The Variety of Critical Theory - PowerPoint Presentation

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Lilly Cullen Ball Criminological Theory Sixth Edition 2015 SAGE Publications Criminological Theory Critical Criminologists A New Generation Henry and Milovanovic Ferrell Arrigo language based propositions ID: 469646

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Slide1

The Variety of Critical Theory

Criminological TheorySlide2

Critical Criminologists: A New Generation

Henry and Milovanovic:Ferrell:

Arrigo: language based propositions

Mathews: left realism

DeKeseredy and Schwartz: left realism subcultural theoryHall and Winlow: universal ethics and cultural criminologyYoung: cultural criminologyGreen Criminology and Ecological JusticeIrwin: Convict Criminology

Introduction

Post-modern criminology helped shape the development and contemporary status of critical criminology

Post-modernism represents a broad and complex philosophical shift away from the traditional Enlightenment emphasis on discovering the natural and social world through the scientific method

Critical criminologies share a perspective that asserts that the major sources of crime stem from the fact that unequal class, race/ethnic, and gender relations do in fact control society

Introduction

Whereas conventional criminologists often claim to be value-neutral scientific experts, critical criminologists disavow this position as ideologically

Prefer to see themselves as more inclined to be politically active and committed to having their work reduce pain and suffering

Critical criminology now rivals mainstream criminology as a perspective that shapes thinking in the field

Modernity and Postmodernity

Modern refers to a form of thought or philosophy developed during the enlightenment of the 18

and 19

th centuriesIt emphasized that the social world contained a natural order that could be discovered by the scientific methodOnce problems were discovered and solved the human condition would experience progress

The scientific method was a dangerous two-edged sword. It could help to relieve human pain, but it also could contribute to the infliction of enormous human suffering

Modernity and Postmodernity

Postmodernism argues that the modern social world and its rules for behavior, including definitions of crime and law, are arbitrary linguistic constructions

Truth is not absolute, and scientific inquiry fails to fully reveal reality

This logic has created false hierarchies and divisions within the social order that are divisive and repressive

Modernity and Postmodernity

Modernism directs efforts to fixing or changing individuals or instructions while neglecting the larger picture of the society as a whole

Postmodernists argue that these ideas should be replaced with approaches that are more relevant to the current era

Postmodern Criminal Thought: The End of Grand Narratives?

From this perspective, crime is not simply a violation of formal law or an

objective fact that

can be discovered

by using the scientific methodCrimes are linguistic constructions made by official institutionsLaws are structures of domination that have led to increased repression rather than to liberty

Postmodern Criminal Thought: The End of Grand Narratives?

Critical observers argued that the state’s law and order efforts at correcting individual behavior were directed at those who were least able to resist the official language of the state

The very core values and the material foundations of society that generate crime are left in place when the state attempts to solve the very problems they generate

Postmodern Criminal Thought: The End of Grand Narratives?

Henry and Milovanovic

Truth is unknowable

Rational thought is merely one way of thinking

Knowledge is not cumulative

Facts are only social constructions

Criticism assumes an alternative truth

Postmodern Criminal Thought: The End of Grand Narratives?

Ferrell

Postmodernism

opposes the intellectual and legal machinery of modernism and the conventional forms of legality, illegality, and crime that criminology conventionally

investigatesPostmodernism attempts to expose and repudiate modern law and the state as a system of coordinated control found on economic and social inequality and perpetuated through coercion and cultural manipulation

Postmodern Criminal Thought: The End of Grand Narratives?

