Radical Criminology, Penal Politics and the Rule of Law (From Radical Issues in Criminology, P 7-24, 1980, Pat Carlen and Mike Collison, ed. See NCJ-74506)

• NCJ Number: 74507
• Author(s): P Carlen
• Date Published: 1980
• Length: 18 pages
• Sale Source: Barnes and Noble College Bookstore
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

An exposition of criminology's radical aspects and an examination of the relationship between crime, politics, and civil liberties are presented.

Abstract

The study rejects global and empiricist theories which relate crime to questions of individual psychology on one hand or to the history, practice, or form of criminal law on the other. Instead, individual theoretically specified instances within criminal politics are analyzed. The four strands of radicalism in criminology which have existed since the early 1960's include 1) a general sociological approach whose proponents have engaged in an enthusiastic but theoretically uneven debate with existential and marxist positions; 2) a theoretically specific body of work from the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies which analyzes the ideological conditions particular to different forms of criminalization; 3) historical criminology as advocated by E. P. Thompson in England and Michel Foucault in France; and 4) marxist critiques of law. It is argued that confusing the political economy of punishment with the political economy of right transforms questions of crime to questions of civil liberty. In attempting to change contemporary relationships between criminal law, crime, and social regulation, radical criminology must also address the question of civil liberty under the law. The author follows Pashulanis in denying any relationship between the criminalization processes and a rule of law which blends equality with individual responsibility. Even though the rule of law must be denied its ideological effects, those effects could facilitate rejection of the rule of law through recognition of the concept of legality. However, until a noncapitalist mode of production requires new representations of value, people who already know the language of totalitarianism will not easily accept the unknown language of 'socialist legality.' Therefore, the law must be both denied and preserved as a condition of value. One note is supplied.