Social justice and criminal justice Edited by Rebecca Roberts and Will McMahon Harm and Society Published by: Centre for Crime and Justice Studies King’s College London Strand London WC2R 2LS Tel: 0207 848 1688 Fax: 0207 848 1689 www.crimeandjustice.org.uk The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London is an independent charity that informs and educatess about all aspects of crime and criminal justice. We provide information, produce research and carry out policy analysis to encourage and facilitate an understanding of the complex issues concerning crime. Acknowledgements: Our thanks go to Ed Brenton, Catriona Foote and Louise Hazell for their assistance and support in the publication of this collection. Registered Charity No. 251588 A Company Limited by Guarantee Registered in England No 496821 © Centre for Crime and Justice Studies 2007 ISBN 978-0-9548903-3-9 Available in an online format only. 2 Social justice and criminal justice 1 Contents Introduction 5 Rebecca Roberts and Will McMahon Neoliberalism and New Labour 1 Neoliberalism, crime and justice 8 Professor Robert Reiner 2 New Labour - social transformation and social order 22 Will McMahon 3 ‘Punitiveness’ and ‘populism’ in political economic perspective 31 Richard Garside 4 A new direction for penal politics? Putting the popular back into populism 44 Emma Bell 5 Tough on… what? New Labour’s war on crime statistics 57 Dr Phil Edwards 6 New Labour, New Legitimacy? The ‘making punishment work’ agenda and the limits of penal reform 71 Dr David Scott 2 Violence against women 7 Constructions of harm and crime in drug facilitated sexual assault 82 Dr Miranda Horvath and Professor Jennifer Brown 8 ‘It’s fine as long as she’s not doing it out of force’: Paying for sex – harmful and/or criminal? 95 Maddy Coy 9 Domestic violence policies under New Labour: wasted years? 105 Dr Aisha Gill and Lorraine Radford Considering a social harm perspective 10 Social harm and social policy in Britain 122 Professor Danny Dorling 11 Gendered harm and the limits of criminology 136 Dr Christina Pantazis 12 Social harm and supranational criminology, post-Maastricht 2007 142 Professor David O. Friedrichs Policing communities 13 Regeneration through discipline: Sustainable communities, liveability and the penalisation of marginality 157 Dr Craig Johnstone 3 14 Whose right to the city? Surveillance and policing the working class in the regenerating city 170 Dr Roy Coleman 15 The socialisation of crime control? A critique of New Labour’s ‘social’ approach to crime control 186 Dr Daniel Gilling 16 Terrorism, counter-terrorism and Muslim community engagement post 9/11 202 Dr Basia Spalek and Robert Lambert Regulating the young 17 The socialisation of crime policy? Evidence from the National Evaluation of the Children’s Fund 216 Dr Nathan Hughes, Dr Paul Mason and Dr David Prior 18 Early intervention to prevent youth offending – something old, anything new? 232 Dr Raymond Arthur 19 Sharing stories about Labour: youth justice strategies in New South Wales and the UK 244 Elaine Fishwick 4 Introduction Since the election of the first ‘New Labour’ administration in May 1997 the themes of social justice and criminal justice have become inextricably linked in government policy. A decade on, with the termination of Tony Blair’s premiership in view, it seemed the right moment to hold a conference to examine the nature of the relationship between the two and to consider the future contours of social and criminal justice policy. ‘Criminal justice and social justice: New Directions’ was held on the 5th and 6th of July 2007 during the interregnum between the Blair and Brown administrations. The conference marked the integration of the Crime and Society Foundation project, now retitled as ‘Harm and Society’, into the mainstream work of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. This change was announced at the conference and the theme of ‘social harm’ was discussed in a number of seminars as well as at a main plenary which included a debate between Professor Paddy Hillyard, a leading advocate of the social harm approach, and Professor Rod Morgan, formerly head of the Youth Justice Board. Other plenary speakers included Professor Colin Leys, who outlined New Labour’s policy agenda from a political economy perspective; Professor Richard Wilkinson introduced on ‘Why inequality matters’ and Rene van Swaaningen on ‘Bending the punitive turn’. Professor Joe Sim also spoke on ‘Law and Order for an Iron Age’. Each of the plenary contributions added a new layer to our considerations on the relationship between social justice and criminal justice in the 21st century. This collection of essays draws together contributions from the conference workshops and covers a range of subject areas relating to the