The Routledge Handbook of International Crime and Justice Studies

Bruce Arrigo, Heather Bersot

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136868498
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Derecho internacional

The Routledge Handbook of International Crime and Justice Studies presents the enduring debates and emerging challenges in crime and justice studies from an international and multi-disciplinary perspective. Guided by the pivotal, although vastly under-examined, role that consumerism, politics, technology, and culture assume in shaping these debates and in organizing these challenges, individual chapters probe the global landscape of crime and justice with astonishing clarity and remarkable depth.

A distinguished collection of experts examine the interdisciplinary field of international crime and justice. Their contributions are divided into thematic sections, including:

• 
  
  

• theory, culture, and society
• industries of crime and justice: systems of policing, law, corrections and punishment
• the criminal enterprise
• global technologies
• media, crime, and culture
• green criminology
• political violence
• public health criminology
• the political economy of crime and justice.

All the chapters include full pedagogy and instructional resources for easy referencing or classroom use. This Handbook will be useful for students, scholars and practitioners of law, medicine, history, economics, sociology, politics, philosophy, education, public health, and social policy.

Part I

Theory, culture, and society

The narratives of crime and justice

1

Four currents of criminological thought

Bruce DiCristina, Martin Gottschalk and Roni Mayzer

Scholarly views on crime, criminals, and responses to crime have varied markedly over the past three centuries, and this continues to be the situation today in the field of criminology. Through the work of researchers from many nations, criminology began to emerge as a secular field of study during the eighteenth century and was well established by the late-nineteenth century. Over the course of its development, it has maintained a multidisciplinary orientation drawing on the work of philosophers, biologists, psychologists, sociologists, historians, and those working in other disciplines as well (e.g., economists).

The aim of this chapter is to provide a sketch of four broad currents of criminological thought: (1) the classical tradition; (2) biological/psychological paradigms; (3) mainstream sociological perspectives; and (4) critical criminology. All of these currents, in one form or another, continue to flow through the field of criminology. Each one consists of multiple perspectives and has changed form over time as new theories have emerged and as established theories have lost their appeal. Although these currents entail different and sometimes conflicting reality-claims, they also intersect at times and, hence, are not mutually exclusive.

The classical school: a wellspring of secular criminology

The eighteenth century was a time of rapid change in Western societies. The Enlightenment reached its peak, and with it there was a fundamental shift in intellectual life as secular inquiry increasingly replaced religious thought. The American and French Revolutions, which occurred in the latter half of the century, marked an important change in political beliefs and institutions, with hereditary monarchies giving way to more democratically-based republics. Moreover, modern capitalism was taking form and the Industrial Revolution was beginning to emerge, two closely associated phenomena that entailed a major transformation in class relations and in the material conditions of social life. It was in this context that the classical school of criminology emerged as arguably the first distinct branch of criminology.

At its inception, the classical school was shaped by the work of scholars from several nations. In his widely read publication, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments ([1764] 1819), the Italian scholar Cesare Beccaria integrated elements of Enlightenment thought to establish what would later be labeled the “classical school.” Twenty-five years after the publication of this work, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation ([1789] 1948), developed a similar theoretical framework that increased the precision of this school and furthered its popularity. Of course, before Beccaria and Bentham, other Enlightenment intellectuals, including the Scottish philosopher Francis Hutcheson and the French philosophe Montesquieu, began to set the foundation for the classical school (see Beirne 1993).¹ Today, nearly two and a half centuries after the appearance of Beccaria’s Essay, the imprint of these scholars still can be seen in contemporary economic, rational choice, and deterrence theories.

Guided by the utilitarian principle and, to some extent, social contract reasoning, the classical school encouraged a secular understanding of crime and punishments designed to deter offenders. The secular content of their work represented a significant break from the theological mode of thought that was still common during the eighteenth century. Indeed, Montesquieu, Beccaria, and Bentham had one or more publications condemned by the Roman Catholic Church and placed on its Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

Beccaria’s Essay represents the cornerstone of the classical school and embodies a combination of utilitarianism and social contract theory.² Although elements of utilitarianism can be found in the writings of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (see Scarre 1994), it gradually evolved into a distinct branch of philosophy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bentham was one of the primary architects of utilitarianism, but the utilitarian principle, in one form or another, had been proposed prior to his work. Utilitarians assert that actions and social arrangements should be judged according to the extent to which they increase happiness (pleasure) and decrease unhappiness (pain); if they generate a net increase in pleasure or a net decrease in pain, they have “utility” and are acceptable. A variation of this principle was proposed by Hutcheson in 1725. At that time, he suggested that our “moral sense” encourages conduct that is oriented toward “the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers” (Hutcheson [1725] 2004: 125). Later in the eighteenth century, both Beccaria ([1764] 1819: xi) and Bentham ([1789] 1948: 1–7) expressed their support for this principle.