Arrigo

Postmodern criminological thought is based on three key language-based propositions

The centrality of language

Partial knowledge and the provisional truth

Deconstruction, difference, and possibility

Looking Back at Early British and European Influences: Background: The New Criminology

Early on, the new criminology was influenced by the impact of the West Coast labeling theory centering around Howard Becker

The

crisis of politics and culture refracted the internal problems of criminology, and thus, the new criminology in Britain

emergedThe central problem was that a wholesale improvement in social conditions resulted not in a drop in crime but rather the reverse

Looking Back at Early British and European Influences: Theoretical Arguments

The New Criminology

Central to

The New Criminology’s

early development was its objections to structural functionalism’s assumption that the social order was based on public consensus and traditional criminology’s overly deterministic treatment of crimeLilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide15

Looking Back at Early British and European Influences: Theoretical Arguments

To overturn these assumptions, the first job was to demonstrate that conventional studies of crime were too narrowly entrenched in more general theories and paradigms that assumed that they had a monopoly on the correct, scientific, and deterministic understanding of human nature and social

order

The task facing the new criminology was to demonstrate that conventional criminology was grounded in ideological constructs central to the policies of the state

Looking Back at Early British and European Influences: Theoretical Arguments

The next task was to make crime the central focus of concern

The new criminology had to focus on the political nature of crime

For the new criminology, capitalism was an exploitative and alienating social order in which inequality was institutionalized by an elite ruling class

Looking Back at Early British and European Influences: Theoretical Arguments

Under capitalism, criminal law is used by the state and the ruling class to secure the survival of the capitalist system

For the new criminology, crime would be defined as capitalist policies and interests that contribute to human misery and deprive people of their human potential

The violation of human rights was of central concern for the definition of crime

Looking Back at Early British and European Influences: Critique of the New Criminology

Three specific problems were identified about

The New Criminology:

The

New Criminology treated criminological theories as if they existed in a scholarly limbo rather than in wider ideological currents tooted in material conditions of advanced capitalist societies

The

writing style

was

closely akin

to that of

people with finely tuned interests in the field of

criminology

It failed to present a cogent discussion of human nature and the social order

Early Left Realism: The Theory

The changing political context of Britain came with the rise of the “New” Right

The 1979 Conservative victory ushered in a new governmental ideology that used as its major agenda the privatization of government industries and the placing of restrictions on welfare, national health care, and educational support

Early Left Realism: The Theory

As the New Right’s governmental policies were being formulated and implemented, radical criminology recognized that its tide had turned

Radical criminology moved away from

The New Criminology

and developed a different approach to studying crime called left realism, which emphasizes the real aspects of crimeLilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide21

Early Left Realism: The Theory

Central to left realism was a strong concern with the origins, nature, and impact of crime in the working

class

This lead to a research agenda that included an accurate study of victimology

Women

as crime victims

Racism

Police

Brutality

Everyday crimes

Crime should be studied as problems people experience

Early Left Realism: The Theory

Left realism advocated minimal sanctions for minor victimless crimes while calling for expanded social control for more harmful crimes, such as industrial pollution and corporate malfeasance

Strong interest in the class and power dimensions of crime causation and what can be done about it

Early Left Realism: The Theory

Criticisms:

One issue is whether left realism has strayed too far from its roots in radical thought

Its emphasis on realistic approaches to the causes of crime come perilously close to advocating punitive control strategies

Early Left Realism: Consequences of New Criminology/Left Realism

Help to lead the attack on traditional positivism

Radical and realist criminologies have contributed to a powerful critique of mechanical determinism, the social construction of statistics, emphasis on the endemic, and the largely invisible victimization of racist crime, domestic violence, and abuse of children

Early Left Realism: Consequences of New Criminology/Left Realism

Policy Implications

Striking a balance between crimes of the powerful and the realities of street crime

Democratic-based reforms

Minimal incarceration

Reentry programs

Democraticized forms of social control

The New Criminology Revisited

During the late 1990s, two events occurred that provided an opportunity to reevaluate the impact of the new criminology

A historic shift in Britain’s politics and the beginning of a new and different political philosophy

The publication of

The New Criminology Revisited

Tony Blair

Elected

as prime minister May 1, 1997

Campaigned for what was termed the “New Labor” Party and promised a national transition to a new Britain

