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| Reviews of Crime and Modernity |
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Russell Hogg
(Faculty of Law, Australian National University) in Punishment and Society
(5) 4: 470-474 (October 2003)
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This is a very positive review and I was
very pleased to read it, not least because I have been waiting with
trepidation for some time for reviews of
Crime and Modernity to start appearing and I was relieved that the first one I read was so positive.
Hogg begins with a fascinating quote from the 16th century jurist Jean
Bodin describing the distinction between the realm of legitimate
political order and that of criminal association: brigands, pirates and
the like. This separation, identified by Bodin as central to modern
political culture, is becoming increasingly blurred as we enter the
globalised world of the 21st century. This sets the scene for
"John Lea’s broadly based and tightly developed analysis in Crime and Modernity
(which) tells the story of the rise of modern crime and modern crime
control against the backdrop of the large-scale societal shifts which
characterized the advent of western modernity and of their contemporary
fate under the impact of ‘late modern’ change."
Hogg does me the honour of a comparison with
David Garland's monumental The Culture of Control (2001), pointing out
that some of our conclusions are not dissimilar despite key differences
in our respective frameworks.
"Where the great strength in
Garland’s book resides in the coupling of sociological
generalization with careful attention to the cultural dimensions of
crime control in particular societies, Britain and the USA, the virtue
of Lea’s analysis derives from his more global canvas, from his
attempt to reflect on the nature of crime and crime control by
reference to the dynamics and uneven effects of the capitalist
modernization process and what he sees as its current exhaustion across
and beyond (as well as within) societies of the West."
He welcomes my global perspective as
"...not only refreshing for those of us
criminologists who do not live in the USA or Britain, but (more
importantly) it also offers a framework and more conceptual purchase
for criminological analysis of the growing number of questions that so
transparently push beyond national boundaries, that link developments
in crime control in the domestic setting to their global context."
The bulk of the review is a very succinct
summary of the main theme: the dynamics, the historical rise and fall,
of the social relations of crime control. The fall is to be conceived
of as a progressive blurring of the boundaries between the two realms
of political order and criminal association identified by Bodin
In fact Hogg carries the argument one step further, or at least
emphasises something in a more succinct way than I did in the book.
Namely, that the globalisation of economic and social relationships,
together with growing inequality and uneven development, means that the
social relations of crime control can no longer be understood from the
standpoint of a single country:
"As national borders become more porous
the social relations of crime control must be considered from this
cross-border standpoint. Through global people movements, transnational
crime and the like the effects of weak and failed states are visited on
other states and the international community. In a sense then the
social relations of crime control of even the most apparently stable
states may prove to be only as strong as the social relations of crime
control that prevail in the weak states with which they are globally
interconnected.
He points out that events in Afghanistan --
and one could now certainly add Iraq -- such as the emergence of
warlords as latter day brigands and pirates will have their effect in
undermining the social relations of crime control even in Britain and
the USA. This is absolutely right. While writing this, in London in the
middle of October 2003, I hear on the radio that a leading British bank
is about to move several thousand jobs to India. If the conditions of
life in the legitimate economy in the UK are now, through the global
mobility of legal capital, governed by the conditions of life in South
East Asia, then the structure of criminality is similarly globalised.
Hogg concludes that
"This would seem to be one of the key and
topical lessons to be drawn from Lea’s analysis. It is also
suggestive of an exciting and challenging agenda for criminology in the
21st century. Those interested in this agenda should read this book."
It is to be hoped that a growing number of radical criminologists will develop this agenda in the coming period
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Pat O'Malley
(Carleton University, Canada) in Theoretical Criminology
(7) 4: 508-510 (November 2003)
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O'Malley sees Crime and Modernity
as the most recent lamentation in "...a growing category of... criminologies of catastrophe" the uniting principle of which
"...is that the last 30 years or so have
witnessed an abandoning of the modernist project of criminal
corrections and its displacement by forms of penal segregation
practised by an increasingly authoritarian state. Almost invariably,
this is itself regarded as symptomatic of a much more general malaise:
a catastrophic rupture in the social relations and governmental
organization of modernity."