In view of the utilitarian principle, the classical school suggests that a just criminal justice system is one that effectively pursues “the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.” In other words, the criminal justice system should serve the interests of the general public; it should not be designed to support only the interests of a ruling minority (e.g., a royal family), although it may support their interests to the extent that they are connected to the interests of the general public. Moreover, the term “crime,” especially following the logic of Bentham, should be reserved for acts that cause substantially more pain than pleasure for the members of a society. In this connection, a deviant act that causes a net increase in pleasure should not be punished as a crime; and a punishment that causes a net increase in pain, a real possibility if “all punishment in itself is evil” (Bentham [1789] 1948: 170), is unacceptable.

Much like utilitarianism, elements of social contract theory date back to ancient Greek philosophy (see Plato’s “Crito”) and were later developed with greater clarity during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, primarily through the work of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau offered different conceptions of “the state of nature” and supported different forms of government, but each of these theorists suggested that it is reasonable for individuals to exchange some of their liberties for the security and other benefits that can be gained by living with others in a society under its government. It is argued that without this agreement (the social contract) and the mechanisms to enforce it (e.g., penal laws), individuals would be subject to coercion from others that would be more oppressive than the terms of the exchange. Within the framework of Hobbes’s theory, it would be a situation “where every man is enemy to every man” (cited in Ebenstein 1962: 368).

Although social contract reasoning was excluded from Bentham’s work, it has a prominent place in Beccaria’s theory, where it is used to help justify punishment. According to Beccaria’s viewpoint, a government based on a just social contract has the right to impose punishments on individuals who violate it (that is, break the laws of the society). However, given the utilitarian logic embedded in Beccaria’s work and the classical school in general, the right to punish is constrained by the utilitarian principle; it is dependent on whether the social contract is acceptable according to utilitarian standards. If the exchange of liberties for security is not geared toward “the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers,” the social contract is unacceptable and punishment, at least in some cases, will be unjust. Combining utilitarian and social contract reasoning, Beccaria proceeds to provide a list of requirements that need to be met for punishment to be acceptable. For Beccaria ([1764] 1819: 160), “it should be public, immediate, and necessary, the least possible in the case given, proportioned to the crime, and determined by the laws.” Bentham ([1789] 1948) agrees with most of these requirements but presents a more extensive list. For both of these authors, the requirements they propose are rationalized by a particular theory of human nature and crime.

According to the traditional interpretation of their work, which still may be the most popular in the field of criminology, the theorists of the classical school assume that humans are hedonistic, rational, and free. The suggestion that people are hedonistic, that we are driven by a desire to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, is clearly evident in the literature of the classical school. Bentham ([1789] 1948: 1), for instance, implies that pleasure and pain “determine what we shall do.” These sensations are our “masters”: “They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think” (ibid.: 1). Likewise, the suggestion that people are rational – that to some extent, prior to acting, we weigh the amount of pleasure that may be derived from a particular action against the amount of pain that may be suffered – is evident in the literature of this school. Bentham, again, offers a useful example: “Men calculate, some with less exactness, indeed, some with more: but all men calculate. I would not say, that even a madman does not calculate” (ibid.: 188).

But what about the assumption that humans have free will, that we freely choose between different courses of action? Is this truly an assumption of the classical school? Different opinions exist on this issue, although currently perhaps the most persuasive position is to exclude this assumption from the original framework of the classical school (see Beirne 1993). Both Beccaria and Bentham appeared to embrace some degree of determinism. Consider, for instance, Bentham’s comments on pleasure and pain governing us and determining what we do. If they “determine what we shall do,” can we have free will?³

