CRIME POLICY – WEEK 1:

INTRODUCTION TO CRIME POLICY

OUTLINE OF LECTURE 1
● Introduction to what crime policy is, how it relies on crime data, and what factors it
depends on
● Outline of lectures 2-10, the seminars, and the exam
● Contact me: [email protected] or [email protected]

CRIME AND HARMFUL BEHAVIOUR

● Crime is a social phenomenon that will always be with us. What is criminal varies.
● Not all harmful behaviours are criminal. What is harmful and what is not varies with
time and space.
● Mala in se are criminalised across most Western countries, mala prohibitavaries
more.
CROSS-NATIONAL DEFINITIONS OF CRIME AND HARMFUL BEHAVIOUR
● Cross-national agreement about what should and should not be considered
criminal/harmful is narrower than is sometimes recognised.
● It is conventional to contrast developed Western countries with others, but that is an
oversimplification.
● Think about laws and policies around adultery, capital punishment, and abortion in
different so-called Western countries

BETWEEN- AND WITHIN-CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

● It is a mistake to assume that Western countries' notions of what counts as a crime or
harmful are in harmony.
● Examples: Denial of the Holocaust (continental Europe vs. US); possession of a blade
or firearm (UK and US); antisocial behaviour (UK and elsewhere)
CRIME POLICIES REFLECT…
1) NATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN THE IMPORTANCE OF PARTICULAR VALUES
a) Emile Durkheim: Social norms of the collective conscience.
b) As cultural norms change over time, laws change with them, but the
transitional periods are typically rocky.

2) PERCEPTIONS ON HOW TO BEST DEAL WITH CRIME

a) Tough-on-crime vs. more welfare-oriented jurisdictions

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT CRIME AND CRIME POLICY?

● Sometimes crime drops across jurisdictions regardless of the policies different
countries have in place.

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 ● Sometimes we cannot estimate the exact effects of crime policies as the public
tolerance of certain crimes changes. E.g. If rates of violent crimes go up, this might
also reflect zero-tolerance attitudes to violence rather than only an actual absolute
increase in violence.
● Most crime goes undetected and/or is not policed, prosecuted, etc., especially sexual
abuse, white-collar crime, environmental crime, etc.
● It's hard to measure crime policies' cost(-effectiveness).
● Countries vary in how they use law enforcement and criminal justice policies. Every
country uses a wide range of criminal justice, regulatory, preventive, and
harm-reduction approaches to dealing with crime, and within countries, there are
typically major differences between crimes.

CRIME POLICY, PENAL POLICY, PUBLIC POLICY

● Crime policy is the plan of action developed at the policy level concerned with crime,
including how to respond to it.
● Penal policy addresses the crime problem more narrowly by enacting and enforcing
criminal laws.
● Public policy approaches to crime, according to Tonry (2009):
1) Criminal law enforcement
2) Prevention
3) Harm reduction
4) Regulation
5) Decriminalization
6) Non-intervention.•

I - CRIMINAL LAW ENFORCEMENT

● Criminal law enforcement is what the criminal justice system does regarding crime
● The criminal justice system is comprised of: Police, prosecutors' offices, courts,
corrections, the legislature, etc.
● Mechanistic decision-making and discretion
● Based on legal threats: deterrence and incapacitation

II - PREVENTION
● Three types of prevention:
1) Situational: managerial and environmental changes that reduce opportunities
for crime
a) Works for impulsive crime that is not displaced (CCTV, alarms,
bullet-proof glass, lights, etc.)
b) Which crime is not displaced? cost? what about just having people
around? what about the offender?
2) Developmental: identifying risk and protective factors, trying to weaken the
former and strengthen the latter (e.g., early intervention with children to
prevent their further engagement in criminal behaviour)

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 a) Proven to be more effective than investing in law enforcement, but
when do we see the effects? Shame and stigma?
3) Community:
a) Community self-help or neighbourhood watch
b) Situational crime prevention at the community/architectural levels
(e.g., changing the lighting, changing traffic patterns, closing streets,
gated communities, etc.)

III – HARM REDUCTION

● Origins: Jeremy Bentham (18th century): ‘The greatest happiness of the greatest
number of people’.
● Contemporary examples: Reducing the harm caused by crime at the lowest
aggregate social cost.
Usually in health, drug-related crime, violent crime, etc.

IV - REGULATION
● Often discussed in relation to business, white-collar crime, gambling and
environmental crime, but also – to an extent – in controlling gun violence,
prostitution, etc.
● Conditions under which people can buy something, carry out business, etc. (waiting
periods, identity checks, completion of safety courses - - - e.g. in gun regulation, but
is this effective?
● A ‘responsive regulatory approach’:
○ Civil and criminal penalties of last resort
○ Preferring cooperative and negotiated approaches
○ Non-confrontational and non-condemnatory
○ More constructive
- - - these are welcome changes, but why are they more often suggested in relation to some
crimes rather than others?

V - DECRIMINALISATION
● Decriminalisation means eliminating crime by definition.
● De iure decriminalisation and de facto decriminalisation.
● Complete decriminalisation is less likely.

VI – NON-INTERVENTION
● Sometimes it is best if we do not do anything about certain types of crime
● Schur (1973): The best way to reduce harm is to do nothing about youth crime. Why?
The age-crime curve and the findings of labelling theory.
● Schur’s argument is more than relevant today since we know that some young people
(foreign nationals, ethnic minorities, children from lower socioeconomic
backgrounds, young people with disabilities and mental health issues, etc.) are
overrepresented in most youth justice systems.

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CRIME RATES, TRENDS, AND COSTS
● Moving from the different public policy responses to crime to establishing why
following crime rates, trends, and costs is important for crime policy
● Caution! Official crime data and/or results of crime victimisation surveys give us only
some idea of crime rates and trends; most crime goes unreported
● Crime rates are the number of crimes (of a certain type) committed per 100.000
people (over a period of time in a certain place).
● Crime trends are the fluctuations of crimes over time.

CRIME RATES: CRIMINAL ENFORCEMENT LEVELS AND CRIME TYPES

● Importance of the level at which we are inspecting the data; great attrition rates
● Importance of the type of crime we are inspecting; some crimes are reported more
often than others:
○ Property crimes
○ Homicides
○ Other violent crimes
○ Drug-related offences
● Take a look at Tonry (2009: 15), while we look at an example of juvenile crime rates
in Slovenia between 1995 and 2020
YOUTH OFFENDING AND OFFENDERS IN
SLOVENIA (1995-2020): CRIME RATES

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CRIME POLICY – WEEK 2: SOCIO-POLITICAL ASPECTS OF CRIME POLICY
LECTURE 1 - SUMMARY
● What crime policy is and how it depends on the time and place
● Difference between crime policy and penal policy - - - crime policy is broader
● Six public policy approaches to crime, according to Tonry (2009):
1) Criminal law enforcement
2) Prevention
3) Harm reduction
4) Regulation
5) Decriminalization
6) Non-intervention
● Crime data and its unreliability
● Crime rates, trends, and costs
● Suitable crime policy: Laws and policies should be based on the best-faith efforts to
achieve the greatest public benefit at the least human cost

LECTURE 2 - OUTLINE
● Geographical space of Western liberal democracies, more precisely the UK and US
● The time frame between the 1970s and the beginning of the 21st century
● Exploring the changes in historical, social, and cultural conditions that resulted in
important shifts in crime control policies
- - - These policy shifts in the US and UK had a big impact
● Comparing these conditions to sociocultural and penal shifts across Europe in the
18th and 19th centuries
● Drawing on David Garland’s Culture or Control and Michel Foucault’s Discipline &
Punish

THE ORDINARY PUNITIVE OF CRIME POLICY: THE UK AND THE US

● Garland: People in the US and the UK have gotten used to punitive crime policy,
just like we get used to everyday things like, e.g., mobile phones.
● The average US citizen: Accustomed to living in a nation that holds two million
citizens in confinement on any given day and puts criminal offenders to death at a rate
of two or more per week.
● The average UK citizen: Accustomed to private prisons that house an increasing
proportion of Britain's prisoners and hardly noticing the numerous surveillance
cameras.