overarching theme of criminal justice and social justice. ‘Neoliberalism and New Labour’ explores recent political and economic agendas and the subsequent impact on social and criminal justice policy. ‘Violence against women’ investigates drug facilitated sexual assault, domestic violence policy reform and men’s attitudes to prostitution. Following this, in ‘Considering a social harm perspective’, gendered harm is explored further alongside contributions on social harm and social policy and also ‘supranational’ criminology. ‘Policing communities’ looks at the ‘socialisation’ of crime control and the role of surveillance and policing techniques in the control and penalisation of marginality. The final section, ‘Regulating the young’ draws together essays on youth justice policy, evaluating recent reforms, considering the National Evaluation of the Children’s Fund and finally, taking a comparative look at recent reforms in New South Wales, Australia. We are extremely grateful to the contributors for their involvement in both the conference and this monograph. By publishing and disseminating critical analysis 5 we aim to act as a bridge between academic, practitioner and public policy worlds, stimulating public debate and providing space for thinking critically about social harm and criminal justice. Rebecca Roberts and Will McMahon ABOUT THE EDITORS Rebecca Roberts is Senior Policy Associate and Will McMahon is Policy Director at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. 6 Neoliberalism and New Labour www.crimeandjustice.org.uk Neoliberalism and New Labour 7 Social justice and criminal justice www.crimeandjustice.org.uk 1 Neoliberalism, crime and justice Professor Robert Reiner What is neo-liberalism? Neo-liberalism is the economic theory and practice that has swept the world since the early 1970s, displacing communism in Eastern Europe and China, as well as the Keynesian, mixed economy, welfare state consensus that prevailed in Western liberal democracies after World War II (Harvey, 2005). As an economic doctrine it postulates that free markets maximise efficiency, by signalling consumer wants to producers, optimising the allocation of resources, and providing incentives for entrepreneurs and workers. Neo-liberalism as culture and ethic Advocates of neo-liberalism see it not only as promoting economic efficiency, but political and personal virtue (Hayek, 1944 {2001}). They associate free markets with democracy and liberty. Welfare states, they claim, have many moral hazards: undermining personal responsibility, and advancing the sectional interests of public sector workers, not the goals of public service. Neo-liberals advocate market disciplines and New Public Management to counteract this (Leys, 2001; McLaughlin et al., 2001). 8 Neoliberalism and New Labour www.crimeandjustice.org.uk Neo-liberalism has spread from the economic sphere to the social and cultural. Consumerism predates neo-liberal dominance, but has now become hegemonic. Aspirations and conceptions of the good life are thoroughly permeated by materialist and acquisitive values. Business solutions, business models, suffuse all spheres of activity: sport, entertainment, charities, and crime control (Zedner, 2006). The ‘Rich List’ has ousted all other rankings of status. The dysfunctions of markets The supposed benefits of neo-liberalism have been familiarised as common sense by its cheerleaders. There are however many negative consequences of unbridled markets and materialism. They used to be stressed by the various forms of socialism, but also by religions, and even by classical liberal political economy, from Adam Smith, to Alfred Marshall and Pigou. As with the trumpeted virtues of markets, their dysfunctions transcend the economic, and include moral, social and political harms: Economic: a) Left to themselves competitive markets will become dominated by monopolies, as the winners use their resources to drive out competitors; b) Inequality of wealth and income become ever greater as the winners of early competition multiply their advantages; c) Allocation of resources reflects the consumer power of the rich not human need, with the Galbraithian juxtaposition of private affluence and public squalor; d) Market systems are prone to macro-economic cyclical fluctuations; e) Insecurities caused by the vicissitudes of ill-health, old age etc. are widespread, hard to predict at the level of the individual, and better protected against by collective rather than individual strategies. Ethical: Market societies generate cultures of egoism, short-termism, irresponsibility to others. Bakan’s analysis of company law shows that it requires corporations to act in ways psychiatrists would diagnose as psychopathic in an individual (Bakan, 2005: 56-9). The most stirring