THE NEW CRIMINOLOGY REVISITED the New Criminology Revisited

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THE NEW CRIMINOLOGY REVISITED the New Criminology Revisited THE NEW CRIMINOLOGY REVISITED The New Criminology Revisited Edited by Paul Walton Professor of Communications Thames Valley University and Jock Young Head of the Centre for Criminology Middlesex University Enfield palgrave Editorial matter and selection Cl Paul Walton and jock Young 1998 Text e MaaniUan Press ltd 1998 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. * No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Totten ham Court Road, London W1P OLP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York. N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin's Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Maanillan Press ltd). Outside North America ISBN 978-0-333-65459-0 ISBN 978-1-349-26197-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-26197-0 In North America ISBN 978-0-312-17415-6 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The new criminology revisited I edited by Paul Walton and jock Young. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-17415-6(doth) 1. Criminology-Philosophy. 2. Radicalism. 3. Feminist theory. 4. Philosophy, Modem-20th century. I. Walton, Paul II. Young, jock. HV602S.N49 1997 364---dc21 96-46500 CIP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 08 07 06 OS 04 03 02 01 Contents Preface vii Notes on the Contributors ix 1 Big Science: Dystopia and Utopia - Establishment and New Criminology Revisited 1 Paul Walton 2 Breaking Windows: Situating the New Criminology 14 Jock Young 3 Reducing the Crime Problem: A Not So Dismal Criminology 47 John Braithwaite 4 Criminology Ltd: The Search for a Paradigm 64 Pat Carlen 5 Postmodernism and Feminist Criminologies: Fragmenting the Criminological Subject 76 Kerry Carrington 6 Intellectual Scepticism and Political Commitment: The Case of Radical Criminology 98 Stan Cohen 7 Crime and Market Society: Lessons from the United States 130 Elliott Currie 8 Crime, Criminology and Government 143 Russell Hogg 9 Criminology and Postmodernity 163 John Lea 10 Criminology and the Public Sphere: Arguments for Utopian Realism 190 Ian Loader v vi Contents 11 Moral Panics and the New Right: Single Mothers and Feckless Fathers 213 Jayne Mooney 12 Reassessing Competing Paradigms in Criminological Theory 221 John Muncie 13 Free Markets and the Costs of Crime: An Audit of England and Wales 234 Ian Taylor 14 Writing on the Cusp of Change: A New Criminology for an Age of Late Modernity 259 Jock Young Index 297 Preface The New Criminology was first published in 1973 and has re­ mained in print ever since. It is representative of the wave of radicalism of the time that spread through the academy into the far reaches of criminology. It reflects the dramatic changes that were occurring both in the level of crime and disorder and in the contested nature of crime and deviance as we moved out of the calm stretches of the postwar settle­ ment into the turbulence of late modernity, which we were then entering and to which we are still attempting to adjust. Radical criminology, which developed both in Britain and the United States at that time, has since proliferated, devel­ oped and flourished. The various currents that form its past, whether Marxist, radical feminist or anarchist, continue in fierce dispute but have in common the notion that crime and the present-day processes of criminalisation are rooted in the core structures of society, whether its class nature, its patriarchal form or its inherent authoritarianism. That is a radical criminology in contrast to establishment, a criminology that views crime as essentially a blemish on society that can be corrected by cosmetic means. Such an administrative criminology is technicist and piecemeal: it holds faith that the fine tuning of sentencing, police practice or the judi­ ciary - coupled with the judicious use of target hardening, CCTV and neighbourhood watch - will do the trick. It is scarcely surprising, then. that radical criminology inhabits an academic territory of theory and dispute, of paradigm building and demolition, whereas administrative crimi­ nology holds away in a positivistic world where the accumu­ lation of empirical facts is backed by minimalist theory. This book represents the present-day world of radical crimi­ nology: it revisits the new criminology of the late twentieth century and tackles the central problems that the transition to the post- or late-modern era has generated. It begins with two introductions, one by each of the editors, which situate The New Criminology