Supported

community inclusiveness and

reform

Focused on the modernization of health care, the reduction of Britain’s runaway welfare bill, human rights, globalization, poverty, the devolution of Scotland and Wales, and a more cooperative relationship with the European Union

The New Criminology Revisited

New Labor’s approach to crime, according to some critics, was soon equally as authoritarian, punitive, and conservative as that of the Tories

Privatizing public service had become Blair’s touchstone since taking office

England’s incarcerated population continued to grow under the New Labor

New Labor’s tough on crime policies often failed to attack the causes of crime

The New Criminology Revisited

Crime and the processes of criminalization are embedded in the core structures of society

The sole and precise aim of new criminology is improving the human condition

The new criminology was and still is not committed to corrections as supported by establishment criminology a la administrative criminology

The new criminology is wedded to social change

The new criminology aims to deconstruct criminological theories in an attempt to construct a social theory of crime and deviance

The New Criminology Revisited

Since the original

The New

Criminology,

feminist perspectives had become more developed ad central to critical criminologyThe Marxist heritage had been refined and redefinedThus, some of the ideas developed in

The New Criminology Revisited

were forerunners of much that captured the imagination of today’s cultural criminologist

Left Realism Today

In recent years, interest in left realism has grown considerably as one of the fields of inquiry under the broader category of critical criminology

Left realists argue that the crimes of the powerless result largely from inequalities inherent in the social structure, the crimes of the disenfranchised—in their opinion—must first be recognized before an egalitarian society based on social justice principles can develop

Left Realism Today

The failure to take working-class crimes and victimization seriously—especially female victimization—helped right-wing groups to dominate control over knowledge about crime and policing

The bulk of left realists' theoretical work addresses street crime, draconian means of policing, and violence against women in heterosexual relationships

Left Realism Today

There are discernable differences between British and North American left realism

The bulk of British realist policies focus on criminal justice reforms including democratic control of policing

The U.S. devotes more attention to anticrime proposals

Left realists in both locations agree theoretically that such policies, including hard police tactics such as stopping and searching people who are publicly drunk only serves to alienate socially, economically, and politically excluded urban communities

Left Realism Today

Left realism constructs and test theories in a number of key problems facing contemporary societies around the world

The vitality of left realism today is also found in its rich discussions of what some critics have called the public irrelevance and marginality of orthodox criminology

Left Realism Today

Conventional criminology had, despite its accumulated theoretical and empirical heft, distressingly little impact on the course of public policy toward crime and criminal justice

Criminology had become isolated from such debates because criminologists do a lousy job of educating the public about what they in fact know about what to do about crime

Left Realism Today

Several reasons for criminology having little relevance about public policy:

The tendency in major research universities to define criminological scholarship too narrowly, favoring “original research” and “significant findings” to be published in peer-reviewed journals with obtuse language

A national political shift to the right

The acceptance of a kind of predatory individualism as a guiding principle of public life

A social Darwinian view of social relationships that supports cutting or eliminating social services to solve the problems of isolation and marginality

Left Realism Today

Matthews proposed engaging in theoretically informed interventions employing an appropriate methodology

Known as the “holy trinity” because it incorporates theory, method, and practice—represented a proposal long associated with other radical and critical thinkers

Left Realism Today

Matthews offers a refashioned realist criminology that prioritizes the role of theory around concepts such as class, the state, and structure

Using these ideas, he argues, coupled with the recognition that a method of analysis that stresses the

meaning

of crime (instead of trends) to victims and offenders, is an essential component that would link theory to effective interventionLilly, Cullen, Ball, Criminological Theory Sixth Edition. ©2015 SAGE PublicationsSlide39

Left Realism Today

DeKeseredy and Schwartz offer a new left realism subcultural theory

that places gender at the forefront

Laissez-faire economic policies have caused a relatively new assault on workers that has helped make North America categorically unequal

Changing Social Context

The 2010 election in England is accorded historical significance

First election after the deepest economic recession since the 1920s

All three political parties had new leaders

Law and order issues were not at the forefront and all three parties had similar proposals for crime

