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It is now reasonably clear that the twenty first century
heralds not the end of history, some new epoch of postmodern playful diversity
and prosperity but, on the contrary, renewed instability and conflict, and a
growing threat to the very physical survival of the planet. Crime is a central
feature of this grim scenario as it progressively loses its status as a clearly
identifiable disruption of the normal peaceful processes of social, political
and economic life to become a core element of those processes themselves. Crime
becomes less part of the exhaust fumes of the system and increasingly part of
the engine itself.
I wrote ‘Crime and Modernity’ not so much with the
intention of contributing to existing debates in criminology as to contribute to
the elaboration of a more general framework within which developments in crime
and crime control could be related to the wider instabilities and conflicts
which now characterise world development.
Inspiring Themes
In writing ‘Crime and Modernity’ there were three main
theoretical perspectives which informed my argument: left realist criminology,
the work of Michel Foucault on the transition from sovereignty to government and
recent developments in Marxism.
1.
Left Realist criminology
Left Realist criminology as it developed during the
1980’s covered a number of themes. Part of it was a practical intervention in
the politics of policing and crime control in the UK at that time. But Left
Realism also involved a number of theoretical and conceptual developments. For
me the most enduring conceptual element was what came to be known popularly as
the ‘square of crime’.
This perspective views the dynamics of crime and crime
control as not exhaustively understandable in terms of the relationship between
the State and the Offender as had been the case with much conventional
criminology, but as a more complex interaction of four actors: State, Community,
Offender and Victim.
This square-like framework can be used analytically to
specify and synthesise varieties of criminological theory and also as a formal
structure to link the various types of action and reaction by communities,
criminal justice agencies, offenders and victims which make up the dynamic of
criminality and its control. This was the approach I took in a contribution some
years ago. (read it here)
In ‘Crime and Modernity’ the square is used in a
different way. It now has an historical dimension. Rather than simply specifying
crime control as a process of interaction, the further question is asked: what
is the historical basis of the emergence of the four actors and their capacity
to interact in such a way that a stable system of crime control is established.
Thus the square of crime reappears as the ‘social relations of crime
control’, as a distinct historically constituted set of social relations,
involving power, communication and interaction between the state criminal
justice agencies, offenders, victims and communities through which conflicts are
defined as regulated as ‘crime’
The social relations of crime control are characteristic of
the social division of labour in modern capitalist society in which the public
in its various local communities are linked to the state, there are clear
relations of power (the state is more powerful than most criminal offenders for
example) the offender is marginalised by the public (communities do not sanction
any forms of criminality), the public and the state both legitimise the status
of and give practical support to the victim of crime.
(for a fuller account read the section on the social
relations of crime control in the extract from chapter one of Crime and
Modernity here)
Crime, from this standpoint, is not a form of action which
exists prior to the institutions and social relations which deal with it. On the
contrary, we have ‘crime’ because we have criminal justice systems. It needs
to be added that we have ‘crime’ also because a certain set of historically
constituted social relations which underpin such systems and enable them to
function. These social relations can be seen as forms of ‘government’ in the
sense deployed by Michel Foucault. This brings me to the second theoretical
perspective which aided me in writing Crime and Modernity.
2.
Foucault on government
In one of his seminal articles Foucault (1991) gave an
account of what he called the ‘governmentalisation of the state’. He saw
modernity as involving a transition in forms of rule of society from Sovereignty
to Government, or a transition from a form of rule which is concerned simply
with obedience to the will of the Sovereign to one which is aimed at the
regulation of society as a complex entity. A state which governs rather than
simply rules is concerned with how society reproduces itself. It is concerned
with population: its health, stability, discipline, useful employment.
Criminality and conflict is to be regulated not simply because it is a violation
of the will of the Sovereign but also because it is inefficient and disruptive
to ordered social and economic processes. These processes of government extend
far beyond the state to embrace the working of private individuals and
institutions such as the family, private philanthropy, commercial companies etc.
In Crime and Modernity I understand the social
relations of crime control as forms of government, as a set of processes which
co-ordinate the management of certain types of conflict, which work by
mobilising civil society to ‘hand over’ the management of these conflicts to
the state (the criminal justice system) and to then act in a supporting role to
enable the practical functioning of the criminal justice agencies. In order to
function as forms of crime control these relations, as noted already, embody
clear forms of definitions and shared languages about conflict and criminality,
as well as relations of asymmetric power.
The two key questions being asked in Crime and Modernity
are firstly, what historical circumstances are conducive to the development
of these relations and, secondly, how and why are they in a state of decay at
the present time? This brings me to the third theme
3.