O'Malley
pays little attention to the overall themes of my book and focuses only
on the concluding sections. With these he makes a direct comparison
between my argument and that of David
Garland:
"There is much in the account that also
reflects observations made, more or less independently, by David
Garland (2001). There is a mutual focus on the return of victims and
communities to centre stage, the rise of emotionality and of a hysteria
in crime discourses, the abandonment of the correctional project and
its replacement by mass warehousing, the normalization of crime and of
government through crime, the growth of private security and risk-based
control and so on."
But O'Malley agrees with neither Garland nor myself. Further, because of the similarities--as he sees
it--of Garland's and my arguments, Crime and Modernity is equally vulnerable to the critique which Lucia Zedner (2002) "has so effectively used to dismantle Garland’s
The Culture of Control". For example, that crime
rates have not continued to rise, that prisons have not abandoned the
rehabilitative ideal, that the welfare state is undergoing a
considerable renaissance. I shall resist the temptation to respond to
these arguments here but this has certainly fired me up to do so at a
later date. Suffice it to say that firstly, as Jock Young has
ceaselessly pointed out, it all depends over what time period you are
looking at crime rates and, secondly, that the argument in
Crime and Modernity was not simply about changes in the
amount of crime but about the changing relationship between various
forms of criminality and legality.
Finally however, O'Malley does give me a back-handed complement: by
comparing me to George Orwell and Max Weber no less! He concludes his
review with the argument that:
"it is possible to read such works along
the same lines as Orwell’s 1984, or more aptly perhaps, as
Weber’s writings on increasing rationality. That is, not as a
literal description of the present or even of what is coming—but
as a warning of where things could head if certain present tendencies
are not checked. They are warning signposts for a liberative politics,
and that, traditionally, has been one of the most valuable and
respectable roles sociology has performed. That in the long run their
predictions are wrong (as they usually are) may be a sign of their
success."
Well, yes, I was indeed talking about tendencies!
reference:
Zedner, Lucia (2002) ‘Dangers of Dystopias in Penal Theory’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 22: 341–61.
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Reinhardt
Kreissl, (Carl von Ossietzky Universität, Oldenburg,) in Kriminologishes
Journal (Jahrgang 35, 2003, Heft 2. pp 152-3)
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(by the way , all the extracts from the review are
translated from the German by myself and I may have not captured some of the
reviewers intentions accurately. In which case I apologize in advance)
It is nice to be reviewed in the Continental European journals, even if
critically. Kreissl begins by praising the task I set myself:
"First of all,
this is a commendable undertaking and such a wide ranging picture
leaves German readers with a sense of envy about developments across
the English channel. If such work is accumulating over there then why
not here?
Fine, but perhaps I have spent too much time reinventing the wheel:
"But that said,
Lea's book belongs in the category of 'me too' products. Everthing that
is to be read here in scarcely two hundred pages, one knows already.
For a such an exhaustive critical criminological diagnosis of the times
Lea proceeds coarsely as regards history and
his theoretical argument is too broad -- 'a mile long and an inch deep'
... from Hegel to Hirschi, and if he had had gone on for another twenty
pages one could have imagined a title such as
'Crime in the transition from the neolithic to the postmodern.' One
comes across statements like
'Modernisation has been a complex, precarious process from the outset.'
(page
53) Well, we knew that already, so what is new?"
Actually, I don't think I ever mentioned Hirschi, but never mind - his name
does sort of rhyme with Hegel, with a quote from whom I began my ramblings.
Kreissl then appears to damn me with faint praise:
"On the other hand
the author should not be scolded for the problem of the subject matter.
What Lea has written could be used as a basic introductory text for a
theoretically informed sociology of crime. This book is suitable as an
introductory text. It unfolds the consistent parallels in the different
strands of social and economic development since the 17th century
in which it embeds the topic of criminality and its control
illustrating the fact that
such themes can be exciting topics of a sophisticated sociological
theory. Lea writes against the control-forgetfulness of sociology and
against the social-forgetfulness of criminology. The famous 'Square of
Crime'
(page 17) with whose help the diverse social relations between
offenders and victims, state and society, can be brought into view,
serves him as
a structuring principle. Lea shows in his book how these conditions in
the course of the time develop as a function of economic
transformations. Lea shows how the concept of the criminal develops as
a social category, how it changes with the tranformation of regimes of
domination and shifts in political and public focus."
But in fact I take
this as a real complement: a basic introductory text for a
theoretically informed sociology of crime, you can't do better than
that!