Changing Social Context

Incarceration rates were declining across Europe between 2010 and 2014

In 2014, 70% of the National Probation Service in England was handed over to 21 community rehabilitative companies (30% remained statutory to supervise high-risk offenders)

They were subjected to market discipline with the aim to reduce reoffending better than the state had done

New commercial emphasis on “payment by results”

Probation in England has ceased to be both “profession” and “public service”

New Directions in Criminological Theory: Death and Birth of New Ideas

The first National Deviancy Conference in Britain (1968) proved to be the beginning of theoretical and empirical work that “changed the character of British criminology”

Conference was revived in 2011 and met again in 2014

“Reinvigorated

critical/radical criminology to take the lead in explaining and articulating a challenge to the staggering range of injustices, inequalities and harms that are an unavoidable by-product of a transformed postmodern and thoroughly globalized

capitalism”

Steve Hall’s (2012)

Theorizing Crime & and Deviance: A New Perspective

Argument

is that contemporary criminology suffers from a largely self-constructed “

aetiological crisis” Does not answer the question of what creates the conditions in which rates of harmful crime increase to elicit the seemingly inevitable punitive reaction orchestrated by neoliberal government

Argues Western

criminology

places blame

for crime on something to be explained that is consistent and “affirms political and governmental projects of the day

” (e.g., free will, socialization, poverty, social inequality) and left the field open for dominating conservative

criminolog

New Directions in Criminological Theory: Hall’s New Perspective

Hall calls for a reinvigorated critical/realist criminological theory to “producing analyses that explain the shape and motivational background of criminality in the current crisis-ridden epoch of advanced global capitalism

Need to recognize that crime and the culture of consumerism are two sides of the same coin under contemporary capitalistic neoliberalism where inequality is deeply embedded

New Directions in Criminological Theory: Hall’s New Perspective

See this inequality with the “one percent” issue in the U.S.

Argues that the unequal distribution of income in the U.S. is attributable to governmental action

Due to this, criminological theory needs to investigate psychological, historical, and socio-cultural motives for crime and recognize prior liberal arguments to reduce crime through integrating marginalized groups clashes with prevailing socio-economic relations

New Directions in Criminological Theory: Hall’s New Perspective

Calls for the principle of universal ethics and politics to find its way into criminological theory and to reject liberal-postmodernism and risk theory

New Directions in Criminological Theory: Hall’s New Perspective

New Directions in Criminological Theory: Jock Young

Central and persistent theme in his intellectual journeys—new criminology, left realism, and cultural criminology—has been those groups marginalized by capitalism

Contributed not only to left reality but to cultural criminology

The New European Criminology: Contributions and Context

In the aftermath of WWII, two powerful developments emerged that were to have a great impact on the developing new criminology

Unemployment and related social problems were an outgrowth of a major shift in the economic market

A flood of immigrants posed a threat to European harmonization

The New European Criminology: Policy Update

Ranks of the working poor continue to grow

European Union has creditor nations (Germany) and debtor nations (Greece) exacerbating previously existing problems

Immigration issues are still at the center of social, cultural, economic, and political debates in Europe

All these issues may be coalescing into floating generations and intensifying populist anger

The New European Criminology: Abolitionism

The new European criminology had two main objectives:

To maintain an exchange of criminological communications and comparisons across Europe that, rather than contribute to free market liberalism, would contribute to developing a European public sphere that emphasizes a sharing of experiences

To develop a European criminological community that would “help develop an understanding of trends and concerns in Europe

The New European Criminology: Abolitionism

No concrete definition of abolitionism

central

tenet of general abolitionism is that punishment is never justified

The criminal justice system as a whole is a social problem that should be dismantled and replaced with alternative dispute resolution

Restricted abolitionism deals with the elimination of specific aspects of the criminal justice system

Prisons

are a form of violence and should be destroyed because they reflect a social ethos of violence and degradation