Excluding the assumption of free will, the core proposition regarding human behavior embodied in the works of the classical theorists may be described in the following terms: An individual will engage in a course of action that is expected to bring the greatest pleasure (or least pain), even if it is a criminal action. In this interpretation, the action is compelled by the person’s innate hedonistic disposition and learned “expectations.” Bentham ([1789] 1948: 179n2; emphasis in original) refers to “expectation of the profit (pleasure)” as “the impelling motive” and “expectation of the punishment (pain)” as “the restraining motive.” These expectations of pleasure and pain vary in their accuracy and may be shaped by many different variables. For Bentham ([1789] 1948: 173), these variables include degrees of “infancy,” “insanity,” and “intoxication.” But more importantly, since the work of Beccaria, the classical school has advocated the development of a carefully calculated system of punishments to shape these expectations and deter crime. If punishment can be used to give us the impression that criminal behavior will cause us more pain than pleasure, we should be compelled by our hedonistic disposition to avoid such behavior. And recall, for classical theorists, this impression must be made in a way that is consistent with the utilitarian principle.

For Beccaria ([1764] 1819), punishment should be public, certain, and swift. To create an expectation that pain follows from the commission of a crime, it is useful for punishment to be public, to occur in such a way that people see the suffering of offenders. If it is hidden from view, people may overlook or misjudge the pain that accompanies a given criminal act. Beccaria suggests that this is a drawback of prisons and the transportation of offenders to societies they have “never offended” (ibid.: 77). Beccaria also emphasizes that certain punishment is preferable to severe punishment, for “[t]he certainty of a small punishment will make a stronger impression than the fear of one more severe, if attended with the hopes of escaping” (ibid.: 93). Where punishment is uncertain, people are more likely to possess little or no expectation of pain when considering an offense. Regarding Beccaria’s discussion of the swiftness of punishment, we find an excellent example of his general line of reasoning. In his words:

The smaller the interval of time between the punishment and the crime, the stronger and more lasting will be the association of the two ideas of crime and punishment; so that they may be considered, one as the cause, and the other as the unavoidable and necessary effect.

(ibid.: 75; emphasis in original)

Overall, public, certain, and swift punishment is presented as an effective means for creating among a population an automatic tendency to associate pain with the commission of a crime. Beccaria implies that ideally “the seducing picture of the advantage arising from the crime should instantly awake the attendant idea of punishment” (ibid.: 76).

But this is not all. For Beccaria ([1764] 1819) and the classical school more generally, punishment also should be proportionate and “the least possible in the case given.”⁴ These proposals reflect the efforts of Enlightenment scholars to moderate the severity of eighteenth-century punishments, and they were present to some degree in works that appeared prior to those of Beccaria and Bentham (e.g., Montesquieu [1748] 1899: 83–85, 89–91; also see Hutcheson 1755, cited in DiCristina 2012: 23–30). Regarding the proportionality of punishment, Beccaria ([1764] 1819: 28, 32) argued that a “fixed proportion between crimes and punishments” is important for the purposes of deterring serious offenses: “If an equal punishment be ordained for two crimes that injure society in different degrees, there is nothing to deter men from committing the greater as often as it is attended with greater advantage.” On the need for punishment to be “the least possible,” he noted that excessive punishments can prompt an offender to commit other crimes in an effort to avoid punishment for the first, and they also can make the public less sensitive to suffering (ibid.: 93–94). Remaining true to the logic of utilitarianism, Beccaria then concludes:

That a punishment may produce the effect required, it is sufficient that the evil it occasions should exceed the good expected from the crime, including in the calculation the certainty of the punishment, and the privation of the expected advantage. All severity beyond this is superfluous, and therefore tyrannical.

(ibid.: 94; emphasis in original)

In the beginning, especially as it appeared in the work of Beccaria, the classical school was applau...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword: Classicide in Communist China
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: recognizing and transforming international crime and justice studies
• Part I: Theory, culture, and society: the narratives of crime and justice
• Part II: The industries of crime and justice: systems of policing
• Part III: The industries of crime and justice: systems of law
• Part IV: The industries of crime and justice: systems of corrections and punishment
• Part V: The criminal enterprise: types of commerce, consumerism, and conspicuous consumption
• Part VI: Global technologies: from the surveillance of humans to the management of situations
• Part VII: Media, crime, and culture: simulating identities, constructing realities
• Part VIII: Green criminology: environmental hazards, natural disasters, and ecological sustainability
• Part IX: Political and state violence: struggles, conflicts, and transitions
• Part X: Public health criminology: global risks and transnational responsibilities
• Part XI: The political economy of crime and justice: the trade in colonialism, nationalism, and globalism
• Index