I think Kreissl is a bit critical of my pessimism which he sees as a
'dystopian
temptation'. But, more importantly he makes the quite valid point that
my
arguments "are based on dynamics derived from the experience on Lea's
front door:
the developmental trajectories of England and the USA, from which the
criminological nightmare illustrating Lea's gloomy prognostications are
derived."
From the standpoint of the German reader this appears as " a kind of
inverse imperialism: an orientation to the negative developments of the
transatlantic hegemonic power."
He is, of course, correct to say that conditions in Germany are still
"far
distant" from some of the things I talk about in the later chapters of Crime
and Modernity. But I would reply with the question: in what direction are
the tendencies of development? There may be greater resistances to the dynamics
of social fragmentation and the normalisation of criminality in various parts of
Continental Europe (though by no means all) but resistance and delay of
the inevitable is not the same as a living counter-tendency pointing in an
entirely different direction. As Pat O'Malley implied in his review (above). It
may not be too late to invalidate my hypothesis (and of course I don't claim any
originality for my basic argument - I just applied it to crime in a more
elaborate way) through new forms of political
mobilisation which effectively challenge the dynamics of capitalist
globalisation.
Kreissl concludes his review in a complimentary spirit
"Reading Lea's text is always energising.. and if at the end only the
thought remains that it would be good to have a similar text more oriented to
the perspective of Continental Europe then the reading has been
worthwhile."
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Nigel
South (University of Essex) in The
British Journal of Criminology 44:1 Winter 2004 pp 144-7
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This
a very positive review by a leading criminologist, Nigel South, in the leading
British criminology journal
He begins by picking
up the fact that two of the themes reflected in Crime and Modernity
were, firstly a desire "to consolidate the theoretical gains of the Left
Realist criminology of the last two decades" and, secondly, my belief in
the necessity of a historical perspective. He notes that I tried to do this by
taking the left realist square of crime as a set of interactions and then
basically embarking on a discussion of how these interactions come to be
historically constituted, or as he puts it "the processes whereby
abstractions become realities (e.g. criminalization and victimization)."
A second theme
underlined in the review is my emphasis on the coexistence of criminalisation
with other forms of governance which constituted its boundaries. Nigel South
thinks that my combination of the internal (that is, within the nation state)
boundaries to crime control constituted by the independence of capital and the
family, with the external boundaries of colonialism and criminal governance at
the geographical periphery of the modernising capitalist world "works
rather well."
As regards my
discussion of the period of the predominance of the Keynesian Welfare State he
welcomes my emphasis on ideas about social citizenship and adds that "This
could have been taken further given that the concept of citizenship seems so
underused in criminology despite the obvious implications of criminalization for
the status of citizenship." As to the more recent period he finds my
discussion of the role of the state (I think he is referring to the section in
chapter 5 where I describe the 'debilitated authoritarian' state ) as smacking
of "global conspiracy theory" but nevertheless "highly
persuasive". He is taken with my quote from Susan Strange to the effect
that political elites are losing the power to regulate society.
He
sees--correctly--my irritation with concepts such as postmodernity as
"glossing over concerns with the problems of power, inequality, exclusion
and conflict." Though I think I would exclude Zigmunt Bauman (whom I quoted
a few times in that chapter) from such neglect. Interestingly South sees the
work of Henry and Milovanovic (1995) as a possible counterfoil here and sees
possibilities of a debate.
My conclusion was
that, in contrast to postmodern optimism about the dawning of a new age of
non-oppressive plurality, we live in a world in which criminality (and we could
now add war and armed conflict) is increasingly part of the 'driving force of
the system'. This led me to echo the old socialist slogan that humanity has to
make a choice between socialism or barbarism. South, I sense, finds this rather banal.
He refers to "the obvious problem of dismissing postmodernist utopianism
only to replace it with an equally unlikely socialist turn..." I would only
point out in defence that I'm not alone among criminologists to argue that this
is the pretty stark choice. Robert Reiner concluded a discussion of the state of crime
control in Britain with a similar evocation of Rosa Luxemburg's famous phrase!
"... the prospects can be summed up by a paraphrase of
Rosa Luxemburg. The choice is some form of social democracy or at best the
barbarism of high crime rates, and a fortified society.There is no other third
way."