‘HISTORY OF THE PRESENT’

● These policy changes, however, were not expected to occur according to the
generation before the 1970s
● Garland sets out to write a book about the ‘history of the present’; so why the future –
that was the present in 2001 – turned out differently than expected
● Garland explores the characteristics of these shifts across three realms:
1) Historical (‘rationalization’ and ‘civilization’ thrown in reverse; the rise of
punitive sentiments and expressive punishment) - - - from welfarism to
punitivism

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 2) Penological (rehabilitation less important; penal policy subject to public
opinion and political appetites, rather than experts) - - - from
rehabilitation-oriented to punitive penal policy
3) Sociological (criminal justice institutions changed in relation to other
institutions, e.g. the labour market, welfare) - - - from formal to informal
controls
These policy shifts in the US and UK had structural reasons: broader social, economic, and
cultural shifts of late modernity

‘LATE MODERNITY’
● … is an umbrella term used by Garland for socio-political changes in the last three
decades of the 20th century
● Which changes occurred?
○ Steadily rising crime rates
○ The decline of the welfare state
○ Distrust in the state as the provider of security
○ Neo-conservativism (tradition, family values, individual responsibility for
social ills)
○ Neoliberalism (free competition, deregulated market)
○ Political manipulations of public anxiety
○ Blaming marginalised groups for wider social problems

LATE MODERNITY AND SHIFTS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY (I)

1) The decline of the rehabilitative ideal:
● First among academics and then practitioners
● The rise of the belief that striving for rehabilitation does not work and thus
should not be the overarching ideology of the system

2) The re-emergence of punitive sanctions and expressive justice

3) Changes in the emotional tone of crime policy:

● Fear of crime becomes a prevailing sentiment
● The image of the criminal shifts from a disadvantaged person to an unruly,
dangerous predator

4) The return of the victim:

● The victim becomes centre stage in criminal justice policy

5) Striving to protect the public

● Due to rising crime rates, punishment and surveillance become perceived as
ways to protect people

6) Politicisation and new populism:

● Public and political opinion gain more value than scientific research and
impact public policy

7) The re-invention of the prison:

● In the post-war period, the prison was considered counter-productive and used
as a last resort, but this then shifted

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 ● Alternatives to prison (probation, community services, monetary sanctions),
popular in the post-war era, were not encouraged anymore
● In late modernity, the numbers and frequency of incarceration increase
● In late modernity, the notion of ‘prison works’ becomes popular; not to
rehabilitate but to incapacitate and satisfy the popular demand

8) The transformation of criminological thought:

● After WW2, crime viewed as a symptom of social need, maladapted
individuals, or injustice, an inevitable clash of cultural norms with the
hierarchical society
● After WW2, the solution for crime was in welfare, job creation, education that
would prevent crime in the first place (punishment as ultima ratio)
● Since late modernity, crime is viewed as emerging from the lack of control of
behaviour
● Since late modernity, the solution for crime is social and situational control,
and the focus shifts from the ‘criminal individual’ to the ‘criminal event’

9) The expanding infrastructure of crime prevention and community safety

● On national levels: debates around punishment, prisons, and criminal justice
● On local levels: debates around the problem of ‚disorder‘ and an entire
infrastructure of control is established - - - this is linked to the next point

10) Civil society and the commercialization of crime control

● Crime control and punishment was once a state matter and carried out by the
police, prosecution, courts, public prisons
● Crime control and punishment become commercialised, and the net of control
is widened (private security, CCTV, private prisons, multi-agency work to
carry out and monitor crime prevention, etc.)

11) New management styles and working practices

● Changes in the objectives, priorities and working ideologies of the major
criminal justice organizations
● Police: from a responsive public service to a crime-fighting organisation
● Prison: from a rehabilitative environment to protecting the public from
dangerous offenders
● Probation: from providing social care to controlling
● Sentencing: from discretion and individualisation to mechanic
decision-making
-- - Performance indicators to evaluate the effectiveness and determine policy priorities
(calculating cost) on one side, but excessive spending on the other (e.g., mandatory
sentencing, ‘zero-tolerance approaches)

12) A perpetual sense of crisis

● The constant feeling that criminal justice and other existing agencies cannot
control crime, so always looking for new theories and institutional models

HOWEVER…

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 ● Garland also gives some guidelines on how to inspect policy changes so that we can
observe trends over time rather than isolated examples that stand out:

A) Do not mistake short-term movements for structural change

B) Do not mistake talk for action
C) Do not assume talk is inconsequential
D) Do not confuse means with ends
E) Do not conflate separate issues
F) Do not lose sight of the long-term

There are not only changes and shifts in crime policies and not all ‘new’ crime policies are
the beginning of a new era.

After the break: Michel Foucault‘s Discipline and Punish

DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH: FROM TORTURE AND SPECTACLE TO DECENCY

● Public executions (18. century)

● Chain gangs (18. and 19. century): the way to detention was a public spectacle of
torture but between 18. and 19. century, this starts to be considered:
○ Inhumane
○ Not doing anything for the spectator public
○ Need for decency
● Carriage and prison as panopticon

THE PANOPTIC CARRIAGE

● Six cells on each side, convicts facing one another, a corridor dividing the carriage
along its length
● The convicts’ feet were tied with metal chains, they sat on oak barrels that emptied on
the public way
● The cells had no windows to the outside
● At any one time, the wardens could see and hear the prisoners
● On the outside, the carriage said ‘Transport of convicts’ only, which creates a more
mysterious and lasting impression in the eyes of the public

- - - a mobile penitentiary carriage that had the characteristics of Bentham’s panopticon

‘The panoptic carriage had only a short history. Yet the way in which it replaced the
chain-gang and the reasons for this placement recapitulated the whole process by which, in
eighty years, penal detention replaced public execution as a calculated technique for
altering individual behaviour. The cell-carriage was an apparatus of reform’

THE PRISON AS SUCCESS OR FAILURE OR SUCCESS BECAUSE IT'S A

FAILURE?

● The prison has always been a failure

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 ● However, the ‘penitentiary technique’ has always worked

- - - What does this mean?

Not denouncing the prison as such, but – in different periods - shifting between the
rehabilitative ideal of the prison and the need for punitive detention by playing around with a
few constant formulations

- Which are these formulations?

PAST AND CONTEMPORARY FORMULATIONS ABOUT PRISON

1) PRISONS DO NOT DIMINISH CRIME RATES (Crime rates remain unchanged)

2) DETENTION CAUSES RECIDIVISM (Prisoners have a higher chance of being

imprisoned, lots of people in prison have offended before)

3) THE PRISON RE-PRODUCES DELINQUENCY (Dire circumstances, abuses of

administrative power in prison, increasing anger of people in prison)

4) THE PRISON ENCOURAGES THE ‘MILIEU OF DELINQUENTS’ (Loyalty to

one another, learning from one another, maintaining ties on the outside)

5) POST-RELEASE CONDITIONS CONDEMN EX-PRISONERS TO

RECIDIVISM (No housing available post-release, constant surveillance, criminal
record and inability to find work, vicious cycle)

6) PRISONS INDIRECTLY REPRODUCE DELINQUENCY BY PUTTING IN

MISERY THE PRISONER’S FAMILY (Material and psychological trauma)

WHY DOES THE PRISON PERSIST IF IT ‘DOESN’T WORK’?

● Because the failure of prison is always attributed to either the corrective role of prison
(rehabilitation) or its punitiveness (just desert and incapacitation)
● And so the solution is always seen in either improving the prison’s corrective role or
punitiveness on account of the other

Foucault: ‘Prison is always offered as its own remedy’ - - - 7 maxims of prison

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CRIME POLICY (WEEK 3) – CRIME POLICY, INTERSECTIONALITY, AND
INTERACTIONS

LECTURE 2 - SUMMARY

● GEOGRAPHICAL SPACE; WESTERN LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES, MORE

PRECISELY THE UK AND US
● THE TIME FRAME: BETWEEN THE 1970S AND THE BEGINNING OF THE
21ST CENTURY
● EXPLORING THE CHANGES IN HISTORICAL, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL
CONDITIONS (I.E., ‘LATE MODERNITY’) THAT RESULTED IN IMPORTANT
SHIFTS IN CRIME CONTROL POLICIES

- - - THESE POLICY SHIFTS IN THE US AND UK HAD A BIG IMPACT

● COMPARING THESE CONDITIONS TO SOCIOCULTURAL AND PENAL

SHIFTS ACROSS EUROPE IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES
● DRAWING ON DAVID GARLAND’S CULTURE OR CONTROL AND MICHEL
FOUCAULT’S DISCIPLINE & PUNISH
● GARLAND: SHIFT FROM THE REHABILITATIVE IDEAL TO MORE
PUNITIVE PENAL PRACTICES (12 INTERRELATED SHIFTS IN CRIME
POLICY IN ‘LATE MODERNITY’)
● FOUCAULT: SHIFT FROM PUBLIC EXECUTIONS, TORTURE – THROUGH
CHAIN GANGS – TO PRISON - - - PRISON AS REPRODUCING
DELINQUENCY (6 FORMULATIONS ABOUT PRISON AND THE 7 MAXIMS
OF PRISON)

LECTURE 3 - OUTLINE

PART 1

● DRAWING ON LECTURE 2 AND EXAMINING HOW THE ‘MACRO ASPECTS’