Prisons

should be replaced with democratic community control

The New European Criminology: Consequences of Abolitionism

Abolitionism has been criticized for being imprecise and for lacking a well grounded theoretical opposition to punishment

Has a vision without a strategy

Does not have practical plans for dealing with dangerous predatory criminals

Abolitionism is still a perspective that is structured primarily by analogies and metaphors

Green Criminology: Background

Also identified as “environmental” and “conservation criminology” combines criminology, public health, and rights, including “those of humans and other species”

Refers to the study of environmental harm, environmental laws and environmental regulation

Green Criminology: Background

Green criminology studies crimes

included in the illegal trade of endangered species, illegal

harvesting, irresponsible

disposal of toxic materials, ecological consequences of technologies, crimes associated with the aftermath of natural disastersNo single theory but generally includes a specific concern with environmental issues, social justice, ecological consciousness, the destructive dimensions of global capitalism

Green Criminology: Environmental Justice

Two major ideas:

Distributions of environments in terms of access to natural resources in defined geographical areas

How social practices and environmental hazards impact specific populations defined by class, occupation, gender, age, and ethnicity

Distinguishes between environmental issues that affect everyone and those with a disproportionate impact on specific individuals

Green Criminology: Ecological Justice

Refers

to the relationship of human beings generally to the rest of the natural

world

Environment has intrinsic value and other species have the right to live free from torture, abuse, and destruction of habitatOf central concern is how humans interact with particular environments and the risks to everything that comes in contact with them (humans are part of a larger ecosystem)

Green Criminology: Ecological Justice

Philosophical differences in terms of the value put on the interests of humans and on the environment

Deep green and biocentric perspectives see diseases, famines, etc. as nature’s way of population control

An act of omission is not criminal if it benefits the biosphere generally

Green Criminology: Ecological Justice

Progressive approach

Different types of social power

Humans do not affect ecology equally and environmental degradation occurs within the context of the political economy

Criminality is related to the “exploitation of both the environment and humans by those who control the means of production

Green Criminology: Animal Rights

Includes speciesism: he practice of discrimination and prejudice against

nonhuman animals

Animals are seen in primarily instrumental terms (as pets, as food, as resources) in environmental criminology, or categorized in mainly anthropomorphic terms (such as ‘wildlife,’ ‘fisheries’)” which allows humans to represent animals has a non-inclusive other

Green Criminology: Animal Rights

Tensions exist between animal rights and environmental justice, and animal rights and ecological justice approaches

Mosquito example

Cultural Criminology

Based on the argument that crime and crime control cannot be understood apart from the domain of culture

Crimes are constructed out of symbolic interactions among groups and people and are shaped by ongoing conflicts over their meaning and perceptions

Cultural Criminology: Late Modernity and Globalization: Contextual Changes

According to Young, the impact of economic and cultural globalization is creating widespread resentment and tensions within the First World and internationally

Globalization nonetheless exacerbates both relative deprivation and crises of identity

Generates a sense of unfairness and humiliation that results in offensive behavior that is

transgressive

and

expressive

Cultural Criminology: Late Modernity and Globalization: Contextual Changes

In the present period of late modernity, boundaries and categories of behavior and culture are blurred and confused

Cultural

criminology focuses on the sensual nature of crime, the adrenaline rushes of

edgework—voluntary illicit risk-taking and the dialectic of fear and pleasure

The

meaning of crime and criminality is

contested and not agreed upon

Cultural Criminology: Late Modernity and Globalization: Contextual Changes

The meaning of crime is socially constructed and not the result of rationally chosen violations of

law

Cultural criminology investigates how the image, style, and the representation of crime and crime control actually

occurs

One of the distinctive features of contemporary society is the constant interplay of the media, crime, and criminal justice that comprises a model of

media loops and spirals

Cultural Criminology: Late Modernity and Globalization: Contextual Changes

Argues that a model is needed that can account for a world

so saturated

with media technology and media images that distinctions between a crime and its mediated image is often lost

