contemporary duality of attitude to criminal behaviour whereby there is both a widespread public demand for a rigorous intervention against criminality, while, at the same time, lawbreaking is widespread to the virtual point of universality with most people having committed criminal offences and/or indulged in deviant activities at some point in their life. These issues are developed with the new ‘deviant leisure’ perspective which discusses activities that – through their adherence to cultural values celebrated by consumer capitalism – have the potential to result in harm. Using the ideological primacy of consumer capitalism as a point of departure, the proponents of this perspective discuss the harm potential that exists beneath the surface of even the most embedded and culturally accepted forms of leisure.

Chapter 9 considers the relationship between crime and the ever-increasing globalization. There is thus reflection on the globalization of a range of criminal activities with the observation that dealing in illicit drugs, illegal trafficking in weapons and human beings, money laundering, corruption and violence, including terrorism and war crimes, are all characteristic developments. The growing influence of global organized crime is seen as a significant rival to legitimate multinational corporations as an economic power, with globalization having greatly facilitated the growth of international terrorism.

Chapter 10 discusses Southern theory which has emerged as an antidote to what scholars from Australasia and parts of the developing world have seen to be the intellectual and explanatory hegemony of the Northern Hemisphere not least in the area of crime and criminal behaviour. The perspective can be loosely defined as a conversation which questions universalism in criminological and social theory. The dominance of Western models is challenged, identifying alternative thinkers and particular issues which have been overlooked in the traditional academy. It is a perspective that has sought to empower thinkers beyond the transatlantic metropolitan centres to focus on experiences specific to their geographical location.

Chapter 11 considers critical race theory which ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction and structure of the book
• Part I From the modern to the postmodern condition
• Part II Crime and criminal behaviour in the era of fragmented modernity
• Part III From the postmodern condition to a revitalized modernity
• Index