ARE REFLECTED IN RELATIONS/INTERACTIONS IN PRACTICE/’ONE THE
GROUND’
● FOCUSING ON BOURDIEU'S WORK ON SOCIAL CLASS, CAPITAL, HABITUS
AND THE FORMATION OF A SOCIAL GROUP MORE GENERALLY & HOW
THAT IS IMPORTANT FOR (CRIME) POLICY

PART 2

● FROM CLASS TO GENDER, ETHNICITY, AND OTHER PERSONAL

CHARACTERISTICS

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 ● EXAMPLES OF POLICIES FROM SPHERES OTHER THAN CRIME CONTROL
AND EXAMPLES OF CRIME STATISTICS AND POLICING POLICIES THAT
REFLECT HOW CLASS, GENDER, AND ETHNICITY IMPACT HOW WE – AS
A SOCIETY – DEAL WITH SOCIAL ISSUES

CLASS, SOCIAL GROUPS, AND (CRIME) POLICIES

● PIERRE BOURDIEU: IS A CLASS AN EXISTING SOCIAL GROUP, AND WHAT

CONSTITUTES A SOCIAL CLASS/SOCIAL GROUP?
● WHY CAN THIS BE IMPORTANT FOR CRIME POLICY?
● DEFINITIONS OF WHAT CONSTITUTES A SOCIAL GROUP ARE NOT
STRAIGHTFORWARD AND ARE SUBJECT TO ACADEMIC AND/OR
POLITICAL MANIPULATION

BOURDIEU: WHAT CONSTITUES A SOCIAL CLASS?

● CLASS AND OTHER SOCIAL GROUPS ARE RELATIONAL – THEY EXIST AS

ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AND MANIFEST
THEMSELVES IN INTERACTIONS
● CLASS DEPENDS ON:
- TYPES OF CAPITAL (ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, CULTURAL + SYMBOLIC)
- DYNAMICS OF CAPITAL (VOLUME, COMPOSITION, AND
TRAJECTORY/MOVING OF CAPITAL)

CAPITAL, CLASS, AND HABITUS

● CAPITAL
● HABITUS
● FIELD (SOCIETY)
● HABITUS:
● ‘THE HABITUS IS A SET OF DISPOSITIONS WHICH INCLINE AGENTS TO
ACT AND REACT IN CERTAIN WAYS. THE DISPOSITIONS GENERATE
PRACTICES, PERCEPTIONS AND ATTITUDES WHICH ARE 'REGULAR'
WITHOUT BEING CONSCIOUSLY CO-ORDINATED OR GOVERNED BY
ANY “RULE”.’ (THOMPSON 1991: 12)

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HABITUS, RELATIONSHIPS, AND (CRIME) POLICY
● HABITUS IMPACTS ACTS OF ‘ATTRACTION AND REVULSION’
● HABITUS IS ‘THE PRINCIPLE OF ALL DURABLE ALLIANCES AND
CONNECTIONS, INCLUDING LEGALLY SANCTIONED RELATIONSHIPS’

● BOURDIEU’S RELEVANCE TO CRIME POLICY:

HOW DO CRIME POLICIES PLAY OUT WHEN ONE GROUP OF PEOPLE (THE
MAJORITY OR REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE) MAKES DECISIONS ABOUT
ANOTHER (RACIAL, ETHNIC, ETC., MINORITY OR PEOPLE IN CONFLICT WITH
THE LAW)?

BOURDIEU, (CRIME) POLICY, AND INTERSECTIONALITY

● MANY PARAMETERS IMPACT WHERE WE WILL BE POSITIONED ON THE

‘SOCIAL MAP’
● INTERSECTIONALITY AND OVERLAPPING AND INTERCONNECTED
SYSTEMS OF DISADVANTAGE AND DISCRIMINATION

'IT REMAINS NONETHELESS THAT (...) THE MOVEMENT FROM PROBABILITY TO

REALITY, FROM THEORETICAL CLASS TO PRACTICAL CLASS, IS NEVER GIVEN:
EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE SUPPORTED BY THE "SENSE OF ONE'S PLACE" AND BY
THE AFFINITY OF HABITUS, THE PRINCIPLES OF VISION AND DIVISION OF
THE SOCIAL WORLD AT WORK IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THEORETICAL
CLASSES HAVE TO COMPETE, IN REALITY, WITH OTHER PRINCIPLES,
ETHNIC, RACIAL OR NATIONAL, AND MORE CONCRETELY STILL, WITH
PRINCIPLES IMPOSED BY THE ORDINARY EXPERIENCE OF OCCUPATIONAL,
COMMUNAL AND LOCAL DIVISIONS AND RIVALRIES.‘ (BOURDIEU 1987: 7)

THE EXISTENCE AND CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL GROUPS

● SOCIAL GROUPS ARE FOUND READY-MADE IN PRACTICE, BUT THEY

ARE ALSO THE PRODUCT OF A COMPLEX HISTORICAL WORK OF
CONSTRUCTION
● CONSTRUCTED SOCIAL GROUPS ARE USED TO PURSUE INDIVIDUAL OR
COLLECTIVE INTERESTS - - - POLITICALLY INTERESTING
● THE PROBLEM OF CONTEMPORARY (CRIME) POLICIES

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 - - - PRETENDING THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL GROUPS DOES NOT EXIST
AND BUILDING ON THE NOTION OF ‘EQUALITY’

'(...) WE SHOULD ALSO MENTION ALL THOSE STRATEGIES DESIGNED TO

MANIPULATE RELATIONS OF GROUP MEMBERSHIP, WHETHER FAMILY,
ETHNIC, RELIGIOUS, POLITICAL, OCCUPATIONAL OR SEXUAL, TO DISPLAY OR
TO CONCEAL THEM ACCORDING TO PRACTICAL INTERESTS AND
FUNCTIONS DEFINED IN EACH CASE BY REFERENCE TO THE CONCRETE
SITUATION AT HAND, BY PLAYING, ACCORDING TO THE NEEDS OF THE
MOMENT, ON THE POSSIBILITIES OFFERED BY SIMULTANEOUS MEMBERSHIP IN
A PLURALITY OF COLLECTIVES.’ (BOURDIEU 1987: 12)

--- SOMETIMES, THESE MANIPULATIONS ARE INSTITUTIONALISED

GENDER DATA GAP AND CRIMINOLOGY – WOMEN AS PERPETRATORS

WOMEN ARE INVISIBLE IN CRIMINOLOGICAL RESEARCH, TOO, EXCEPT FOR

TWO TYPES OF RESEARCH:

1) STUDIES PRESUMING AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT NATURE OF WOMEN

COMPARED TO MEN IN TERMS OF A) TEMPERAMENT AND ABILITIES B)
THE FEMALE PSYCHE

THEORIES PRESUMING THAT ANY DEVIATION FROM THE SOCIALLY

ASCRIBED FEMALE ROLE IS DEVIANT AND A PERSONALITY DISORDER

2) RESEARCH ON MEN, BUT STUDIES GENERALISED TO APPLY TO WOMEN

AS WELL

GENDER DATA GAP AND CRIMINOLOGY – WOMEN AS VICTIMS

● SIDELINING WOMEN AS VICTIMS OF CRIME, ESPECIALLY

GENDER-MOTIVATED CRIMES (DOMESTIC ABUSE, FEMICIDE, ETC.)
● DATA FROM THE UK IN 2020 (OFFICE FOR NATIONAL STATISTICS 2020):
- 7% OF ALL WOMEN IN THE UK EXPERIENCE DOMESTIC ABUSE
- 3% OF ALL WOMEN BETWEEN 16 AND 74 HAVE EXPERIENCED
SEXUAL ASSAULT

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 - ALMOST HALF OF ALL FEMALE HOMICIDES (46%), WHERE
WOMEN ARE VICTIMS, ARE DOMESTIC HOMICIDES
● GENDER-MOTIVATED CRIMES OFTEN GO UNREPORTED - - - WHY?

FROM CLASS AND GENDER TO RACE AND ETHNICITY

● UK: DESPITE MAKING UP JUST 14% OF THE POPULATION IN THE UK,

BAME MEN AND WOMEN MAKE UP 25% OF PRISONERS, WHILE OVER
40% OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN CUSTODY ARE FROM BAME BACKGROUNDS
● BAME: BLACK, ASIAN, AND MINORITY ETHNIC BACKGROUNDS
● THERE IS GREATER DISPROPORTIONALITY IN THE NUMBER OF BLACK
PEOPLE IN PRISONS IN THE UK THAN IN THE UNITED STATES (LAMMY
REVIEW 2017)
● RACIST POLICING AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE VS. BLACK LIVES MATTER
● WANT TO KNOW MORE? OPTIONAL READING: PHILLIPS AND BOWLING
(2012)

LECTURE 3 - SUMMARY

● SOCIAL CATEGORIES ARE REAL AND SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED AT THE

SAME TIME
● THEIR SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION MEANS THEY CAN BE POLITICALLY
MANIPULATED, ALSO WITH THE HELP OF CRIME POLICIES
● GIVEN WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT CLASS, GENDER, RACE AND ETHNICITY
DISPARITIES WITHIN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM, THINK ABOUT
WHAT THAT TELLS US ABOUT EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW AND THE
SEEMINGLY NEUTRAL NATURE OF CRIME POLICIES.

