scholarly journals Les liaisons dangereuses : Foucault et la criminologie

Criminologie ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dany Lacombe
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Life Strategies ◽  
Social Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methodological Considerations

With Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault offered the social sciences a theory of power, and conceptual tools that radically transformed law reform studies. In criminology, for example, the social constructionist tradition, by drawing on Foucault's notion of power, increasingly inscribed law reform studies in a narrative of the dispersal of social control. Attempts to reform the criminal justice system are understood in terms of the increased penetration and expansion of social control into the whole of the social body ; thus, "nothing works !" In this article, I intend to challenge this conventional wisdom on law reform and the dispersion of social control, by demonstrating that it is founded on an essential-ist notion of power that we cannot attribute to Foucault. In light of his work on sexuality, and governmentality, I will examine how Foucault's productive notion of power is better understood in terms of "mechanisms for life", strategies that both constrain — through objectifying techniques — and enable — through subjectifying techniques — agency. The implications of Foucault's productive notion of power for law reform are examined in terms of methodological considerations.

scholarly journals Out-Group Animus and Punitiveness in Latin America

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (8) ◽  
pp. 1161-1189
Author(s):  
Peter S. Lehmann ◽  
Cecilia Chouhy ◽  
Alexa J. Singer ◽  
Jessica N. Stevens ◽  
Marc Gertz
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Ethnic Conflict ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
The Social ◽  
Racial Ethnic

The social threat perspective anticipates that members of racial/ethnic out-groups might be perceived as socially, politically, or economically threatening; criminally inclined; and in need of social control via the criminal justice system. In light of this framework, the current study examines the influence of out-group animus on punitive sentiments in the rarely explored context of Latin America. Data from the 2012 AmericasBarometer survey collected in nine countries ( N = 15,145) are analyzed, and the findings indicate that animus against foreigners, Blacks, and the Indigenous is positively associated with support for punitive measures. These results lend support for the social threat perspective and provide further evidence that this relationship might be a cultural universal in societies characterized by racial/ethnic conflict.

Art and Mindfulness Behind Bars

2019 ◽  
Vol 99 (4_suppl) ◽  
pp. 3S-13S
Author(s):  
Jill Leslie Rosenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
System Research ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
The Social ◽  
Correctional System ◽  
Potential Collaboration

Engaging in art and mindfulness activities has been found to have numerous positive effects on individuals regardless of age or setting. In recent years there have been an increased number of these programs finding their way into the correctional system. Research indicates that there are multiple benefits for individuals who are incarcerated that engage in these activities. The purpose of this volume is to highlight some of the successful implementations of art and mindfulness programs within the criminal justice system. The authors included in this issue represent a variety of disciplines from both the social sciences and arts in order to develop multidisciplinary understanding, discussion and potential collaboration.

scholarly journals The Relevance of the Social Control Theory in Explaining Crime among African American Families

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Ayodeji Daramola ◽  
Gbolahan S Osho
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Control Theory ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Justice System ◽  
African American Families ◽  
Social Control Theory ◽  
The Church

Today, criminologists, especially, Black criminologists, are thoroughly perplexed by the same problem of disproportionate minority confinement (DMC) most especially of Blacks in both the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Are African Americans more criminally minded than other races or ethnic groups? Do African Americans actually commit more crimes than others? These are the questions that the different deviant theories have tried to answer. The concept of social bonding arose from social control theory, which suggests that attachment to family and school, commitment to conventional pathways of achievements and beliefs in the legitimacy of social order are primary and important elements of establishing a social bond (Hirschi, 1969). In expounding his social control theory, Hirschi listed the elements of the bond as attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. Does it mean that African Americans commit more crimes than other racial and ethnic groups? Or are African Americans genetically wired to be criminogenic? Is the society or the environment to blame for the perceived higher rate of crime among African Americans? Or are the criminal justice system, the judicial system, and the juvenile justice system, all together racially biased against Blacks, especially, Black males? Even though Hirschi (1969) did not mention attachment to religious beliefs as part of social control, but for the African American families, the church could play a significant role in helping to cement the bond of adolescents to their families. Any study of the African American family is not complete without the church. According to Work (1900), in all social study of the Negro, the church must be considered, for it is one of the greatest factors in his social life.

scholarly journals Feminist Methods and Sources in Criminology and Criminal Justice

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Howe
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Advanced Education ◽  
Justice Research ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Feminist Methods ◽  
Criminal Justice Research ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Criminology And Criminal Justice

AbstractThis article by Adrian Howe is based on a presentation given at the ‘Sources and Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice Conference’ in November 2015, jointly sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Education and the Socio-Legal Studies Association. She begins by querying whether there are indeed distinct feminist methods in the social sciences. She outlines the impact of what she calls the ‘methodical revolution’ on the criminology discipline, Foucault's contribution and Foucauldian methodologies deployed in criminological and criminal justice research.

