Theoretical Criminology 18(1)

Theoretical Criminology, February 2014: Volume 18, Issue 1

Outcasts, performers and true believers: Responsibilized subjects of criminal justice
Dawn Moore and Hideyuki Hirai

We draw on a field study of three drug treatment courts to show that responsibilization strategies create a paradox of bulimic exclusion and empowerment for individual subjects. By theorizing three different subjectivities emerging from our research sites (outcasts, performers and true believers), we show how subjects of intervention actively work to negotiate their own experiences of responsibilization.

Corporate fraud as misplaced confidence? Exploring ambiguity in the accuracy of accounts and the materiality of money
Fiona Haines

The corporate fraud narrative suggests that misleading and inaccurate accounts engender misplaced confidence that robs creditors and investors alike. Yet, this view underplays nested ambiguities in business accounts first in the (im)possibility of accuracy in a set of accounts and second in the constituent figures themselves as embodying uncertain monetary value. This article analyses these phenomena and argues that confidence, nurtured by governments through their regulatory practices, is essential to maintaining perceived integrity to both in spite of continuing ambiguity. This management of confidence is engendered through the interdependent yet contested relationships between government, business and professional elites. Corporate fraud is embedded within these relationships and hence difficult to dislodge without threatening the productiveness that business promises and government craves. Criminalization of corporate fraud deflects attention to one of these actors, the business and its directors, without clear recognition of the role played by government itself.

Weeding the garden: The Third Way, the Westminster tradition and Imprisonment for Public Protection
Harry Annison

This article engages with the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence of the UK Criminal Justice Act 2003, a prominent measure against ‘dangerous offenders’, in a ‘substantively political light’ (O’Malley, 1999). It provides an interpretation based on policymakers’ beliefs and traditions. I argue that the perceived need for the IPP sentence and its ultimate form was the result of New Labour ministers’ reliance on the Third Way political ideology and its implications for criminal justice policy. In addition, in terms of the policymaking process, I suggest that the ‘Westminster tradition’ conditioned policymakers’ actions in relation to the IPP sentence, in ways that were crucial to its outcome. The article concludes with an examination of the moral significance of these beliefs and traditions by reference to Bauman’s discussion of the dangers of a modern ‘garden culture’.

The emotional geography of prison life
Ben Crewe, Jason Warr, Peter Bennett, and Alan Smith

Accounts of prison life consistently describe a culture of mutual mistrust, fear, aggression and barely submerged violence. Often too, they explain how prisoners adapt to this environment—in men’s prisons, at least—by putting on emotional ‘masks’ or ‘fronts’ of masculine bravado which hide their vulnerabilities and deter the aggression of their peers. This article does not contest the truth of such descriptions, but argues that they provide a partial account of the prison’s emotional world. Most importantly, for current purposes, they fail to describe the way in which prisons have a distinctive kind of emotional geography, with zones in which certain kinds of emotional feelings and displays are more or less acceptable. In this article, we argue that these ‘emotion zones’, which cannot be characterized either as ‘frontstage’ or ‘backstage’ domains, enable the display of a wider range of feelings than elsewhere in the prison. Their existence represents a challenge to depictions of prisons as environments that are unwaveringly sterile, unfailingly aggressive or emotionally undifferentiated.

The symbolic purpose of hate crime law: Ideal victims and emotion
Gail Mason

This article examines the symbolic function of hate crime law. By challenging the norms that sustain and promote prejudice, hate crime law seeks to contribute to claims for social justice on behalf of victim groups. This symbolic function cannot be achieved by legal rules alone. Drawing upon theories of emotional thinking, the article argues that the moral work of hate crime laws is dependent upon the capacity of victim groups to engender compassionate thinking that helps reconfigure perceptions of them as dangerous, illegitimate or inferior Others. This analysis seeks to contribute to our understanding of the processes through which some minority communities fall short of the image of ideal victims capable of contributing to the moral claim embedded in hate crime law.

Legitimacy and crime: Theorizing the role of the state in cross-national criminological theory
Amy Nivette

One of the primary components of state stability and order is that citizens consider those in power just and legitimate. Citizens who perceive the state as legitimate are likely to consider its institutions a valid source of morality and social control.  Theoretically, legitimacy should play an important role in criminal offending across countries. This link between state power and citizens—that is, legitimacy—has the potential to be an important social mechanism connecting state actions to individual criminal behaviours. With this in mind, this article explores how political legitimacy might affect levels of crime and violence across countries.  A lack of legitimacy may lead citizens to (1) reject the monopoly of physical force to employ self-help and/or (2) withdraw commitment from institutions, breaking down social control.