● Bourdieu: Social class is where somebody is most likely to be placed on a social map based
on four types of capital (economic, social, cultural, symbolic) + their volume,
composition, and trajectory
● For Bourdieu, the habitus shapes a person's 'being in the world‘ and social actions by
intuition rather than reason, influencing the availability of opportunities in theirlife.
Bourdieu called habitus the 'structured structuring structure' because it is, at once,

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 structured by the person's social class but also gives structure to the future paths available
to that person
● Focusing on Bourdieu's work on social class, capital, habitus, and the formation of a social
group more generally & how that is important for (crime) policy
● Social groups are real and socially constructed at the same time
● Their social construction means they can be politically manipulated, also with the help of
(crime) policies
● Social categories (e.g., class, gender, race and ethnicity, etc.) can impact how we are
treated in the criminal justice system

(WEEK 4) – MULTIDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES IN CRIME POLICY

Week 4- Outline

● Historical and contemporary understandings of multidisciplinarity in criminal justice

through a theoretical approach
○ - - - the first five lectures are theoretical, and then we will show these theories
on examples in the last five lectures
● Which disciplines do crime policies/public policies concerned with crime draw or
depend on, apart from criminal law and criminology?
○ - - - the intersections between sociology, social work, psychology, political
sciences, etc. AND crime policy
● Focus on two obligatory readings:
○ -Deleuze’s Foreword to Donzelot’s The Policing of Families (1979)
○ -Lacey’s The Prisoner’s Dilemma (2008)

RATIONALE FOR THE LECTURE / CHOICE OF READINGS

● Donzelot: The control of the family is exercised through social policy, social work,
psychology, education, etc. The 'policing' of the family is only partly exercised by the
police and law enforcement, but mainly through more soft surveillance
● Lacey: Challenges the arguments made by, for example, David Garland - which we
looked at in week 2 - that ascribed the penal excess to 'late modernity' in a very
generalised way, not distinguishing between different policy responses outside the US
and the UK. Lacey analyses the political, institutional, and cultural factors that
impact crime policies in particular countries

DONZELOT AND “THE SOCIAL”

● 18th and 19th century

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 ● Investigating state interventions into family life
● Working- and middle-class family lives were shaped differently by state policies and
professional discourses
● Children in need and those with risky behaviour became subject to preventive
measures that justified state interventions in family life
● Families became ‘policed’ by what Donzelot called ‘the social’ — a hybrid sector
that was both public and private, comprised of social work, philanthropic,
educational, medical and law enforcement agencies
● This new state surveillance affected the rich and poor differently

DIFFERENT EFFECTS OF “THE SOCIAL”

● Parents and their children could preserve their autonomy and privacy only if they had
the economic capacity to do so
● Protected liberation’: Their financial ability enabled privileged families their morals
remained unquestioned publicly by statutory agencies. They were able to seek help
more discretely through contractual arrangements with private agencies
● ‘Supervised freedom’: In disadvantaged families, amorality was assumed whenever
social norms were disrespected, so — since these families could not afford
non-statutory treatment — the state was authorised to intervene directly with its
sanitary, educational, medical, and/or moral surveillance

FROM THE GOVERNMENT OF FAMILIES TO “GOVERNING THROUGH THE

FAMILY”

● From the government of families to governing ‘through the family’

○ - - - How?
○ The state’s focus became helping ‘dangerous children’ and ‘children in
danger’ + assisting with hygiene and promoting compulsory education
○ The state was therefore more likely to invade the private sphere of
disadvantaged families that lacked capital
○ Thereby, the state diminished poor families’ sovereignty and independence.
At the same time, it destroyed their resistance, as it managed to strike a
balance between not generating too many advantages and abandoning severe
repression

FROM CHARITY TO PHILANTHROPY

16
 ● Social assistance went from unconditional charity to conditional philanthropy as
an ’earned investment’ (savings become the condition of assistance)
● Poor families had little savings and were unable to help themselves, which became
considered a moral deficiency, legitimising state interventions in those families

- - - 18th and 19th century: shifts in penal policies (Foucault) and family and social policies
(Donzelot)

- - - impact of other disciplines

PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

● Invasions into family life destabilised the family by loosening ties between children
and adults
○ - - - How?
○ Through constant over-policing of different agencies
○ -The over-policing focused on the child and their well-being & their
parents’ duty to build up the child’s potential
○ -Unable to do so, poor parents became the targets of blame
○ -Impact of psychology: Parents are the source of the child’s satisfaction or
frustration (but this was taken out of socio-economic context!)

“THE SOCIAL” VS “NEW MODERNITY”

● Were social and political shifts of ‘new modernity’ (Garland, week 2!)
concerning family, crime control, and welfare policies new?
○ - - - continuing trends set out in the 18th and 19th century:
○ -Blaming and responsibilising poor individuals/families
○ -Not taking into account structural/social factors that affect people’s lives
○ -Controlling individuals/families

LECTURE – PART 2: Penal excess experienced by the US (and partly the UK) from the
1970s to the end of the 1990s cannot simply be attributed to ’new modernity’

POLITICAL ECONOMIES AND CRIME POLICIES

17
 ● Lacey 2008: The political economies of nations can explain their different penal
trajectories and crime policies

The US and the UK are liberal market economies of penal populism that use the criminal
justice system to manage inequality, producing stigmatising and exclusionary effects

Coordinated market economies, characterised by proportionally representative electoral

systems and a generous welfare state, on the other hand, have a more reintegrative and
inclusionary criminal justice system

● The US and UK often expand the criminal justice budget, targeting categories of
socially, racially, and otherwise excluded groups through punishment and surveillance
(instead of welfare, education, employment, etc.!)

- - - crime policy is (only one) part of the broader public policy!

(CRIME) POLICIES ARE RESPONSES TO…

● … perceived crime problems and the capacities of governments to develop and

implement crime policies based on their cultural norms, and institutional factors,
particularly political and economic factors
● Crime policy is not an autonomous area of governance, nor can changes in crime
policy be attributed to ‘new modernity’
● Crime policy depends on how civilised, progressive, and democratic a country is

- - - do policies, including crime policy, promote inclusion or exclusion?

CRIME POLICIES AND THE QUALITY OF DEMOCRACY

● Examples of the US and the UK show us that not all liberal-democratic criminal
justice systems aspire to be inclusive and reintegrative
● The paradox is that in the UK and the US, crime policies have become punitive
because of public support (remember the ‘three strikes’ video), which could be
considered democratic
● But the extent of public support and the impact it has on politicians varies based on
political and institutional systems in a particular country, i.e. the quality of
democracy

THE PARAMETERS OF DEMOCRACY

18
 ● Representation of, and responsiveness to, the will of citizens
● Direct or indirect participation of citizens in decision-making
● Accountability of officials for proper conduct and effective delivery of policies in
the public interest
● Adherence to the rule of law and respect for human rights

THE DEMOCRATIC PARAMETERS OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE / CRIME POLICY

● The proper scope, functions and limits of criminal law

● The goals of and proper limits on punishment
● The appropriate design of criminal procedure and criminal justice institutions,
including prisons, the police, etc.
● The resources dedicated to criminal justice policies, compared to other public
policies

- - - Link to multidisciplinarity, but this time, we are talking about it in relation to politics,
so the reliance of policy on politics rather than only social circumstances and personal
circumstances (weeks 2 and 3).

- - - In theory, crime policies will rarely be exclusionary, but how they play out in practice
depends on institutional preconditions for the realisation of democratic values in a
particular country

ANGLO-SAXON EXCLUSION VS CONTINENTAL INCLUSION

● Garland offered a macro-level analysis, but ‚late modernity‘ did not impact all liberal
democracies towards penal excess; some democracies responded with penal
moderation
● Figures for that time: In 2006, incarceration rates ranged from 36 per 100,000 of the
population (in Iceland) to 737 in the USA, with England and Wales, at a rate of 148

-- - Why?

