Punishment and Political Economy (original) (raw)

Recent Developments in Criminological Theory

"This volume contains recent and cutting-edge articles from leading criminological theorists. The book is organized into ten sections, each representing the latest in the multi-disciplinary orientations representing a cross-section of contemporary criminological theory. These sections include: 1: Classical and Rational Choice; 2: Biological and Biosocial; 3: Psychological; 4: Social Learning and Neutralization; 5: Social Control; 6: Social Ecology, Sub-cultural and Cultural; 7: Anomie and Strain; 8: Conflict and Radical; 9: Feminist and Gender; 10: Critical Criminologies: Anarchist, Postmodernist, Peacemaking. The articles were selected based on their contributions to advancing the field, including ways in which the authors of each chapter understand the current theoretical tendencies of their respective approaches and how they envision the future of their theories. Because of this, the articles focus on theory rather than empirical research. Of particular note is the tendency toward integration of different perspectives, as described by editors, Henry and Lukas, in their original introduction to this volume. Contents: Introduction; Part I Classical and Rational Choice Theories: Rational choice, deterrence, and theoretical integration, David A. Ward, Mark C. Stafford and Louis N. Gray; A crying shame: the over-rationalized conception of man in the rational choice perspective, Willem de Haan and Jaco Vos. Part II Biological and Biosocial Theories: A theory explaining biological correlates of criminality, Lee Ellis; Behavior genetics and anomie/strain theory, Anthony Walsh. Part III Psychological Theories: An alternative psychology of criminal behavior, Julie Horney; A sociocognitive analysis of substance abuse: an agentic perspective, Albert Bandura. Part IV Social Learning and Neutralization Theories: Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities, Albert Bandura; When being good is bad: an expansion of neutralization theory, Volkan Topalli. Part V Social Control Theories: In defense of self-control, Travis Hirschi and Michael R. Gottfredson; Refining control balance theory, Charles R. Tittle. Part VI Social Ecology, Subcultural and Cultural Theories: Transcending tradition: new directions in community research, Chicago style, Robert J. Sampson; New directions in social disorganization theory, Charis E. Kubrin and Ronald Weitzer. Part VII Anomie and Strain Theories: Anomie, social change and crime, Jon Gunnar Bernburg; Building on the foundation of general strain theory: specifying the types of strain most likely to lead to crime and delinquency, Robert Agnew. Part VIII Conflict and Radical Theories: Revisionist history, visionary criminology, and needs-based justice, Gregg Barak; The state of the criminology of crimes of the state, Dawn L. Rothe and David O. Friedrichs. Part IX Feminist and Gender Theories: Patriarchy, crime, and justice: feminist criminology in an era of backlash, Meda Chesney-Lind; Feminist state theory: applications to jurisprudence, criminology, and the welfare state, Lynne A Haney. Part X Critical Criminologies: Anarchist, Postmodernist, Peacemaking: Constitutive criminology: origins, core concepts, and evaluation, Stuart Henry and Dragan Milovanovic; Against the law: anarchist criminology, Jeff Ferrell; Restorative justice: what is it and does it work?, Carrie Menkel-Meadow. Part XI Conclusion: Interdisciplinary integration: building criminology by stealing from our friends, D. Wayne Osgood; Name Index."

The relationship between criminal justice and criminology: 'poetry' or 'technique'

Summary The author outlines the theoretical and practical relationships between science and jurisdiction. Based on possible consonance or lack of consonance between criminology and criminal jurisdiction the author traces different models. Criminology had a fundamental impact on the criminal justice system and the law reforms proved that scientific results could be transformed into legislation. The paper examines the course of historical development: how, when and why exactly in the given moment of history did criminology and other disciplines interact with each other, and how they shaped criminal policy and the system of crime control. When societal sensitivity towards crime and criminality changed, crime control took a new direction and admitted knowledge from other fields of disciplines than before. Promising scientific results were transmitted to the political sphere by criminology in the first half of the 20th century. Lately the strong ties between sci-ence and policy weakened as the need decreased for scientifically grounded findings regarding perpetrators. In the beginning of the 21st century criminology is expressly facing with the fact that crime policy is able to free itself from the system of reacting to causal interconnections of crime, and crime control can be considered as a purely political or technical issue as well. The relationship of criminology and criminal jurisdiction changed with the appearance of high technology, and the „technique” of crime management gained a central place in crime control. The governmental expectations in crime management have dramatically changed, because instead of the questions in most countries instead of „why” and „what” the question of „how” has become the most important one in most countries. International experi-ences also show that legislators are increasingly using the means of limiting the discretionary powers of law enforcement. They are gradually „taking back” the power to define the content of punishment from professionals, and the influence of social science expertise is gradually decreasing in the system of crime management. The author warns that criminologists can easily find themselves in the role of a „crime management assistant worker”, and from his expertise the political stakeholders will only require elements of technical nature.

Punishment, Marxism, and Political Economy

The political economy of punishment is a critical approach within the sociology of punishment that hypothesizes the existence of a structural relationship between transformations of the economy and changes in the penal field. Inspired by a neo-Marxist framework, this materialist critique of punishment explores—from both a historical and a contemporary perspective—the connections between the reorganization of a society's system of production and the emergence, persistence, or decline of specific penal practices. Thus, materialist criminologists have investigated the parallel historical emergence of factories as the main sites of capitalist production and of prisons as the main institutions of punishment in modern societies. Scholars in the field have also explored the correlations between incarceration rates and socioeconomic indicators, such as unemployment rates, poverty levels, welfare regimes, and labor markets. This materialist framework has been criticized in mainstream criminological literature for its alleged economic determinism. In particular, critiques have focused on the theory's tendency to overlook the cultural significance of punishment and the politico-institutional dimensions of penality, as well as on its exclusive emphasis on the instrumental side of penal practices as opposed to their symbolic dimensions. In response to these critiques, some recent works have tried to integrate the old political economy of punishment with epistemological tools from different disciplinary fields in order to overcome some of the limitations of the materialist approach. This broadening of the structural paradigm in criminology could point toward the envisioning of a "cultural political economy of punishment." Particularly in its more recent iterations, the materialist critique of punishment provides a powerful lens for investigating current transformations in the penal field, such as the advent of mass incarceration and the ongoing prison crisis in the United States.