both theoretically and politically (albeit, quite naturally, with some disagreement). It then presents vii viii Preface the reflections of some of the leading international figures in criminology on developments since 1973. As editors we had a remarkable response to our project. Our thanks go first to all our contributors for creating such a lively collection. Special thanks must go to Ian Taylor for his staunch support of the project throughout its long ges­ tation and to Jayne Mooney, who provided invaluable edi­ torial advice in the later stages. Thanks also to all those colleagues who helped along the way: Andrew Cornish of the University of Wollongong, Mark Findlay of the Univer­ sity of Sydney, Brian Winston of the University of Wales, Cardiff, andJohn Lea at Middlesex University. Anya Richards and David Dawson helped word process the early manuscript, Albert Ross hung around as usual, Joseph Gabriel Mooney was a blessing and Catriona Woolner edited the final manu­ script marvellously. PAUL WALTON JOCK YOUNG Notes on the Contributors John Braithwaite is Professor of Law in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, Canberra. Internationally he is Australia's best-known crimi­ nologist. His many publications and books include Inequal­ ity, Crime and Public Policy, Crime Shame and Reintegration, and Not So Just Deserts: A Republican Theory of Criminal Justice. Pat Carlen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bath and was until recently Head of the Centre for Criminology at Keele University. She is the author of several key books including Magistrates Justice, Women s Imprisonment, Women, Crime and Poverty, and Alternatives to Women's Imprisonment. Her most recent book Jigsaw: A Political Criminology of Youth Homelessness is based on her pioneering research in this area. Kerry Carrington is Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities, University of Western Sydney (Hawkesbury), Richmond, NSW, Australia. She teaches gender studies and feminist criminology. She is the author of Offending Girls: Sex, Youth and Justice, co-editor of Cultures of Crimes and Violence, Travesty: Miscar­ riages ofJustice, and Justice: Prisons, Politics and Punishment. Stan Cohen is Professor at the London School of Econom­ ics and the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. One of the most distinguished criminologists of his generation, his work has spanned studies of youthful disorder to crimes of the state. He is best known for Folk Devils and Moral Panics and Visions of Social Control. His recent research has been on violations of human rights and the denial of responsibility. This has resulted in the report published by the Center for Human Rights, University of Jerusalem: Denial and Acknowledgement: The Impact of Information about Human Rights Violations. Elliott Currie is the foremost American critic of criminal justice policy and the author of the influential Confronting Crime. His recent research has focused on drugs, youth and ix x Notes on the Contributors delinquency and he is the author of the fiercely critical Is America Really Winning the War On Crime? Russell Hogg is Senior Lecturer, Law School, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia. He teaches criminal law and criminology. He is the author of Rethinking Law and Order and co-editor of Travesty: Miscarriages ojJustice, Under­ standing Crime and Criminal Justice and Death in the Hands oj the State.· John Lea is Professor of Criminology at Middlesex Univer­ sity. He is co-editor of the recent Engels volume The Condi­ tion oj Britain, has translated Tamar Pitch's Limits oj Responsibility, is the co-author with Jock Young of What is To Be Done About Law and Order? and has just published Crime and Post-Modernity. Ian Loader lectures in criminology at the University of Keele and has written numerous articles on crime and policing. He is at present working on an ESRC project on anxiety about crime and urban unease. Jayne Mooney is Head of Criminology at Middlesex Univer­ sity. She has published articles on violence in public and private space, and her book Women, Violence and Society is to be published by Macmillan. Her research has focused on criminal victimisation and she conducted the first large-scale prevalence study of domestic violence in Britain. John Muncie is Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Social Policy at The Open University. His publications include The Trouble with Kids Today: Youth and Crime in Post-War Britain, Imprisonment.· European Perspectives (with R. Sparks), and The Problem oj Crime (with E.
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