Critiques the methods often used by conventional criminology and offers alternatives

Stress the human dynamics of surprise, ambiguity, and such things as anger—factors that are often ignored by conventional criminology as well as by the media

Use methods informed by an ethnographic sensibility

Cultural Criminology: Late Modernity and Globalization: Consequences of Cultural Criminology

Cultural criminology is charged with using a definition of culture that is based on political

motivations leading to confusion about the meaning of culture and subculture

There is a lack of understanding and engagement with the classic debates on the meaning of culture found social anthropology

Where is

culture

if there is no distinction between psychological, economic, political and geographical forces that impinge on experiencing crime individually or the patterns of crime over time

Cultural Criminology: Late Modernity and Globalization: Consequences of Cultural Criminology

Hall and Winlow propose instead an approach that places crime within the context of increasing instrumentalism in consumer culture and the breakdown of the pseudo-pacification process

Weakening strength of the contemporary culture to hold together the collective social solidarity

Traditional collective social bonds have been replaced by the most complete and pervasive form of atomised competitive individualism yet seen

Cultural Criminology: Late Modernity and Globalization: Consequences of Cultural Criminology

It is not the material aspects of consumer goods that provokes desire and ambition, but rather its social symbolism and its power to identity and meaning in what has been identified as

liquid modernity

Cultural criminology is in danger of developing into

culturalism—an extreme reductionist argument that attempts to explain culture and identity in late or postmodern capitalism by emphasizing the explanatory power of culture at the expense of neglecting political, economic, and historical processes and shifting contexts

Cultural Criminology: Late Modernity and Globalization: Consequences of Cultural Criminology

The theory tells little about crime itself from a positivistic perspective, or the meaning of crime to its victims

Cultural criminology uses the destabilizing conditions of late modernity to study how populations position themselves

The enemy is the state and rational choice theorists

Cultural criminology seeks to dissolve conventional understandings of crime regardless of whether they are specific theories of the institutionalized discipline of criminology itself

Convict Criminology: Background: Primarily an American Contribution

John Irwin was the first convict to openly use his criminal experiences to enter academe

In the late 1990s, the convicts turned academics had enough critical mass, energy, and determination to start what is now called “convict criminology”

By 2003, convict criminology was self declared as a new school within criminology

Convict Criminology: Background: Primarily an American Contribution

This perspective grew out of six interrelated movements:

Theoretical developments in criminology

Writings in victimology

Writings in constitutive criminology

The failure of the prisoners’ rights movement

The authenticity of insider perspectives

The growing importance of ethnography

Convict Criminology: Background: Primarily an American Contribution

Central to convict criminologists’ claims is that radical and critical perspectives often have remained the intellectual products of the well meaning yet privileged, with only minimal reference and relevance to the victims of the criminal justice machine

Convict Criminology: Background: Primarily an American Contribution

Its humanitarian orientation encompasses a kind of “back-to-basics” criminology, one that listens to the people on the receiving end of criminal justice

Has empowered some ex-cons, convict criminology has in turn given voice to prison workers close to the ground in prison administration and prison research

Convict Criminology: Consequences of the “New School of Convict Criminology”

It is not at all clear that convict criminology is doing anything new that has not been done in the past

45 years

with the exception that about half of the contributors embrace the identity of “ex-con

”While the convict story from convicts’ perspectives is interesting and informative, it risks having more in common with journalism and novels/memoirs than with academic

criminology

Convict Criminology: Consequences of the “New School of Convict Criminology”

This approach is struggling to negotiate a position of critical relevance

Convict criminology has created what appears to be somewhat of a sustained presence within criminology and the media

Sits at the crossroads of activism and academics

Conclusion

Critical criminology stands outside mainstream criminology and outside the structures of power in society

the central theme that informs these diverse critical perspectives is that official, legitimate, and hegemonic realities should not be taken for granted

Existing realities are not inevitable but are socially and politically const