1) Different paths to democracy (status-based criminal justice systems and

Enlightenment reform in continental Europe)
2) Slavery in the modern era (the US and the UK)
3) Cultural and political-economic factors (Coordinated systems invest in broader
public policy and maintain an inclusive crime policy vs. liberal market systems have a

19
 free market and use crime policy as a tool to manage the population excluded from
the economy)

● Historical and contemporary understandings of multidisciplinarity in

criminal justice through a theoretical approach
● Which disciplines do crime policies/public policies concerned with crime
draw or depend on, apart from criminal law and criminology?
● Deleuze’s Foreword to Donzelot’s The Policing of Families (1979) - - - main
points:
- The control of the family, i.e. the 'policing' of the family, is only partly
exercised by the police and law enforcement, but mainly through more soft
surveillance (social work, psychology, psychoanalysis, education, etc.)
- This control started with the rise of ‘the social’ as part of preventative
th th
measures established in the 18 and 19 centuries
- The rise of ‘the social’ affected the rich and the poor differently, propelling
lower-class families under the public gaze and into the system, including the
criminal justice system
● Lacey’s The Prisoner’s Dilemma (2008) - - - main points:
- Crime policies are not only impacted by broader/macro socio-economic
circumstances like ‘late modernity’, but depend on the political, cultural, and
institutional factors within a specific country and its political economy
- The US and the UK are liberal market economies of penal populism that
use the criminal justice system to manage inequality, producing
stigmatising and exclusionary effects. Coordinated market economies,
characterised by proportionally representative electoral systems and a
generous welfare state, on the other hand, have a more reintegrative and
inclusionary criminal justice system

20
WEEK 5 – OUTLINE: PENAL CULTURES AND CRIME POLICY TRANSFER
● Foundation: Nicola Lacey’s ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’
● Exploring:
1) How does a country’s political system impact the punitiveness of its penal culture,
and why are crime policies usually not transferred simply from one jurisdiction to
the other?
2) Which countries include deviant individuals, and which are more likely to exclude
them?

● Approaches:
1) Social history: Whitman’s (2003) book Harsh Justice - - - Comparing policies in the
US and Europe through a historical lens
2) Comparative criminology and political economy: Cavadino and Dignan’s (2006)
article Penal Policy and Political Economy - - - Comparing the similarities and
differences between countries with different political systems

● Aim:
○ Relativising the statement that ‘late modernity’ has impacted all criminal
justice systems in a similar way
○ Critique of this approach:
1) Overexplaining the differences between countries
2) Underestimating the local/regional impacts and differences in institutional cultures

PART 1: WHITMAN – HARSH PUNISHMENT

WHITMAN: CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL ROOTS OF PENAL POLICIES

● 17th and 18th century

● Comparing the US to Germany and France
● Two main reasons for different penal policies:
1) Social hierarchies vs. egalitarian social status
2) Strong state vs. resistance to state power

SOCIAL HIERARCIES VS. EGALITARIAN SOCIAL STATUS

● European societies knew social hierarchies (aristocracy vs. the lower classes), unlike
the US that had an egalitarian system
● In Europe, harsh punishment was reserved for the lower classes, while in the US,
harshness was the same in punishing people of the higher or lower class
● Today, European countries resist harsh punishment as they associate it with social
hierarchies (there is a general tendency to deliver more dignified forms of punishment

21
 to everyone). In the US, degradation is not problematic and is perceived as an inherent
ingredient of punishment

STRONG STATE VS. RESISTANCE TO STATE POWER

● In Europe, historically, mercy was linked to social hierarchies and was in the hands of
the strong state/royalty. The US is faithful to resistance against the strong state and
formal equality (i.e., treating everybody the same), so mercy does not play an
important role
● In Europe today, mercy is reflected in the individualisation of sanctions and general
amnesties granted by the state. European strong states are bureaucratised, and
professional (not public!) opinion usually impacts penal policies. In the US, the spirit
of mercy does not pervade the criminal justice system, and penal policies are more
easily subject to politicisation through public opinion

PART 2: CAVADINO & DIGNAN – PENAL POLICY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

DOES GLOBALISATION MEAN THE HARMONISATION OF PENAL POLICIES?

● In the 1990s, punishment in the US and the UK was politicised - - - politicians/the

media presented voters with the idea that crime policy was a tool to tame rising crime
rates
● The prediction was that if globalisation continued to progress, this would bring about
penal convergence or even a homogenisation of punishment according to the US’s
harsh penality model due to the impact of American culture

BUT

● All late modern societies are subject to globalisation

● Globalisation has not led to a global homogenisation of penal policies

DEFINITIONS OF GLOBALISATION RELATING TO CRIME POLICY

● Criminal law and the criminal justice system are not that prone to globalisation
● Globalisation is the international flow of information, people, and products, yet some
localities resist global trends
● There is faster-pace information sharing about crime policies due to globalisation and
some penal convergence, but not penal homogenisation
● Penal globalisation partly happens but has uneven consequences; in some countries, it
went in the opposite direction from US’s populist punitiveness

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 PENAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN COUNTRIES

● Week 2: Foucault talked about the change in the ‘art of punishment’ from a corporal
to a carceral one between the 18th and the 19th century across European countries,
giving France as an example
● Contemporary prison rates: US (505), England and Wales (136), Spain (116),
Slovenia (68), Iceland (37)
● Punishment is a complex phenomenon, impacted also by the countries political
economy

POLITICAL ECONOMY AND PENALITY

● Different types of modern political economies – diverse penal policies based on

sverity of punishment
● Comparing 12 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, and the Antipodes
● Commonalities: All contemporary capitalist societies
● Differences: Different political economies/relationship between the citizen and the
state

RESULT: Division of countries into four groups based on: a) Economic and social policy;
b) Income and status differences; c) Citizen-state relations; d) Social inclusivity; e) Political
orientation and penal ideology; f) Mode of punishment and imprisonment rates; g) Inclination
towards privatised prisons.

GROUP 1: NEO-LIBERAL GROUP

Economic and social policy Neoliberalism, political conservativism, free-market
economy, individualism, minimal and means-based
social benefits, stigmatisation of social need

Income and status differences Formal egalitarianism, but substantial income

differences, social exclsuion of people marinalised
from the free market

Citizen-state relations Social exclusion beyond poverty (denial of

effective citizen rights and participation in political
and social life)

Social inclusivity Social exclusion (absence of trade unions,

affordable healthcare, leisure, education, welfare,
etc.) – ghettoisation and the underclass

23
Political orientation and penal ideology Right-wing/‘law and order’

Mode of punishment and imprisonment rates Exclusionary/high

Inclinations towards privatisation High

COUNTRIES US, Englang and Wales, Australia, New Zealand,

South Africa

GROUP 2: CONSERVATIVE CORPORATIST GROUP

Economic and social policy Status-related based mainly on occupation, but a
moderately generous welfare state (benefits,
however, rely on reciprocity and civil servants enjoy
safest occupational and welfare pathways)

Income and status differences Smaller differences than in neoliberalism:

pronounced, but not extreme, relating to occupation,
not completely egalitarian due to the state
perpetuating existing national, class, economic and
occupational differences
Citizen-state relations Communitarianism (including and integrating all
citizens), but traditional institutions (church, family)
carry out some welfare functions
Social inclusivity Important national interest groups (e.g.,
organisationsrepresenting employers and workers)
are integrated with the national state, members of
those national interest groups enjoy generous welfare
benefits as a social right

Political orientation and penal ideology Centrist/rehabilitation

Mode of punishment and imprisonment Mixed/medium

rates
Inclinations towards privatisation Moderate
COUNTRIES Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands

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 GROUP 3: SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC CORPORATISM GROUP
Economic and social policy Egalitarian, secular, universalistic and generous welfare
benefits (only partly based on contribution), employers
dedicated to investment, the state promotes both full
employment and profit

Income and status differences Limited and broadly egalitarian, based mostly on
occupation
Citizen-state relations Unconditional and generous social rights, the state
takes care of social citizenship for marginalised groups
(children, the disabled, the elderly)
Social inclusivity Trade unions drive social policy, very little tendency
towards exclusivity, inclusivity is the full responsibility of
the state (not the family, church, etc.)

Political orientation and penal ideology Left-wing/rights-based

Mode of punishment and imprisonment Inclusionary/low

rates
Inclinations towards privatisation Low

COUNTRIES Sweden, Finland, Denmark

GROUP 4: ORIENTAL CORPORATIST GROUP

Economic and social policy Private, sector-based welfare system that is bureaucratised
and paternalistic, welfare is conditioned with employee's age
and increasing social responsibilities (e.g., having a family),
not their productivity, welfare function is largely carried out by
private employers, family, and community-based
organisations (not the state!)

