Theoretical Criminology 17(4)

Theoretical Criminology, November 2013: Volume 17, Issue 4 

Policing and the surveillance of the marginal: Everyday contexts of social control
Megan O'’Neill and Bethan Loftus

While the surveillance practices of the private security industry have become a central preoccupation of scholarship, the surveillance power of the state has been greatly enhanced through multiple procedures of information gathering to support practices of control and management. In this article, we draw upon two different research projects to examine the surveillance work of the police and other public sector groups working in partnership, as well as the activities of police officers operating covertly. In so doing, we expose the often unintended, but nevertheless invasive and comprehensive power of state agencies to gather details of individuals in the residual working class, within mundane and innocuous policing practices. Our central argument is that these developments have occurred alongside a displacement of social policy through crime control, and represent both an acceleration and intensification of existing state approaches to the surveillance of the problematic individual. This extensive project of targeted surveillance, we contend, also calls into question current claims that the state is moving towards a system of managing deviant populations.

Mapping the margins of intersectionality: Criminological possibilities in a transnational world
Kathryn Henne and Emily Troshynski

This article contributes to recent discussions around intersectionality, a framework that captures how two or more axes of subordination overlap in practice, and its utility for criminology. Even though intersectionality offers an analytic through which to account for discursive dimensions of marginalization, feminist criticisms of intersectionality’s proliferation across disciplines suggests that the concept needs to be revisited. After contextualizing intersectionality’s tenets, we trace how feminists have addressed related issues through a transnational lens and then consider how these adaptations can help inform future criminological inquiry. We conclude with the argument that a critical re-reading of intersectionality not only enables a focused critique of mainstream criminology, but also encourages an innovative feminist praxis within the discipline.

Pathways, race and gender responsive reform: Through an abolitionist lens
Emma Russell and Bree Carlton

In this article we take stock of a recent moment in penal history in Victoria, Australia, where agencies have implemented gender responsive policies to address the disproportionate growth in women’s prison numbers, and in particular the overrepresentation of women constructed as ‘culturally diverse’. We draw upon abolitionist and intersectional frames to provide a theoretical critique of this political event. Our analysis extends beyond the unitary frame of gender, which has until recently dominated critiques in this area, to highlight the ways in which racializing logics are reproduced through such policies and practices. We explore the implications of the adoption of the criminological notion of pathways through the language of liberal feminist reform, which signifies a reinvestment in the myth of individual rehabilitation. The consequences of these discursive practices include the reproduction of pathologizing and risk-focused practices that can only yield more racializing, interventionist and expansionist responses within correctional spaces.

A genealogy of neoliberal communitarianism
Friso van Houdt and Willem Schinkel

This article investigates the power/knowledge relations between contemporary penal government and criminological theory. Based on an analysis of the strategic case of the Netherlands, the emergence of what can be called neoliberal communitarianism is discussed. In relation to the ‘penal welfarism’ it succeeds, neoliberal communitarianism provides a rationale of governing that allows a greater amount of complexity precisely because it consists of a paradoxical set of doctrines, discourses and techniques. This involves an emphasis on both ‘individual responsibility’ and ‘community’, protecting market and community by tightening social control, law and order and the production of rational self-controlling individuals while excluding the cultural and biological ‘risk citizen’. The article illustrates the incorporation of criminological theories as policy underpinnings, and it explicates how criminological theories can be placed in the discursive space of neoliberal communitarianism.

Assemblages of penal governance, social justice and youth justice partnerships
Patricia Gray

Youth justice in England and Wales is delivered by multi-agency Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) which are expected to work in partnership with social welfare agencies to provide ‘holistic’ support that targets the interrelated personal and social needs of young offenders associated with their risk of reoffending. This article engages with criminological debates which attempt to interpret the hybrid assemblages of penal governance that have characterized late modernity in order to theorize why these partnerships have had only limited success in addressing the social context of youth crime. It will be argued, evidenced by an analysis of research data on YOT partnerships in action, that these assemblages are ‘classed’ in so much as they act as conduits for strategic elements which articulate powerful class interests (along with those of other social forces) to be translated into practice. Such strategic elements sustain class inequality and deny social justice to young people in conflict with the law.

Neoliberal prisons and cognitive treatment: Calibrating the subjectivity of incarcerated young men to economic inequalities
Ronald Kramer, Valli Rajah, and Hung-En Sung

Based on fieldwork conducted in a cognitive-treatment setting for young men in jail, this article argues that contemporary rehabilitation efforts not only manifest theories of disciplinary and risk society, but also embody ideologies of the self and economic relations that are consistent with neoliberal capitalism. Drawing from Marxist theories of penality, we show that correctional officers seek to reconfigure the subjectivity of young incarcerated men in ways that adjust them to economic inequalities. For instance, they frequently portray labor markets as accessible and readily offering stable employment opportunities. When correctional officers acknowledge structural limitations and racial inequality, they are likely to dismiss such concerns by insisting upon the power of individual choice to overcome social barriers. We consider why correctional officers embrace neoliberal ideologies and note some implications for future research.

Changing fate? Agency and the desistance process
Deirdre Healy

There is a significant conceptual divide between criminological theories that treat offenders as rational agents who freely choose their actions and those that portray offenders as individuals whose behaviour is determined by external forces. Recently, research into desistance from crime has produced a more complex and nuanced account of crime causation which acknowledges the interplay between agency and structure. Yet, while the concept of agency is frequently invoked in contemporary discourse, the variety of definitions and measures employed by researchers makes it difficult to establish a clear and consistent picture of its role. This article attempts to address this deficit by evaluating the contributions of agency-centred theories of desistance. An integrated framework, which aims to consolidate existing knowledge about agency and provide additional insights into its role in desistance, is then proposed.