Marxism
Marxism, in my opinion, remains the most adequate account
of the dynamics and in particular the instabilities of modern capitalist
society. Most theories of ‘late modernity’ ‘postmodernity’ etc., while
they grasp many of the features which have come to prominence in modern urban
capitalism over the last thirty or so years ( such as a fragmentation of
identities and cultures, including a pluralisation of definitions of deviance,
globalisation,) imagine in one way or another that we are moving on to a new
form of society which is different but also stable. Postmodernity is usually
seen as a new form of society with new dynamics of power and cohesion but
nevertheless with its own tendencies toward stability. A good example of this
would, in my opinion, be Hardt and Negri’s Empire (Hardt and Negri 2000)
A Marxist approach, by contrast, retains a view of modern
society as conflict ridden and contradictory. While Marx was quite wrong in
imagining these contradictions would result in overthrow of capitalism by the
industrial proletariat during his lifetime, the essential analysis of capitalism
as a mode of production which at first develops humanity and its resources (the
forces and relations of production) and then, eventually, turns into a fetter on
their further development, remains essentially sound.
Marx and Engels’ great work, the Communist Manifesto
of 1848, began by celebrating capitalism as a revolutionary modernising force
that dragged society out of the slumber of the Middle Ages and encouraged modern
science, human freedom and emancipation, built cities, developed communities and
culture. We can go on to understand how, as part of this process, the
development of capitalism facilitated modern social relations of crime control.
These relations, while never completely dissociated from the domination of the
ruling class, nevertheless made possible the advance of justice and the rule of
law.
Among Marxist writers I am particularly influenced by the
work of Istvan Meszaros. (Mészáros 1995) He argues that it is only now, in the
present period, that we are witnessing the consequences of capitalism as a
fetter on human development. Capitalism has entered a phase of destructive
self-reproduction in which, as a normal feature of its development rather
than only during the periodic recessions or ‘great thunderstorms’
characteristic of earlier periods, it undermines the infrastructure of modern
society. Capitalist development, notwithstanding the technological innovations
it continues to nurture, is predominantly destructive; undermining communities,
culture, liberty, the functioning of cities, the physical environment. In
particular the mechanisms of government which stabilised during the nineteenth
century are weakened and undermined. And included in this process is the
weakening of the social relations of crime control.
An Outline of the Argument
So, in Crime and Modernity I attempt to bring these themes
together to develop a theory of the rise and fall of the social relations of
crime control. I stress that I am concerned to develop an initial approach
rather than tie up all the loose ends of the argument. A very schematic and
summarised presentation of what is already a exploratory and unfinished argument
now follows:
1.
Pre-modern society
In pre-modern societies the social relations of crime
control are not very clearly developed. The vast bulk of conflicts are not taken
to law but sorted out within local communities themselves. At the same time the
state—the power of the Monarch—is more concerned with sovereignty than
governance, more concerned with obedience to the Royal will when exercised, e.g.
when levying taxes for warfare rather than with the regulation of society. It is
therefore discontinuous and episodic, leaving numerous gaps and spaces within
which what Foucault called ‘tolerated illegalities’ can exist as normal
features of life (Foucault 1977) Often the Royal power is ineffective over large
areas of the terrain. Whole communities may live by forms of criminality. The
distinction between criminality and normal community life is thus itself
blurred. The distinct identity of the criminal is made more opaque by
co-existing with wide categories of outsiders perceived as dangerous and
threatening; people from outside the town or region for example. Finally, such
is the power of forms of social caste and status that concepts of deviance and
criminality can not result in a clear labelling of ‘criminals’ in the modern
sense clearly separated from other forms of social status. The ‘criminality’
of the peasant is not on a par with the criminality of the Lord. There is no
rule of law and powerful consensual process of criminal labelling to bring them
together.
2.
Modern capitalist society
Capitalism was the great modernising force which
established the preconditions in which the social relations of crime control
began to emerge. In particular, after a period of initial turbulence and
destabilisation, a stabilising tendency asserted itself. Urbanisation, the
socialisation of the ruling bourgeois class into habits of restraint and
prudence, the stabilisation of working class communities, the social and
political integration of the working class through structures of political
compromise, shared values of work, leisure, property, normal and deviant
behaviour, public order and disorder, the appropriate use of public space,
spread across the social classes. In this context criminality became more
clearly marked out. Meanwhile the state, increasingly democratised, turned from
the violent enforcement of rule to the complex tasks of government and social
policy and regulation. Criminality, became no longer simply a violation of
morality and authority but also a disruption of socio-economic order and in need
of effective control and marginalisation. The social relations of crime control
penetrated and mobilised society to enable the effective government and
management of crime by a state whose power across the entirety of the national
terrain was no longer in question. The criminal became marginalised pathological
and weak. This in turn was the basis for the growth of the ‘science’ of
modern criminology.