Income and status differences Very limited, hierarchal, and based on traditional patriarchal
ranking

Citizen-state relations Quasi-feudal corporatism, a strong sense of duty

25
Social inclusivity Alienation of outsiders, but otherwise little social exclusion,
individuals with a strong sense of social duties

Political orientation and penal Cantre-right/Apology-based restoration and rehabilitation

ideology
Mode of punishment and Inclusionary/low
imprisonment rates
Inclinations towards privatisation Low

COUNTRIES Japan

LINK BETWEEN POLITICAL ECONOMY AND PENALITY

● A significant association between different types of political economies andpenality

● At the beginning of the 21st century, there were almost watertight dividing lines
between the different political economy types regarding imprisonment rates in these
countries.
● All the neo-liberal countries had higher rates than all the conservativecorporatist
countries, followed by Nordic social democracies, with the oriental corporatist
country of Japan having the lowest imprisonment rate

Reasons for the punitiveness of neoliberal countries

1) Neoliberalism is criminogenic
2) Neoliberalism fosters an individualist ethos that is more likely to promote
marginalising those excluded from the free market and breaking the law

Reasons for penal moderation in corporatist and social democratic countries:

1) Inclusionary social and economic policies protecting people against the free market
2) Not blaming the individual, but more inclined to promote rehabilitation and
resocialisation (‘the society’ is to be blamed for crime)

Reasons for leniency of oriental corporatist Japan

1) Strong sense of belonging to informal family and work-related social groups

2) Strong sense of obligation to be accepted
3) Role of apology in leniency vs. harsh punishment when apology is absent

26
CRITIQUE OF FINDINGS ON LINKS BETWEEN POLITICAL ECONOMIES AND
PENALITY

1) Whitman: Only briefly mentions the impacts of slavery on American

punitiveness - - - need to include findings of postcolonial studies
2) Cavadino and Dignan: They do not take into account European and other
jurisdictions that are at the periphery of criminological knowledge - - - need to
include criminologies of the Global South

•Exploring:
1) How does a country’s political system impact the punitiveness of its
penal culture, and why are crime policies usually not transferred
simply from one jurisdiction to the other?
2) Which countries include deviant individuals, and which are more likely to
exclude them?
•Approaches:
1) Social history: Whitman’s (2003) book Harsh Justice - - - Comparing
policies in the US and Europe through a historical lens
2) Comparative criminology and political economy: Cavadino and Dignan’s
(2006) article Penal Policy and Political Economy - - - Comparing the
similarities and differences between countries with different political systems
•Findings:
1) The US has a different crime policy to Europe because of its different
history: a) Lack of social hierarchies and an egalitarian social status
(degradation is part of punishment), b) Lack of strong state and resistance
to state power (mercy is not embedded in the criminal justice system, which
follows formal equality) (Whitman 2003)
2) There are four groups of countries based on how their political economies
impact the punitiveness of their penal cultures: a) Neoliberal, b)
Conservative corporatist, c) Social-democratic corporatist, d) Oriental
corporatist (Cavadino and Dignan 2006)
•Drawbacks:
1) Not taking into account the local level
2) Not taking into account institutional cultures
3) Not taking into account slavery, etc.

27
WEEK 6– OUTLINE: PENAL CULTURES AND CRIME POLICY TRANSFER

Weeks 6 to 10: Applying the theoretical knowledge of crime policy obtained through
the first five lectures to a specific criminological field: youth justice.

Week 6:

Two readings:

1. How have socioeconomic and political shifts between the 1970s and 2000s
described by Garland with the umbrella term ‘late modernity’ led to the
responisibilising of young people and their parents for youth crime and poor
parenting in the UK? (Reading 1)
2. According to Simon, what is the role of crime in governing the US family?
(Reading 2)

REMEMBERING ‘LATE MODERNITY’ (WEEK 2)

● Steadily rising crime rates

● Decline of welfare
● Distrust in the state as the sole provider of security
● Rise of neoconservatism (traditional family values, individual responsibility)
and neoliberalism (free competition, deregulated market)
● Public fear and its political manipulation

- - - resulted in governance-at-a-distance

LATE MODERNITY’ & CHILDREN AND PARENTS

● Parents responsibilised and expected to manage children’s crime risks

● The family’s economic, social, and cultural capital are disregarded
● Parents are blamed for the crime and anti-social behaviour of their children
● Improving parenting without changing the family’s circumstances becomes a
pursued crime control policy

- - - Policy that helps perpetuate stereotypes about youth crime being present only in
lower-class families due to their parenting per se

28
‘LATE MODERNITY’ & SOCIALLY-DECONTEXTUALISED FAMILY AND CRIME
CONTROL POLICIES
1970s - Cycle of deprivation

● ‘Poverty is passed down in disadvantaged families from generation to

generation, so parents should improve their childrearing to reverse the trend’

1980s – Undeserving poor

● ‘Children’s misbehavior stems from deficient child rearing, and familial

problems are transmitted intergenerationally due to ‘bad parenting’

1990s – ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’

- Disadvantage as a personal failure, not consequence of poor economic and

social policies
- Parents should fulfil their obligations to children
- Re-educating parents
- Punishing parents for the offending of their
- Punishing children

RESPONSBILISING CRIME POLICIES: EXAMPLE 1 (ASBOs and parenting

orders)
● Crime and Disorder Act 1998: Anti-social Behaviour Orders
● ASBOs are civil orders, but their breach is a criminal offence, and a conviction
can result in up to 5 years of imprisonment (2 for minors) (hidden
punitiveness)
● Anti-social behaviour’ becomes an umbrella term for very different social
problems (from spitting, noise pollution, and ‘drunken behaviour’ to
‘paedophilic activity’, racism and xenophobia, and dangerous driving)
● Disproportionate effects on young people, especially those of poor
backgrounds
● Parents can be punished for a child’s breach of an ASBO through a
parenting order

RESPONSBILISING CRIME POLICIES: EXAMPLE 2 (Removal of doli incapax)

● Crime and Disorder Act 1998
● The government abolished the legal presumption that children below 14
cannot be criminally liable

29
 ● 10-14-year-olds could be criminally liable if the prosecution proved they were
not only ‘naughty and mischievous’
● Youngest age of criminal liability in Europe
● Impacted greatly not by evidence-led research, but by the media-bolstered
Bulger case

RESPONSBILISING CRIME POLICIES: EXAMPLE 3 (Responses to the 2011

riots)
● Shooting of Mark Duggan by the Metropolitan police on 4 August 2011
● Since the 1980s, there have been tensions between the police and Black
citizens in the UK: Black people were 6-8 times more likely to be stopped and
searched by the police, and many Black people died while in police custody
● Riots - - - started as protests against police conduct, racial inequality, and
poverty on 6 August in Tottenham in London, but escalated into robberies,
arson, looting, etc., across England, ending on 11 August
● Role of social media and ‘copycat violence’
● Policy response described as inadequate: 3000 arrests, almost 2000 charges
- - - law enforcement and, again, responsibilising family policies (‘Troubled
families’ approach)

Responses to 2011 riots

● Legislation and crime policy that failed to acknowledge the material reality of
families and perpetuated stereotypes by linking poverty to parental neglect
and youth crime.
● Pathologising and stigmatising a segment of the population most in need, and
moving the discourse from welfare need to social control 2011 riots

‘CRIME FAMILES’: GOVERNING DOMESTIC RELATIONS THROUGH CRIME

● Until the 1980s, domestic abuse and everything that happened in the family
was immune to criminal law and crime policy, considered a private matter
● The family went from ‘zone of privacy’ to ‘zone of potential responsibility:
- Responsibility for children’s wellbeing
- Responsibility as a potential perpetrator of domestic abuse

… through criminal and civil (family and divorce) proceedings and procedures carried
out by other institutions (schools, social services, probation, etc.)

30
GOVERNING DOMESTIC ABUSE THROUGH CRIME
● Domestic abuse is a complex social phenomenon, which can be perceived
through the prism of crime, but not exclusively that way
● Simon (2007): vignette/story about domestic abuse and institutional
responses to it
● Feminist and other pro-prosecution critiques of domestic abuse laws and
policies: other objectives (women’s welfare, employment, childcare) should be
at the forefront, not criminalisation
● Governing family life through crime is not the best solution; it often misses
structural factors

SOME EXAMPLES OF DOMESTIC ABUSE POLICIES

● From the recognition of victims and first shelters to domestic violence as a
crime that needs quick and clear punitive responses (remember: this is the
US context in some states!):
1) Mandatory arrest
2) Statutory prosecution, regardless of the victim’s will
3) Mandatory incarceration
4) Domestic violence courts
5) Children as domestic violence victims

FEMINIST CRITIQUES OF DOMESTIC ABUSE POLICIES

1) How effectively does a hardening of the criminal justice response to domestic

violence protect women from repeat violence?
2) How does the investment of the domestic violence victim as a crime victim
advance the equality of women as political subjects more generally?
3) Does the construction of masculine domination as criminal violence alter
the larger ecology of cultural support for that domination?