Maybe the choice won't appear so utopian twenty years from now!
Anyway,
notwithstanding
these reservations South concludes his review on a very complimentary
note:
"... Lea has
produced a serious and scholarly contribution, of great interest to
criminologists (whether 'critical' or not), to postgraduates, as well as the
more advanced undergraduate. This is a book that is well written, absorbing,
thoughtful and thought provoking"
references:
Henry, S. and
Milovanovic, D. (1995) Constitutive Criminology. London: Sage
Publications
Reiner, R. (2000) 'Crime and Control in Britain'. Sociology (34)1 pp 71-94.
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anonymous
reviewer in
Class War (London) Issue 85 -IV (4/5)
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With
great amazement I discover this rather positive review in an anarchist on-line
webzine. It is particularly gratifying to be favourably compared to Naomi Klein's Fences
and Windows, a book whose circulation no doubt dwarfs mine to a microdot.
The Class War comrades award me '4 and a half skulls' (out of how many
I'm not sure!) and the criticisms they make of my perspective are fair
enough from their standpoint. Since the review is difficult to
locate, and I came across it purely by chance, I hope they won't mind if I reproduce
the whole thing here. In return I offer a link to one of their web
sites
Crime and
Modernity, John Lea, (Sage, 2002. £16)
This book is far
better than Klein’s though unfortunately it won’t get the same coverage;
coming from an author with a strong innovative pedigree that is a real shame.
Even in the anarchist movement which is meant to be receptive to new ideas and
badly needs such comprehension, it is shameful but there won’t be many who
will read it. This must read book, though perhaps not for the beginner, is well
worth it, and we don’t want to hear any excuses from the experienced activists
because there are none!
This book provides a
detailed grasp of the dynamics of society that Klein merely alludes to once in
her book. Describing the current motor of capitalist society in this period and
the associated regime of control and punishment, Lea uses such terms as ‘destructive
reproduction’ and ‘punitive sovereignty’. The first term is how capitalism
reproduces itself today by destroying the societal fabric, and the second refers
to how policing is basically a fire brigade response into working class areas in
force to attack the subjugated citizen. Lea shows that fragmentation is a key
characteristic of society today, as opposed to the incorporation of the post
World War Two years.
With interesting
comparisons of the aggressive masculinity of the ghetto, and the share dealing
rooms in the City of London, Lea points to the normalisation of crime as a key
feature of contemporary capitalism, both by capitalists and as destructive
individualism in the ghettos.
There is also good
analysis of the blurring of boundaries between war and crime with recent
examples from across the world, including crises of governance within the USA.
However Lea says there is hope and choice, the poor are resisting with
progressive social crime of their own, in various traditional and new ways. Away
from the barbarism of capitalism and towards socialism!
Finally there is one
anomaly in that, even though Lea correctly castigates the destructive role of
the state, he then says we must reclaim it as help in the process of social
inclusion. Whilst at the same time substantive social equality is necessary for
realistic change.
This left ‘realist’
agenda does seem at times to be at odds with analysis that says the state is the
executive of the bourgeoisie, and does not think progressive change will be
possible from structures made for domination.
4 ½ skulls.
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Colin
Webster (Teesside University) in
International
Journal of the Sociology of Law Volume 31, Issue 4 , December
2003, pp 361-366
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Whereas
other reviewers have made passing comparisons between Crime and Modernity
and David Garland's excellent The Culture of Control, Colin Webster's
review deals with the two books together. The result is a precise comparison
between my approach and Garland's.
Both
our books are characterised as:
ambitious
attempts to capture long-term changes in the governance of crime control
associated with the dynamics of capitalist globalisation, the increasing
normalisation of crime and in particular the collapse of the Keynesian welfare
state and resurgence of neo-liberalism since the 1970s.
The
main contrast that Colin Webster draws out is between what he characterises as
my 'bottom up' approach focusing on changes both in the economic role of
criminality and in the experience of crime in working class communities and
Garland's 'top down' approach which focuses on a cultural and political
orientation to how the middle class and political elites have responded to
rising levels of crime. The result of these two different methodologies and
starting points is that while there is a large measure of agreement between the
two books as to what as happened (since the 1970s) there is a sharp
divergence in the analysis of why it has happened.