Reconciling Results on Racial Differences in Police Shootings

2018 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 228-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland G. Fryer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
First Century ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Investigative Journalism ◽  
Police Use Of Force ◽  
Lethal Force ◽  
The Social

Police use of force, particularly lethal force, is one of the most divisive issues of the twenty-first century. To understand the nexus of race, criminal justice, and police brutality, academics and journalists have begun to amass impressive datasets on officer-involved-shootings (OIS). I compare the data and methods of three investigative journalism articles and two publications in the social sciences on a set of five rubrics and conclude that the stark differences between their findings are due to differences in what qualifies for a valid research design and not underlying differences in the datasets.

scholarly journals Leprosy and the Plague: State Surveillance of Low-Income Fathers

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
Monika Jean Ulrich Myers ◽  
Michael Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Child Support Enforcement ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Surveillance

Foucault’s theory of state social control contrasts societal responses to leprosy, where deviants are exiled from society but promised freedom from social demands, and the plague, where deviants are controlled and surveyed within society but receive some state assistance in exchange for their cooperation.In this paper, I analyze how low-income fathers in the United States simultaneously experience social control consistent with leprosy and social control consistent with the plague but do not receive the social benefits that Foucault associates with either status.Through interviews with 57 low-income fathers, I investigate the role of state surveillance in their family lives through child support enforcement, the criminal justice system, and child protective services.Because they did not receive any benefits from compliance with this surveillance, they resisted it, primarily by dropping “off the radar.”Men justified their resistance in four ways: they had their own material needs, they did not want the child, they did not want to separate from their child’s mother or compliance was unnecessary.This resistance is consistent with Foucault’s distinction between leprosy and the plague.They believed that they did not receive the social benefits accorded to plague victims, so they attempted to be treated like lepers, excluded from social benefits but with no social demands or surveillance.

In Search of Respect in Criminal Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-40
Author(s):  
Gabrielle Watson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interpretive Approach ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
Critical Enquiry

The principal aim of the chapter is to examine the merits of respect as a concept of critical enquiry. This is an ambitious task, not least because it involves a challenge to the definitional self-evidence of respect to which criminal justice scholars and practitioners routinely subscribe. The chapter pursues three distinct lines of enquiry and reflection. What is respect? The first task is to attend to this deceptively simple question. In so doing, the chapter assembles materials on respect from philosophy and elsewhere in the social sciences. Second, having explored what respect means in general terms—though this is hotly contested—the chapter sketches and filters the most prominent classic and contemporary works into an understanding of respect for criminal justice. By initiating a dialogue with related disciplines in this way, the aim is to build a strong conceptual platform from which to engage with the substantive material on policing and imprisonment in subsequent chapters. Third, the chapter situates respect in criminal justice in contextual and methodological terms. Much of this work must be justificatory both of respect and of my own methodological choices. Having explained in some detail what respect means and why it has been selected for examination, the chapter considers why policing and imprisonment have been selected as contexts for that examination, and how an interpretive approach offers a means by which to conduct that examination.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Gabrielle Watson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
A Value ◽  
The Social ◽  
Penal Institutions ◽  
Justice Practice

Respect is a value whose importance in contemporary criminal justice many would endorse in principle. It is well established that every person, by virtue of his humanity, has a claim to respect that need not be negotiated and cannot be forfeited. Rich and ongoing debates about respect beyond criminal justice—notably, in philosophy and elsewhere in the social sciences—indicate that scholarly interest in respect surpasses disciplinary boundaries, that it is of considerable explanatory and normative scope, and that it matters. It is curious, then, that despite academic interest in the democratic design of penal institutions in recent decades, respect is more akin to a slogan than a foundational value of criminal justice practice.

27. Critical perspectives on crime and punishment

Criminology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Case ◽  
Phil Johnson ◽  
David Manlow ◽  
Roger Smith ◽  
Kate Williams
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Transformative Justice ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Community Justice ◽  
Critical Perspectives ◽  
Control Theories

This chapter examines a range of perspectives which question the assumptions underlying the concept of ‘punishment’. It first explains what is meant by the idea of critical perspectives on punishment before discussing a number of critical perspectives on the justice system including abolitionism, social control theories, community justice, and transformative justice. It then explores unjust punishment and problems for criminal justice of discrimination and inequality, focusing on the disparities in treatment between white, BME, and other sectors of the population in the criminal justice system. It also considers how ‘crimes of the privileged’ and state crimes can remain unseen or unpunished and concludes with an evaluation of the limitations of critical analyses of crime and punishment.

8. How do we prevent crime?

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Tim Newburn
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Crime Prevention ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Situational Crime Prevention ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Informal Social Control ◽  
Prevention Techniques

It is often assumed that the criminal justice system is crucial in determining crime levels, but the available evidence does not bear this out. In fact, it is the processes of socialization underpinned and reinforced by informal social control that play a vital role in controlling crime. ‘How do we prevent crime?’ considers the various crime prevention techniques that have contributed substantially to recent apparent reductions in crime. It describes the distinction between social crime prevention, which tends to focus on fairly broad and deep issues, and situational crime prevention, which is narrower in focus, is pre-emptive, and seeks, through a variety of means, to reduce the opportunities for crime.

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