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF SOME DOMESTIC ABUSE POLICIES•

● Domestic abuse and immigration

● Intersectional discrimination based on gender and nationality

Fever immigrants are reporting domestic abuse

31
Weeks 6 to 10: Applying the theoretical knowledge of crime policy obtained through the
first five lectures to a specific criminological field: youth justice.
Week 6:
Two readings:
1. How have socioeconomic and political shifts between the 1970s and 2000s
described by Garland with the umbrella term ‘late modernity’ led to the
responisibilising of young people and their parents for youth crime and poor
parenting in the UK? (Reading 1 + examples: ASBOs, removal of doli incapax,
policy responses to the 2011 riots)
2. According to Simon, what is the role of crime in governing the US family?
(Reading 2 + domestic abuse, its criminalisation, and feminist critiques of such a
policy approach)

CRIME POLICY APPLICATION II and III –

WEEK 7 - THE INTERSECTIONAL/INTERACTIONAL

WEEK 8- INTERDISCIPLINARY

CONTEXT OF YOUTH JUSTICE

Lecture 7

● Applying Bourdieu’s work on capital, class, and habitus to the field of youth
justice
● Examining how – in professional interactions – the social positions of the
professional and the client impact the relationship between them and the
outcomes of interventions
● Thinking about the relationship between the police and young people
through exploring the practices of stop-and-search

Lecture 8

● How do institutional discourses and organisational working practices of

agencies involved in youth justice impact the professional relationships
within them and their outcomes?
● Edinburgh study of youth transitions and crime

32
LECTURE 7

NEGOTIATING CLASS IN YOUTH JUSTICE: PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND

INTERACTIONS

● Between 2015 and 2019

● England
● Participant observation, interviews, and focus groups with young people in
conflict with the law, their parents, and the practitioners that work with
them
● Youth justice, broadly defined: schools, early intervention, the police,
mental health, charities, youth offending teams (Donzelot: ‘the social’)
● How does the social distance between the interacting parties impact
professional relationships (lecture 7) vs how do the institutional discourses
and organisational working practices impact these relationships (lecture 8)?

BOURDIEU AND HABITUS – A SUMMARY

● Habitus is a structure that is, at once, ‘structured by’ and ‘structuring’ the
social world through synchronising an individual’s beliefs, manners, and
conduct with their class background
● How people perceive and respond to – and are responded to by – others
reflect their social position and lifestyles as manifested in their
relationships
● Habitus is:
○ Acquired in childhood
○ Acquired subconsciously
○ All-encompassing
○ Learned and transmitted through practical sense

(… but also later, through conscious deliberation, fragmented, transmitted more

rationally)

33
CHARACTERISTICS OF HABITUS (1/4): ACQUIRED IN CHILDHOOD

● Habitus is acquired in childhood and shapes family life, but due to financial
and material needs, rather than different moral worth of people from
different backgrounds

JA: Does poverty impact the family’s everyday life?

C9: Not exactly poverty, but the stress that it causes, which can rub off on the
children. They can get stressed too, but they’re neither in the position to be nor
do they need to be. They’re not causing it.
C14: I think poverty influences everything, but it’s because parents have to work
more jobs to support the family and can’t spend as much time with their kids or
support them in the same ways that they would if they had money. All kids need
attention, so they might get it through committing crime instead.

(13-year-old male and 15-year-old male in FG 8)

CHARACTERISTICS OF HABITUS (2/4): ACQUIRED SUBCONSCIOUSLY

● Dispositions, beliefs, and actions are transferred from parents to children

subconsciously

The thing with your children is that even if they go off the rails if you expose
them to that culture and those positive things at a young age, a part of that will
always still be with them. So, when you’re trying to pull them out of trouble,
they have something to latch onto rather than trying to teach them some big new
skill they have never used before. I think, fundamentally, it’s a class thing
because it’s hard to see outside of your class. It’s almost as if you’ve got tunnel
vision. It’s hard to have that social mobility. That’s the hardest thing. To visualise
things differently, especially being raised in one way.

(Danny, 21-year-old male)

CHARACTERISTICS OF HABITUS (3/4): UNIFIED AND UNIFYING NATURE

● Habitus has a unified and unifying nature. It is all-encompassing and

impacts all spheres of social life

After getting arrested and being involved with the youth offending team, I started
working at a café. Now, people that come to this café aren’t the kind of people

34
who do drugs and stuff. So, the people I referred to every day went from drug
addicts to university students. That made me see what I’ve lost. It made me see
that ethos that I had from private school again. That there’s more to life than
this. That was the biggest thing. It gave me the perspective that I needed to get
out of it. And then with the counselling, the thing that was crazy to me was that I
talked to counsellors and I knew what they wanted me to say. I knew what the
form was going to say. I knew what they wanted to sign off. So, I’d just say it. I’m
good at doing that. I’m good at sourcing out what people want to hear. And I think
it’s because I went to private school as a kid.

(Danny, 21-year-old male)

CHARACTERISTICS OF HABITUS (4/4): TRANSMITTED THROUGH PRACTICAL SENSE

● A person knows, practically, when, where, and how to think and act with a
‘feel for the game’

I think everyone, even uneducated people, understands that if you’re clever at

school, you’re bound to get a better job, but there’s knowing it in theory and
knowing it in practice, isn’t there? Privileged people will have had more practical
experience with that, regardless of their knowledge. Habit, you know, in any
family, is just entrenched and they’re used to living this way. It can be chaotic and
difficult and challenging, but it’s normal to them. That’s what they’ve learned.
It’s learned behaviour. That’s why it’s difficult for families to change sometimes,
especially when parents have had negative experiences of being parented
themselves and negative experiences of education. On top of that, there’s the
reduced access to community facilities and health services, so then when they get
to the age when they’re then parents and responsible for their children, they
don’t know what to do.

(Jenna, EI worker, twenties)

POSSIBLE IMPACT OF HABITUS ON (PROFESSIONAL) INTERACTIONS -1

● In everyday life and interactions

Most people from this council estate wouldn’t cross the bridge and go to the city
centre. I worked with kids that have never been to the city centre. They mentally
didn’t feel good enough. I remember one that was 21 years old and she’s worked

35
since she was 15. She struggled, mentally and emotionally, to go to a pub in the
city centre. Because the only pubs that she went to were in her area of the city. I
took her and she physic- ally couldn’t cope. There was a barrier because of her
upbringing and the perspective that her parents taught her. It’s the lack of
confidence and a type of parenting where people are also afraid of professionals.

(Kylie, police constable, forties)

POSSIBLE IMPACT OF HABITUS ON (PROFESSIONAL) INTERACTIONS -2

● In professional interactions

JA Why do you think disparities in decision-making persist although professionals

and judges nowadays receive a lot of training so there should be more awareness
about these issues?

T: There’s several reasons for that. Young people who come from affluent
backgrounds can communicate at the same level as the magistrates. They have a
large vocabulary, they have better body language, they will come across as being
reasonable. Their presentation in court will be much better. The pattern we see
from affluent people is the ability to ‘fake good’. They make it seem like
everything’s fantastic on the outside and give the right answers to the right
people, but underneath the behaviour continues. I would say that people who are
living in poverty are going to be different in their presentation because they are
on what I call a ‘survival level’. How can you concentrate in school or present
yourself in court when you’re worried because you have no money? I think what
also happens is, in terms of the disadvantaged, that their parents are not always
as able as the more educated ones to argue the case for their child, so they can
end up with less favourable results.

(Terry, YOT manager, fifties)

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HABITUS AND THE ‘LAW OF DIRECTION’

● The courses and outcomes of negotiations – both official and unofficial – are
not only constrained by formal rules or the organisational pressures of the
situation (lecture 8) but are also and always affected, albeit unwittingly, by
the social gap between the parties (lecture 7)

I think you should have certain people for certain people. I would have opened up
more to someone that was more like me rather than someone who is the total
opposite of me. And that’s normal. If all of the mentors in my time were young
males who didn’t have a father and had a little bit of trouble back in the day, I
would have gotten on way better with them. I would have opened up to them way
more than to some old lady. I’ve got nothing in common with her. Her house is
paid for. I’ve lived in a council house all my life. You can’t relate, because they’re
living in a different world at that time and they can’t see it either. Whereas if
someone has been through the same thing, they see how your posture is, how you
speak, how you act... They can tell how you feel inside.

(Leroy, 21-year-old male)

HABITUS AND INDIRECT DISCRIMINATION

● People are processed for their acts, but decisions about how they will be
treated are also impacted by silent and unacknowledged judgments of their
lifestyles
● Equality on a normative level, but how come some groups are
overrepresented in the system?
● Normative and interactional level: Understanding the interactions between
young people and officials is essential as it impacts legitimacy, trust, and
compliance with rules.