It needs to be stressed that this modernisation process
was, firstly, a difficult transition. In the early stages, as exemplified by
England during the eighteenth century, there was a contradictory movement in
which law and criminal justice are initially directed at the working class as a
whole by the ruling class while many forms of economic crime functioned as forms
of generalised resistance (social crime) to the disruptive effects of
developing capitalism on traditional rural social relations. and under
conditions in which the state was relatively weak in its ability to control the
national terrain.
Secondly, the transition was never complete. Communal
sanctioning of a social criminality of theft, the practice of local management
of conflicts rather than their handing over to the state to be processed as
crime, always remained a part of working class life. More crucially, the social
relations of crime control were continually bounded and challenged by other
forms of governance which negate them and operate in accordance with quite
different dynamics. Thus the commercial enterprise and the family functioned,
and still do, as forms of autonomous self-regulation for which criminalisation
and the entry of the state criminal justice agencies are seen, except in
extremis, as themselves disruptive incursions. Meanwhile at the external
periphery of modern capitalism, various forms of colonialism retained the
characteristics of the earlier period in which crime control was directed at the
masses as a whole rather than at a distinct criminal class. Also various forms
of criminal governance, in which well organised groups act both as violent
criminality and at the same time as agents of political and social stabilisation
in the absence of a strong state (as with the Sicilian Mafia) remain important
phenomena.
Nevertheless the tendency towards the stabilisation of the
social relations of crime control was fostered by capitalism’s need to
socialise the working class: to integrate it into forms of political compromise,
to organise and stabilise urban life to sustain the conditions for smooth
capital accumulation. The high point of this process was the Keynesian Welfare
State. The indication was that crime rates were falling during the latter
nineteenth century. It was expected that they would continue to do so as the
welfare state eliminated poverty and extended social citizenship rights to all.
3.
Capitalist Society in Crisis
By the end of the 1970s a whole epoch, perhaps even
modernity itself, appeared to be drawing to a close. It was becoming
increasingly clear that fundamental changes were occurring in the direction of
development of capitalism. From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards it
had appeared that, despite periodic economic recessions, massive poverty and
social inequality, war and violence, capitalist development acted as a force for
social consolidation. It sustained the spread of the ideas of the Enlightenment,
individual liberty and human rights. It created the conditions in which the
masses could demand inclusion into those rights. It built cities and stable
communities. It created the conditions for the emergence of forms of integration
which reduced social and political conflict to a minimum compatible with the
survival of the system. Even if that stability had eventually required a growing
state intervention, a transition to the organised
modernity of the Keynesian Welfare
State, it had appeared capable of sustaining itself. More specifically, it
consolidated the social relations of crime control as a mechanism for the
governance of a wide variety of conflicts and harms.
This is no longer the case. It is reasonably clear in the
first years of the twenty first century that the direction of development has
fundamentally altered. Tendencies to social cohesion, integration and cultural
homogenisation, are now displaced by counter-tendencies toward social
fragmentation and polarisation, inequality, pluralisation and diversification.
On a larger scale modernisation as a process of global assimilation to the
social structure of the advanced capitalist countries, a weak tendency at best,
has been displaced by the accentuation of differences and inequalities between
states and regions, growing global inequality in wealth distribution, global
warming and environmental pollution.
The key change which marks the transition to destructive
self-reproduction is that capitalism, driven as ever by the need to sustain
sources of profitability, is fundamentally changing its relationship with labour
and with the stabilisation of the social infrastructure. Capital has lost
interest in the socialisation of labour and in the city. It has shifted towards
global mobility in search of cheap labour and is increasingly reluctant to pay
socialisation costs. (Teeple 2000) The result is the decline of the Fordist mass
production economy which sustained the integration of the working class into
consensual values together with decline of the national economy linked to a
strong nation state which secured the integration of the bourgeoisie into
national cultures and structures of political compromise.
4.
The weakening of crime control
An important consequence of these developments is the
undermining of the social relations of crime control. Three dimensions of this
can be distinguished.
The system becomes criminogenic
Criminality moves from the periphery to the centre. It
becomes structurally normalised, that is to say it becomes part of the
way the system works rather than its disruption. The system itself is
destructive. At the top of society, the ruling classes become increasingly
internationalised, less held in check by cultures and political structures of
national responsibility born of an understanding of the necessity to invest in
the social infrastructure to secure the reproduction of a stable labour force
Transnational corporations operating globally and tactically in search of cheap
labour can ally themselves with all manner of brutal local regimes which force
down the price of labour. An obsession with short term profitability and
reduction of taxes on capital pressures legitimate business into the techniques
of false accounting, money laundering etc., associated with organised crime.
Meanwhile at the bottom of social structures the process of
‘social exclusion’ consequent on the decline of the welfare state and
expenditure on reproduction of the working class leads to the re-emergence of
various types of criminality as forms of survival, a progressive blurring of the
boundaries between legitimate and illegal economies.