So
Garland and I both agree that "social control strategies and methods
changed from the 1970s onwards, and that a fundamental shift in social control
processes took place that reflect the move towards a more controlling society
that attempts to manage and extend both more freedoms and more controls at the
same time." However, where we fundamentally differ "is that
Garland believes these changes are a legitimate response to pervasive and
growing criminality, yet for Lea they are a harbinger of the failure of the
interventionist state to respond to fragmentation and loss of social cohesion
arising from the capitalist modernisation process."
Colin
Webster certainly does not set out--nor should he--to resolve the different
approaches of Crime and Modernity and The Culture of Control. But
by bringing them into focus in his review he indicates that the on-going debate
about the long term trends in criminality and its control might be usefully
served by a contrast between the two positions. He concludes his review,
charitably to both Garland and myself, that notwithstanding the differences and
conflicts between our perspectives
both
books successfully map the contemporary landscape of crime control, are
milestones in their scope and ambition, and will be classics of their type
within a contemporary criminology that all too often displays its inability to
see the wood for the trees.
reference:
David
Garland (2001) The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary
Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press
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Mark Halsey (Flinders
University) in
Australia and New Zealand Journal of Criminology
Vol.36, No.3,
December 2003, pp.382-389.
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This
is a lengthy review and most welcome from the leading criminology journal of the
southern hemisphere
Mark
Halsey spends the bulk of his review summarising the main themes of the book. He
sees the underlying argument as concerned with the ambiguous nature of Modernity
and its impact on crime control
One
of the recurring themes… is how modernity… shapes and yet ulimately
undermines the capacity for states and communities to think about and reduce
crime in meaningful ways.
He
then proceeds to a very careful summary of the main themes of each chapter. I
have to say that his lengthy summary is a model of precision and succinctness.
He brilliantly pulls together the main themes of each chapter in such a way as
to produce a really useful guide to reading the book. Now I know what I was
talking about!
Halsey
charitably concludes.
In
summary, this is a good book which, whilst not revolutionary in content or
scope, nonetheless paints a picture of recent trends in criminal justice
policy that will, no doubt, resonate with, and provide food for thought for,
many readers.
Only
in the very last paragraphs of his review does he introduce his criticisms. He
confesses "a sense of disappointment with the ineluctable tone and
direction of the text." What irks him is the Marxist inspired orientation
of the argument. Though I would add that Marxism was one among several
traditions which inspired me, as I make clear in my web page summarising
the main arguments. Foucault is, for example, at least as important as Marx
in this respect. Halsey indeed notes my dependence on Foucault at various points
in his summary of my argument, though I would be the first to admit that I have
used a rather 'marxified' version of Foucault. What Halsey doesn't like is the
orientation of my conclusion to the choice facing humanity being one of
'socialism or barbarism' with the stress on social equality implied in the idea
of socialism. Here Halsey's own perspective, of what I take to be a postmodern
relativism, comes to the fore. It is worth quoting his conclusion at length.
But
if modernity has illustrated one thing above all else, it would surely be that
such equality exists (can only exist) discursively and not at the level of the
Real. Individuals, in short, are not… reducible to one another (whether in
terms of biology, psychology or circumstance), Lea suggests at the very end of
his work that in the age of intense fragmentation and uncertainty (that is, in
the age of postmodernity) there is "one thing [of which] we can be
certain", that "the choice facing humanity is simple: socialism or
barbarism." (p. 191) It is the invocation of this binary which that
illustrates, perhaps even more than any other statement in the book, the
limits of Lea's thesis. For it fails to deal with the key (genealogical)
questions which haunt each and every will toward systematisation, namely,
whose socialism? Whose judgement of the so-called barbaric event? Who, in
Deleuze's terms, wins the 'right' to circumscribe the limits of the possible?
Nietzsche (or one of his many commentators) once remarked to the effect that
"everyone matters because no one does". The challenge, I would
suggest, is to know that this statement works and has implications for human
(and non-human) life irrespective of the "system" in which it is
uttered.
Now
here's a thing! Obviously I would like to strongly disagree at this point. But
this is not the place to do so. I think Halsey would probably agree-indeed his
review strongly implies-that it is possible to get a lot out of reading Crime
and Modernity without necessarily agreeing with the conclusion. And what
more could an author ask for?
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