- - - the case of stop-and-search (UK)

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STOP-AND-SEARCH (UK)

● In the UK, a police officer has powers to stop and search you if they have
‘reasonable grounds’ to suspect you’re carrying:
○ illegal drugs
○ a weapon
○ stolen property
○ something which could be used to commit a crime
● You can only be stopped and searched without reasonable grounds if it has
been approved by a senior police officer. This can happen if it is suspected
that:
○ serious violence could take place
○ you’re carrying a weapon or have used one
○ you’re in a specific location or area

STOP-AND-SEARCH STATISTICS

● London Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime Statistics for 2018
● In 2018, Black people comprised 15.6% of London’s population, while White
people comprised 59.8%. In 2018, 43% of searches were of Black people,
while 35.5% were of White people
● A total of 151,102 searches were carried out in 2018, an increase of 16% in
London on the previous year, rising by 5% for white people and 19% for black
people.
● In 2018, there were 10.8 stops for every 1,000 White people and 50.2 stops
for every 1,000 Black people
● Young people aged 15-19 were stopped at a rate of 97 per 1,000 people
● Overall 16% of searches led to an arrest and the data shows arrest rates
were lower for the black population
● For white people, 30.5% of searches resulted in further action, for Asian
people 27.8%, and for Black people lower still, at 26.7%

WHAT IS POLICE WORK (INCLUDING STOP-AND-SEARCH) FOR?

● Catching criminals?
● Maintaining order?

What is the justification for stop-and-search if it does not help reduce crime and
crumbles the relationships between the police and the community?

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STOP-AND-SEARCH AND SOCIAL MARGINALITY

● Based on the above statistics, it could be argued that stop and search is
used to keep order and manage and create social marginality
● Different theories:

CONSENSUS THEORIES: It is because they tend to live in high-crime areas that stop
and search is disproportionately aimed at ethnic and other minority groups - - -
formal/police explanation

CONFLICT THEORIES: While offending is more evenly spread across different social
groups and categories, police will often ignore or tolerate offending among the
powerful and concentrate on those with less status and influence - - - alternative
explanation of police bias

POLICE AND INSTITUTIONAL BIAS

● Murder of Stephen Lawrence 1993

● Macpherson report 1999: The police is ‘institutionally racist’
● Casey report 2023: The police is institutionally racist, misogynistic, and
homophobic’

POLICE AND THE TYPES OF INSTITUTIONAL BIAS

● UK (England, Scotland)
○ Stop-and-search directed towards :
■ Those who use drugs
■ Marginal social categories – minority groups, young people,
recent victims of crime, the unemployed, those not in good
health
● US —> Marijuana stops concentrated in neighbourhoods with a
predominantly Black population
● Spain —> ID checks are more frequent for visible ethnic minorities and
non-Spanish citizens
● France —> ID checks are more frequent for Muslims, Travellers, Gypsies,
and youth wearing clothing that reflects part of a subculture

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STOP-AND-SEARCH, BIAS, AND POLICE LEGITIMACY

● Stop-and-search encounters test the legitimacy of the police

● Casey report 2023: 50% of people do not trust the Met police
● If police lacks legitimacy and people do not trust the police, how willing are
they to follow the rules?

STOP-AND-SEARCH AND CRIME POLICY

● Democracies govern through law and criminal justice and law enforcement
practices
● Knowing what we know about stop-and-search, what could be defined as its
current policy aim?
○ Managing social marginality
○ How could this be changed?
○ Managing disorderly behaviour, not disorderly people
○ Changes in the law cannot change stop-and-search practices
○ Stop-and-search should be abolished (but this could result in
excessive use of even more aggressive policing, e.g. arrests)

LECTURE 8

FROM HABITUS TO INSTITUTIONAL DISCOURSES AND WORKING PRACTICES

1. Can institutional discourses and organisational working practices impact how

people are treated within the justice system, broadly defined? (Reading 1)
2. What do McAra and McVie mean when they say some young people are
‘propelled’ into the youth justice system based on prior institutional
contact? (Reading 2)
● Different institutions working with young people in trouble with the law
have different professional paradigms
● Institutional discourses/paradigms often blur the lines between welfare and
punishment or vulnerability and risk
● Educational, welfare, law enforcement, and judicial orders can reinforce or
compound one another to marginalise some young people

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THE IMPACT OF ORGANISATIONAL DISCOURSES AND WORKING PRACTICES

● Results of institutional contacts are not only subject to the similarities

and/or clashes between the interacting parties’ habitual dispositions and
perceptions (Lecture 7), but are also influenced by the ‘characteristics of
the event’(Lecture 8) (Bourdieu)
● Differentiation according to class or other personal characteristics might be
evoked and/or bolstered by organisational working practices

Example: Liberal discourses in schools that promote individuality but sideline the
impact of social factors on the child’s ability can silently reinforce differentiation
based on socio-economic background

CHILDREN, FAMILIES AND THE RISK/NEEDS DISCOURSE

● A predominant understanding of children as individuals at risk and their

families as the key risk factors in developing troubling behaviour can
provide conditions for biased professional perceptions of familial difficulties
● Remember family- and crime control policies in the UK from the 1970s to
the early 2000s (cycle of deprivation, undeserving poor, tough on
crime/tough on the causes of crime, troubled families)
● Example: AssetPlus assessment and planning framework in the youth justice
system (UK)

AssetPlus

● Used to measure risk in young people in conflict with the law (10-17 years)
at different stages to:
○ Forecast reconviction
○ Measure the change in a young person
○ Outline the positive factors
● Risk assessment based on: Offending history, living arrangements, family
factors, education and employment, neighbourhood, lifestyle, substance
use, physical health, emotional/mental health, attitudes toward offending

--- in-built bias

--- violates the ethical rule that no personal characteristic for which an individual
bears no accountability (for example, social class, race and ethnicity, gender,

41
disability, etc.) should be considered when determining the type and length of
their punishment

RISK MANAGEMENT AND OVERREPRESENTATION IN THE SYSTEM

● Risk assessment and risk-centred narratives can have a ‘ratchet effect’

(Harcourt 2008)
● Protecting the public vs unfavourable social outcomes - - - exposure of
certain groups to further marginalisation, social control, and punishment

RISK MANAGEMENT AND BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN WELFARE AND

PUNISHMENT

● Young people in need: the concept of vulnerability

● Vulnerability and risk are conceptually mixed
● Agency contact based on a person’s vulnerable position can translate their
welfare needs into risks of antisocial behaviour through further institutional
control

Example: domestic violence victims vs questioning their immigration status

RISK MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVING THE STATUS QUO

● Policing of families (Donzelot)

● Guarding a certain type of order (Loader and Bradford)
● Conformist interventions (Currie)

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THE IMPACT OF ORGANISATIONAL WORKING PRACTICES - 1

A) The understanding of time

● Capitalist industrial logic
● Pursuit of effectiveness and efficiency at the cost of fairness and social
justice
● Business-like ethos

-- - The trajectories of less privileged young people in conflict with the law and
their parents can be unstable and interrupted by unforeseeable events, so their
lifeworlds and ability to plan might not resonate well with the expectations of
agencies that perceive time as running straight and individuals as agentic
future-predicting subjects

Example: Rehabilitation programmes for young offenders

THE IMPACT OF ORGANISATIONAL WORKING PRACTICES - 2

B) Bureaucratised services and lots of paperwork (less discretion, targeted

interventions)
C) Lack of therapeutic relationship
D) Drop in prosessionalism

- - - In such conditions, interventions are more likely to have discriminatory

effects. Do they?

- - - Edinburgh Study on Youth Transitions and Crime

EDINBURGH STUDY ON YOUTH TRANSITIONS AND CRIME

● Aims to examine the causes and consequences of young people’s

involvement in crime and anti-social behaviour
● A longitudinal study of a single cohort of around 4,300 young people who
started secondary school in the City of Edinburgh in the autumn of 1998
● Over this period, the study collected information using questionnaires
completed by the cohort members and administrative data from official
records, including education, social work and criminal conviction records. It

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 then updated the criminal conviction records and conducted in-depth
interviews with a sub-sample of the cohort at ages 24 and 33

FINDINGS 1: School

● Young people’s offending pathways begin before their contact with law
enforcement officials, namely with labelling practices in schools and other
agencies
● An ongoing ‘filtering process’ continuously propels the same young people
into the youth justice system, whereby this does not necessarily depend on
the seriousness of their offenses, but on prior agency contact per se and
conditions that they cannot control, including their family reputation and
social disadvantage

FINDINGS 2: Police

● Formal labelling continues as police target the same young people from
disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds as ‘usual suspects’
● The seriousness of their offence might initiate the first contact of a young
person with the police, but the following interventions are often encouraged
by their ‘troublemaking reputation’ itself
● Neighbourhood effects are less significant for police intervention than
‘individual bias’ and family reputation, so the police help reproduce social
disadvantage by targeting a particular socioeconomically deprived group of
juveniles

FINDINGS 3: Courts

● An ongoing ‘filtering process’ persistently drives these young people further

into the youth justice system.
● This inertia does not depend only on the seriousness of the children’s
offences, but also on prior system contact per se and circumstances that
they cannot control, including their social disadvantage.
● The repeated institutional interventions, based on elements that young
people cannot influence, impel additional surveillance and prevent juveniles
from removing the attributed deviant labels and desisting from offending

44