There is a shift back from government towards sovereignty
The declining preoccupation of capital with the
socialisation of labour implies a decline in its interest in government as the
overall social planning and regulation of society. Much of such
activity—welfare, health care and education—is progressively privatised,
while the state returns to a preoccupation with security. This manifests
itself as a concern with crime control and the neutralisation of potentially
troublesome marginalised populations. There is a shift—to use Foucault’s
terminology—away from government back in the direction of sovereignty.
It makes sense to talk of the emergence of the ‘debilitated authoritarian’
state. The state has become in many respects weaker through a continuous decline
in resources and capacities to engage in regulation and planning of the welfare
state variety and the transfer of such facilities to private capital. At the
same time it has become more authoritarian, particularly in the accumulation of
coercive police powers appropriate for the management of marginalised
populations. At the same time, good deal of the management of risk has been
privatised and decentralised to the level of the ‘active community’ through
the extension of, for example, of ‘gated’ housing or shopping areas to which
access can be denied to ‘undesirables’
Needless to say, the troublesome populations or
‘dangerous classes’ which are the focus of government policy are, in effect,
those at the bottom of the social scale. The untrammelled freedom of global
finance and transnational corporations are increasingly beyond the reach of
either effective regulation or the exercise of sovereignty at the level of the
nation state. But the exercise of sovereignty at the level of national terrains
becomes increasingly ‘tactical’ taking the form of a focus on key urban
areas where heavy criminalisation and ‘zero tolerance’ regimes will focus
are episodically introduced while other areas in which marginalised populations
are concentrated are subject to strategies of ‘border patrol’ with
occasional forays by law enforcement agencies as the occasion demands.
There is a resurgence of criminal governance
This exercise of ‘punitive sovereignty’ is, like its
precursor in pre-modern societies, discontinuous in space and time. There is a
growth of areas left within which illegalities tolerated by marginalised poor
communities as social crime flourish just as at a global level whole
regions or even countries may pass beyond anything but the episodic incursion of
state authorities. Again, the world of global finance and business, within whose
networks systems of organised crime merge with legitimate business, are subject
to even fewer incursions of police power. These spaces provide a breeding ground
for systems of criminal governance in which the coordination and
regulation of the social and economic life of the poor is coordinated by
criminal, rather than legitimate, economies usually accompanied by its own
variant of brutal ‘sovereignty from below’ (Stenson 1999) In such situations
crime control operates episodically, if at all.
The result is that the working of the social relations of
crime control continues to weaken. The state authorities withdraw into episodic
punitive sovereignty, offenders reintegrate with communities and become
themselves systems of governance and rule. In this respect the situation within
national states becomes more like that pertaining in international relations at
the same time as there has been a concerted effort to introduce effective
criminalisation of human rights violations in the international sphere
Back to the Future
The continual weakening of the social relations of crime
control is part of a more general process which many observers see as a
transition to postmodernity or late modernity. In fact it is to some extent
analogous to a return to the past; a process whereby capitalist societies in a
state of deep crisis are resuscitating phenomena which characterised the
earliest stages of their development or even characteristics of precapitalist
society.
Thus at the level of social and urban structure the
reappearance of large marginalised or ‘socially excluded’ populations to be
generally feared and criminalised recalls the initial stages of capitalist
development in which the newly urbanised masses as a whole, rather than a
distinct criminal group, were the object of law and police. The tendency to the
fragmentation of urban space into secure protected or ‘gated’ locations
which function as islands of security surrounded by ‘wild zones’ certainly
evokes premodern society. Meanwhile the reintegration of criminality with normal
life and the normal economic structures of modern capitalism again evoke earlier
stages of capitalist development.
The argument of Crime and Modernity ends effectively
at this point but it is here of course that the future of crime control as part
of the wider issue of what mechanisms can be devised for the effective control
of conflicts within a framework of civil liberties and justice, is one of the
major questions for the coming period. Writing this while pre-emptive war is
raging in the Middle East does not encourage the view that answers to these
questions will be easy.
27 March 2003
References:
Foucault, Michel (1977) Discipline and Punish. London: Allen Lane
Foucault, Michel (1991) "Governmentality" in Gordon, Colin and Paul Miller ed.
The Foucault Effect. Falmer: Harvester Wheatsheaf. pp 87-104
Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri (2000) Empire. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press
Mészáros, István (1995) Beyond Capital. London: Merlin Press
Stenson, Kevin (1999) "Crime Control, Governmentality and Sovereignty" in Smandych, Russell ed.
Governable Places: readings in governmentality and crime control. Aldershot: Dartmouth Press. pp 45-73
Teeple, Gary (2000) Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform: Into the Twenty First
Century. New York: Prometheus Books
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